Description: Ever wonder what it's like to bunk with the Unibomber? Hotaru doesn't have to wonder anymore. One naive teen enters the paranoia filled world of Elle Belmounte and is changed by the experience. The alarming thing is, in light of the bizarre phenomena the girl has seen going on aboard the Suiryuu, the disturbed musings of Elle actually seem more than slightly plausible.
Soldering smells pretty bad, and in such a poorly ventilated room, the stink lingers in the air. It smells like lead, and considering what soldering is made out of, isn't too far from the truth.
Elle sits in the bathroom, with a borrowed swivel chair and a broad hardback book over the sink as a makeshift workspace, the vanity lights around the mirror giving her adequate lighting to work on... something. Bits of wire, circuit boards, and a small metal casing that looks like it was pulled off of a broken laptop sits next to her as she works away in relative silence.
Taped to the mirror is a paper with a complex set of plans. Circuits, from the looks of it, and only half of what she needs, should Hotaru be the kind that's capable of reading electrical diagrams. This is done on purpose. Elle has memorized half, so that should someone stumble in on the diagram, it would be impossible to tell what she's doing.
Not that many could tell anyhow.
The mercenary seems to be murmuring something under her breath as the light on the gun illuminates, and the smoky trail rises up from the tip of the iron. The lyrics are almost inaudible, especially while she's busy chewing on a Tootsie Roll Pop stick.
"All are gone, all but one.
No contest, nowhere to run.
No more left, only one.
This is it, this is the countdown to extinction...o/`"
There is a wiggle of a key in the door, a jiggling of the handle that seems to stick a little, the figure outside wrestling with the same jammed behavior that she had complained to the staff about before. There is another rattle, an annoyed grunt from outside, and then finally an exercise of a certain amount of brute force that gets the door open, swinging inward. There. Finally!
The smell of something burning in the room assaults her senses immediately, eyes widening at the initial thought that a fire is burning in the room, only to realize that there's someone else in there already. Face paling slightly, Hotaru simply just stands in the door frame, tiny enough to hardly fill it even by the smaller portals that tend to be used on ships for the purposes of saving space.
"I'm sorry," the girl spits out after a moment. No wonder the lock was so sticky, she has the wrong room! Hopefully she hasn't broken the lock by forcing it so hard. "I'm really sorry, I- all the doors kinda look the same, and-" A hand reaches forward, clamping down on the handle with the intent to pull the door closed again to hide herself back in the comparatively breathable air of the hallway. Until, that is, her eyes stray across the blue luggage bag tucked in the corner. Her bag. Right where she had left it before heading out in the morning. The dawning realization is pretty evident if Elle were to even bother glancing up from her project to look at the teen girl she's supposed to share the room with.
The smell doesn't bother Elle. Used to sleeping in warehouses and breathing deisel fumes as well as smoking, soldering doesn't bother her in the least. Given the way she has to look at the circuitry, however, it's a wonder she doesn't have to wear glasses. Brown eyes squint, refocusing on the chart and then the board in front of her.
"Come inside, or go away," Elle says absently. Once starting on a project, her attention is difficult to turn. Not because of the focus, but because while she's doing mind numbing manual work, her brain is already formulating dozens of other plots and plans. The motions of a fevered mind are hard to follow. Elle doesn't expect half of her considerations to come to fruition.
But if she's worried that people might see her, it doesn't show. She pulls a fresh coild of solder from her toolbelt. Whatever it is she's working on is either not dangerous, or so unusual that only a few people would understand it's purpose. At the very most, it looks like she's gutten a clock radio. This might not be too far from the case, given the LED light laying on the ground next to her stool.
The idea that they are supposed to share this room is the last conclusion Hotaru comes to. After her assumption that she had the wrong room falls through, she instead figures that Elle must be here because of /her/. Maybe there's business left unfinished between them and the young woman is here to take care of it - aboard this boat where there's no where to run... That's the problem with kids these days. They always think everything is about them.
But with the way Blackjack's leader barely even regards her presence, any delusions that Elle has broken into her room for something to do with herself are rapidly dispelled. Which is a relief in one sense, if not disconcerting in another.
Hand still clasping the door handle, the girl finally steps into the smoke filled room, closing the door swiftly behind her, leaning her back against it as the latch clicks back into place. And it's there that she stays for a long while, a soft cough being the only sound Hotaru makes for the time being. Young eyes take in all of the props Elle's project requires. The diagrams, the wires, the soldering... She knows pretty much nothing about any of that.
There's that reluctance to break the silence that reigns after that point, the only sounds those Elle makes as she adjusts her project or places components where they're supposed to go. "So... I guess we're supposed to share this room..." The girl remarks. Hey, friendly conversation is a good idea, right? Break the ice a little? I mean, it's not like Elle has ever beaten her upside the head with a guitar and dragged her off, tied up in the back of a van before or anything. Her eyes scan the rest of the room, finding outside of the woman's handiwork in the bathroom, it looks very much like how she remembered it. This is probably not the right time to mention that her bed time is between the hours of 11:00 pm and 7:00am, is it.
"Mm." Imagine how Elle's employees deal with her. Barely verbal. Abrasive when she does talk. Cruel, critical, and merciless, always watching and judging with passionless eyes. Hotaru may have been victim to Elle's actions, but she doesn't have to deal with her on a regular basis.
Elle has indeed done little to the room. Her rucksack is in the bathroom with her, having brought almost nothing in the way of personal effects. A day bag filled with clothes hangs from a hook in the bathroom door. The rest? Tools and equipment. Clicking noises are heard as Elle seats a curicuit board into the casing, carefully attaching the device into it's housing with a small screwdriver.
Her actions seem to indicate that Hotaru's appearance means very little to her. The young girl may have made a difference in the lives of many people around her. But to Elle? The girl doesn't even appear to be a footnote. Just someone who exists, an entire dimension away from her.
It's slowly that Hotaru finally pulls away from the door she was leaning against, steps taking toward the middle of the small cabin. Being completely dismissed is, well, actually, it's not that bad. And hey, compared to the things Elle had to say to her when they brushed into each other in the cargo hold, the silent treatment is definitely an improvement!
Hotaru breaths in deeply, though that ends up being a mistake as the fumes evoke another soft cough, her hand coming up to rest against the base of her neck lightly. She walks over to her bag and slings it up onto the bed she had already picked out as hers in the morning. That it is the furthest from the bathroom may help at little when it comes to try to sleep through whatever it is Elle is up to. Speaking of which.
"I'll just use this bed if that's okay?" Pause. "What are you fixing?" comes the next question, voiced almost as if already not expecting to get an answer out of it, her eyes straying across indecipherable plans mounted on the mirror before she finally turns away to open up her blue travel bag.
"Something that's going to save everyone's life if I'm right."
An Ohm meter is applied to the machine to test if the circuits are complete. The needle sits, and Elle seems satisfied with this result. Three things that resemble gray tokens are pressed into three slots on the circuit board, and then the device is tested again. This time the needle jumps. Another nod.
The case is closed, and she stoops to pick up the LED on the floor, slipping it into place in a hollow window on the front paneling.
Naturally, she's not going to expound on her purpose for doing anything. That's not Elle's nature. Instead, she takes a long time to speak again while making sure the screws in the case are tight.
"If it doesn't work... I hope you don't have any regrets."
That she got any kind of answer besides a non-distinct grunt is actually a bit of a surprise to Hotaru. By the time the case is closed up and Elle has switched to conducting her tests, Hotaru has already changed into a set of light blue, flanel pajamas. Her outfit from the day is hung neat and tidely from a small bar over the top of her bed with coat hangers she actually packed along in her bag /just/ in case there were none to be found on the boat. Best to be prepared for that kind of thing.
And by the time Elle utters her enigmatic warning about whatever device it is she's making, Hotaru has already turned down her blankets and started pulling the ribbons out of her hair, only to freeze mid-tug and glance over her shoulder as if trying to detect even the slightest hint of mirth in Elle's expression. A search guarenteed to be futile, of course. Elle doesn't seem to be the joking type.
Coming out of her stunned freeze, she pulls the second ribbon the rest of the way out and daintily hangs it over a hanger as well. "That sounds kind of bad," comes the rather banal response, the girl struggling to figure out what she thinks about that as she sits down the side of her bed for a moment. At least it looks like the soldering is done for now. Surely the room will clear up in an hour or two, right?
"Are you..." She frowns a little, pausing before she finishes the question, "Are you doing something against the clan that are running this thing?" Her tone suggests that she's actually not even adverse to the idea. Though the unfortunate loss of life if Elle proves to be wrong is kind of a downer.
"I'm protecting my interests," Elle replies bluntly. "Everyone else dying if I screw up is just kind of a side effect. Either way, I don't plan to be around here when things finally wrap up." She begins to clean up her workspace, sweeping away the lefotver solder, and dropping what is most likely a hand written Ryuohara tome in the wastebasket.
"This is a tournament. A ninja-run tournament. Haven't you even been around the ship? Something's not right here. You can feel it in the air. Hear it in the halls."
The device is put into her rucksack, and a padlock is used to close up the bag. "You feel it. I know your type. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that you're just now noticing it. Well, let me give you a heads up, so you can run off and tell all your bubble-headed teenage pals and stay the hell out of my way."
"This place is a energy powerhouse. There's something going on in the basement. Power conduits. Power amplifiers. All of it's because of those ninja seals and writings. Something in here is build completely to draw up energy and amplify it. You tell /me/ why you think they want two dozen jackanapes on this crate beating each other up with fire that shoots out of their nostrils?"
The sudden burst of information is a lot to take in. That the boat itself was strange was pretty obvious the moment she stepped onto it. Alan's flickers of energy clearly provoked some kind of response in the lines etched in the walls. And that brief moment in the hull, where she ran into the small gathering earlier... she felt something very wrong there. A room isn't supposed to change like that just all the sudden. Coupled with the fact that she's never once ever trusted Riko since the time the small kid dragged her off to some hidden dojo, splashed tea all over her, then proceeded to beat the crap out of her... yeah, that kind of put a damper on their interaction going forward.
"Nn." Now it's Hotaru's turn to be non-conversational, though the look in her eyes suggests that while she might not understand much about Elle's creation, she does follow her words very clearly. The details she emphasizes highlighting things the orphan has noticed, bridging the gaps between the different clues to let her see the bigger picture from the perspective of someone like Elle who is a true master at it.
Any regrets? Well, right about now she's kinda regretting getting aboard the boat in the first place. And it has nothing to do with sharing a room with Elle Belmounte. There is a very nagging question in the forefront of her mind though. If Elle is correct and this is all an elaborate trap... why does she care? What got this cold woman so intersted in what Riko and Seishirou are up to? What's it to her if they drag a bunch of kids off to the ocean and use them like some kind of living chi battery? The question isn't voiced as she looks silently at the carefully planning woman.
There is a quiet inhale and exhale, then Hotaru flops her back down onto the bed, eyes gazing up at the low cabin roof overhead, watching the trails of what remain of the soldering smoke drift beneath the lights. "I really hope you know what you're doing." the girl murmurs softly. And why tell her all this? Isn't she afraid of the girl nervously telling everyone she sees what the crazy woman she's bunking with is up to?
Unless that's what Elle wants Hotaru to do. There's something to be said about being the one that controls the information. But if no one beleives you, then that information is useless. but when that information comes from the lips of someone everyone trusts... then whatever you say to that person becomes truth.
Even if it's only half of the truth.
But Elle isn't known for her lying. People would like to beleive that human beings like Elle are all deceitful, lying individuals. Helps them sleep at night. The truth is actually less pleasant. Elle tells the truth because she knows that people don't want to hear it. The truth hurts, and it's the best weapon in her arsenal. Knowing what everyone is doing is perhaps the thing that Elle does best.
"The question you need to ask," she says, as she steps out of the bathroom, "is whenther or not your hosts know what they're doing. I can build countermeasures all day for things that make sense to me. I can't compensate for someone else's random failure."
The woman tosses her rucksack onto her bunk. "I don't need to tell you to not touch my stuff. Or have anyone else touch it. Because if something goes wrong, you might get to see what the inside of a nuke is like. Now, if you want to be something other than a mindless peice of kindling on this trip, I recommend you be careful. If you see something or hear something weird, let me know. Nobody trusts me, but everyone trusts you, including me. So if you want to get out of this place alive, you'd better be forthcoming."
"Unless, of course, you want to become so much cordwood with pigtails."
There is a moment where the hyper imagination of a girl that's been fed a lot of unexpected information begins to wonder if Elle is telling her so much because she's going to just kill her in her sleep! But... no, that doesn't really fit with Elle either. If she was going to do her harm, then she wouldn't have wasted her breath in saying anything to her at all. It's odd the nuances that can actually provide a bit of comfort with the complicated issues the girl has suddenly had dumped proverbially into her lap.
When Elle begins speaking again, Hotaru turns her head to the side, watching every move she makes. Where she tosses the bag, the warning about touching her stuff, eyes widening at first at the warning about what would happen if something goes wrong with the woman's machinations. "I will," comes the simple statement when one of Southtown's most dangerous individuals tells her that she better be forthcoming, stated with the kind of simple honesty one might expect from the girl.
Elle's right though. People do trust her for the most part. And she does know at least one employee on the boat that may have a little bit better insight into what's going on here. Looking back up toward the ceiling, moving her hands to rest behind her head, Hotaru's expression has shifted from the frightened dear that she entered the room as. There's a certain glint of determination in her eyes, her jaw set, her mouth clenched tightly. Those ninjas are up to something nefarious. She's certain of it. It's all they know how to do!
"I'll tell you anything I find out." Elle's the last person in the world she'd ever thought she'd be saying /that/ to.
Excellent. That sets up the guard for her router. She needn't worry about anyone tampering with the device any longer. Elle heads towards the door. "One last thing," Elle says as her hand touches the door. "Have you ever heard of the Ryouhara clan until just recently? Kinda weird that they jump out of nowhere and start beating on people. Then they pull this stunt."
"I know a little about keeping things secret. I know a little bit about ninjas, too. I know that a lot of them have been around for hundreds of years."
"The point, Kewpie," she says before Hotaru starts to wonder where she's going with this, "Is why the hell would a ninja clan that's been hiding for at least a hundred years or more suddenly jump out of the woodwork and hold a giant televised tournament, and then invide a bunch of hyperactive kids to fight on it?"
The door handle turns, and Elle opens the door. "Don't worry if you don't know the answer. I don't think a lot of people do, and the ones that might may not even be on this ship." And with that, she steps out to do God knows what. Elle moves in unpredictable ways.
As Elle moves toward the door, Hotaru shifts, propping herself up on her elbows to look at the woman as another flurry of very valid, disconcerting questions are fired off. It's probably no surprise to the departing woman that young Futaba has no answers to that list of questions. But maybe someone does. And maybe she can get said someone to slip up a little. She's not the best in the world at getting information, but when you look about as threatening as a doll on a toy store shelf, people tend to loosen up a bit.
The door closes behind Elle and Hotaru slumps back to lying flat on her back, arms out at her sides, eyes staring at the ceiling as she's left to rumniate on the detonator sitting in the very room she's trying to sleep in...
Log created on 02:21:13 09/04/2007 by Hotaru, and last modified on 22:05:51 09/04/2007.