Description: K' and Whip meet completely by chance, deep in Ikari territory, and Whip promptly demonstrates her affection for her long-lost brother by shooting him. ... ...though to be fair, they didn't yet know they're brother and sister, and K' did dare her to. In retaliation, K'... makes his sister cry. They're already catching up on nineteen missed years of mischief, apparently!! Ultimately, they do put down the guns long enough to discover they've got a shocking lot in common... much to their mutual surprise and distress.
Even on the cusp of nightfall, the thick jungles that carpet the Andes still drip with active life, The diurnal half of the jungle's denizens may have gone to bed for the day, but that's just the cue for the nocturnal wildlife to rouse and conduct their business. Nighttime in the tropics chirps and shrieks with the activity of a thousand named and nameless creatures, the raucous sounds putting the freezing, empty silence of more northern climates to shame. What little light glimmers from the cloud-riddled sky never makes it through the thick canopy of leaves that interweaves high above the forest floor. It's only twilight, but down on the ground it might as well be full night.
The pitch blackness of the jungle, K' notices, settles more like a smothering blanket than like the intangible absence of light it ought to be. He shuts his eyes-- it makes little difference right now whether they're open or not, his keen senses notwithstanding-- and swipes an ungloved hand tiredly across his face. Slowly, he wills himself to move on even despite the crushing heat.
Maxima had buggered off to Canada for a short trip not long ago, and so K' had figured he could do a little traveling of his own. His intentions, however, were far less nostalgic than the cyborg's. The reasons were obvious... and they were part of his motive for being here. There was something here he wanted to find: something that could be pertinent to his crusade against NESTS. He just hoped he found it before it found him-- it'd probably be somewhat difficult to explain why he was so interested in them and their doings.
He's prowled half a wide circle around the area in question, trying to find a way closer to investigate without being caught. Moving through the thick growth as well as he can manage. He's trying to disguise his presence, and he does so decently well-- he's been well-trained-- but he still leaves those little traces of passage that would be easy for anyone more experienced in the jungle to track. Unaccustomed to maneuvering in such dense foilage, he's as out of his depth in the jungle as a wolf: used to more open spaces, used to far colder temperatures... and missing both acutely.
Whip has been tracking him now for the last quarter-mile, shadowing every last footstep with a surgical precision. The cagey confines of a hundred dark trees does not hinder the young mercenary in the least; the tangling South American jungle has been her home for close to an year now. She has learned well how it works, and she is fluent in its messy cursive. Every snapped branch and broken blade of grass are clues for her to follow, the jungle practically pointing arrows towards what strange interloper has dared to disturb it at night.
And staring down at transparent boot prints lit by NVD, the young woman can only smile thinly to herself.
It wasn't too long ago that she was finishing her last scouting shift when she was radioed a breach in Ikari's alpha perimeter, and was requested to investigate it as the highest ranking officer in the immediate area. If not ordered, she would have gladly volunteered.
Whip enjoys the hunt. It was possibly the only good part of her old assassin days. She never enjoyed the kill, could never stomach taking a life in cold blood, but the chase was a different story. That was never about the mark; the very part she was persuing another human being as a negligable fact. It was all about her own abilities, and testing them, seeing if her mind was sharp enough and her intuition clear enough to guide her down all the right roads. It was always the greatest sense of satisfaction. And now she's getting to taste it again, feeling that predatory side of her reawakening as she follows this faceless intruder on his destination toward the Ikari base.
Following him, she is no more than a ghost now, a sliver of darkness ripped free from the jungle and able to move, keeping close to the towering spines of trees as booted feet choose carefully, learned by the terrain to step where it is most quiet. Crouching, she performs a regulatory sweep, making a stop to assess her new coordinates -- when movement stirs at the edges of her goggles. Whip mimics rigor mortis, suddenly frozen in place, holding her breath.
The outlines of a man begin to register. She's got him.
K''s long and circling trail betrays the inexpertise of a lithe man that -should- have been lightfooted enough to leave no mark... but who is too inexperienced in the thick depths of the jungles to know where and how to step. Not like the woman shadowing him. As it wears on, however, his progress becomes more and more difficult to discern, each step a ghost of the one previous. K''s rapid, efficient learning process is spelled out clearly in the increasingly-faint tracks he leaves behind.
He doesn't learn quick enough or well enough, however, to throw this young officer of the Ikari.
The runaway science project has no trail to follow-- no marks to read. He is given no clues that he's being stalked. There is no broken path that alerts him to his unseen companion for the evening. All he has is raw intuition-- a sort of bestial sixth sense, augmented by processes he doesn't particularly care to recall-- and it tells him that there are eyes on him, tracking his movements. He completes that final damning movement, the one that locks up every joint in Whip's body and steals her breath, and then his own motions still to nothing. He can feel something nearby. He just... does not know where.
K' stiffens like a wolf that's picked up the scent of another. His gaze flicks around, silver head turning left to right in the slow and wary motion of an animal that knows it's being followed but doesn't know by what. He slowly turns in a watchful circle, his tall frame slinking lower into a more guarded stance, one heel sliding noiselessly scant centimeters above the jungle floor. As he does his face-- devoid of shades for once, reflective surfaces being nothing but a liability-- is almost bared in an instant of rare light, a glimmer of moonlight tracing along the wild fringy bangs that veil away his eyes. He begins to back away, trying to sink back into the anonymity of the heavy shadows, each step careful to go only where it's most noiseless.
She knows well enough now that he is within range, but even then, even with the help of her sensory technology, Whip doesn't know yet whether to classify this man as friendly or hostile. But, by the way he freezes, by the way she can read him as aware of her, he has far graduated himself out of civilian territory. It would probably be unwise for him to be sniped. A person like this is most helpful when initially questioned, which suddenly makes her job all the more difficult. It means he will have to be caught but not killed, at least until Ikari can discern whether or not he is a present threat.
So the Ikari mercenary chooses to wait, having all the timeless patience to do so. She's saddled herself for hours on end in chairs, on rooftops, behind countless scopes all in the name of duty... waiting is not a new concept. Perched there, Whip is invisible in the dark undergrowth, her dark shivvie shirt and camo breeches as stark as shadows, her heavy jungle boots as soft as feathers because they know how to walk. She waits, watching him, her goggles lending her the ultimate advantage in these moments: the ability to see.
What Whip wasn't counting on was her only advantage becoming her undoing.
For a slip of a second, the choking darkness parts under the lingering eye of the moon, the soft light opening a more detailed world to her under the limitation of night vision. It is at that moment her faceless prey turns, and then is not so faceless any more.
Behind the lenses of the heavy NVD, young eyes widen.
Her hands clench reflexively. Her jaw grounds molars together tight. She's not seeing this right. Because this couldn't be happening. Not in a thousand years. Not here. Not now. Not him.
She's seen this face only once, only for less than a moment, but she's seen it so many times that there is no doubt in her mind.
Now it is the moonlight's turn to reveal something for him. At the corners of K's vision, there is the littlest glint, the familiar way light falls and reflects off angry gunmetal. It is a barrel. And it's pointed right at him.
Suddenly, and at his shoulder, a woman's voice punctures the silence. It demands of him in a stern, disbelieving hiss, "--What the hell are you doing, Krizalid?"
K''s wary gaze slides left, and then right. It halts. Then it flicks just a little lower, coming to rest on the cold gleam of a gun barrel. The slightest hint of a sardonic, scathing smile pulls at his mouth as he turns slowly to face whoever's apprehended him more fully. His hands lift in a sedate gesture as he moves, coming up empty. They're seemingly harmless-- though the reality is that they are anything but. Even though neither one -carries- a weapon, one of them alone -is- more than weapon enough.
Within the confines of that heavy red glove, stifled fingers twitch. K' bites back the urge to lash out in startled self-defense, stilling the impulse of his hand.
It's rare to see, but K' does have the capacity for a patience to match even Whip's. He waits out her appraising look in silence, mistaking her shock for cold reluctance to talk. But when she finally spits that surprising phrase at him, his impassivity cracks. His disaffected mask cracks, baring a hint of startled uncertainty beneath, and his hands drop in a shock to match hers. He's struck silent and still for a few moments, hearing a name completely unexpected: a name he's been running from for most of his life.
His dumbfoundedness is soon replaced by a heavy suspicion that drags his widened eyes to narrow again. Amber eyes slit. It's clear he recognizes the name. It's clear it doesn't belong to him. And it's clear he has no love for the true owner of it-- no love for being mistaken for him. "You -know- Krizalid?" he replies lowly, answering demand with demand. He spits the name like it'll leave a bad taste-- or bite him-- if he lingers on it too long. His voice is all wrong for his 'brother'-- it's younger, harsher, accentless and laced with a sharp bitterness-- and his form, once it's better revealed to her night-vision sight, is too light and lithe. "How?"
He doesn't ask if she knows 'of' Krizalid. It shouldn't be too hard: the man has gone out into the public before, and if she's from the organization he'd come to try to discover more about, it wouldn't be surprising to discover they have intelligence on NESTS. What he is asking is how she -knows- Krizalid. There is a level of personal familiarity in her tone and word choice that should not be there-- and abruptly, that fact sparks a sudden realization in the forefront of his mind.
He'd simply assumed she was one of these mercenaries: hence his first reaction of demanding confusion. But the abrupt thought that he might be wrong and she could actually be a NESTS agent has crossed his mind, and a short-lived flicker of fear glimmers in his eyes. Who else would know Krizalid, if not a NESTS agent? "If you know him for the reason I -think- you do..." He's edged back, bracing, the beginnings of a shrinking snarl in the back of his throat.
With a startled, barely-restrained anger, Whip holds a gun on what she considers to be Krizalid, her first friend and a sole reason why she still lives to this day... countless times over. But the inherent trust one should have for an old friend doesn't exist here, not in her, not when it concerns someone as insane as him. However thankful she should be for Krizalid, it doesn't even come close to excusing his unwelcome appearance on Ikari territory. Why the hell would he even be here? What reason does he have? Has he gone totally mad?
Whip isn't sure. So she stands back and holds her gun on him, a gun she knows has little effect on someone like him. Wary and trying like hell to keep a control on her outrage, she doesn't have much else to do except assume the defense and wait out his answer.
And thoroughly accustomed to years of Krizalid's little quirks and odd behavior that was his gateway into total madness, the Ikari mercenary was preparing herself for an array of responses from the man. She just wasn't expecting this one.
The changed voice stuns her; it seems to set a foundation for the many differences she is suddenly able to say, the minute changes in build and carriage that one can barely see at night under infrared. Her jaw grits slightly against this surprise, and then his fierce question finishes the one-two punch. Half-hidden in the dark, the outline of his aggressor flinches.
What did he--?
It hits her: he's not Krizalid. And, for a brief, stunned moment after this realization, Whip doesn't know whether to feel relief or dread.
She soon settles on dread. This man isn't Krizalid, but he's got his face, the likeness so uncanny that even she finds herself doubting this revelation. And there is only one explanation for this... he has to be a clone.
Whip is forced to realize two things: clones come from NESTS. And such a clone has deliberately found the Ikari base.
Her hands tighten around the gun aimed on him, a nasty desert eagle with a barrel that looks almost overcompensating if held by a man. But it seems definite that this aggressor is in fact a woman, especially when she speaks again. "Turn around," she orders flatly, ignoring this intruder's threats. "Lock your fingers and place your hands against your neck. Slow. Do so immediately or you'll be shot.
K''s shadowed eyes flicker at the sign of hesitation from his faceless aggressor. They fix on the spot where her eyes ought to be, his own thwarted from a glimpse of her expression by those heavy night-vision goggles. His gaze remains level, and it shows little save for a rising-- albeit still-shackled-- ferocity. It's the look of a cornered animal faced with the threat of being put right back in the cage he'd managed to escape.
Soon enough Whip recovers from her own shock, her quiet voice cutting through the clamour of the jungle. His expression twitches at the sound, the timbre of her speech more clearly heard now that he's really paying attention. A hint of confusion twitches along the line of his brows, his expression briefly knitting into something troubled. Something about her voice strikes a chord in him. He swears he's heard her speak before, even if only in half-remembered dreams.
The moment of distraction lasts only a moment. The line of his jaw tightens, his lowered hands shutting abruptly in frustration. He can't remember. And he doesn't have time to try to dig for whatever's bothering him right now.
In the here and now, he's notably failing to comply with her demands. He remains facing her, stance edgy but thus far nonthreatening, his hands forcing themselves open into some semblance of neutrality. When he talks, it's slowly: his voice measured and low. "I didn't come here to antagonize the 'Ikari.' I came out of possible common interest. But if you -are- with NESTS, we -do- have a problem. Especially seeing as I just told you that..." A mirthless grin tries to struggle to life on his face, only to abort halfway. His head tilts slowly, his voice trailing, and the last notes of his voice die completely in the air between them before he talks again.
"You'd have shot already if they wanted me dead. So I'm wanted alive. You can probably figure I'd sooner die than go back... so you can go ahead and shoot. I welcome you to." His stance slackens, the boy settling back on his heels with a strange sort of impudence considering he's staring down the barrel of a gun. His expression cracks abruptly into a savage sort of look, a humorless smile cutting the dour set of his mouth open to bare white teeth. A glimmer of heat thrums about his coiled right hand, blurring the air immediately around it. It still refuses to lift and neutralize itself in the desired manner. "Or at least-- I welcome you to /try/..."
Were Maxima here, he'd be shaking his head in despair at his young friend's utter foolhardiness. Or, more likely, doing something far smarter than K' considering the situation at hand.
In these precious moments, Whip's mind has shifted gears to overdrive. She thinks at a desperate pace, overcome by too many sudden questions, until it almost feels like she's being forced to reassemble a jigsaw puzzle by a gun to her head. This man looks just like Krizalid. Only one good reason why... he's got to be a clone. Why would they clone Krizalid? For what reason? And doesn't Krizalid oversee the cloning projects? He told her as much -- she witnessed him doing as much back in New Guinea -- so does he know? Is this his idea? If not, then whose?
Whatever reason has brought him to Ikari can't be a good one. Especially for her.
Whoever he is, he knows who Krizalid is, and he knows what NESTS is... and it already deems him a liability. The question for her now is whether he lives or dies, a qustion that... pretty much finds its answer the moment K' makes the mistake of speaking.
Her whirling thoughts go as still as death. Her attention centers squarely back on the unnamed man in her gun's sights. And behind the dark lens of her NVD, Whip's dark eyes are compelled to narrow.
The jungle yawns as a black expanse. No lights grace the gaping darkness, and the only sounds are of quiet breathing, and the buzzing and crawl of insects. That lone figure facing him now freezes immediately into a dangerous silence, pausing not because of surprise but because she is thinking. Behind the coffin-nail grey of her gun, the posture of her body is clear -- alpha, dominant, and one move and I'll blow your fucking head off. But sometimes movement isn't necessary.
Welcome you to try. That sounds like a dare.
Her finger presses the trigger.
COMBATSYS: Whip has started a fight here.
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Whip 0/-------/-------|
COMBATSYS: K' has joined the fight here.
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K' 0/-------/-------|-------\-------\0 Whip
COMBATSYS: K' endures Whip's Desert Eagle.
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K' 0/-------/------=|-------\-------\0 Whip
K' is a mediocre science project. That is pretty much all there is to it. He's a failure. An attempt to infuse Kusanagi fire that didn't turn out half as well as Krizalid. A bit of extra dead weight on the hands of NESTS. Not good enough, and yet not bad enough to simply throw away; that is all the answer there is to Whip's questions. That is the reason for his existence. It's got shockingly little to do with Krizalid himself, and more to do with Kyo Kusanagi.
Of course, K' doesn't even know Whip has those questions, and thus he doesn't make any move to answer them.
He watches her carefully as her finger twitches lovingly on the trigger. Level golden eyes, appraising and focused as a wolf's, remain not on her eyes or hidden face, but on the way her hand tightens on her gun. From how closely he watches her, one might almost think he felt himself capable of stepping around her bullet point-blank: an arrogance that -should-, in any sane world, be punished. And yet-- the first instant her finger starts to shut on the trigger, K' is already moving, as if trying to do just that.
His figure frays and melts into the darkness around them, black-clad form blurring into the even blacker night. Wisps of shadow stream about his ill-defined form as he surges forwards towards her. He knows he can't avoid the bullet entirely, however, knows all he can do is take it in a way that won't stop him from retaliating; and so he simply tries to minimize the damage he'll take. Her bullet rips a deep furrow clear through his left side, scoring a deep furrow. Had it hit any further to the right and there'd be a neat hole in the boy's chest: a bullet lodged in his flesh.
The sudden loss of focus from the pain knocks him out of his blurred movements. His lean figure resolves again mere moments from impact with her, the boy stopped on a dime so close she can count his lashes. He's stonefaced an instant, staring down at her as if unable to believe she just took his dare; and then he suddenly grins fiercely, the feral expression a startling crescent of bitter, humorless white in his dark face. The smell of blood soaks the air between them, sudden and sharp.
"You need to give me some clues here..." he tells her frankly, his dark voice mixing seamlessly into the heavy blackness around them. "Otherwise I'm gonna assume you're NESTS. And I'll kill you to keep my freedom."
It's the only warning given before he snaps forwards in a catlike pounce, blood kicking spasmodically from his wound at the rough motion, aiming to knock her to the ground and pin her there. One hand snakes forwards to shut around her gun wrist and wrench that barrel clear.
COMBATSYS: K' successfully hits Whip with Quick Throw.
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K' 0/-------/------=|==-----\-------\0 Whip
This demonstration betrays what Krizalid had once told her about clones: they were fleeting, they were dysfunctional, and they were incomplete... They were no more than equations on a chalkboard, little, inconsequential steps toward a distant goal. They had one purpose to serve.
But Whip sees different in this alleged clone. He talks like a human being. He moves like one... better than one. She had told Krizalid as much, yelled at him in outrage through fire and fierce battle, that clones were living people. She had believed with every aching inch of her heart that she was right. And this seems to prove it.
Sometimes it hurts being right.
Despite the added advantage of night-vision, despite seeing clearly that K' is moving fiercely at her, his speed goes unmatched. Eyes widening, her reflexes going on alert, she tries to outstep his tackle, but he's already intercepted her clear from the air, and her lean, light body gives little arguement. With a muted crunch of the underbrush, her spine hits the jungle floor and their tangled bodies go skidding. A decisive crack of her head against the dirt rids the unknown marauder of her NVD. It tumbles away in a heavy rattle of metal, lost into the darkness.
Whip hisses out in pain and irritation, tensing when she becomes suddenly aware to a foreign weight bearing down on her body. Her teeth grit when she feels her desert eagle violently leave her hand, her palm burning against the force of it.
It is then he gets his first glimpse of his attacker's uncovered face. She's just a girl, looking no older than he, with stern eyes and dark hair as the soft moonlight cools her pale skin with whites and blues. Her parted lips draw together quickly, fiercely, pursing into an angry frown. Her eyes twitch back and forth in a searching manner, and it quickly becomes apparent why... she can't see him. Her eyes, now devoid of her goggles, are still adjusting to the dark.
In those moments before she can, the girl soldier just stares blindly, her throat swallowing visibly, her short hair winged across the ground. In those moments, she has hardly the face of someone who would fire a gun, much less do this.
Her lips turn into a scowl, and she tries to wrestle a hand free enough to try to jab her interphalangeal knuckles into his bullet wound. It's a quick and stinging diversion meant to give her enough opening for the real attack.
"--I'll be asking the questions here," Whip suddenly sneers as she tries to unseat K' long enough to crack one booted foot at his face.
COMBATSYS: K' blocks Whip's Medium Strike.
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K' 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Whip
Whip might see the difference between K' and the idea of a clone Krizalid's told her. Whip might know clones are as much human as the men and women off which they're templated. It's a pity K' himself doesn't know it. His very name-- or lack of one-- stands as testament, in his mind, to his incomplete state. Not even good enough or whole enough to warrant a real name. He was only worth a letter. A variable in an equation that didn't end up balancing out properly.
He feels like this almost every moment, every day, from the first few instants of wakefulness to the last thoughts he has before sleep. And he hates NESTS for being the reason he has to wake up feeling like some blot on nature-- for making him bear this weight that's sometimes almost more than he can shoulder. It's why the ferocity in his eyes, as he fights against a perceived capture attempt, is laced with a hint of desperation. There is fear buried in his gaze even as he lunges at her. For all he effects a detached, cold demeanor most of the time, he feels fear more often and more acutely than most people do. He feels it like a beast: mindless and driving.
He meets her body in the air, superior weight and size defeating her own momentum near-instantly. He knocks her clear to the ground and pins her there, one hand nailing her shoulder and the other disarming her. He leans in further, bearing down in order to hold her still; his movement disturbs the open wound in his side, and his stolen fire-laced blood drips hotly onto her clothes. It's only after he's sure he's got her immobile that he glances towards her bared face-- and what he sees there makes him freeze.
It's not that the face is young, or that it's that of a girl. He knew her gender already from her voice; he knows already from his own example that teenagers are capable of anything in this sick world. That she is the same age as him is not so terribly surprising. What -is- shocking is the sudden and intense sensation of deja vu that blanks out his mind in the first few instants of looking upon her face. At the sight of her some memory springs up to taunt him just below the surface of his conscious thought; but the instant he lunges to grasp it, it disappears. His widened eyes fix on her face, frustration and intent scrutiny mingling in them as he tries to remember why her face and voice strike such a chord in him.
His moment of distraction costs him. Whip, suffering no such burden, twists a hand free from his slackened grasp: with painful consequences. A snarl rips out of the back of his throat as her freed hand bites into his bullet wound, her quick knuckles painting with his weirdly-hot blood. He retreats slightly, shaking off that lingering haze of memory angrily, his body pulling back from its mantle over hers with the startled quickness of a cat bitten by its own quarry.
Whip lashes out with a quick kick before he can get clear of her; he aborts his retreat to defend himself. His left hand snaps up, crossing to catch her blow before it can fully connect. Bare fingers shut tighter on the inside of her leg as she speaks again. She wants to interrogate him? Fine... "Then ask," he invites darkly, the remnants of a growl lingering about his voice.
COMBATSYS: K' takes no action.
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K' 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Whip
With equal parts shock and aggravation, Whip finds this man to share more traits with Krizalid than his face. He's just as fast. Is he also as strong?
Her booted leg snatched out of its kick, she freezes, the lock on her leg tethering her weight in an awkward pin. Her eyes widen. He's got her open to his next attack. She knows she's vulnerable.
The young woman immediately tenses, conditioned by her battle-weariness to expect pain subsequent to her stopped kick. But it never comes.
Instead, she finds herself, with more than a little disquiet, staring up at K''s unusual face, unnerved by how she finds it both familiar and alien at the same time. He has more than enough means to strike her, especially in her relative vulnerability. But he doesn't. She's not entirely sure why, but she decides to humour him for it.
Her violence dulls to a barely-controlled patience, and however tense, she remains unmoving on the jungle floor. That vicious leg of hers tames minutely within his hand, however through the thick cloth of her breeches, the underlying muscle feels wound and rigid. It's waiting.
Whip stares at K' with little indecision or pause. However burdened she is by his face in return, it has nothing to do with her missing memories. She has no pause against looking him straight in the eye. Her face fixes with a tempered, superior look, as though she were holding him at her mercy... but it doesn't last long. Certain questions arise to the forefront of her mind, and reminded of them, she can feel herself become unsettled all over again. Her mouth twitches as though it wants to frown, and her dark eyes lose some of their razor's edge. In its place, an honest confusion tightens the corners of her face.
She pauses one moment, as if uncertain of what to say, then steels herself and goes forth. "Why do you look like Krizalid?" she asks out of nowhere, her voice oddly gentled with a wondering edge. "Are you a clone?"
COMBATSYS: Whip takes no action.
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K' 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Whip
K''s wry expression snaps in half at her question. He'd asked for it, to be fair... but for whatever reason he hadn't expected her to circle back to Krizalid. Especially not with that look in her eyes... that tone in her voice. For a moment he looks as if she hadn't decided to hold back-- as if she had decided, after all, to pull a knife and stab him with it. His wolf-yellow eyes are wide and unguarded for an instant, baring a surprising hurt and a more expected confusion. If she were NESTS, she -should- know the answer to this... but if she weren't NESTS, she shouldn't know to ask this at -all-.
He meets her changing gaze eye to eye, his own look twitching between uncertainty, frustrated half-remembrance, and suspicion. Something compels him to answer. "...We were both custom-made," he replies lowly, a startling bitterness etched into every syllable. "Both altered to fit one genetic template. He and I were intended to be capable of the same things. Why not look the same too? We'll match out on the field..."
He barks a harsh and shortlived spate of laughter, releasing her and pulling back. The sound is terrible in its self-castigating, self-mocking mirthlessness. "I'm not a -clone-. If you have to ask if I am, either you're not NESTS after all... or I guess I'm something less even than -that-. Not even worth sending somebody high-ranking or knowledgeable to come chase me down." Something inconsequential, hardly the high-ranked leader of NESTS Krizalid turned out to be. Marginalized. Something not even worth knowing about, despite being one of a tiny handful of people NESTS ever successfully gave the Kusanagi fire.
"But still. You know too much -not- to have been in NESTS. Unless whoever you really work for has got more intelligence than I thought." He's stood up again in the intervening time, and he leans forward as he speaks. His gaze tilts down through his lashes coldly. "You know about the cloning." He's silent a moment, staring at her, and then he asks abruptly, "Did you run? Maybe thinking about it? I recommend it..."
COMBATSYS: K' takes no action.
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K' 0/-------/------=|===----\-------\0 Whip
He's not a clone. He started just as Krizalid did, as a person, a different one before the experiments. Krizalid lost his memories of that life before them, at least what he had told her. Maybe she's the same. Maybe that is why she is unable to remember. But it can't be. She never experienced anything what he did. It's like night and day. And they made him crazy. It had to have been the experiments that put him over the edge. This is so much to take in.
Whip still heaps in an interrupted, half-remembered way, strewn along the leafy jungle floor, her hands braced against the earth to prop up her back, her one kicking leg fallen where he had released it. There she remains, unmoving, her attention focused solely on this boy before her, the one who tells her secrets she has never and possibly should not have ever known. Her dark hair hangs over her eyes, a tress of it caught on the wet corner of her mouth. In that moment, she looks frightened and young, much too young for any of this. Radically different from the soldier who had shot him point blank.
Fortunately, her domestication is short-lived.
"I'm not NESTS," she says firmly, harshly, as she stands back up. There's an underlying threat layered in her voice, impatience hanging a heavy weight off her frown. Something about the subject matter makes her sore, but that revelation is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Very deliberately, she turns the questions back on him, ignoring all those aimed her way. "You escaped NESTS? When? What is your name? Do--"
The girl soldier pauses most noticeably now, her lips beginning to mouth the first syllables of words that do not want to form. She grits her jaw and narrows her eyes on K', looking him transparently up and down, sizing him up for the real question she wants to ask. It's not wise for her to do so. It is the most incriminating piece of evidence she could possibly supply. It would insinuate too many things. It would make this encounter much more a liability than it already is.
But she has to. She has to know.
Again, that military severity exhales out of the young woman like the last breath out of a dying body. Her shoulders sag very faintly, and her dark eyes crease with purpose. Her guard is crumbling, coming so very close to being let down.
"Do you have the amnesia?"
K' hangs back like a wary animal as Whip rises to her feet, shoulders hunched and head lowered in a distrustful, bright-eyed regard. He watches her move, unblinking eyes carefully reading the lines of her face. It's completely foreign to him, the face of a stranger-- but there's something written there, between those smooth lines, that is nonetheless familiar. Perhaps he's seen her around somewhere before; perhaps that's what it is.
Whatever she is, she's not NESTS, and moreover she seems to take offense at the very suggestion. That much he can notice from her short, firm reply. It's the only question of his she deigns to answer right now... and he's guessing she probably only answered it so she could retort with all the questions -she- wanted to ask.
He paws up in a nervous reflex at his face as she spits questions at him, realizing too late that his usual glasses aren't present. He ends up pushing strands of hair from his eye, fingers twitching slightly as they ghost along his temple. She's trying to bring herself to ask something, he can tell; and so he doesn't answer her right away. He's waiting for the bomb to drop.
It's a pretty sizable bomb.
The breath leaves him in a slow, near-silent exhale at the final question: one composed of innocuous words, but framed in an unmistakable insider's tone. There can be little doubt now she's a runaway like him. Finding another almost makes him feel relieved. He's finally seen some kind of progress-- found another like himself and Maxima-- after so much time searching.
"...Yes." He answers reluctantly, but answer he does. He has to if he's to get anything more out of her, possibly ask her if she's fighting them like he is. A brief, slight shake of the head in complete disbelief: it's so strange to speak of these things to a complete stranger, and know while you do that-- ironically enough-- she may be more able to sympathize with him than anybody else he's ever known. A spasm of bitterness crosses his face at his next words. "The only thing I remember is I had a sister."
It seems such a harmless thing to admit.
All she can do is just look at him.
The jungle floor rustles underfoot as she dares a step closer, unable to help herself but do so. As the bone-dry moon slants light down through the treeline, bleaching a hundred scattered spots on the mottled ground, she steps into one, freed from the shadow once again. The instant of light reveals every bit of her face, and the expression on it, the fixed intensity of a starving man staring down a turkey dinner. Her head tilts at the littlest of angles, lips parted with an expectant hope, her dark eyes searching.
The soldier side of Whip tells her she should not be doing this, she shouldn't be staring so pleadingly at someone she had just turned a gun on. The world has taught her that there's no such thing as coincidences; especially those that step out of perfect darkness and reveal that they have a past -- or lack thereof -- so identical to hers. It can't be possible, her logical side concludes.
Too bad she doesn't believe it. He sounds so honest... but beyond that, she wants to believe him so badly. She wants to know more than anything else that there's someone out there just like her. It means she could be a step closer to discovering who she really is. A strange sort of relief drowns her the instant he answers her; that simple "yes" is more cathartic to Whip that she would ever realize.
It's too bad it doesn't last long. He admits to having a long-lost sister. And the girl flinches like she has taken a shotgun shell to the spine. "..." she replies eloquently, her lips moving briefly but with no sound ever quite coming out. The strangest expression crosses her face.
That can't be. He's missing a sister. She's missing a brother. She knows she is, it's the only anything she can make herself remember. That's so strange... too strange. There's someone just like her? Is this all because of NESTS? Have they done this to more people? Did they do just the same to him? It's strange... so very strange--
And what's even stranger is that all this is scaring the shit out of her.
The ground rustles once more when she steps back, retreating from the light, shying back into the safety of darkness and shadows. After a long time, his harmless statement is replied, her voice small and strained. "You-- need to get out of here."
The intense, hopeful look on her face is a little daunting: primarily because K' doesn't know what it wants. Mildly disturbed, he shrinks back from her scrutiny, twitching back with the nervous restlessness of a boy that doesn't take well to having expectant looks piled on him.
But all the same, he doesn't try to stop her coming closer. He can't even say that her avid look is out of place, given the startling commonality they've just found in one another. There's something about that look that mirrors the way he himself is feeling. She's probably as starved for answers-- for a person who's gone through what she has-- as he is.
He watches her mutely as she dares closer to him, taking a tentative doe-like step forward. For now, he doesn't move further. He might as well be carved from stone.
K' doesn't have the caution his sister does. Here, in this moment, he -wants- to believe her hesitant questions and denials prove she's just like him-- somebody escaped from NESTS-- and as such, he's committed himself to operate under that assumption. He's got nothing more to lose, nothing else that can be taken save his life-- so why not take the risk?
He's surprised, however, when the most offhand, seemingly irrelevant admission he makes all night turns out to be the one that hits her the hardest.
His gaze twitches back at her obvious shock. It reels off her, skating to one side in sudden downcast thought. When it snaps back to her face, it's intent and piercing, and it doesn't look amused at her reply. -Get out of here-? "Why?" Does she know something about this? Is there some danger inherent in that? Is that why she suddenly wants to leave so badly?
He presses forward the instant she expresses doubt and tries to back off, alarmed at seeing this chance slipping away. His heels rustle quietly on the jungle floor, the mere ghosts of footsteps the only sound to mark his movement. "I'm not leaving. Not now. I want to know more. You're the first person I found that's anything like me.
"Tell me your name. At the least." He almost seems begging. "Or do you not remember -that-?" His expression twists into a self-mocking smile that looks utterly -painful- in its sheer bitterness. "I certainly don't remember mine..."
Pursued, still the girl walks backwards, her audible step all but excised of its predatory silence. Military precision has all but abandoned her, and all that's left is a very lost, very lonely young woman who doesn't know what to think or what to do.
Even the first emotion to touch her through her confusion is misplaced. She feels the most disturbing urge to laugh, vindictively, like the entire universe has decided to turn on her. Now this is ironic. He's asking her -- her of all people? For answers? As if she knows anything? As if she sits alone some days and wonders if her life is a meaningless void, and what happens if she ends up unable to remember? Does she die a nothing?
A sharp breath creases out from her lips; the ancestor of a laugh, even if the sound of it is fiercely self-deprecating. She doesn't really want to believe all this is even happening, all in the space of a few minutes. Maybe she's imagining this. Maybe she's going crazy like poor old Krizalid. It'd be much more likely a prospect than finding herself, face to face, on Ikari territory with some guy who seems to rival her in missing memories and siblings.
And isn't this a step towards the truth she's so long wanted? Isn't this one clue closer to reclaiming her lost past? Hasn't she sat up every lonely moment and promised herself that she'd figure out who she was? Didn't she promise herself that she would do anything to get her memories?
If these are the answers she has so wanted... why are they scaring her so much?
"I--" she stutters back, her voice cut off when something reflexive reminds her how stupid it would be to reveal herself to him, especially ever so callously on Ikari territory. Frowning to herself, still walking backwards through the brush, Whip is forced to make a split decision.
"--I don't remember mine either," she reveals, tiredly, in the resigned way old veterans speak about their amputated limbs. "I had to name myself."
There is a muffled bump, and her rushed, scraping steps mysterious stop. It is because a tree has caught Whip between her shoulder blades, her mental mapping of the night jungle lost beneath what is more important. She remains fixed there, breathing shallowly, frowning off into the dark, at the source of that voice. It is bothering her so much, the sound of it, and for reasons that are not entirely conscious. All she knows is she can't decide whether to feel relieved or threatened. Whether she has found an answer or left herself open to a potential enemy.
Her voice is so light, so quiet, it almost whispers past her lips. "I'll tell you one last time. Get out of here."
K' follows her. His black form, dark skin wrapped up in darker leather, melts in and out of the thick shadows: fading in and out of discernable sight as he tracks her in her retreat. He's nothing if not tenacious. It'll be one of the first things Whip ever finds out about her brother; just as he's discovered, to his mild grief, that she's not one to be dared.
Pity they don't yet know they're siblings. Her lack of cooperation is causing his temper to fray.
"I came to find the Ikari," he tells her lowly, emboldened beyond any reasonable caution by her implied admission she -was- once from NESTS: has gone through the same memory loss as him. Eventually he notices she's stopped, but his own pace doesn't slow. It brings him right up in front of her, cornering her-- whether by accident or design-- against that traitorous tree that she's fetched up against. "I found something better. And I am not leaving without some kind of answer."
His eyes search her face, the look in them smoldering with some impotent frustration. There's something there, but he can't read it. "-Some- hint. Like why you left. What they did to you. Why you're here." A heavy pause. "...if you'd fight them."
The last reason he doesn't want to leave her, doesn't want to just get out like she's telling him; the one he can't and doesn't explicitly say: I don't want to be the only one. I want to know for sure I'm not the only one.
The intent, searching look he levels at her as she talks-- the hidden look of complete, lost bewilderment buried beneath it, one that's a mirror to Whip's own-- doesn't last long. Eventually a muted, deep growl pushes out of his throat, and he backs up slightly with a slight dip of his head. HIs left hand lifts, pressing against a temple, fingers clawing into silver hair. Whip thought about laughing; K' actually does. The sound is a short, bitter bark of a laugh more than anything else: a joyless and mocking sound.
"Looking for answers from somebody who doesn't even know herself... fucking brilliant." His voice, the tone of it dark and heavily sardonic, filters through the fall of his bangs with some effort. "Fine. There's only one question that's relevant anyway. Do you hate them or not-- want to see them put down or not...?"
Whip says nothing, does nothing, her spine flush against the scratchy bark of some twisting tree. It pricks sharp points through the cool material of her skivvy, but she's far from caring. She can do little but remain there, apparently tethered to the spot, but whether it be by the tangling jungle or her tangling thoughts, that remains a question. She merely holds her spot, not unlike most cornered animals, her mouth frowning a gentle line not befitting of many soldiers. Her dark eyes look up at him, but it is hard to distinguish how, hard to tell the expression there as the murky dark fills the pits of her face with shadow.
Possibly for the best. Her heart is racing; she can feel it. Her lungs are burning and she realizes because she's been holding her breath. His words hit her like no bullet ever could, and Whip forgets that little voice at the back of her head, the cold conditioning that reminds her where she has a knife concealed on every part of her body, and how she would employ this with an enemy in such close proximity. He's not an enemy at all. He knows things -- or more precisely, does not know -- that only she would have an idea about. He sounds like someone who has been suffering in the way she has. He sounds like a survivor of NESTS, and not even close to finished surviving, if they have any say against what they deem a traitor.
When he finally backs up to allow them both a breath's space, she does not follow, still paused against the tree as though it were a crutch. She makes only the barest movements, her head turned to follow his movement, her eyes no doubt tracking him through the dark, a deliberate silence covering her like a uniform. She is silent as he compromises to ask only one question of her. And she remains silent after.
She has no words for him. Not a single whispered yes or no. Nothing.
But the jungle has something to say, as the warm winds change, and the treeline ceilinging the girl hisses a sea of disturbed leaves. Moonlight slips in through the darkness briefly, deftly, like a knife slipped in between a sleeping someone's ribs, and shines down on her. For a moment the concealing shadow is wiped from her face, and hidden beneath it all, there is an unmistakeable wet glint. The girl soldier is crying. She does it silently, and only with her eyes, but the heartbroken look in them answers enough.
K' had been prepared for just about any reaction from the slight, uniformed girl in front of him. He had been prepared for her aggression, her compliance-- he'd even been prepared to pursue if she simply cut and ran. He hadn't been prepared for this.
Moonlight ghosts across her face. It silvers across the wet tracks of tears. K' draws up short, knocked completely out of his depth by the unexpected turn events have taken, and his intent focus falters and dies, drawing to a miserable halt. For a nonplussed, confused moment, he almost feels guilty about pressing her so hard.
Struck silent by the sight, K' simply stares at Whip. Moonlight and shadow trace silently across his stilled form, the mute silver light let through whenever the branches high above sway apart just so. Eye to eye with the devastated look on her face, confronted with the impossibility of a crying girl, he finds his emotions warring between the expected surge of confused frustration that wells up in him at this continued lack of meaningful words... and some sneaking, frail sense of compassion: an emotion, despite popular belief, yet extant in him despite his life's best efforts to remove it completely.
The latter is possibly helped by the fact that he personally understands-- has personally experienced-- how thoroughly NESTS can wreck a life. He knows there's likely damn good reasons for those tears.
Watching her cry, something in his mind spasms, a memory twitching to conscious thought for long enough to startle the normally-implacable young man. He's heard this before, seen this before-- somewhere. Just like he's heard her voice before. Somehow. He grasps at the thought, but it's gone in the next instant: gone wherever dreams go in times of wakefulness.
A long, weary sort of sound breathes out of him, the customary shell of hard, prickly toughness gone with that sigh in a rare moment of physical honesty. His shoulders slump, his tensed stance unraveling. Without that defensive hard-edged snappishness he's grown so used to wearing, K' just looks and sounds exhausted. "I'm sick of being alone. -Having- to be alone," he finally says. The admission is so quiet it almost mixes seamlessly into the night around them. "Aren't you?"
Whip knows she is far from alone. She's been blessed with a family like the Ikari Warriors, with teammates and a commander who have proven time after time that they honestly care for her. If anything gives her pause against truly considering the faction her home, it's her own deception, that guillotine blade she has constantly hanging over her head. Even then, with that everpresent threat, there are moments she is able to find peace and belonging.
But even then, despite all that she has claimed since her defection from NESTS, there is a side of her that hears K''s tired words and understands every bit of it. She can be surrounded in loyal comrades and still feel absolutely alone. It's the price a fractured person has to pay, feeling constantly at odds with the amnesia, never sure what you should be feeling because no memory is there to tell you what is right and what is wrong, what is your own self and what is a perfect stranger. And sometimes she wakes up frightened, so scared to consider that she may die without remembering. Every person dies alone, all by himself, all by herself... but what about those who don't have even that? What happens when you die incomplete?
Staring at him, the girl mercenary makes no move to smear away her tears, and she wears them like a medal of service, something not to be ashamed of. Ever his foil, her pale skin looking drawn, her dark eyes and hair darker in the low light, she carefully extricates herself off the tree and returns back to the darkness, only her outline and her quiet steps betraying her presence. Her steps are slow and measured, and almost seem to be threatening a thoughtful retreat; either that or she is simply intent on making space.
But her audible step lingers to a pause when K' makes a genuine entreat of her, her moving form gone still to listen. She exhales audibly.
"Three weeks from now... go to Metro. Find a place called the Avalon. For now, that's all you need to know. Now get out of here."
The close-knit family that Whip has found in the Ikari Warriors.... K' has yet to find any sort of equivalent. If not for Maxima's steadfast friendship, he probably wouldn't even have lived this long outside of the shadow of NESTS: completely consumed by his own loneliness and hatred, far too volatile and rash to survive sudden exposure to the world without a steadying and guiding hand. It's been a long time since he felt anything like peace or belonging.
That restlessness is part of the reason he asks that uncharacteristic question of her-- the reason he's so surprisingly frank with a seeming stranger. But in truth, she stopped being a stranger when she admitted to the same amnesia as him, with largely the same causes. That alone is enough to let them connect. He can say those startling words because he knows the girl will understand them where nobody else would, and that knowledge loosens his tongue. The isolation of an amnesiac is a crushing thing. It's a burden not easily borne alone. It wants to be shared, if only to be relieved for a few moments.
He wouldn't usually have asked such things of anyone. He wouldn't have liked to admit any weakness. It's debatable whether he would even be so blunt with Maxima. He's just never seen reason to discuss his burdens and troubles with anyone. But it seems... all right to say here. And that honesty is enough to stop Whip: enough to get that one concession out of her. His silence in response-- his lack of motion to stop her-- is all the assent she needs.
He's tired, and he won't get anything else from her. It will be a risk to just trust her and walk away now-- but it might be worse to try to hold on too tight. He doesn't know. But cynical as he is, pessimistic as he is, he tries to allow himself just a little optimism here; a little hope that this chance meeting can lead to something that isn't a dead end or a doublecross.
Log created on 21:12:05 10/07/2007 by K', and last modified on 00:12:55 10/26/2007.