Description: Frei has so many pieces of the puzzle, but they don't make any sense lined up against one another. Deciding to take the initiative, he visits the Sky Noah to track down the one person who might actually be inclined to answer his questions. She does... but the process might not exactly be a pleasant trip down memory lane for either of them.
There is a window of time every day where the training room is evacuated in whole by the soldiers of the Initiative. There will be no lingering, no stalling to get one last round of sparring or one last set of weights lifted. No, when that appointed hour comes around, the room is vacated in its entirety.
For that is when it's Kula Diamond's turn to train.
Halfway through today's session, entering the training area of the impressive flying fortress would make it rather clear why everyone else stays outside of it during this block of time. For starters, it's /cold/ in there. Opening the door is inviting a rush of artic-cool air to wash over oneself. Then there's the ice all over the place, especially the floor - evidence of Kula allowing so much chi to flow through her that the very environment becomes somewhat of a refrigerator just by the way the energy around the girl is altered by contact with her own frozen aura. The room takes on an almost ice-cavernesque appearance to the point that even the observation windows are frosted over.
The entire phenomenon collapses quickly in her absense, the ice giving way to water and vapor quickly, followed by heaters that dry the chamber out so that it can resume being used by everyone else on the ship. But for this block of time, entering the training facilities is to visit another clime all together.
Such is the private domain of the Ice Princess once per day and there she can be found this very moment, occupying a location in the middle of the largest section, standing straight, gloved hands closed at her sides, head bowed slightly, eyes closed. She seems to in a state of concentration or meditation and whatever it is she is doing seems to generate enough energy as to shift air currents around the room, creating a subtle breeze where one shouldn't exist.
Small crystals of ice hover and flow around her, carried by an ebb and flow of chi invisible to the untrained eye. Her expression is serene, her posture calm, and she will continue to be that way even if someone is brave enough to pay the room a visit.
It's not as if the Einherjar organization is a massive private army, waiting to descend upon evildoers like a million cut-rate Batmen. Even the permanent staff of the Sky Noah is a specific group of hand-picked, carefully-chosen individuals. So when Frei makes his appearance on the ship, he is spared walking corridor after corridor of people glancing at him in confusion. However, the young sage's appearance does make waves with the few who do encounter him. Even if he weren't the person in the Initiative who spends the least time on the Noah of anyone, he looks massively out of place compared to the luminaries who might grace the flying vessel as it is. The messy red hair, short stature, and retiring posture don't immediately say 'warrior' at all. Add on top of that the fact that he stops just outside the training room door during Kula's specific, uninterrupted time, and it is, really, a minor event.
Initiative operatives in their crisp uniforms stand behind him in the shadows of doorways and the corners of corridors as the redhead reaches out a hand toward the door handle, and then pauses, looking at the door as if trying to see through it. To an outside observer, this is a right-minded act of self-preservation, but inside Frei's mind, the hestiation has nothing to do with the cold.
Something inside him knows that the answers he seeks might mean an irrevocable step forward into something larger than he might really want to become involved in. The names on his list... they're not minor players. They are people with real and terrible power. For all the learning and talent he's acquired, Frei is still a relatively small fish in that particular pond. Stepping over the threshhold is an act terrible in scope.
Eyes close, briefly, and then his hand comes forward and grips the frost-rimed handle, even on the outside of the room. "Answers," he says, looking ahead, echoing Adelheid's words. "One way or another."
The observers outside see him enter, and close the door behind him with a bizarrely quiet and anticlimactic hiss of the door sealing shut.
Inside, Frei takes a moment to look forward from a variety of angles, observing Kula's meditation, feeling the currents of chi and icy wind as she extends her awareness into the room. He's only faced Kula in battle twice, once with his senses massively dulled, but the feeling is unmistakeable. He was on the right track pursuing this... though this isn't the same as being 'right' compared to 'wrong' in so doing.
There's no way she wouldn't sense the sudden entrance and presence of another person entering this room at this time, and so Frei waits for her to, inevitably, open her eyes. To his credit, he meets them without flinching, offering a wan, tired sort of smile. After all, the dancing frost has, in its own way, a sort of chaotic beauty to it.
"Like Superman," he eventually says, "in his Fortress of Solitude."
Frei is given a minute to take in the frosty interior before his arrival is acknowledged. For most, such exposure without having dressed warmly for the occasion, would be borderline dangerous, to say the least. Frei is threatened with, at worst, discomfort.
But that isn't the only reason the girl is avoided. An enigma - so young yet so deadly, there is a lot of blood on the girl's hands. That she is the byproduct science unshackled by morale obligations is not exactly a secret throughout the crew. And while she has never done anything to harm anyone aboard the Sky Noah, one can't shake that impression that the threat is there all the same. While a few do interact with the living weapon in a friendly manner with the child, most would rather not take their chances.
Kula opens her eyes, crimson in color, contrasting with the sky blue lengths of hair billowing gently over her shoulders and back, her expression remaining neutral as she takes in Frei with a very neutral look. It's only when he speaks that he gets a more measureable reaction from the girl - a blink, then a second. A slow exhale releases her breath as a small cloud of visible vapor and her hands unclench at her sides with a quiet leather creak, small shards of gathered frost breaking free from her fingers and drifting to the ice-slicked floor.
The air in the room responds in kind, calming, becoming still as Kula lifts her right hand to dust powdery frost off of her leather jacket. She contemplates the statement, familiar with the iconic Superman but not with the less renown frozen retreat. A couple of steps forward are taken, ice crackling beneath her feet. "It is not 'solitude' if there is company." she replies, the hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth a subtle indicator of having amused herself with the comment.
She closes her eyes for a moment, relaxing even further the magnitude of her aura. The blue melts out of her hair, leaving damp, strawberry-blonde in its wake, and when she opens her eyes again, they have returned to their natural violet color. She looks contemplative again. "I suppose one can be lonely in a crowd." The ice in the room begins to lose its form, evaporating and melting, draining into the pipes in the floor.
Her hands lift to brush her dampened hair back over her shoulders. "Hello again." There is a certain reservation there. It was never a secret that the man that stands before her now took objection to the measures Alma took to break the girl from the ranks of NESTS.
"You know," Frei says carefully, thinking through his words with deliberation, "in my experience it's sometimes *easier* to feel alone when you're around people... depending on the people, of course." If there's something Frei does understand, it's being just... a little bit different from everyone around you. Knowing that there's always something, a tiny crack in the ice, that keeps you from really connecting. A little bit of difference can be worse than the alternative, much of the time...
The former NESTS assassin seems in a good enough mood for having her training interrupted, and Frei brings a hand up to brush his long bangs out of his eyes, noting the dew-like dampness caused by the natural heat of the room rushing into the void now that Kula's abilities aren't keeping it at bay. For a moment, he seems absorbed in looking at Kula outside of a 'battle ready' mode, which in fact he's never done before. He'd thought the ice-blue tint of her hair was her natural color, and not a coating of ice. The sage makes no effort to hide his surprise, blinking a few times at the revelation, considering... well...
His last memories of meeting Kula aren't exactly pleasant. His chi sense dulled and deadened to uselessness, his very physical self used to power some engine of terrible power, and the beginning of a chain of events that seems like it led to Jiro Kasagi's eventual death in Einherjar service... it's not that he blames her for any of that, but it's hard to see her, and not suddenly flash back to thoughts he'd rather not have, feelings unresolved and unspoken. In the end, he swallows once, and decides to forge ahead. Some things are bigger than the past intruding on the present.
"I didn't want to intrude," he says, and that much is sincere, "but I have some very important questions to ask you, Kula..." At this, Frei's eyelids drop a bit, becoming heavy-lidded, and his gaze goes to the ground. He doesn't know how to approach this. K' was defensive, worried, tense; the other two, he had no read on whatsoever. Finding that he really is hand-wringing over this -- literally gripping one hand with the other and twisting -- he tenses, then steps forward and does his best to make eye contact with this woman. It's not a place he wants to go...
But, haunted by the darkness he felt in Sunshine City, he has little choice.
"I don't want to pry into things that aren't any of my business, but this is important. There's a lot at stake..." He hopes, deep down, that she feels it too... that sense of impending doom. That discordant note at the back of her head, clashing with the harmony of things.
And he doesn't know what he's going to do if she decides she doesn't want to tell him.
"Your power..." He leaves it at that. Maybe she'll just open up.
His observation about the variable contributers to loneliness earns him the slightest nod from Kula but she makes no other remark, giving him plenty of opportunity to think about how to broach the subject that brought him here. She doesn't look like she's about to ask, as if she's rather used to long periods of silence when interacting with others. Her temperment most certainly doesn't seem hostile and at worst might come across as reserved, maybe even a touch curious. The frost clinging to her attire melts away quickly and there's a strange lack all together of frost on the girl's face, her only visible skin.
She returns his blinks of surprise with one of her own as she 'stands down' from being combat-ready. But she seems to figure out what he was reacting to after a moment, a tiny smile visible for a fleeting moment as her right gloved hand lifts back up to curl a length of her hair around her finger. She continues to say nothing, however.
At his first pause, she shakes her head, "It's okay." Her head cants to the side a little, "I used to have to answer lots of questions." The analysis, both physical and psychological, she was subjected to at NESTS on a daily basis was rather rigorous and quite thorough. If she's afraid of what Frei might ask her about she certainly doesn't seem to show it. Her mind tries to guess where he might be going with this. Does he want to talk about the NESTS labratory where they had their last climatic encounter? Does he want to ask her if she feels regret for the things she did or the events that came to pass afterward? Is he here about Jiro? She knows he was a friend of the boy who lost his life in Taizhou so tragically...
As he continues to beat around the bush, she waits patiently. Around the room, the sound of rushing air is heard as the ventillation begins to pump warmer, dry air into the training facility. He mentions not wanting to pry and she just looks vaguely surprised again, as if the concepts of private business or personal matters aren't at the forefront of her thoughts.
Then he gets to the matter at hand and Kula stares back, lowering her right hand, the lock of hair uncurling back into place. "Does it scare you?" she asks directly. Well, she might not have exactly opened up. But she isn't retreating either.
Good question.
Deciding to go the route of honesty, he looks at Kula and asks -- with a weary-looking smile on his face, as if to suggest that he and the young (former) assassin are sharing some sort of secret joke -- "Should I be?"
The unknown has never scared Frei, not really. He decided long ago that the ratio of things he didn't know to the ratio of things he does vastly favors what he doesn't, so being afraid of that would be a recipe for lifetime anxiety. But deep in his heart, he *is* a little afraid of what he knows about this ability, because it challenges beliefs he's spent so many years building up. There is chi, which he knows backwards and forwards, and there is... something else, which his association with Alma reveals 'Soul Power' to be just one name for, and that he doesn't *know*, but at least vaguely understands and comprehends. What Kula -- and a select few others -- do leaves him confused. Perhaps...
"Maybe I'm not afraid of the power itself," Frei says at last, "but rather, what the power represents."
Here, he looks up toward the ceiling, letting his arms drop to his side, his fingers occasionally curling and uncurling as a sort of distracted, nervous twitch sort of motion. "There's so much I don't understand in the world." His head drops back down, fixes his gaze on Kula again, and perhaps now the former NESTS fighter can see that there really is something... haunted his expression, a dullness to normally bright green eyes. "You're not the only mystery out there. But you and... the others... are the only mystery that's right in front of me, that I can ask questions of. So even if the answers reveal something I'd rather not hear, I still have to ask."
Answers... one way or the other.
"Do you know K'?" Frei asks, after a pause. "A long time ago Alma gave him... I guess you'd call it 'asylum' at the YFCC. Him and the big guy with the mutton chop hair." Maxima... another issue entirely. "But I noticed something about K' and his flame. I'm sure people who weren't looking for it would never notice it in a million years, but... I wanted to know what was so special about him."
He never said this to K', never revealed it to anyone, in fact. But he was watching, waiting to see what it was that drew him into the center, to orbiting Planet Alma. And there it was, right in front of him.
"It was fire. Not... this," Frei says, holding one hand up, a tiny, swirling comma of flame spinning in his palm before dissipating. "That... I understand. His was different." Here, he pauses, swallows, then continues. "You, too. It's similar, but just different enough that for me it's like... looking at something slightly out of focus."
"Yes."
The reply comes curtly at his first almost rhetorical question. But there's no menace to her voice, no implied threat, simply a statement of fact, a declaration of something she knows that perhaps she thinks he /should/ know. But that's what this is all about, isn't it? "But not right now." Right now is a time for questions and answers.
As Frei struggles with moving closer to the issues eating away at him he will have to endure simply being stared at by Kula, the girl infinitely patient for her age. He mentions not understanding much in the world. "Me too..." There is a deep honesty to the admission; a child struggling with the impossible mysteries of the world.
Her eyes study Frei up and down, not seemingly shy with the staring that commenced from the moment she focused on him. Maybe she catches something of that tormented look in his eyes, an echo of thoughts not spoken or shared yet. When he brings up K' Frei earns the first blink of complete surprise thus far. She doesn't really need to verbalize a response as it's already written in her features. She most definitely does.
So this is one of those who K' knew? One of the people in that circle of many that built around the NESTS escapee... At the Cartel, K' was an anathema, a dirty word used to reference unspeakable failure. 'Practice harder, you don't want to end up like that mistake, K'.' 'K''s love for us was a lie, but you will never hurt us like him.'
"I do." She doesn't look away even still. Her violet eyes shift to focusing on Frei's hand when he demonstrates the tiny sphere of crimon flame. It's only as he gets to the real point of this that she starts to look a touch reluctant, hands coming up to fold against each other.
"The explanation you're looking for... it all comes from one person. You mentioned 'others', more than just K'?" Who else has Frei seen this effect in? Is she probbing him for her own intel? Who's questioning who here?!
The redhead's breath catches. She does know. He'd feared she might not... but this reaction is enough to dispel that fear. She asks who the 'others' are and Frei has to actually stop and fight down the rising of his heartbeat, the combination of worry and scholarly desire that is fueling this entire process in the first place. "One or two," he says guardedly, thinking back. One was a long time ago, and he couldn't really be certain. The other, though... "Just last night in a King of Fighters battle, actually. A man named Ash Crimson. And... maybe someone else, but I can't be sure." The 'World Warrior'... both times Frei's fought him there's been plenty of distractions. It might have been his imagination, so he'd rather not say. If Kula wants to, well...
There's a pause, and he realizes in his haste that Kula said something very, very particular that, in his haste to engage his own questions, he more or less passed totally over. He 'should' be afraid? But not now... For a moment, the redhead actually glances at Kula with something approaching sympathy... though perhaps there is, without his knowing it, a small amount of pity there, too. If she were threatening him, that would be one thing, but it didn't sound as if she were. It's rather that she sounded as if she were delivering a warning, meaning that maybe Kula herself has just as much reason to fear...
Shaking his head, Frei brings a hand up and pushes it against his chest, palm down, looking dismayed, eyes heavy-lidded again. "I don't know what it means. If you know K', then you know he never said five words to me about it one way or the other... and I don't know anything about Ash Crimson, other than that he's... dangerous." He must be. Alma was fighting him like he's fought a very specific few people in the past, Seishirou Ryouhara included. The same countenance he had facing down Rako Saze in Taizhou, he wore facing Ash.
Without any further information, Frei's going to rely on his friend's judgment in the matter.
"Who is the 'one person'? What is this all about, really...?"
When Frei mentions Ash, Kula looks away for the first time, glancing to the side, a faint furrow in her brow - it seems she didn't expect that name. It passes in time for her to return her glance to Frei and notice his own shifting expression. It's a look she's received countless times before and familiarity with it yields no reaction now. Perhaps the reason for her warning will become apparent in time.
"The questions you are asking are dangerous..." the child points out. Naive but not dumb, she's had to do a lot of growing up in the scant few years she's been alive. And without the daily instruction she used to receive from the Cartel, she has had to try and learn on her own - a far more daunting task than she had realized and a situation that might have stunted her advancing strength to some degree.
"I'm not sure about Ash Crimson." she admits and it's easy to tell that the fact she didn't expect him to come up with respect to this exchange. "But K' was not born with the power over fire he has now. His natural chi is something of shadow and darkness - a dark partner to his burning flames. You know about NESTS, yeah? It was their base you decided to invade when..." she waves her left hand a little as if to gesture toward 'the past' and leaves it at that.
"The fire he wields, well, it, ah..." She begins to waffle. In truth, she has never spoken of these subjects to anyone before. She's never been asked. There was enough evidence just in cursory analysis of the girl and knowledge of her past with NESTS to assume that she was some kind of highly successful experiment in chi manipulation and it seems just about everyone else she's ever met were content to leave it at that. But Frei wants to know more.
The queried weapon closes her eyes for a moment then opens them again. "Do you know of the Kusanagis? A few years ago, NESTS obtained a sample of Kyo Kusanagi's blood. K', Krizalid, K9999, myself... just a few of hundreds of experiments - attempts to graft the power of the Kusanagi bloodline to others. Some, like K', were children stolen to be experimented on. Others were clones. Clones of Kyo. Clones of K'. Countless others... Each one manipulated in a different way by the scientists, each one a stepping stone to their goals. Maybe Ash was one of them too? I don't know. There were so many..."
Kula inhales then exhales, shoulders slouching a little, eyes shifting to the floor as she folds her gloved fingers against each other. "I am too - an attempt to try stabilizing the unpredictable flames by converting them to more more controllable ice. I was born in their research facilities too."
She lifts her face a little, eyes averted to the side. "In me, they ingrained a means of limiting the power, being able to keep it from destroying me by regularing my aura in response to the persistent ebb and flow of the bloodline power. I wasn't the first... many ice manipulators before me died, their bodies frozen within hours of leaving their growth chambers."
She finally looks back at Frei directly, her fingers unfolding, her right hand lifting to twirl a curl of her hair around her finger once more. "I was lucky to develop with a lot of hair. When I unlimit my aura my hair serves as a temperature regulator... that's why it becomes blue so fast." she explains, looking a touch sheepish at the clarification. "It's one of the things that let me live when so many others didn't." She releases her hair again, head canting to the side. "Do you know why Kyo Kusanagi's flames are so special?"
When she speaks, Frei should be thinking about the ramifications of what she's saying. There's so much in there that demands more questioning. But instead he becomes wrapped up in things that don't even seem relevant, things that come from so far away. She was... 'created' for the sole purpose of controlling, limiting another's power. And Frei knows how she was used, though he didn't have the name NESTS to put to it until recently. She was used to kill, to destroy. In his mind's eye, her face briefly overlaps with the face of his own clone, staring back at him. Created for some terrible purpose but wishing, with all his heart, solely to *end*, because he knew no other way to exist.
Could it have been just enough of Frei himself existed in those bodies to compel that wish? Could it be that, in her heart of hearts, there was no way out for Kula other than what Alma offered her?
The sage's eyes shut tight. He'd thought this buried, dealt with. He thought he had made peace with the person whose feet he put the blame at -- Alma's -- and, in way, they had. Frei accepted that if Alma understood the enormity of what he'd done, then Frei could trust and forgive him. But Frei hadn't had all the information. Had Alma *known*? Was that what let him take the step that he had? Inside, he'd come to peace with what he had to do, and what the others felt they did. But hearing Kula's story is enough to rip those wounds open fresh, raw and bleeding. "That..."
He cannot imagine a more terrible fate. To Frei, the freedom to choose is everything. All his beliefs are predicated on that simple maxim, that people should have the freedom to decide. Alma took that away from Kula... yet perhaps he provided her with it at the same time. It's no wonder she considered that she could feel alone among others. Being neither one thing nor the other... it's the most human of conditions, and the one that brings people the most pain.
He doesn't shy away from the tragedy of it; that would be the worst thing he could do. Instead, Frei gives voice to the thoughts in his head unfiltered and untempered. "That's terrible..."
He brings his face up, wiping a hand under one eye. "I don't know that I could have survived, having everything taken from me, Kula..." he says, after a pause. "I don't think I have that kind of strength."
After that, he falls silent. Perhaps that is all he can think of to say. Unconsciously, he's put his hand down on his stomach, palm down, as if nursing some sort of internal injury. That feeling of unease he's had for weeks... this does nothing to improve it.
Whatever the cost, Adel had said. Answers at whatever the cost. Well... this might be the cost.
"I know... Kyo Kusanagi," Frei says carefully. It'd be more accurate to say Frei knows OF him; he's fought the Scion of Flame twice, seen him fight on TV many more times than that. The World Warrior, the former King of Fighters, Kyo Kusanagi. "But I don't know anything about them. Are you saying that fire he wields is some sort of inherited power that NESTS was trying to duplicate?"
His brow furrows, as he tries to piece together the implications. So K' is a... reflection of Kyo, in some way, and Kula was created to control K'. Both of whom escaped the Cartel in their own ways, rebelling against it in the end. And then there's Ash Crimson, who nobody seems to know anything about in any way. How is he connected...?
She continues explaining as Frei struggles with thoughts about the past but with the own eye-averting she engages in, she doesn't realize that she might be better off shifting topics to focus on what's bothering him the most that instant. It goes without saying that Alma knows a lot more than he ever expresses directly - a remarkable intuition augmented by a psychic tie to others that is not to be Frei's privilege.
Only when he muses upon the horror of what is being explained to him so candidly does Kula take notice. "It is?" She seems to contemplate this for a moment, giving it a consideration that suggests she isn't sure that she automatically agrees with such a basic tenent. "Maybe what they did is terrible. But without it, I would not be alive and I like being alive." She smiles a little, seemingly not as troubled by the recollection. Is she able to tune out the fact that in order for her to exist so many had to suffer and die in horrific attempts at failed life? That K''s childhood was robbed from him leaving him to escape and deal with the lasting repercussions on his own? Are those acceptable to her by virtue of the fact that all those mistakes led to her life being created? Is it even something someone her age should /have/ to try to weigh the balance of?
Her eyes lock with his, her expression becoming rather serious again. "I miss what I used to have and the people I knew... I miss knowing that every day there was somewhere to go back home to..." She narrows her eyes in thought for a moment before adding, "You have had a lot taken away from you before... you're tougher than you think."
He rests his hand at his stomach and she blinks, "Are you sick?" But it's on to Kyo Kusanagi now. Kula nods once when Frei surmises that the power Kyo weilds is something inherited. "The power Kyo has over fire is unique to the Kusangi family. Or, well, was..." NESTS decided to change /that/ minor little issue of thousands of years of legacy.
Now they're treading into territory not quite so familiar to her. "I think the Kusanagi flames have to do something with an ancient demon... or something. NESTS only wanted them for their power as far as I know."
It's hard for Frei to concentrate, now; there's two disparate lines of thought in this conversation now and each are pulling for a different part of his attention. On the one hand, Kula is slowly laying out the answers to questions that he needed. On the other, she's also blithely, guilelessly talking about her history in a way that claws across Frei's thoughts like a file. He doesn't blame her for wanting to be alive, after all, and it's not as if she has any control over the actions of people who brought her into the world, any more than a 'normal' human has control over the parents who bore them. He gets a sort of distracted smile on his face as he thinks about that. "That's reassuring, in a way," he says to Kula, glancing at her sidelong. "Don't you think? Wanting a feeling of security and to be useful, having a place to call home... that's not so far from what most people want."
As for having a lot taken away from him, the sage's eyes fall at that. He's lost things, in a sense... but he's always bounced back from them admirably. "Maybe you're right," he says, quietly, "that I've lost things. But those losses led me on a path to finding a better 'me' in the end." When he raises his eyes back to Kula, his expression says everything, really; written all over it, is the hope that Kula can, in some way, do the same. Given how she's described her life, perhaps she already has.
"Ancient demon...?" He brings his hand to his lips in a gesture of contemplation. "I was in Sunshine City recently, and I felt a... a *presence* there," he says, for lack of a better term. Images pop into his head, of Aranha's struggle to keep his chi under control, and of Gen's admonitions not to let the seeping feeling of darkness Frei was experiencing overwhelm him. It... could be an ancient demon, but that's way out there in terms of plausibility. "That could be anything. And it seems like you don't know Ash Crimson..." With a shake of the head, Frei sighs. "I guess I'll just have to ask him... though I doubt he'll offer anything up." Turning back to Kula sidelong again, he smiles wearily. "Alma was demanding answers from him, in the KoF battle... and Ash didn't look like he had any to offer."
"I think...," Kula replies simply, quiet smile at her lips. "I have found that I am not so different from everyone else." She glances to the side, her gloved hand lifting, fingers curled, knuckle resting at the bottom of her chin in thought. "Maybe there are just certain things everyone has in common, regardless of how they started here."
When he muses the impact of losses in his own life, her eyes meet his. "I'm glad." she replies, her expression warming a little. "I remember there was a time when your hair was not so colored." That time he was cut off from the breath of life he had known so personally. "I'm... okay." she then decides to add after a moment's consideration. There seems to be reservations there, something in the back of her mind that she isn't going into.
She pays close attention when he mentions Sunshine City, eyes rolling up a bit in thought. "What do you want to find out about Ash?" she asks, eyes narrowing a little. "What is it that you're looking for? Do you think he has something to do what you felt in Sunshine City? What was Alma trying to find out from him?"
The girl exhales a little, a flicker of worry crossing her expression only to be replaced with a sober seriousness, "If Ash has anything to do with NESTS... you might be walking into something very dangerous. You think all this?" she gestures widely, indicating the ship and the Initiative as a whole, "Has escaped their notice? They know about Adelheid and those who have allied with him. And if Ash has anything to do with NESTS... You might not want to approach him alone." She looks even more stern for her age after a moment, "I certainly hope they don't decide they need you to renew their experiments from the war, after all."
She relaxes a little, offering Frei a touch of a smile. "If you need company... I have fought Ash Crimson once before."
A hand comes up and, somewhat self-consciously, ruffles through Frei's own hair. It is, as always, pointlessly messy; his long bangs somehow remain long despite the relatively close cut of Frei's hair on the average, the curve of them framing (and occasionally, obscuring) his freckled, green-eyed countenance. "I admit... that worried me a little bit," Frei says, in what sounds like a surprisingly vain statement coming from him. Bringing his hand away, he glances into his palm for a moment, then back at Kula. "The hair, I mean. I'm... well, I'm half Japanese, you know? But I've got Dad's Irish looks. I like that, though. It's a nice reminder that not everything in life is zero sum. I can... well, I can have my sword-swinging, hardcore Japanese mom and still look a little bit like a Weasley kid." There's a pause, before he adds, "The handsome ones, the older brothers. Not the guy who plays Ron."
It just goes to show, that even in the darkest situations, sometimes there are aspects to a person's personality that you can't suppress, no matter how deep it goes down.
Kula warns Frei that pursuing this might mean crossing NESTS, and closing his eyes for a moment, the young sage actually starts to smile a little bit. He had still been looking into the palm of his hand, considering the symbolism of what Kula MEANT -- she wasn't, likely, talking about his actual hair color -- when she goes on to consider the warning. It's a reasonable way to look at it. After all, at this point *every* major syndicate that exists has tried to kill Frei. NESTS has done it twice, putting them ahead of the game, but Shadaloo, even R' in the form of Mature and Vice... well. Maybe not Geese's Syndicate but they are, as it were, on vacation. "Ah, well, all... this..."
He looks around, taking in the Noah. The perfectly amazing technological marvel... one built with, in part, Ryouhara technology. He can feel the thread of it pulsing in the ship, especially now that he's had a chance to examine more of their ninja engineering in person. He supports Einherjar, in the sense that they are doing work others probably could not. On the other hand, he feels no particular connection to the place one way or the other, which is probably obvious to Kula when he turns back to her and shrugs with a helpless smile. "I don't know what I'm looking for. But I know that... well. Between you and me," he says, canting his head to the side a little. "I'm no hero, Kula, not really. But someone has to pay attention to the little things. And I trust my intuition. There's something very dark on the horizon, and now you've given me a clue. They might not be related. This might all be for nothing. But someone's got to look behind the backdrop while the heroes walk around on stage, clashing prop swords."
It may be the most harsh thing Frei's ever said, but at the moment it's how he feels. This isn't about people. This is about... mythology. History. Tiny warnings written into culture and stories and people's feelings. It might be nothing. But that's a gamble he's going to take. It might end up being vital.
"That... would be nice," he says at last, having considered it carefully. "I don't really know what I'm doing. You can... keep me in check."
Kula blinks a little as Frei cites his nationalities. "I wonder what I am," she muses, hands coming up to rest against her cheeks as if with sufficient self-inspection of her own face may yield the necessary clue to answer the question. No country to call her own, no idea of belonging except to the very Cartel she is now aligned in opposition against.
At the mention of the Weasley kids he loses her again, however, Kula staring blankly at Frei at the references that mean nothing to the child so woefully unequipped with practically any understanding of what anyone is reading or watching these years. She makes a note to look up the reference online as to be better equipped to understand any future comparisons to any such Weasley kids.
"Not a hero, hm? Just very brave then." She grins a little. "One of the bravest people I have ever met. But you can argue otherwise if it makes you feel better." She stretches her arms out at her sides a little then glances up at the wall-mounted clock. "I have to turn this room back over to the rest of the crew about now. But now that you're aboard, maybe you should stay for lunch? There is supposed to be ice cream dessert today, though the flavor is still a mystery."
"That's the nice thing about words," Frei says quietly to Kula, as she starts heading his way. It's probably time to leave this room and perhaps, for a moment, leave the conversation that went on in it too. Talk of ice cream makes Frei think that Kula would like to be a normal human being for five minutes and a sudden pang of hunger makes him realize, so would he. Still, there's one last thing he can say. "You can call me brave, and I can deny it, but in the end they're just labels we put on things. It's possible to be both at the same time."
Stopping at the door, he turns back to Kula and shrugs. "I guess in the end, which label is more apt depends on what happens next. Frankly, I'm more interested in seeing what sort of ice cream dessert the galley on an anti-terrorist secret organization's flying ninja airship comes up with."
Log created on 15:42:48 02/20/2011 by Frei, and last modified on 05:52:09 02/21/2011.