Ninth Light

[curseu-reflexes.livejournal.com]

[In the wake of the most recent mission, you'll find a disheartening sight if you enter the hangar.  The HK-1138' Corona lies in a crumpled, ruined heap off in a side designated for unsalvagable wrecks, the entire machine nearly split in twain height-wise, a huge chunk of it just fucking gone.  Those parts from before?  Yeah, phoney.  All of them.  Danconias-Phillips imitation parts and completely incompatible.  You didn't actually think they'd HELP Julia, did you?]

Come on... move... move!

[And elsewhere in the hangar, Julia has been trying as hard as she can to use other machines.  Knightmare Frames.  Mobile Suits.  Everything and anything that currently isn't claimed by someone else just so no stone was unturned.  But it's all for naught.  Her hands fly wildly and clumsily at the controls.  It takes all of her willpower and focus to just a machine to stumble awkwardly forward, and all too often her machine stumbles and falls.  And finally after one failure too many...

[Well, everyone has a breaking point and Julia's just hit hers.]

I can't...

I can't pilot anymore...

Comments

[curseu-reflexes.livejournal.com]

What's there to figure out? The Corona's gone!

Arika, please. I-I need to know when to call it quits. My father would have died; no, the whole of the Irgelion armada would have died if he didn't order a surrender at the end of the conflict!

[crystal-energy.livejournal.com]

Grandma said that if you quit once, you'll quit everything. And that knowing when not to fight isn't quitting.

[Guess who didn't care for bully boys in their village?]

We're trying to stop people from fighting, right? We can't quit!

[curseu-reflexes.livejournal.com]

[She shook her head at that.]

I didn't come here for any noble reason, just because I didn't have anywhere else to go.

And it was wrong for me to go out fighting... I'm no soldier.

[crystal-energy.livejournal.com]

But weren't you fighting to protect the rest of us?

[curseu-reflexes.livejournal.com]

Yes... I-I mean no -- it's-

[She buried her face in her hands.]

This place became my home. I was just trying... to pull my weight...

[In Julia's eyes right now, that might as well be the truth, even if she wouldn't agree with that in a better state of mind.]

[crystal-energy.livejournal.com]

Grandma always said that if you care about what you're doing and who you're doing it for, there's no such thing as it not being enough!