... Several minutes pass, and on this setting, David's now relaxing himself on the roof-pool; a big bottle of whiskey on one hand, and the other had an equally-large burger; though none of the Neon lanterns were on, at the distance one could witness Planet Kitadake giving off a small, bright-blue halo which helped illuminate that smooth, cool and slightly-breezy night.
He sighs contentedly to himself, "... Now this is a reason to come home each day..."
"Hey there... David."
The Freelancer heard the soft voice of a woman to his left, and when he turns his head to look he finds Jaden slowly entering the pool; she was wearing a common, white bikini: David could swear the bikini Jaden wore on that occasion was comparatively thinner than usual, bordering the line to that of translucency; but in the dimness of the night he could hardly prove it was either white or grey, let alone prove it appeared so.
"Well...... There you are." He squints his eyes a bit for a moment to catch a better view of her.
Jaden began again, "... uhm... Sorry about before... but everything I've said is true... In fact, it's been a while since I revealed my private life like that to anyone..." She strokes the hair from her ear away slowly, "Under normal circumstances... I'd have to kill you... but you could say that you're the... exception." And she bats her narrowed eyes at him.
"Yes, well... That'd put all your worry to waste wouldn't it? Oh, and we haven't even done that bet with the pistols yet... We'll have to get round to it some time."
"Oh, you're right about that, si..." She replies with a cool, yet somewhat strange grin, "... I just hope you're a good shot as you say with your... pistol..." She bites her lip, seemingly with ecstasy, as she finishes saying the last word.
David raises an eyebrow at her remark, "... uh... Anyway... See my new ship?"
The Corsair frowns for a moment, but quickly reverts back to her usual, tomboyish demeanor, "... Well yeah. A Havoc II Bomber... fancy that, senor... I never knew you had one before... well, neither did I know you had a starflier, so why should I be surprised?" She giggles, albeit sheepishly.
"Well, the Starflier was a scrap. I was probably going to set it up for target practice; just by using Mila I had to do less work."
"Too bad about your Virage... Was a fine ship that one."
He brushes it off, "Eh... I still have one here, and the original's in Rheinland...
"That reminds me, I'll have to get another one built, as well as a copy of the Havok! Copies are always much cheaper... But still ain't cheap with my equipment."
"Si, sounds like a good idea for me to get a copy for my ship as well."
"Oh, and you should probably get a bomber, that way we'll be able to start taking out big targets, which is always fun." and he grins.
"Mmm... bomber... it's been ages since I've flown a bomber..." Her mind drifts off as she went on, "... and the last one didn't end too well: I remember it was when Geronimo and I---"
She pauses momentarily, and then looks away sadly, "... uhm... just, no... A bomber's not my style, anyway."
"Yea, alright. They can be hard to get used to."
"It's not really... It's just that... I..." She looks at David painfully, "... Let me tell you something that only few of my friends... and most of my enemies, know...
"... I... I'm used to the light fighter cause of one fact alone: I'm not the best of shots... the only asset that I have is getting out of tight spots... usually by myself... being the survivor...
"I've... mostly relied on my luck those whole times; it's only rarely that I could fend off true pilot aces... and..."
Jaden places her human hand on her face, "... That single fact has gnawed on my conscience my whole life... I've never been able to defend the things I've held dear, David...
"I... I'm sorry... all that I'm good at is being a scout... being an 'untouchable' ...
"... and I feel so... so pathetic...
"I just wish... that I could finally... defend what I truly held dear..." The Corsair then looks up at the night sky, "... But as I quote a poet from a time long forgotten, 'Can a Leopard change its spots?'"
The Freelancer takes a bite out of his burger, and after swallowing he replied, "Heh, well, a scout saved my life back in the LSF."
She looks at him in with an intrigued face.
"... Intel had found that a wing of Order fighters had entered Zone 21, and was ripping up any Liberty ships they could find. Kappa squad was dispatched to take em out...
"It'd be easy... A team of fighters and bombers taking on no more than 5 fighters... should've been easy. But as we neared their last known location, Kappa 4, the scout of the squad, decided to go ahead... And what he found was nasty...
The Order fighter wing was in fact a swarm of 8 fighters and 2 Osiris Battleships. As soon as he told us on the comm, Kappa leader had us turn around and wait for some heavy backup. If we had of gotten within scanner range of those ships, we could have been toast. Five ships up against 10 is bad odds to start with, but Battleships? Ain't anything 2 Bombers can do with a swarm of fighters on their arse."
Jaden narrows her eyes a bit in evident doubt, "... You're not frakking with me, are you?"
"Nope."
She looks at him for another moment, then relaxes a bit, "... So you're not... mmmm..." She then looks down on the water's surface, replying half to herself, her voice a bit hurt, "Well... Back in my homeland, the Corsair Empire, the scouts were some of the more worthless fighters in the Military, that only your influence goes as far as you could 'throw' an untouchable...
"It kept paining me that one such as myself couldn't be of much use except as the eyes and ears of the Corsairs Main Force unless we honed our skills in combat much further...
"I wasn't alone, though... We tried to appreciate our role as scouts, and for a time we were content... we all were... but..."
Jaden closes her eyes, and dunks her face in the water with a splash; and what seemed like a minute had passed her head resurfaces, gasping for air, "In the Empire, to run away from your duties would've been to tarnish your honor... and being an untouchable would entail that you had already shamed your family by just being alive... Resources were scarce enough as it was and still is now, and if you couldn't contribute much to the Empire you were basically dead-weight... Sometimes, it just wasn't our fault that we managed to survive where others could not... yet...
"... Cannon-fodder or not, I... We... couldn't just forfeit our lives... We were still needed... The Empire still needed scouts to keep the Main Force safe, to guide the way... to soak up the first missile salvo, so to speak. We were treated like peons, and the higher-ups looked down on us, to the point that should we eventually improve, they'd do their best to pull us down and put us back in our 'rightful' place..."
Then she looks at him with sad, miserable and slightly-tearful eyes, "Tell me, David... How could you ever face your superiors with the knowledge that, by being alive, you have shamed your family honor by running coward and leaving your compadre's to die...?"
David looks back at her, and seeing as she was serious, tries to give smile in an attempt to calm her, "Well, I don't know to be honest..." He looks up to the glowing gas-giant as he continues, "I don't live my life by words like honor and duty... I left those things before for the simple reason that they can get you killed... I detached myself from those kind of things. That's why I'm still here."
The Corsair stares at him for a few moments before staring back at her reflection on the water, "... I... I see... You have a point though, David... it's... it's just...
"... Could I have done something different...? If I had been given the chance... to turn back time... to re-live those moments...
"Do you think... that I could've done something otherwise to... I don't know, make things better? Anything...?"
"Depends if you already have all the information. To make a choice knowing all the results is easy; it's when there are unknowns in the results do choices become risky..." A sigh comes out of him as if a heavy weight had been lifted.
A long pause follows as Jaden looks back up to the stars, "... And if the latter were true... then all you'd have... is faith... and luck...
"... Isn't that right... David?" and she glances back at him.
"Yep..." He snorts a short laugh to himself before continuing, "The best thing to do is to just use the cards you're delt with, not dwell on the cards you wanted... You do that, you waste time... time for other things... time you could've used to getting the cards you want."
"... Getting... the cards you want..." she repeated.
"Yep. Just make sure..." He returns the glance back at her, "that you know what to do when you finally get 'em..."
Jaden blushes red for a moment, for it seemed his words had struck a chord in her heart; a smile starts to crack on her face; then a giggle; and finally she comes out bursting in laughter, cutting the stillness of the night, "Your words are truly wise, señor. I never knew you had it in you, HAHAHAHAHAH!!!"
"Yea, but look at the difference: I have everything I want, and will most likely ever want, with me already...
"... and you?" He chuckles slightly, "I don't think I need to say anything more."
Her face quickly goes smug, "Oh, you are SO going to pay for saying that..." She then gives a very wry grimace at him, "But such as it is, you're right... as I hate to admit it."
A shiver runs down his spine as Jaden looks at him with a daunting stare, "Yes... yes, I probably will...
"I'll tell you, if you really want to hurt me, destroy my ships. Those are the things I truly care about: my ships are a part of me, and whenever I loose one, I loose a bit of myself."
She rolls her eyes unexcitedly, "Pfff... men and their toys...
"... which reminds me... Why not pay your dues NOW?" She gives a somewhat devilish grin.
"Eh?"
"Si, David... Like, I've already told you part of MY story... but I'd like to know YOUR story for a change, no?" She giggles a bit to herself.
"Oh? Not much to it, actually: my Father was a commercial pilot on Manhattan; I took after him, learned to fly and the usual.
"I joined the LSF after the company I worked in went bust: I was mainly a paper pusher then, and I was one of those in the LSF for a while. I did the reports for cardamine smuggling operations on Manhattan.
"Then when I got my hands on that Havok, I lerned space flying, and fell in love with it. I then changed my job to LSF space agent and went on from there."
"Oh? There's got to be more to it than that for you to become part-jackarse, heheh."
David shrugs his shoulders, "Guess it's just in my nature... I've always been different: I can look at situations in ways that people never even considered. Unfortunately, I didn't get on with most people.
"So instead of trying to become a 'nice' person, I embraced my inner-jackarse. People knew me for that, I didn't blend in, and they accept me as I am... if you could call it that."
"Huh. You really are something, aren't you?"
"Yep... A pilot who uses brains instead and duty and honor, and also enjoys making other people's lives miserable."
"... Only that the latter part's sometimes bigger than the former and makes you a friggin [A.D.M.I.N. censored]...
"Oh... and by the way... what happened 4 days ago when you were all frakked-up and filled with all sorts of bull[A.D.M.I.N. censored]?"
"I..." He pauses for a moment, "... Get angry sometimes."
"Yeah?" Jaden gets a bit closer, her look evidently showing suspicion, "... Then what the hell caused that rage at the time? I know many things sure do make you spin your head off pretty easily, but...
"That arsehole-ishness lasted for a bit too long if you asked me..."
He hesitates, as if unwilling to say more, "I... Just get in a mood where if something doesn't go right, I tend to want to smash them until they work."
She says in a dry tone, "Well... Aren't you the cute, little barbarian?" She calls the robot for a burger, which promptly responds and heads off, "You're hiding something, I just know it...
"Anyway, at the least just make sure you point it at your... OUR enemies... and boy, do I have a lot of prospective enemies for you to turn your anger onto, don't worry..." and she grins darkly to herself.
"... heh... maybe reducing 1/3 of the Sirian population wouldn't be so bad.. so long it's the frakkers that get kicked..."
... another long pause comes around the night...
Deciding to break the silence, David lets out a long yawn, "Well... May as well get some rest. Can't wait to rip it up in my old girl: that Havok has been with me a long time."
"Hmmm... so when do you think it'll be... appropriate to set up your... pistol, for our upcoming bet, mmm? The heritage forest kinda seems not so suitable cause it's so god-darn dense.
"... Know any other place you think that's more... private?" She grins a bit.
"I already have it covered: there's a shooting range in the forest we can head to tomorrow."
"Oh... you do? Huh... fancy that." She rolls her eyes before continuing, "That should make things a lot easier."
The robot comes with the burger on a tray, "Ah... there you are, finally... I've been starving to get some San Corsico's onto my belly for quite some time." She gets the very elegantly-made burger from the robot and starts munching it happily, "... mmm..."
"'Bout time you started liking them!"
"Ah... this is just one of the good ones... lots of meat, and not that much disguisting oil... Sometimes I swear you could power a single house with a single burger's worth of oil..."
"Naw, it takes 12 to do that, heheheh."
"Anyway..." She waves the burger on hand around the air, "If you really are tired, you go on ahead... It's been 3 days since I've been to the pool, and I've been dying to get back. So I'll stay here for the time being, alright?"
"Sounds like a plan." And he gets out of the pool and, grabbing his towel hanging on a nearby chair, heads downstairs to bed.
She counts for 30 seconds right after the sounds of David heading down the stairs finish; she then looks at the robot with intimidating eyes, "... Leave... now..."
After the robot leaves the Corsair to herself, now satisfied she was finally alone, Jaden slowly grips the garter on her bikini, and pulls down the swimwear off her body, stripping herself until she leaves her gorgeous body entirely naked and exposed.
With the burger still on hand, she submerges deeper in the water and takes a large bite out of her meal, smiling to herself.
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