Late week 57: Ushvani Spa Trip.

Tansai's rather plain car turned into a parking space, tucked away in a street a little away from the entrance to Ushvani. The agents walked the short distance, Silvia's face hidden underneath her hood, Tansai striding slightly ahead, face hidden behind her mask as always.

Tansai led Silvia down some steps to a small, wooden door and opened it for her, leading into a plush lobby area, a smiling receptionist behind a sleek marble desk. Small atmospheric candles sat in holders, filling the air with a soft scent, while the carpet was simple, to avoid damage from clients coming out still slightly damp. Tansai walked up to the desk, and after a short chat, turned back to Silvia. "We've got a few minutes wait. Wanna sit down and look at the treatment list?"

Silvia nodded, still glancing around nervously as she had been for the entire trip so far. "Okay, sounds good. I...I'm probably not going to know what half of them mean, though." She sat in one of the chairs, though on the edge, rather than leaning back, and kept glancing around. "Do you know about this kind of thing?"

"A bit. I worked for EI for a decade or two before joining Oracle. I've picked quite a few things up here and there." said Tansai, flicking through the neatly bound folder on the nearby coffee table. "Here. This is probably the page you want." She said, handing it over to Silvia. "These are all things to relax." The page started off basic, with things like massages, then progressed down until at the bottom were delux packages involving pools of specially formulated liquid that caressed you while jets massaged you back, your selection of music playing and the entire room covered in holographic projectors that allowed you to choose what the room around you felt like.

"You used to work for EI?" Silvia said, her head turning in surprise. "I mean...no offence...you don't...you don't seem the type. I always heard that EI Agents were...more...um..." She hesitated, trying to find the right word, but at least she wan't looking around so much any more. "...Excessive." She looked back down at the list of treatments. "Maybe...um...you should pick."

"Eh. Some are. But, you know. It does rule a massive area. All sorts get in, just the money you get drags in more of the kind of guys you're thinking of. There are agents around you would think were Western Fed commandos they're so serious." Tansai had been leaning back in her chair, hands behind her head, eyes closed as she said this. One of them cracked open as she fixed Silvia with a look.

"Though I'll take the not seeming like one as a compliment. How about you, where are you from?"

"Er...me?" Silvia seemed slightly taken aback by the question, but she seemed to settle back slightly. "Yokohama Open City. It's a...it was a nice place. I mean, Open Cities are generally pretty good, I know, but Yokohama was pretty good even by those standards. Shi Yukiro keep...kept it that way. And Shinjitsu were based there...they kept the area around their base pretty good too." She looked down. "I...it's pretty different now. Obviously."

Tansai nodded. "Yeah...I heard about the tsunami." She paused for a moment, looking over the paper. "You ok with talking about it, or do you want to change the topic?" she asked, connecting eye connect with Silvia.

"I...I should be fine." Despite her words, Silvia's voice was low, and there was an echo of pain in it. "I mean, I've had to think about it enough. And I knew things would likely be different when I came back." She shook her head, eyes downcast. "I mean...a world like this...you get used to hearing all the latest news instantly. It's...different out in the wilds. You lose track of things so easily. And then it all hits you at once. But I'm...I'm coping. The people here have really helped. Especially...especially Hugo."

Tansai reached into her bag and pulled out a real chocolate bar, which she passed over to Silvia. "That's good at least. People usually help." Tansai's voice, while comforting, was slightly oddly pitched and it was difficult to work out what she was thinking, before rather suddenly perking up. "Anyway, we need to decide what we're doing. This one sounds good." she said, pointing to the "Star Pool Massage", a heated pool with a holo-ceiling made to look like a clear starry night, along with elegant orb shaped massage robots that could be activated via alcoves in the wall.

"It...it really does." There was a note of awe in Silvia's voice as she looked over the description. "I mean...that's just...well...pretty much perfect." Her eyes tracked over several of the other options before floating back to it. "Yeah, I...that looks pretty good to me."

Tansai began to respond, when the little light at the desk went off and they were called in. After confirming their choice, they were led to a pair of small, yet incredibly plush changing rooms. Tansai changed quickly into her bathing suit, which, true to form, fitted around the neck leading to a face mask, and when Silvia left the changing room was lying face up in the water, arms askew, blinking at the remarkably realistic holoceiling, slightly hidden by the small amount of steam drifting from the water. The only sounds were the slight lapping of the water, and Tansai's slow breathing. By the door was a small panel, built into the wall, with touch screen selections for pretty much every facet of the bath.

When Silvia emerged from the changing room, her first reaction was to look up at the sky, her face shifting into an expression of wonder. It felt like it had been so long since she had been able to see the stars, and never as well as this. After a moment of just staring, she slowly lowered herself into the pool and took a few steps forward, before leaning back and letting herself just float alongside Tansai, relaxing in the steam.

"It's...it's incredible."

Tansai simply nodded, and didn't say anything for a while. "I never saw these things as a kid." she said, slightly quietly. "Didn't see them till Pos took me up to the moon. Always too much smog in the air, or too much light when I was in EI."

She pushed herself to the wall and pushed herself up. Her body seemed slightly more loose than usual. "Just kind of weird walking in here and having more of them out than I've ever seen."

Silvia nodded, still floating in the water. "Yeah. You don't get this many even in the wilds. Too thick an atmosphere or something. Never did understand it properly. But...this still reminds me of then. It was...a good time. Mostly, at least. Dangerous, but it's what I signed on for. Seeing this kind of thing." She let herself float, relaxed, with a smile creeping across her face.

"What did you do out there?" asked Tansai, trailing her fingers in the water. "Just...walk around and see what was there?" she seemed curious about the subject. "I...don't think I ever got assigned outside a city myself."

"Pretty much," Silvia replied, still staring upwards at the stars. Her voice was calm, almost dreamy. "I mean, nobody else had done it. Or nobody else who ever mapped it. I mean, that was challenge enough. There are some nasty things out there. Gemini practically uses it as a dumping ground, and there are an awful lot of people who'd rather the unmapped stay unmapped. Liberty Black especially, down there. But Comoros and the WF and a few other people too. But it was...nice, for all that. So...quiet." She closed her eyes, letting the water carry her. "Not quite like here, but...quieter than the cities."

"Never been too fond of the quiet myself. Always feels like something's wrong." said Tansai, lightly. She nearly continued "Found a lot of bodies in quiet places" before stopping herself. This was a trip to calm down Silvia, she already seemed jumpy and Tansai didn't know how she'd respond to talking about death.
"Do you want to go back to that, do you think?" she asked, looking down at the woman floating in the water in front of her.

For a moment, Silvia was quiet, just continuing to stare at the stars. And then, when Tansai was beginning to think that she hadn't heard the question, she replied in a thoughtful voice.

"I...I don't know. I mean, I enjoyed it out there. Most of the time, at least. Not when things were trying to kill me, obviously, but it was...I liked it. It was what I wanted. To...to get away. From people. But now..." She tailed off for a moment before resuming. "Now I don't...I don't want to get away so badly. I actually like it here at Oracle, too." She stopped speaking again, but the contemplative expression on her face indicated that she still had more to say. And indeed, after a moment she started talking again.

"You know, before I got the offer from Oracle, I was going to go back there. Shinjitsu wanted me to stay in Japan and I couldn't face it. So I was going to go back. Where I felt...safer." She chuckled, although without any audible mirth. "Stupid, isn't it? Feeling safer in a place where pretty much everything that moves is trying to kill you. But it's true. That's how I felt, at least then. Now...now I don't know."

Tansai laughed friendly, and sunk back into the water. "Makes sense to me. You know what you're doing when you're dealing with stuff trying to kill you. That's easy." Lying on her back, she gently pushed off the wall and kept going till her head nudged Silvia's ankle. "Oracle's a pretty good place, I think. Cool boss, lots of money, plenty of freedom, chance to piss off the Corps...you seem pretty suited for it to be honest." she laughed again, not mockingly, but cheerily.

"You really think so?" Silvia twisted her head sideways so that Tansai was as much in view as possible. "I mean...it seems like a pretty...it seems like you need to be pretty good to work here. Considering the kind of crazy stuff we do. So...well, that means a lot coming from you."

Tansai rose her hand in the air and gave a thumbs up. "I dunno if we just have an awesome team, or if other people just don't think the way we do, or if this would be normal if every field agent had the kind of money we have...but I think we do pretty well. You were pretty cool on that mission we did together too."

"Thanks. I just...well, it seemed like somebody needed to go in through that vent. And I'm kind of used to that kind of stuff. Well...maybe not so much vents specifically. And, you know, toxic gases. But that kind of stealthy stuff...I can do that." If she had been on land, Silvia would have shrugged. As it was, she just continued drifting, turning her head back up. "We do seem to have some...advantages. It takes some getting used to."

Tansai laughed again. "Yeah, it does a bit, doesn't it. Though probably more for you than me, given where we came from."

She allowed herself to drift around a bit, spinning slightly through the water. "How you getting on with the people here then?

Silvia was silent for a moment, weighing up the question. "Pretty well, I think," she replied eventually. "I've been getting on pretty well with Fenris, anyway. And back at home there's Shinobu, who's great, really, even if she's a bit...odd. And then there's...there's Hugo." Her voice faltered a little as she said his name. "We're good friends. I'm...I'm glad to have him around. Really." She paused, trying to think of other members of Oracle that she'd met and had anything resembling a conversation with. "I think...that's about all the Agents I've met. For now, anyway. I haven't managed many missions yet."

Tansai was quiet for a moment, before she matter of factually stated "You fancy him, don't you?". There was no element of teasing in her voice, nor did she particularly move from her position on her back.