2022-01-19: My Orders Are Absolute, Got It?
- Log: 2022-01-19: My Orders Are Absolute, Got It?
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Anti, Alexis Kerib
- Where: Tsutsujidai
- Date: 2022-01-19
- Summary: Akane carves a little guy out of clay, and takes him out for a meal before his mission to crush Gridman can begin in earnest. It doesn't end as planned. Takes place about four hours after 2022-01-18: A Demon in My Safest Haven.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
As we lens in on our valiant squad of Tsutsujidaians:
A 7'8" alien sits in the driver's seat of a mid-sized sedan; directly behind him is Akane Shinjo (at protest -- she would normally take the front, but had to teach Anti what a seatbelt was, which necessitated going to the back and doing it herself; she elected to remain in the back) and to her side is her new autointelligence kaiju. They've been driving around, looking for a place to eat for a while.
"Oooh! Black Star Crab?" Akane half-asks, half-suggests. "I didn't think of that one myself... neat! Sounds like a big dub that you didn't figure out how to stop at Sushiro after all! I could really go for some crab... Alexis, stop here!" she requests, sounding... genuinely enthused about food, for once, with an eye toward herself. This is the third restaurant Alexis has brought them toward --
-- and, 40 seconds later, the third restaurant Alexis has passed.
Akane takes a moment to sit there, huffy. She's having an unexpressed thought and weighing the exact amount of sharpness with which she wants to express it.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Black Star Crab..."
There are certain assumptions baked into an auto-intelligence kaiju. He was born understanding speech and responses; his very first words were a confirmation of Akane's regency, after all. But just because he knew how to promise to defeat Gridman, that doesn't mean he knows everything.
He just keeps absorbing these names, as they drive past. Donkeys, Sushiro, and...
"We eat crabs?" Anti wonders, placing in his mind the categorical knowledge that crabs are armoured warriors alongside the knowledge that food involves both chewing and swallowing. The two things hardly seem to go together.
Except --
NYOOM --
Anti puts a hand to the window, as he watches the restaurant sail past. Without much emotion, he amends his statement: "... we won't eat crabs?"
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
"No, we eat crabs," Akane says, curtly. "Or at least we would. Hey, Alexis." Akane kicks the seat, with a little force. "Do you know how to use the brakes on this thing? I told you to stop three times!" Another kick, this time with a little more force.
"Hm? Brakes?" Alexis asks, glancing back. "Ah. I thought I'd figure it out during the drive..."
This escalates Akane from modestly irritated to an absolute, white-hot anger. "How about instead, you figure it out right now?" she demands, not quite hitting an exclamation but almost there as she punctuates with a third, forceful kick -- this one all the way to the back of the seat, and forceful enough to move Alexis a hair forward.
A split second later -- subtly, after arresting his momentum, a thing Anti might notice but Akane isn't in position to -- Alexis swerves the car off to the side, and ultimately, into a network pole. A lot happens at once!
Cell service in Tsutsujidai gets about 10% worse. (This will be fixed by tomorrow.)
Akane and Alexis -- not buckled in -- go flying. This is zero inconvenience for Akane, who is quite upset; she manages a youth roll that terminates at a wall, leaving her annoyed but only 'fell off bike, skinned knee' level annoyed. It is less than zero inconvenience for Alexis, who rights himself fully almost instantly.
Anti, who is buckled in, actually has zero problems except getting whipped around briefly.
Akane needs a minute to reorient herself. Alexis seems in good spirits, laughing it off with a, "... Such a violent young lady. Ho ho... how unfortunate about the car, though."
"This one's on you for not knowing how to stop," Akane grumbles, coughing a little bit. "... Where's Anti?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti notices an awful lot of things, in quick succession:
1) Akane seems confused over the concept of whether they're eating crabs or will only have the capacity to eat crabs in the future.
--> Are they going to adapt mouthparts which can crush the crabs? Maybe that's why it's a future hypothetical. That would make sense.
----> Wait, can Akane do that?
------> Akane's orders are absolute, so she'd probably just order herself to be capable of eating crabs.
2) The proper way to correct someone who isn't doing what Akane tells them to do is physical force.
--> Does Alexis not realise her orders are absolute?
----> Oh, Alexis doesn't take orders from Akane.
------> That's why Akane is asking him questions instead of giving him orders. The questions just SOUND like orders.
3) Alexis doesn't have the same priorities as Akane.
--> Is this his first time in a car, too?
----> Akane wouldn't be able to kick his seat if she didn't have to show Anti how cars worked.
------> Akane likes things to be figured out very quickly.
4) Alexis isn't actually bothered by Akane kicking his chair.
--> It looked like he was, for a second.
----> But he definitely caught himself.
------> Wait, doesn't jerking that wheel make the car move --
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEECH
Anti goes forward very suddenly before being arrested JUST as suddenly, and slamming back into his seat, again, quite suddenly. He blinks, behind a mop of white hair all knocked into his face. He doesn't particularly need time to orient himself, because the force generated might be able to rattle his body when he's this size, but he was made to handle much, much bigger forces.
Which just means he gets to hear Alexis laughing about it, really. How unfortunate...
Oh.
Alexis crashed the car because Akane was being violent.
So that's how it works, Anti thinks.
He waves a hand, through the broken glass of the window. "Over here."
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
It takes Akane a few more seconds to get oriented. She's mildly dazed at worst, and a little irritated, but it still takes her a second after having her frame of reference so heavily changed so abruptly. She stands up, putting a hand on her back and pushing it forward a little, trying to realign... everything. "Wow. Here I am getting thrown around, but Anti's totally fine! That's a kaiju. Good stuff." She grins, and takes a moment to self-congratulate; normally she might not, but she's had a very weird couple days. "I did a good job with this one."
Alexis doesn't seem to need any time to re-situate himself meaningfully. "You did take the time to buckle him in," he points out, gently congratulatory. "It's good of you to dote on your kaiju so."
Akane glances back. Black Star seems -- farther than it should be. Or maybe just oddly indistinct.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti looks down at himself, and notes two things:
1) He looks basically the same as Akane, give or take a few features.
2) He is still incredibly buckled in.
Pursuant to point 1, he looks back to Akane, and then back to himself. Not the same? Okay. So he looks at Alexis, and back to himself. Also not the same, but Alexis, at least, is measurably different to Akane. He must be supposed to be spikier than her.
Pursuant to point 2, Anti confirms: "I was buckled in, so I managed." And thanks to observing Akane working that arcane buckling magic, he figures out how to release his bonds, his little claws coming down to fiddle with the sheathe. Poke, poke -- oh! There's a button. Once he depresses it, the belt retracts.
Anti subsequently opens the door, and it cracks off on its hinges. He stands, holding the entire metal slab by its handle, as if Akane had asked him to hold her bags for a moment.
"I'm a kaiju who looks like Akane..." he absorbs that information, alongside all those other lessons. "... but I don't get thrown around. I see." Being thrown around, subsequently, must be bad stuff; he had better be the one doing the throwing.
And it's good for Akane to dote on him? He does prefer that to the idea of being kicked.
This, of course, is the precise moment his stomach grrrrrrooOoOOOoOoOWWWWWWLLLLLLLLS.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Akane grins easily at that self-reflection. "Yep! That's the seatbelt for you."
"They are so important," Alexis affirms, starting first toward Anti -- or toward the wreck. He pokes around in the glove box.
"You're a kaiju who can eat with me, too," Akane says, managing to be all smiles despite her deep annoyance at the circumstances. "Lemme just clean myself off here..." Akane hates feeling unclean or damaged. It's easy for her to deal with it in relatively short order, mind -- it takes a little time and some mental effort, but she can reinstance her general look.
"... If you'll excuse me," Alexis says, loud enough for Anti to hear but quiet enough that Akane misses it. "I'll need to make a phone call to report the accident..."
As she fusses with herself a little more, Akane says, "At least we crashed pretty close to a convenience store! I can still get you something to eat," pleasantly.
Alexis asks, curious, "You're fine with that? We've come a long way, you know."
"Not like we have much of a choice with the car busted," Akane shoots back. "C'mon, Anti. Let's get you something to eat. ... Sorry about this. Convenience store food's okay, right?" There's a bit of a hitch in her voice -- a bit of a tense, unvoiced 'please be okay with it.'
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti kind of wishes he'd kept a hold of that shield, when Alexis turns to him. Someone who can punish Akane's transgressions isn't someone whose attention he particularly wants.
... luckily, Alexis moves past him, to the wreck, and Anti is able to approach Akane without comment. He looks far too serious for Akane's grin, but... maybe he's just a dour sort of kaiju.
Akane cleans herself off, but she doesn't tell Anti to do so, which means that there are still some chunks of plastic and glass just kind of chilling in his hair. Alexis asks to be excused, and Anti grunts, because he's not really asking.
But Akane says she can still get him something to eat, and all a sudden his intense eyes are all on her again. Anti, who is an intelligent kaiju, has thoughts, and right now a primary thought which keeps interrupting all the others is: he's hungry. He nods, and he'll follow her, despite Alexis's curiosity.
She asks him a question, too.
But is she really asking?
There's a breath of a delay, as Anti weighs up whether he's expected to reply to this gesture of politeness, but something in Akane's voice tells him it's a question looking for an answer. "I'm fine with anything," Anti replies, simply; it's true, after all, and he's clearly not supposed to argue.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
The interaction already kind of sucks. Oh, sure, Akane will still get at least the basic thing she wanted out of it, and will play-act care to the extent to which it matters. But it's tainted, now. She lets out an irritated sigh, not bothering to direct Anti to clean himself off; if she was in a better state, she'd either do it herself or at least tell him to, but right now, she's secretly sucking and dying in her head about the car.
As far as she could tell, after all, it was her fault.
"All right! Then let's get going," Akane says, leading the way. Alexis follows for a time; at about the halfway mark, his path diverges very subtly. Eventually, he ends up off to the side of the convenience store rather than going inside with the two of them. He needs to go around to make the phone call, after all. Akane, at the head of the line, doesn't pay attention.
Akane's feeling chatty. It helps her dump stuff out of her brain. "Soooo..." she starts walking the aisles of the 721, looking for the ideal bento. She can get away with saying a lot, here; people generally mind their own business. "We've had a couple more visitors lately," she says. "Some of them seem fine, but I might need you to go outside if they keep showing up after you crush Gridman. If people are slipping in, that's a real problem! Oh, right -- Alexis, I was going to mention, someone else showed up today, in my room, and I kinda want an explanation for --"
-- She looks back. Alexis is gone. "Huh. Where'd he go?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti is smart enough to intuit that the mood has changed, even if he can't quite place it all. Akane still seems as cheerful as ever, but that irritated sigh...
Alexis goes off to make his phone call, and at that point, there are two paths before Anti.
<-- he can not excuse Alexis, and go with him to see what on earth a phone is,
or,
he can keep following Akane, even though she seems dissatisfied -->
Arguably it's not really a choice -- Akane told him to get going, so he has to get going. Arguably, it's the most important choice in his young life. (Is that really saying much? Has he even been alive for an hour yet?!)
Anyway, the point is, Akane does have someone to talk to, because Anti is still trailing behind her, akin to a lost kitten who got some attention.
"Understood," he confirms, as she's talking about the outsiders -- who are, if not bad, at least a real problem -- but he does nothing more to interrupt her. His eyes scan the lines of bento. He wonders what the shiny parts taste like.
Then Akane asks another question, and that is strange -- different, between them, because it really does seem like Akane is asking. "He's outside," Anti replies -- promptly, this time. "Around the side."
Having explained where Alexis is located (which is, let us remember, precisely what Akane asked), Anti has a question of his own: "How should I handle outside?" It's an innocent request for clarification, but it's as blunt as anything Anti says.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Akane considers this for a moment. Oh, she thinks. He's literally like an hour old. He needs the help. "Any idea what he's up to?" Akane asks, keeping it casual. The topic of Outside weighs heavier on her mind than whatever Alexis is up to. Oh, sure, she needs to show him that his buddy left a calling card, but that can wait for now. She's got Anti to talk to, and honestly, she's more comfortable talking to him than to Alexis.
After all, Alexis, in a very literal and metaphorical sense, is alien; Anti, conversely, is 'like her,' as even he himself has noticed.
She likes the thought that a kaiju is like her. Enough to have it actually perk her mood back up, a bit! She picks up a bento, and says, "Here! I used to like this one a lot." Fried chicken, veggies, rice. Not super complicated. She leads Anti along toward the checkout counter, absently fumbling in her hoodie. She's got a bunch of loose miscellany in the pockets -- and more in her bag, of course.
She fumbles with money as she tries to figure out what to say to Anti's question. "Hmmm... Alexis might know more than I do, at this point..." ... that actually feels nice to say, too. The alien is better at handling the 'world of the gods' than she, a native, is. A little longer, a little more comfortable, and maybe she can hole up here forever.
"He's the one who handles that stuff. I just stay in here," she answers, truthfully. "If you need to do something out there that you can't do on your own, I bet he'll have some way you can do it."
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Said he's making a phone call to report the accident," Anti explains. Akane is all emotion, and he is none of it; for all her casual inflection, his voice doesn't waver from that same brusque intensity.
He could have copied her speech patterns, but... Anti would rather take on a way of speaking unlike Alexis's. It's the safest way for him to try and clear any space for himself, now he's recognised he has landed in an intricate web.
Of course, he's applying the lesson of opposite-action he learned from Alexis.
But never mind that.
His attention slips from Akane to the bento she's picked up, all zeroed in on the chicken and the rice. He is intent, and clearly invested. He grunts, and follows her along to the counter.
'At this point' is a nice thing to hear, too; it's comfortable and unchallenging, given the first idea he had to respond to was the idea that Akane's orders were absolute. It means that Akane did know more, before she delegated. Alexis 'handles that stuff'.
"So I'm doing it on my own," he confirms, with a nod. "All right. I'll contact him if I have to."
Anti is now loading...
Now loading...
Ding! Anti has now realised that contacting and reporting are the same general concept.
But he doesn't explain his thought process, so -- "What's a phone, anyway?" -- his next question might seem a little out of the blue.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Akane doesn't think anywhere near that hard about what she says -- or, more accurately, she isn't right this second. There's other thoughts in the mess that are slightly ahead of that in the queue. She finally scrapes enough money out of her pockets (and her bag) to give the cashier.
Someone who cared more about themselves -- their time, their cognitive load -- would probably consider a wallet or a card holder or something. But no, Akane just sort of has an undifferentiated mass of gilla, luke, and yen in her pockets and her bag. Whatever. It's not a big deal. There's no time pressure in this place, anyway.
"Huh. He's got insurance?" Akane is just a hair more inclined to interrogate the situation than she normally would be, and muses, "Wonder how someone who doesn't know how to use the brakes got insured... ehh, maybe they're just lazy about asking questions." She's created a very disengaged populace, after all.
Akane starts to lead Anti outside, once that's bought and paid for. There's the familiar 'ding' of the convenience store door, speaking of dings. Akane doesn't bother to explain what a phone is. "Oh, I guess it would be better for you to have one too," she reflects. "I'll get you one later, okay?" Then he can figure it out on his own time, Akane thinks. She's kind of a crappy teacher when it comes to technology anyway -- whereas Anti is a very good learner and will probably be able to figure it out if she gives him only the basics in the most hands-on way.
She offers the bento, before she forgets. "Here you go! Eat up."
She absently fishes in her pockets, looking for something. Eventually, she finds it:
The Kaiju Card of the Giga Lord Monster, Maga-Orochi. It exudes a power -- faint, but with the suggestion of something massive, like the tip of an iceberg.
"... Doubt I'll need this, with you on the case," she thinks aloud. "Soon, not even Gridman will be able to cry for help... and then everyone in my space will be quiet again, and people will stop coming in, and..." She trails off. She doesn't actually know how to put that thought the rest of the way together in her head, so, she lets it sit unfinished.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Using the brakes," Anti echoes. It's not how he remembers it, but is that what Akane thinks? Or... maybe if Alexis had braked, jerking the wheel wouldn't have mattered.
Maybe.
But insurance involves laziness, he notes, and that's an important lesson, too. It will be even more important when Anti learns what insurance is. But one question at a time!
Anti trails Akane, as they leave -- helpfully, the door offers sound-effects. Whatever a phone is, it's important for Anti to have one. "Phone..." He repeats, again, in consideration.
Hands-on, he takes the bento, but even with his growling stomach he manages to pause and look to her. "You're not eating?" He asks, and in doing so learns the inflection for concern, which sounds troublingly close to the tension of Akane's nerves.
But he pauses, and reflects: "... oh, used to." Implying that Akane doesn't like it any more. Of course he's attentive to her words -- he's her kaiju, after all.
So Anti, who understands eating, proceeds to lower his mouth down and CHOMP --
right through the plastic coating --
right into the chicken and the rice.
CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP.
Maybe it's safer to think aloud when he's distracted like this!
Except... Anti is still listening.
"You don't want it to change?" He asks, eyes tilted up, head still lowered. Mind you, his mouth is quite full, so it sounds more like: You don' wannit do changh?
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
"Well," Akane says, with a vague gesture with one hand, still holding the kaiju card, "I like watching you eat." She doesn't elaborate further on the topic of her own eating. After all -- she doesn't need to. It's something that anchors her to the world, to other things, to the grand cycles of things that interlock.
She opted out on that one!
Akane considers whether to bother telling Anti you don't eat the plastic parts. ... wait, does Anti not eat the plastic parts? Do kaiju need to do that? ... a kaiju would probably not think about that kind of stuff, she reflects, so she elects not to. If it makes him sick, he'll probably connect cause and effect once he horks up some plastic; he seems very good at that part.
Anti asks a question. He asks a shockingly difficult question, with the innocence of someone whose lifespan is probably still measurable in minutes and not hours. "Gridman keeps making it hard to fix things," Akane half-explains, half-dodges the question. "And since he showed up it seems like I'm getting new people in here every day!" She looks down at the card, then at Anti.
At least someone from outside respects that this is her space.
"So you better crush him." She smiles sweetly. "I'm counting on you!"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Akane likes watching him eat..? Well, that's fine, then. Don't worry! Anti will probably learn not to learn the plastic parts, one way or another.
Speaking of learning, let's go through it step by step:
1) Gridman is a problem,
2) This world is supposed to be fixed,
3) Gridman is making it hard to fix things,
4) New people keep showing up,
4a) And that's implicitly bad,
5) It's Gridman's fault,
6) Anti needs to crush Gridman,
7) Because Gridman is causing the problem,
8) And the problem is the world being hard to fix.
Anti pulls his head up, and pulls with it a shred of wrapping-plastic, a strip of fried chicken, a cascade of rice, a few vegetables which fall from his hungering maw. It's easy to lose some food as he declares, entirely intent: "I'll definitely crush him."
Akane is counting on him, so he can't let her down.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Akane does exactly the thing she wanted to do: watch Anti eat. It's here that she manages to almost, almost reach her bliss; oh, sure, Alexis kinda ruined it... but even in its abbreviated state, even with Anti eating the plastic like an idiot cat... it's still nice.
She scoots forward a little, giving the Kaiju Card one last look. "... Yeah, definitely not gonna need this," she affirms, mostly to herself. "I don't need help. I've got you!" The smile she gives Anti is one of genuine pride, though who she's directing it at is an open question.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti grunts, and nods, mouth still full. The response is genuine, though, even if it is moderated a little by the fact that -- look, he's REALLY going at that bento. There is rice everywhere! Some of it is even getting in his mouth! There's a slice of carrot stuck to his cheek, and an entire MESS of sauce all OVER his nose. He might have accidentally eaten a bit of car debris which fell out of his hair into his meal. There are crumbs on his eyebrows.
But what he internalises is that so long as Akane can rely on him, she doesn't need anything else. She doesn't need help, because she has Anti. Anti is the one who was made to help Akane...
And she's proud of him.
(That last part he fills in, all on his own.)