2022-01-31: Do You Really Think That Love Is Gonna Save Your Soul
- Log: Do You Really Think That Love Is Gonna Save Your Soul
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Guy Shishioh
- Where: Starbows, Tsutsujidai
- OOC - IC Date: 2022-01-31/0096-01-31
- Summary: Guy Shishioh finds his way through the barrier between worlds. He... actually gets much more information than he gives.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Tsutsujidai is... still. If you're used to hustle and bustle, in small bursts, its quietude -- the slow, lazy pace of life within -- might actually be pretty nice. Certainly, it's a place that presents fewer... issues, than the outside world.
After months of being closed, it is now open -- in fits and spurts, but especially to people who might be termed Vessels of Light. It is easy to slip through the cracks of reality around Nouvelle Tokyo and come here, comparatively, though it might take a slightly annoying amount of riding the train to find the right spot to pass out...
Akane Shinjo has just finished class for the day. She's got a few favorite places she goes, then straight home -- distinctly part of the Going Home Club, unless an opportunity presents itself for certain other activities. Today's activity: Starbows. Her favored drink: a light roasted coffee -- light enough to be tinged a fair bit red, rather than standard coffee brown -- with cherry syrup and sugar.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy Shishioh let himself drift into unconsciousness, following the battle at PLANT. The physical toll of resisting the awesome strength of a Triple Zero-boosted J-Quath, the intellectual and pseudo-psychic effort of ripping his own robot's programming apart until it would move, the emotional weight of hearing one of his best friends tell people their lives are a mistake with a sad smile in her voice, and the spiritual burden of sensing the one he loves seeking for him in the Limpid Channel, wishing he would simply surrender to the light with her...these things defeated him in a way he is rarely defeated. And so, he slept. GGG's recovery team hauled GaoFighGar away, from PLANT space, and...
---
A vision of a young girl he knows. Her dress is a bright, sunflower yellow, her face calm and serene. Safety.
A young man he doesn't, but he has a guess. Face stern, a red suit. Danger.
Both?
His eyes snap open and he's on a street corner, in his 'casual' outfit, which is more or less the same as his Chief gear except for a more casual vest. He scratches his head, trying to remember. Lapses in memory are a new one, he thinks. It doesn't...feel, like a dream? But something's wrong. Half-consciously his hands rise, tracing out an invisible wave only his Evoluder body would perceive. Not much radio traffic.
---
Maybe Akane's used to people looking around like lost tourists, by now. He's tall, with a sleeveless yellow vest that looks like it fastens at the front but isn't. A green jumpsuit down to green trousers, white on the inside. Bright blue eyes and auburn hair.
He jumps in the manner of a person who has just spotted that kaiju sitting motionless on the horizon.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane is getting used to this. The flow of people in and out is... manageable, if distressing; she isn't pleased to see people plop into the world freely, but neither is she instantly on maximum alert. Besides -- this is someone she wanted to see, or at least assess.
Maybe that's why the world made his passing between reality and unreality so easy.
Akane sips at her drink, her bright red eyes tracking Guy. She considers her approach... weighs things for a moment. So this is Guy Shishioh, back from -- to all previous appearances -- the dead. The one that got away from the Aura of Dawn. No doubt related to her new friend, Renais Cardiff-Shishioh, too.
Sssssssssssssssluuuuuuuuuuuuuurp.
She watches him jump as he notices a kaiju. She decides on her approach angle. But first, she buys a second coffee drink. She's dealing with so many more intrusions. She deserves something nice.
Akane approaches... at a very low speed! She keeps her coffee in front of her, for now. "You look like you're lost!" she says, pleasantly. Her brow furrows for a moment as she looks at Guy, asking, "... You look really familiar. It's in your eyes and your cheekbones a bit... do you have a cousin? Maybe a sister?"
It certainly *looks* like Akane's deep in thought, before she says, "She'd be -- about my build, but 15 centimeters or so taller, if I had to guess?" A slightly wide-eyed, blank blink. "Huh. Actually she *dresses* a little like me too. Weird."
Be direct, Akane reminds herself, but not *too* direct. Give him a high-specificity prompt and see what he does with it.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
What the devil is that!?
Guy has gone from sort of numbly coasting through a situation he's still trying to confirm if it's actually happening when he spots the titan on the horizon and feels himself come alive in a way that just doesn't happen in dreams. But nobody notices it. He feels eyes on him more than the sky. He finds his fingers itching at the back of his head, uncertain.
And then...a voice speaks!! He turns, half expecting a woman made of tires. No such luck. "I...suppose I am," he says, guardedly.
Who is this? She...looks normal, but in the back of his mind he remembers reports of the Zonderians bearing common forms as well. Still. Safety...hm.
He relaxes a hair, hands falling toward his sides. "I have a lot of cousins," he says, cracking a grin. That description, though, narrows the field. And is concerning. Renais was here? Wherever here is?? "Renais, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
While she's definitely the least static part of this landscape, Akane at least isn't the *only* thing in it. For the moment, she continues to present as simply a concerned citizen. "I think that's what she said?" comes the casual reply. "We only talked a couple times. She was getting coffee here."
She weighs how much to give. She doesn't want to seem like she and Renais are affiliated. (They aren't.) (They are.) That would give Guy cause to categorize her as a potential threat, if she has the right shape of the dynamic from Kaworu and Renais herself, after all.
"She mentioned something she felt like she had to do. I haven't seen her in town often before... is she with the military?" She does her best to feign worry. (It's not hard. She is actually worried.) "We don't get a lot of military or police action here... maybe she just really wanted better coffee than they have on base."
After a moment, she shrugs. "My name's Akane Shinjo, by the way. ... which side are you two related on?" A pause, before she offers, "<I can switch to French, if you want,>" in admittedly significantly accented French.
She has not even spared the kaiju a second glance.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
...roll with it, Shishioh, he decides. Caution is warranted, but this isn't a hostile place. He's not getting that kind of vibe. He looks up, finally noticing where they are. "Starbows?" he asks the world. "Never thought I'd see the day." Well, if Renais got here under half as bewildering of circumstances as Guy, he can see why she'd wander toward somewhere that smells like coffee, at least.
"...had to do, huh," he says, softly. "I can tell," he adds, regarding the police presence. "Doesn't seem like there's much military or police traffic at all." He's not talking about cars. "She...used, to be with the police." Sort of. Chasseur is 'the cops' in the same way BioNet is 'the robbers', anyway. "She's been away."
He waves off her attempt at French. "No need for that," he says, with a chuckle. "I'm Japanese through and through." Also rocks. "My name's Guy. Guy Shishioh." He medium expects a reaction from that. Guy's not really someone who travels in circles that wouldn't know the heroic pilot of the King of Braves, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Implication is getting Akane... not as many places as she'd like. She *wants* to press Guy for information on Triple Zero, but what's she going to say? 'This is some kind of psychic space where I live and I'm worried about your cousin because I think she's only being nice to me because she can't be nice to anyone more deserving, because she has to end the God damned world'?
Guy would never just accept that, Akane thinks. "Used to? I could see that, I guess," she says, carefully rotating the idea in her head. She can come back to that with another innocent question, in a bit. "Do you want some coffee? You seem like you could use a break, too," she says, gently.
She takes a half-step back toward Starbows. She doesn't give Guy the expected reaction; *she* knows who the King of Braves is, but Tsutsujidai doesn't, and she -- for the moment -- presents as another resident, to him. "So if she used to be with the police, who is she with now?" she asks, carefully sighting in those steadily more targeted questions. Sure, at this stage, it's ones she already knows the answer to -- but she needs to know the shape of *Guy's* knowledge, too. "She seemed a little..." There's a vague gesture with the hand *not* holding a horribly specific coffee order. "... off. Most people around here don't notice that kind of thing, I guess. We talked about Tarabaman and that part was fine, but other stuff seemed like..." She trails off, here.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
The failure to react is itself information. Guy's deeply lost here but he's a smart man, and he's already cobbling together some kind of sense of things. He can't quite square it with what he knows of...the universe, really...but he knows better than to limit himself by common sense. The Zonders would've ended everything long ago, if 3G limited itself to what should be possible. So, OK: This is A Space, That Exists. Radio traffic is Weird. People don't seem to really recognize him by sight, which - he's not so smug to expect everyone to, but he's used to catching a few murmurs most places he goes, especially after his rather explosive return.
Akane Shinjo lives here. So does a kaiju that is apparently minding its own business. No need to bother the poor fellow.
'You look like you could use a break, too.'
He huffs a breath and his shoulders relax a few hairs. "That obvious?" he says with a light laugh, and follows.
He scratches the side of his head. Man, how much is he going to hold back? This is the most public of records. But it feels wrong to dump his whole story on this kid, too. "She's working with some old friends of mine right now, I think," he says, summing it up not entirely adequately. "They..." Hm. He chuckles, scratching the back of his head. He feels like he's explaining Zonders to Mamoru again, playing with kid gloves with something terrible. "It's a lot to explain. Your sense is right. They're not quite themselves, right now."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Okay, Akane thinks. She's getting *somewhere*. She might not get where she wants to get all at once. But she has him. "... Yeah, that's what I figured. Her priorities seem kind of muddled! Usually when someone has something only they can do and something they *must* do, they're the same... but it's not like that with her at all." What a specific construction.
She skips a step. Okay, more than that -- she skips *two* steps, in between ordering Guy some coffee. (She defaults to getting him her order, again, unless he really wants more adult coffee.)
Actually, she skips all the steps. Akane Shinjo is used to manipulating the people of her world. "So what do you plan to do about it?" The question isn't hostile, but it comes out pointed -- maybe a little too pointed. She walks it a half-step back, with a, "I liked talking about Tarabaman with her." But she doesn't *really* walk it back.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"That's good to hear," is Guy's unusual reply.
Guy finds himself thinking about the sky and the kaiju and the whole situation again, and doesn't entirely phase back in until Akane's settled up. Apparently he's having teenager coffee! This is fine. Guy's basically a big kid a lot of the time anyway.
What...a pointed question, Guy thinks. Akane is throwing him alarm bells, for sure. For one thing, she seems to be the only one who's noticed him much, and this conversation is...way more probing than a convenient how-do-ya-do to the tourist. So...
He leans all cool against the wall for a few moments. "She always liked that show. I...never made time for it," he says, quietly. He turns his eyes up on her. "What would you want me to do about it?" he asks, instead of boldly answering.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
There's not a lot of other foot traffic. They can wait freely without repositioning too far from the counter. Akane's certainly not in any hurry to do that.
... She's a little bit not used to getting a bit of push back when she asks these types of questions. It actually puts her off guard, a bit. She overplays her hand a bit -- not enough to betray herself as God, but certainly as more knowledgeable than everyone else in the room. "Do you always answer questions with questions?" she asks, instead -- but after a moment, she concedes, "If you're asking because you're going to go with what I want, though:"
She cants her head a little to one side, before affirming: "I don't want her to do what she thinks she has to. It'd be a real drag if it interrupted class! I just wanted to know about all the steps in the middle."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Not often," Guy admits. "But today seems like a good time for firsts."
He nods at her real answer. "Me neither. The person she was would never agree to this. What they saw..." His eyes furrow. "No. I guess that wasn't the problem."
He looks up toward her, then his eyes cut past to the window. "Speaking of seeing things," he says, nudging with his chin toward the kaiju looming on the horizon. "What's the story with your friend out there? This neighborhood have a guardian?" He's heard of it - infrequently, but in his circles you hear about the weird stuff.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Oh? You can see them?" Akane asks, blinking a few times as Guy points it out. It pivots her brain from Triple Zero, a bit; one thing about Akane is that she is unfortunately very easy to redirect, sometimes even for long periods. "Most of the people around here can't... there's a couple people in my class who can, and lately a bunch of touristy weirdos have been coming in and most of *them* can see them, but..."
She shrugs. "Anyway, they never move or anything. Sometimes other kaiju show up, but everything's back to normal the next day... it'll really freak people out if you bring it up, though." After a moment's thought, she asks, "... actually, I guess there's a ghost story I've heard once or twice around school that might be worth hearing, if you're a kaiju noticer..."
Akane is slowly updating her ideas on how to present herself. "Sorry for playing dumb earlier," she adds, after a second. "I didn't want to freak you out if you couldn't see anything and didn't know anything." Correct, albeit... gross misrepresentation of all the intervening steps.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Hm. Now that's a lot more information than he had before, and...it seems like it evened him out quite a lot, actually. His whole posture eases. That feels right, even if nothing about this place makes any kind of sense to Guy's own experience. Where the heck is he? Did he get yanked to the Kyushu Zone, somehow? That's Build Base's turf, he wouldn't know what to expect. "Interesting. I can't say I've seen anything like that, before. Things resetting overnight sounds handy for the kinds of problems we have." He grins, a handsome, kind smile. "I'll trust the expert, then."
"It's fine. It sounds like you have to weigh your words pretty carefully, Akane." Apparently he is the kind of person who uses -kun for people in her age bracket. He chuckles. "Must be tough. I've never been good at it."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane rubs at the back of her head. "Ahahaha... I'm not great it it, myself, but it'd screw things up if I didn't think about it at least a little," she says, clearly embarrassed at the positive attention. It's not that it's bad attention, but Akane has a complex relationship with praise and with the sort of gentle familiarity -kun gives.
Which forces her brain back to business, of course -- and then to Renais, and to the Aura of Dawn. "... anyway," she says, looping back around. Guy finally gets his coffee. (Everyone here moves a little slow, though things seem to part a bit for Akane on that front.) "Do you know how you're going to help her?"
Ugh, Akane thinks. I sound pathetic and helpless. Okay, new limit: I am *not* asking the King of Braves for help. Crying for aid brings more Vessels of Light in, and I have enough of THAT. It's fine to give him a nudge, though.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy accepts his drink, says his thank yous, takes a drink, and smacks his lips, thoughtfully. "Hm. I like it." He chuckles. "I spent a long time not really able to eat or drink, so I try to enjoy things like this now."
He looks at her, and there's confidence back in him. Now that he's not half afraid he's about to have the floor turn into spikes, the man they called the King of Braves looks more fit for his throne. Good news: The SOS has been received.
"Know? Not really. There's lots to figure out before then. Hopefully, Purification will simply blast it out of her, but even that means I have to get her tired out. If that doesn't work, things get...complicated. But I have my friends working on all that."
He chuckles. "But I guess I do know what I'm gonna do. She and I, all of us, swore an oath. Not Over Omega, but an Oath Sworn Through Courage."
His face turns...not hard, not severe, but focused. Singular of intent. For a moment, he looks like he could carry the whole world. "As long as we have courage, we can overcome anything. So long as I draw breath, I will continue to fight. And no matter what, no matter how dire it gets, I will never, ever give up."
It's like reciting a treasured prayer. His face blooms into not a calm smile, but a confident one. "We'll get them back. The how, the why...even if the odds are zero percent, we'll make it a hundred with guts."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Is that what it takes? Courage? Akane thinks that sounds like bullshit, flatly; courage is something in short supply for her. Conversely, her fear and pain have been very much rewarded!
... But for a second, she does want to believe in the King of Braves. He makes it so hard not to. So hard that it makes her angry. On the one hand -- please, yes. Save Renais. On the other hand -- how *dare* he? How does he look at this weighty thing, this impossible thing, and just decide, 'this, too -- this, I can overcome?'
The world feels so close-in. So small. Like all it has in it is her, and Guy, and her desperation to see him execute her hopes.
"... If anyone can do it, it sounds like it's you!" she enthuses, instead of voicing any of that. "Good luck!" She remembers to pay for Guy's drink. "I just remembered I have a lot of homework... I skipped most of last week. I should really get going," she says, suddenly *very* eager to be anywhere else.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy isn't the kind of open that lets him sense the words on the page. He thinks he hears doubt in her voice, but that's fine. He believes in his own courage. As long as he has that, he's unbreakable.
"Hopefully I'll have a little help," he chuckles, but watches her scramble to leave. 'Skipped most of last week?' That's almost more worrying than the kaiju. Gosh, did Triple Zero also release a horde of troubled teenagers? "I'll see you later, I think," he says, with a casual wave.
He settles in to look out the window. He can't hide away. He was gone for too long already. But to brace for the battles to come, it's not so bad to take it slow for a few minutes.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane exits Guy's line of sight at a much higher speed than she entered it.
Every time she hits a traffic signal between herself and home she is mashing it furiously for the entire time she's at a crosswalk. (One of the rare cases where the space doesn't simply part for her, too; she seems to hit every damn wrong light.)
She doesn't even crawl into her chair when she gets home. She just flops straight backward into the trash and -- though she doesn't sleep -- spends a good two hours like that.