2022-02-11: Alexis Kerib's No Good Very Bad Day (Chapter 1)
- Log: Alexis Kerib's No Good Very Bad Day (Chapter 1)
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Alexis Kerib
- Where: Tsutsujidai (Tokyo)
- Date: 2022-02-11
- Summary: Yuliana visits Tsutsujidai. Tsutsujidai is not equipped to handle Yuliana, and neither is Alexis Kerib.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6kXb0NL1PE Snow in Summer
"For me? Well, I would hate to be rude."
A woman -- by all rights quite moderate, in stature and appearance, a nice trim dark blue suit coupled with a striped pink-and-purple shawl which nicely contrasts her teal hair -- reaches over the stillness, to take a summery crushed-ice drink from the open stand of the vendor.
The person it was intended for, standing beside her, says nothing about the intrusion.
Indeed, she says nothing at all.
Does nothing at all.
As the people of Tsutsujidai move around her, the vendor, the customer, the people directly behind her in line --
-- they have ceased to pretend at existence.
They are frozen in time.
It doesn't seem remarkable, to the people moving around outside her sphere of influence, an area roughly two metres around her in any direction. (Beneath her feet, the earthworms have ceased to wriggle.) Neither does the fact that in those two metres -- about six-point-five feet, for the sake of translation -- the oppressive sunlight of high Tsutsujidai summer is interrupted by light, frosty snowflakes, and an aura of midwinter chill.
With a loose, delighted grin, Yuliana Dispersal steals the crushed-ice delight, and saunters off away from the stand. Life resumes, in her wake.
Life pauses, as she walks through it.
It's not long before she comes to a park bench, and sprawls over it -- a hand lashed loosely over the backrest, her other hand holding a drink far too cold for her personal temperature.
"My! What a lovely little getaway."
Siiip.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
There is a lot that Alexis Kerib is willing to, as the kids say, 'let rock.'
This does not qualify!
He can't be everywhere, but his paranoia is a little bit spiked after his experience with Kaworu; having to draw and fire, as it were (even just as a warning) has had him actually putting in some effort in Tsutsujidai. Despite his unusual figure, he goes unremarked-upon.
Perhaps in that way, they are alike.
He doesn't sense the void, even in its negative space; he is closed to such things, at conscious choice. He encounters Yuliana by sheer chance, because he is, in fact: on an errand. He is, in fact, actually picking up a second set of papers about that damn car crash from last month. (He could teleport there, but the paranoia has him using it as an excuse to walk the streets of Tsutsujidai just a bit.)
When he actually sees that distortion, though -- that change in the light from oppressive sun to comfortable partly-cloudy, that rejection of the heat of Akane's heart with a cold midwinter snow -- he stops cold.
He approaches, translating across the sidewalk, across the grass, to that park bench. "Can I help you?" he asks, at least sounding sincere about it.
(He is not. This is an uncomfortable intrusion.)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Here comes a special boy!
Flaming-head and encompassing cloak, there is nothing about Alexis Kerib which screams 'normal citizen of this strange little stop in Tokyo.' Perhaps that's why Yuliana's green-eyed gaze falls on him, immediately.
Her smile is entirely welcoming. Her hand, spread wide from where it was waiting on the back of that park bench, is too.
"You certainly may," a slight adjustment to his offer, given warmly, despite the snowflakes fluttering down. "Please, sit! The world is too short to loom oppressively over every little thing, wouldn't you agree?"
With that hand, she pats the bench, beside her, entirely within her sphere of influence.
With her other hand, she lifts that icy drink up for another sip, straw all playing over her easy grin.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis wears these things as a mask.
Patterns like ************, *** *******, **** *******... these are things he puts on. It is easier to move unobserved, after all, if you make yourself literally unobservable.
Yuliana is actually this way.
Yuliana has walked into his space and made a part of it her own without so much as a second glance, and meets him the way he usually meets his guests.
He moves toward the bench. "I prefer not to," he says, with a shake of his head. "Did you come here for any particular reason, or are you simply looking for scenery to chew?"
Alexis does enter her field, a little bit. ... surprisingly, the actual sensation is something he finds -- not altogether unpleasant, at least. But at the same time -- he knows, instantly, that in this little bubble, he could not retreat. His ability to trace the bonds of humans, to move along them -- even the callous way he does it is severed in that small slice of space.
He hates this the most.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Close enough. Yuliana didn't really need him to sit down; she just wanted him a little... bit... closer.
It confirms an awful lot of things, just having him exist in that space, in this space.
"Perhaps you are misunderstanding me," Yuliana offers, apologetically, inclining her iced drink in his direction. "Scenery -- we do not chew such a thing, you understand. A wonderful metaphor, but terrible life advice! My dentist, he says to me: 'Yuliana, you cannot eat the background'. And of course, you should always listen to your health professionals." She takes another sip, from a drink too cold for winter. "They have spent ever so much time learning how to speak to brick walls, after all."
She gestures, wide, to the tableau behind her. A man wipes away sweat from the summer heat. A girl bounds away, icy treat in her hands.
And Yuliana smiles. "But you, I think, you have marvellous ideas for the background! Look, here. You have created an entire second layer of narrative, all picture-in-picture. A marvellous creation! This we call 'meta', yes?" Both her hands curl around her drink; her head cants, cheerfully. "You ought to be congratulated for seeing the bounds of reality so clearly, dear, even if it is slightly rough work. Oh, but I'll not fault you for that. Perhaps, aeons ago, the stories of Earth were as fragile as this..."
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis is blindingly angry to be -- condescended to? Is that what this is? Is Yuliana honestly condescending to him?
He's so gobsmacked by the whole thing that he actually needs a minute. He eventually remembers that he is, in fact, talking to a person and not a black hole (a thing he has his own experience with), and steps back. It's a step. It comes with the movements stepping implies.
"How did you even -- enter this place?" he asks, so thoroughly unsettled that he forgets to play his part and simply begins approaching questions he does not have the answer to by asking them. "How are you accomplishing this, at that? Are you..." Hm. He runs through the possibilities in his head.
This universe could still have a very-much-intact Sturm. But this would be a feat even for a Sturm bathing in that planet's light.
She could, of course, be a Blackhole-seijin. But those are the denizens of another cycle entirely.
"Explain... yourself," he eventually settles on. He doesn't even have enough answers here to tease more answers out.
This is horrible!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Staggeringly tall strangers with flaming heads and -- is that a robot mouth? It animates like a robot mouth -- are clearly, obviously, extravagantly bad news. Some measure of Yuliana does, of course, register this man as an immediate threat.
But that doesn't change the fact that this is just delightful. This is the most fun she's had all week!
And that's why the first answer Alexis gets is laughter. It's not particularly unkind laughter, a genial chortle all covered by her free hand. "My, my!" Yuliana exclaims, brightly. "Normally I would say here that it's all in your head, but in this lovely little chapter you have written manifest, it would fall a shade cold, wouldn't it?"
In silent demonstration, she reaches out a hand, delicately, to catch the delicate dreams encapsulated in one of those snowflakes.
Her fingers curl in, one, two, three...
Clench.
She swipes the chill moisture away, with a sharp flick of her wrist. "So perhaps I would to start with your first question," she says, taking another sip of her drink. It's remained icy, despite the heat outside, because winter is much kinder to cold beverages. She clicks at that straw with her teeth, for a moment, before she lets it drop back down. "I took a nap on a train, naturally. Imagine my surprise when I was sleeping right through my stop and ended up here! Lovely place," she assures him, again, "lovely place."
She puts her drink, half-emptied, on the bench --
And she stands.
And she takes a step towards Alexis.
It isn't a particularly threatening step. She's remained quite friendly, this whole time. Quite personable. Palms displayed, open, weaponless. "Explain my 'self'?" She asks, halfway to a purr, a hand curled at her chin. "Why, certainly. But if I were to do such a thing, it's only polite for the asker to introduce himself first, wouldn't you agree..?"
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis immediately concludes that he is being patronized. It puts him in another time -- another place.
He was too dumb to hate it the right amount then. Now, of course, he feels no such limitation!
Despite the fact that the step isn't threatening, Alexis treats it like it's armed. He has no doubt, in this moment, that this woman could tear into the cracks in this heart and start pulling if she wanted. Strip the walls bare and crack the ceiling. If she could fly, things would -- accelerate. Considerably.
... He concludes it's best for him to play along. "... You may call me Alexis Kerib," he says, fully ceding to the request. He has the information he wanted -- at the very least, the void before him travels the world like any other human. "I am the caretaker of this place."
Hovering around Yuliana, Alexis remains moving, moving -- always moving. It's still that irregular, floating movement for which he's known best... but it's fast, and concerned. He's on his toes.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Could she hold him? Could she grasp? Would she pull him into an event horizon with no escape..?
Yuliana has pianist's fingers -- long, elegant, gentle. They gesture to Alexis, peaceably. She does not lunge. There may still be the horrible impression she is waiting, patient as an ambush.
One step forward for each 'step' back.
"Hoooh?" She asks, all rising-tone, all engaged. "The caretaker! Taking care! This is the name you have given your authorship -- marvellous!" Her hands throw out, as if to embrace him, as if to embrace his entire world. "What a clever concept you are. I applaud your creation."
Literally! One hand to the other, standing applause. Soon enough her fingers wrap together, and her hands tilt, all to one side. "Now," she says, "I promised you one's explanation, and of course, one must not renege on these things." Yuliana doesn't believe that, but she effortlessly sells the idea that she does.
"They call me Yuliana Dispersal, you see," she says, spreading her hands in placation. "Simply, I am the negative space where a protagonist would go. From this hollow I see the stories you write, and into me you stare and do not return. Alas, I can never reach you! For even the character who writes his own story does not realise his place in the narrative, no?"
Her eyelids lower; her smile becomes a smirk.
"Reality is an abyss. Oh, my dear, I hunger for you. This new chapter you have written... exquisite."
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
This situation forces a choice from Alexis. He could end this situation so easily. It might be hard-won, and difficult, but it's a story that's written in full and complete. The world could call back to it dozens of times and still be left with rhyme to offer. All the players are on the table, even! And then some!
He could play his old role.
This is, of course, why he cannot.
Alexis realizes that there is a place in the narrative that he has chosen (if, perhaps, not the one he actually occupies). He is equally aware that it traps him, in this sense -- to answer the insult would be to shift his stance backward.
Alexis has forgotten how to use the brakes.
"Hmmmm... Dispersal. Interesting," Alexis says, and for a moment he is finally back in his element. "A word that sees much use in this world! You deflect, then. Obscure." In that sense, they are much alike, of course -- the power of darkness misleads, misdirects, obscures. It does not illuminate.
"Fascinating."
Infuriating.
"I don't think there's room for you in this story," he offers. It sounds like he's meeting her metaphor. (In truth, he is endlessly frustrated that she has reached into his own without so much as trying.) "What role would you expect to play, then, in your hunger...?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana is not trapped in a role. This is the privilege of being Real. She has no part to play, on the stage of life. She alone is free; she alone grasps the power to change the fate they have written.
Everything she ever wanted.
Alas! The illusion shatters.
"You are such a clever little thing," Yuliana offers, soothingly. "Correct! This is the word specification they describe me! From me is a promise. Equality of all men, together. Come! Hand-in-hand, we will look now with our eyes and listen with our ears!"
She leans for-or-or-waaard, two fingers tapping to the side of one of her green eyes. "Are you eyes open, dear? Tragic, I cannot see, with that little barrier you have placed between us. Oh! Perhaps I shall eat this, too."
She straightens up, grinning, hand splayed to her sides. "Ah -- but the dentist!"
It seems, for all the world, that she's ignoring his denial of her place in his tale. It's only when she settles back, bouncing on her heels, that she addresses his offer-denial. "You are so very scared I will ruin your story, I think? Or perhaps it makes you angry? Clever boy, I cannot see you, I can make no conclusions. But I disrupt every story, you see, just by my being. Yours is special only in its labile nature, is it not? Very feeling. Very -- from the heart."
She laughs, again.
It is not so genial.
"The heart is the most nutritious part of a thing," Yuliana says, easily. "This I consume. But not yours, I think! You do not protest this way. You come a different way." Her hands clap together, cheerfully. "I come a different way! Let us not quarrel, dear Alexis Kerib, you delightful creature."
Yuliana reaches out, palm forward; her fingers curl, inward, curling-beckoning like a plant which has learnt the value of flesh.
"I would see this story you would write, pen stolen from reality, creation upon creation. Is this not a beautiful thing, to see what the story would written?"
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis is referred to in the diminutive, over and over. He hates this, too. He has chosen a world where he can be large, and yet, Yuliana does not respect this. Yuliana does her absolute damnedest to make him feel small, even with her tiny, frail human body.
He would like to stab her. But there is an illusion to maintain.
He laughs along with her callback joke. He likes those, too. It is singularly infuriating. He feels like his style is being bitten in his space. And yet: it's worse than that.
This is sincere!
"... Well. If you are willing to avoid such a quarrel, I suppose I can play along," Alexis offers, beginning to ease -- slightly. Only slightly, only very slightly. He doesn't really like that this is the deal he's cutting -- because it's a deal, that he is cutting. "What is it you offer, then?"
He considers the metaphor, and then asks more pointedly: "Do you simply wish to watch the production, or help me to pen the script?" It's a tentative question. He doesn't need any help. He needs to be the writer, not -- some sort of collaborator.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana isn't even a particularly large woman, standing at a decidedly average five-foot-five. Neither is she a particularly old woman, though, certainly, she's more an adult than many of the child soldiers put through the grand machine these days. She has no reason at all to diminish the people around her, except...
Perhaps it is Alexis's very towering height which causes her to cherish him in this particular way.
She sees the pain point; she carves in.
Would she like to stab him? Or has she, again and again, throughout this entire conversation?
Yuliana is elementally herself, and consumes everything in her path.
You see, she thought it was a very funny joke.
(If she can't mislead him, she may as well have a little fun.)
Her hand comes to rest on the side of her cheek, cradling it, there, as her head tilts. "Oh-ho? I wonder!" She chirps, delighted. "Are you the sort who needs help to pen his tale? Surely not. Surely not! Though, if you were to encounter writer's block, I would be a poor witness consumer were I not to lend a hand. It would not cost you much..."
Yuliana's words trail into the event horizon of her, all consumed by the teeth of her grin. It would cost him very, very much.
This world, so emotional Yuliana stops it in its tracks...
Oh, she'll eat it WHOLE.
But that's for later.
"This whole world is a novelty! A tale within a tale! I'll just see what you have to say for yourself, don't you think? All your themes and overarchings. What kind of story do you write, dear Alexis? Romance? Drama? Oh, tell me it's not literary fiction, surely you're more vivacious than that." She turns to the side -- steps into his space again, in the turning, always she is intruding into him -- and brushes back those bangs, obscuring half her face. "... or, will this be a tragedy?"
The amount of threat in that statement rides entirely on whether or not Yuliana, eyes open, has seen what Alexis is about. It is Schrodinger's declaration, acknowledgement-menace.
"I offer nothing," Yuliana purrs, reaching to him, empty-palmed. "Nothing at all."
Her gaze turns, looking to him sidelong, smile half-hidden, one eye open.
"Will you take it, my dear..?"
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis Kerib has seen an argument end a universe.
This interaction is worse.
Oh, to be sure, it's not worse for his psyche; quite the opposite -- in the end, it only makes him retreat deeper and deeper into the mask. In some senses, it is comforting, in that it pushes him further along a path he was already walking, spurs him toward a conclusion he had already drawn.
But in terms of immediate, relevant emotional landscape this is almost certainly the worst interaction Alexis has had in ages, which is buck wild, because like four days ago he straight up tried to stab someone 'like him' for poking around in the situation.
Alexis stops himself again, in front of Yuliana.
A hand -- no, Alexis's hand -- emerges from his cloak. He grips the hand in front of him. He shakes firmly. "'Nothing' it is," he agrees.
He has an ally, now. It's a dynamic he has seen play out before. They'll sort it out when it comes time for sortings.
"... A tragedy, yes. The story of a lonely, overwhelmed girl who could not escape her loneliness no matter how deep into herself she retreated." He does not linger on the handshake. Indeed, quite the opposite; pact made, he pulls back. "Unremarkable in the Universal Century, isn't it?"
He watches Yuliana very closely, looking for her reaction.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
This interaction is MARVELLOUS.
Yuliana has had something of a habit, these last few months, of collecting the unusual. Characters with strange capabilities will serve her well, in the next chapter. A man who can craft a world from a heart -- this, too, is a boon offered freely to her, with all the luck she deserves.
She isn't only being patronising, in her forward friendliness. Oh, she's treating him as an absolute diminutive, of course. But she's also genuinely thrilled, because she is the sort of person who can torture and adore someone all at once.
It's easy to do both those things, when the person she's talking to isn't real to her in any meaningful way.
Oh, certainly his hand feels real, in hers. (She has a firm grip -- a soldier's grasp -- but not to the point of causing injury.) The shaking motion, between them, this is real enough. The deal --
"Wonderful," says Yuliana, with all the warmth of someone getting everything she wanted.
If only it were not a pantomime!
Her hand pulls back, fingers trailing through her bangs. She does have two eyes, even if one seems permanently buried beneath that teal hair. "The little girls cry out in the blood of their mothers," she says, voice soft to crooning, fingers by her chin. "They grow in the shadows disregard of men who find places for them, and swear their vengeance on the world. You hear about them, sometimes, the successes. But did you know of the failures, Alexis? Many girls, they enter battle, they see the death came forward, they die."
It's a gentle, smiling story, delivered without flinch or remorse. There is something of misdirection to this, as well, but it's hardly something she commits to wholeheartedly.
Right now, she's just having fun.
"In war we are always needing this cannon fodder, my dear. The lonely girls fill seats and fire weapons. They are darling little things, for all the weeks they last."
She claps her hands together, the slow-boil of her expression shifting instantly to louder cheer. "You had best tell me who this lonely girl is, yes? I would hate so terribly to silence your work before its time." This, amongst other things, is a lie. "I am an abyss which consumes emotional tenor, you see! How wretched it would be were she left to her thoughts!"
... it's a lie, but it's not the worst-faith proposition she's put to him today.
It serves Yuliana's purposes perfectly well to let Alexis keep his pet project, after all, so that she can begin the work of making him one of hers.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Finally -- talking about something that everyone comprehends and enjoys:
Mulched children.
"I see, I see," he says, drawing... not the right conclusion, but not a wholly wrong one either. "Well. It's only after one dies and is reborn," he offers, "that one can be a truly normal person."
Alexis's tooth-panels light up in a smile. Perhaps he too, now, is having fun -- or at least, allowing himself to treat the moment as if he is. "... Very well," he says. "It will make it easier to manage her if you know her name. She is Akane Shinjo -- this world's heart and its God."
She is the God -- yet he is the caretaker, and he is the one who makes deals, and he is the one writing the tragedy. What a singularly strange dynamic.
"The rest, in this world -- they could hardly be said to be anything. You see how they shut down around you, of course." He considers whether to warn her that there is a guest in this space -- a visitor. ... it's probably better if he does -- one problem could no doubt solve the other. "There is one visitor -- a 'Vessel of Light' -- not of your world. He is heavily weakened, though he is still an annoyingly anchored thorn... You'll likely struggle, if you choose to attack him -- especially here. His other hunters are... territorial."
Alexis begins to feel comfortable, again -- as though the relationship he's entered into is one in which he sets terms fairly and evenly, and can expect them to be acknowledged.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"And how normal are you, I wonder?" Yuliana slings out, from the abyss. It's an entirely innocuous question, except for all the ways in which it isn't.
She leans back, fingers curling at her cheek. "Oh-ho..? How kind of you, to offer her centre billing. Ha! We do not call fireplaces logpiles!" She chortles, as she draws the obvious conclusion between fuel and output; clearly, this is a universal topic of enjoyment.
Yuliana doesn't seem to have any flinch reaction at all to hurting children for power, but...
... well, she is a military woman.
It's hard to rise up those ranks without accepting a few core tenants about life.
"Memories of men, I wonder, I wonder," a hand goes to her hip, as she looks out at the snow, where it meets the sun. "Rough work, but the effort itself is applaudable, no? Quite the achievement." The weight of her shifts, one leg to the other. "And a visitor from the stars, you say? Difficult to attack, you say? A fascinating framing presumption!" Yuliana's hands come up, to clap together. "Very very nice! You are so good at leading people, my dear!"
Her hands tilt one way; her head, the other. "I'll keep your enmity in mind, dear, but I'm sure you have your very own weapons primed. I wish you luck!"
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis picks up the question behind the question.
This, too, sucks, actually.
"Do not presume I move through the world the way you do," he says, instead of giving an actual answer to the question of his normalcy. The words of a strange creature who knows he is a strange creature? Or someone self-conscious about how normal he is?
The conversation moves along -- and Yuliana immediately strips the artifice of Alexis's words bare. "... I wasn't saying it was me," he answers her. It's a much more casual tone and choice of phrase than he usually turns. "But thank you for staying clear."
Alexis takes another few 'steps' back; this time, they aren't steps. (At great effort.) He realizes he's just given her an excuse to stay away, rather than set her on his guest. "I believe that's everything we can offer each other, for the moment. ... Please take the next train out. It wouldn't do for the girl to see you, you know."
It's not the kindling that he cares about, but he can't just say that out loud.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana giggles -- straight-out giggles, like she's sixteen again -- when Alexis insists she not presume. "As you like!" She agrees, cheerfully, and that line is just entirely patronising. Some of her patronising has been pulling double-duty: this one is just, one-hundred-percent, exclusively patting him on the head.
She doesn't pin him to it, though. She's kind enough to let him move on. They're friends now, after all. :)
"Perish ignore the thought," Yuliana declares, waving a hand. "Clearly you've got a marvellous plan! I look forward to seeing it! And do call me if you need any help at all, won't you, dear?" She dangles her hand in a 'call me' gesture, near to her ear. She doesn't know just how impossible her existence makes the offer. (She would find that even funnier.)
"For now..." Her hand comes to rest at her scarf, for a moment -- "yes, I think this will do nicely! You've been such a wonderful host, my dear!" Yuliana throws him a kiss -- MWAH! across the yawning abyss -- and assures-threatens: "I'll visit again!"
With that, Yuliana turns, and ambles down the street. Around her, people stop, only to start moving again seconds later; the snow falls, only to immediately melt.
In this world where she is demonstrably more real than the people around her...
... Alexis's no good very bad days are just beginning.