2022-04-10: Kindness

• Log: Kindness
• Cast: Nidaime, Anti
• Where: Tsutsujidai
• Date: 2022-04-10
• Summary: Anti stumbles on Nidaime. She shares something of her mother with him, and they speak on kindness and transactions. Anti makes a promise.

---

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime knows Anti a bit better now but wouldn't say she KNOWS Anti yet, even though he is definitely a boy who is definitely engaged in the behavior that Chibodee warned her about. And perhaps that would have been it! Nidaime had sort of, honestly, been worried that Gridman was just going to kill him with how determined Anti was to defeat Gridman himself. Nidaime hasn't seen Gridman at work much more than anyone else has--but she heard so many stories that the man had become something of a legend in her eyes, an unbeatable mythological figure.

But he's survived multiple battles! That makes Anti pretty incredible in her eyes.

That being said, though, she has no idea how to contact Anti, or how to find Anti, or where he might be outside of 'probably in Tsutsujidai' which is, well, the size of a city. But when Nidaime doesn't have much to deal with, she usually hangs out at the park because, well, NO HOME means the park is kinda a great person for a homeless person to spend their time. She has dragged her shopping cart over to the lawn and is humming to herself as she lays out a towel and puts a sleeping bag on top of that carefully so grass stains don't get on the former.

She still has her earbuds in her ears which might be a quasi-permanent fixture.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti is a survivor.

        He doesn't realise just how applicable the word is, yet.

        Not only in those battles, where he tries so hard to kill Gridman, and -- increasingly -- hard to not kill everyone who isn't Gridman. (The Ultramen are an uncomfortable grey area; Anti dislikes shades of grey, and so hasn't thought about it.) No -- while Anti is indubitably good at coming back from battles, most recently that time he got hit by falling Maga-Go'yavec rubble when his timer was running out, which was a whole adventure and a half -- he has the normal world to survive, the rest of the time.

        Not that he hasn't had help. There are people advising him here, too.

        That's why he's in the park. There are food establishments nearby, so he can rummage through their trash and get things to eat. And there are water features, which means he has something to drink. There are plenty of trees and bushes and benches, too, so there are places to sleep.

        It's a good set-up.

        He doesn't have a sleeping bag. Never occurred to him to need one. He's a kaiju, so exposure bothers him as little as dysentery does -- which is to say, not at all.

        (Comfort never factored in to it.)

        He's not sleeping now, though, despite the fact that the street-lamps have flickered on. His shadow cuts long across them, as he stalks through the park, hands shoved into his pockets.

        He was going somewhere, tonight. Then, he sees that girl.

        "..." Anti says, lips parted.

        His footsteps cease. There is a shifting noise of shoes on grass, as he turns. He starts walking in a direction ninety degrees to his original heading.

        He stops, again. Six paces from her.

        "You," Anti says, with that same quiet intensity he always wears off the battlefield.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime is clearly the spoiled princess of kaiju who eats tasty snacks and sometimes they are NOT from the dumpster. Nidaime wouldn't call herself a survivor even though she has survived mostly because she hasn't really felt in the kind of danger that 'surviving' implies. Daddy takes good care of her and, well, they haven't pissed off anybody enough to earn any kind of focused violence. And unlike Anti, Anosillus can keep on trucking for a while.

Nidaime continues to kind of hum around even after Anti says 'You,'. Did she not hear him?

Oh right the earbuds. She probably actually, in fact, did not hear Anti.

But then Nidaime's nose twitches faintly and she reaches up to remove one of the earbuds from her ear and turns to look at Anti. She smelled him first.

"Ah! Anti!" Nidaime smiles. "I hadn't seen you in a while. How have you been?"

She turns to start fidgeting in her shopping cart, opening up a plastic bag which contain the sum total of her groceries (mostly juice and snacks that keep well).

"Are you thirsty?"

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti is a kaiju, so he doesn't have to worry about infection, either, which is to say the closest thing he's had to a shower in the last ever was when the summer skies last opened up to rain on him.

        He doesn't quite absorb that Nidaime's ear decs mean she can't hear him, but he also doesn't understand what awkwardness is. He just stands there, unmoving, unmoved. She figures it out, eventually.

        She asks --

        "I walked."

        ...

        That's how he's been to the park, technically, but...

        Question sufficiently answered (in Anti's mind), his gaze follows her movements to the shopping cart. This doesn't strike him as strange. He doesn't understand the concept of shopping carts belonging to shops.

        She's better at finding food than he is because she was made before him, he supposes.

        After a long moment's pause, he nods, to her next question.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime grins, "I walked here too! I can't ride around in the shopping cart without someone pushing the cart."

She frowns, clearly distraught that she hasn't had this life opportunity yet.

She pauses for a moment as she draws out a juice box, jabbing a straw into it and offering it to Anti ('you suck on the straw' she explains, showing him by sucking on it first before offering it to him.)

"Oh but..." Her eyes sparkle. "If you wanted to go for a shopping cart trip... I could push you."

It's possible Anti has already figured out straws but she wasn't going to bank on that.

She looks back down to her shopping cart and starts fidgeting through it--intent on giving Anti a meatbun too. "Are you going home soon?" She hasn't immediately cottoned on to the idea that Anti is living in the park.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti grunts affirmation, when Nidaime confirms that she walked here, too. It all makes sense, to him.

        He doesn't have any emotions about the life opportunity, though, because it isn't relevant.

        He does observe her lessons about how juice boxes work, though. There's a little widening of his eyes, as she demonstrates the meaning of the little hollow stick. (This isn't the first juice box Anti has found. He smelled food in there, so he ripped the box apart and shook it into his mouth. He gave the little hollow stick no regard whatsoever.)

        He proceeds to clomp his lips about the straw and try this method. It works much better. He is somewhat surprised by the vacuum he creates inside the juice box making a noise after he comes up for breath, judging by the way his head jerks back and he fixes it with an intense Look.

        "I don't need to." He says, of the cart. His eyes do not sparkle.

        He continues sucking on that little hollow stick called a straw. Shloorp.

        He stops, to answer her question. "Home?" He's a kaiju; it never occurred to him he needed one.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Home?

"Oh, well, Tsutsujidai is my 'home'." Nidaime gives as an example. "But I thought you were...hm..." She thinks about how to put this. "I thought you were living with the human who made you." She usually refers to Akane as 'god' but she is electing to be a bit more precise rather than relying on metaphor with Anti. Even when she's not using metaphor, well, sometimes it turns out that way. She doesn't have to make things even more difficult.

She claps her hands a few times though when Anti reveals his straw technique. "Well done...!" She says. It's completely genuine. She's impressed! She had someone teach her how to juice box herself.

"Oh, alright," She says. "Your loss." She HAS been pushed around in a shopping cart before. Thanks Sayla!

She kind of pushes the groceries to the side and clambers up inside. She barely fits.

"I'm not heavy so I'm easy to push around even when I'm in the shopping cart." She tells Anti.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        "... I can't go inside." Anti chooses a particular word to describe Akane's preferences, here; not that he isn't allowed to, or even that he doesn't care to, but that he can't. The balance of power is unspoken and absolute.

        But there's something about Nidaime's own description, there. The lack of an 'us' --

        "She didn't make you?" Anti has evidently learned more about rising tones since the last time they spoke; he's consistently marking his questions appropriately, now.

        He nods, as she claps her hands. He stares, as she clambers into the cart.

        He does not move to push her.

        He does wonder what size has to do with pushing people around, though, when people like Akane and Asuka manage it just fine.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime quirks her head a few times but Anti still doesn't move to push her so she climbs back out.

"Oh..." Nidaime says. Some part of her ... well, it isn't that she can't, exactly. And indeed sometimes she can't. But she shouldn't. Going outside could cause...problems. For good people. Kind people. People she doesn't want to see get hurt.

"Nope! Mom and dad made me. Dad's a biiiiig guy." She fans out her arms. "He is a big turtle guy!" She isn't really thinking of 'oh yeah technically Anosillus and Anti have exchanged blows. Maybe Nidaime thinks that's just what dads and boys do from time to time. "And my mom is music."

She holds up the free earbud. "Do you want to hear?"

She wiggles the earbud enticingly.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti doesn't understand things like context clues! He's only four! (Months. Four months. Important distinction.) He's still figuring a lot of these things out, like how people will tell you exactly what the problem is by talking about someone else, instead.

        He does get the impression he missed something when she climbs out of the cart right after climbing into it, though.

        A big turtle guy, though...

        "I fought him," Anti says, plainly. He knows that keeping secrets is important, but sees no reason to lie around another kaiju.

        Give him credit: Anti's extreme credulity means he doesn't even BLINK when Nidaime tells him her mother is music. He accepts that point blank.

        He pauses, for a moment -- but just so he can do the mental calculus on getting into clawing range of someone else. After that moment, he steps forward, into earbud range. "All right."

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime seems to believe it anyway. She says, "Yay...!" And she pulls out the other earbud, scootching in close to guide the earbud to Anti's ear. He hears...a powerful melody emanating from the earbud.

BGM: https:''www.youtube.comwatch?v=5xxQs34UMx4

"Someboooody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed! She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead!" Nidaime sings along. The earbud isn't in her ear but she knows where the song is.

"That's okay, Anopapa is just trying to keep people safe. That's what Anopapa does...! Because I don't fight."

She wrinkles her nose thoughtfully for a bit. Maybe some kind of complicated feeling there. "He fought Gridman once too but not anymore. They're friends now."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Lo, does Anti experience the shocking, world-altering experience...

        ... of being an all star.

        (Tsutsujidai isn't cold, though. Does that mean that Akane -- well, never mind that.)

        Once the song finishes, he looks over to Nidaime, with -- it's that same dumb expression he always wears, a scowl on his face, as if he's very intensely focused on a problem. But he seems to understand something, at least.

        If that was Nidaime's mother... it explains a few things.

        (He's taking all of this awfully seriously, isn't he?)

        Nidaime is a kaiju who doesn't fight, though, which is still passing strange to Anti, even with the comparison to the repair kaiju in the back of his mind.

        His scowl creases deeper by degrees, as Nidaime tells her more, about his father. "Not any more," he repeats, sceptical. "I see... he failed to hate Gridman enough."

        Anti straightens, freeing the earbud from his ear and handing it to Nidaime. He wouldn't bother, with a lot of things, but those are important to her.

        "I won't fail," he promises her, stern.

        Was that really the message he was supposed to get..?

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime collects her earbud back with the kind of reverence that likely tells Anti, yes, this is very important to her and his understanding is actually completely correct on that point at it. It's almost as if she sees those earbuds as her true connection to her mother.

And it is. It's how she hears her voice. The voice that told Anti that he's an all star.

And it tells Nidaime something very important, that Anti would give them back to her. There's one big reason that she doesn't think Anti can stop Gridman--because Gridman's a super cool mythological hero! But now she has another one, one a little more grounded in reality.

"Mmhmm," She agrees that her father failed to hate Gridman enough. "But if he hated Gridman enough... I probably wouldn't be here now." She smiles, "So I really lucked out!"

She puts one earbud back into her ear, fingers curling inward as she steadies herself.

"You're kind," Nidaime says, even if let's face it most of Anti seems determined to disabuse that notion. "I think it's hard for kind people to defeat Gridman. Maybe you'll be the first."

Nidaime takes the headphones seriously too it seems.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti's head tilts down, just so, a little duck of his chin closer to his neck. He doesn't understand how not hating Gridman can be lucky. It's hard for him to conceive of the idea of someone who hates Gridman completely simply being killed. Akane's kaiju die because of a lack of something, in his eyes -- not an overabundance.

        (That's why he keeps failing, too. He's missing something, some cue or clue which would lead him to victory, like an assumption in the conversation which leaps over his head.)

        He doesn't immediately protest her evaluation, though there's a confused twist to his scowl, a little sideways cant of his head.

        "What does it mean?" Anti asks, finally.

        Silence beats.

        He elaborates: "Being kind."

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

"Mm..." Nidaime considers how to describe kindness. "It's not easy to describe..." Even Nidaime is still a kaiju and sometimes she only knows what something is because she can feel it, not because she can define it. But she probably should try.

"You gave mom back to me," Nidaime says. "If you decided not to, I wouldn't have been able to force you to give her back to me."

She smiles, showing off her fangs a bit. "That's being kind." Nidaime this is kind of a dangerous thing to say to Anti right now but she does add, "It encompasses more than that, but that is a kind thing to do. I don't have a definition. All I know is when people do kind things I know they are kind. A boy who worries about me being on a battlefield, a man who teaches me what boys are like--it doesn't have to be for me, it can be for you or anyone. Has anyone ever given you anything?"

She thinks for a moment and adds, "Taking another's happiness into consideration. Maybe that's it."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        But describing things is easy. Water is wet. The sky is blue. The sun is yellow. These are all very easy facts to establish. Why, Anti wonders, is kindness any different?

        (It isn't. Anti doesn't realise just how, though.)

        ... ah, he thinks. Because Nidaime isn't a fighter, she wouldn't be able to fight back. So does it mean considering helpless people...? That doesn't make much sense. Anti doesn't consider helpless people at all. Is it different when she's right in front of him, instead of underfoot?

        He is quietly, intensely baffled.

        Taking someone else's happiness into consideration...

        "Akane gave me something to eat." His first response is entirely predictable; even if he doesn't think Alexis would ever take his happiness into consideration, he is too close to see how the knife cuts both ways.

        But is that really what kindness is?

        Anti wonders why he thinks of an umbrella, instead.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Nidaime considers her one talk with Akane. Akane wasn't exactly unfriendly, but she isn't sure she felt kindness there either. It felt more like a ... transaction. Indeed, Nidaime had been trying to be kind to Akane and she turned it into a transaction so she couldn't be kind to her.

It kind of felt like that.

"Mm...." Nidaime says. "It could be."

She looks back over to Anti after considering the sky for a moment.

"Did she want you to do something for the sandwich? If you give someone something so they do something you want, or give you something back you want or do something for you--that's just a trade. That might not be bad, but..."

She shrugs both shoulders. "Vending machines can do trades. That's how I get most of my snacks. Vending machines aren't kind, they just... are. But when Auntie Sayla made me snacks.... That felt like kindness. She didn't ask for anything. She didn't even ask for anything without words. She just...got me ice cream because she cared about my happiness."

She smiles apologetically preemptively.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        A trade..?

        (Here, Anti thinks of Jude.)

        Nidaime explains herself, and Anti frowns, folding his arms. (Crinkle-crunch, goes the empty juice box, crushed between elbow and hand.) A convenient breeze sets his scarf to scattering, behind him. He got it back -- or, perhaps, Tsutsujidai could not abide his existence without it.

        "It was an apple," he says, first. As opposed to a sandwich, implicitly.

        It's important to clarify misunderstandings.

        It's easier to clarify the obvious.

        "... she wanted to explain something." Anti goes on, finally. He can't say just what, but he doesn't expect Nidaime to pry. "Since I didn't understand."

        What she wanted to explain might not have been, entirely, what she thought she was explaining.

        But Anti does think she wanted him to know.

        His gaze tracks to the side, to focus on the shopping cart, for a moment. He has to remind himself he's not in any danger around a kaiju who can't fight, which is strange. What an odd feeling.

        (What an odd... feeling.)

        "When she's happy with me... that's when. Sometimes it's different, when I don't measure up. Is earning kindness that strange?" As opposed to just running into someone in the rain --

        "That's how it works," says a boy who's seen it working from so many angles.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

"That does sound like a trade to me but..." Nidaime gives a small shrug. "I don't know her. I only met Akane once." She may have a strong intuition and empathic sense of the woman but she doesn't KNOW Akane in the way of a friend, or even a kaiju made by her.

It does make her feel a little...sad. Having to be distant. Even when she's with them, she's not quite in the same place. That's what it feels like.

"I've had apples before. Someone told me once that an apple a day keeps the doctor away and then once I went to a place called 'The Big Apple' but if I'm being honest it just looked like a city really, and all the apples were normal sized."

She wanted to explain something... She wonders what Akane wanted to explain. "Eheh, there's some things I have a difficult time understanding something. Like--"

She stalls for a moment, lost in her own head as she wonders why Gridman is five people right now instead of one person. It's a weird choice. And it's also weird that he's going tos school come to think of it. Maybe GRidman wanted to feel like a human being for a whlie.

If that's the case, Nidaime thinks she understands that.

"I don't think it's strange--humans use transactions all the time. but I don't see transactions and kindness to be the same thing."

She wobbles back and forth on her feet some more. "Humans are pretty complicated though. Sometimes what they do and what they mean aren't the same thing. You've noticed that right?"

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        "... maybe."

        It's hard for Anti to say Akane isn't kind, hearing what kindness is. It feels incorrect; like it's something that ought to belong to her. But Anti is a being designed to cut to the truth of the matter, because learning, in the end, is the search for the best explanation, the best tactic, the best method --

        He can't just pretend he doesn't see how transactional their existence is.

        He can at least process her next question well enough. "Yes." Akane often says things Anti can tell she doesn't mean to say. Alexis...

        Alexis means things he doesn't often say.

        (But then, he isn't human. And neither is Anti.)

        He looks back to Nidaime, frowning, as he always does. A question burns in his heart. A horrible uncertainty he must address --

        "What's a doctor."

        Or that. That's a fine question, too.

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

It's hard for Nidaime to say Akane isn't kind either so she can hardly blame Anti for thinking the same.

Luckily the doctor question is easier. Nidaime is a little relieved to be on that rather than on something as complicated as 'kindness'. "When humans get sick they go see someone called a 'doctor' who helps them feel better."

She is about to leave it at that but then she thinks of a complication. "Though actually sometimes animals can get sick too so humans take them to an animal doctor which is like a human doctor but for animals." She tilts her head again and adds, "Though ... humans are kind of like animals too, aren't they? I guess human doctors specialize in just humans and animal doctors specialize in all the other animals."

She looks up at the sky. "And I think sometimes a Doctor isn't someone who heals people at all they just sort of know a lot about something in any particular skill like being a doctor of engineering..."

She wrinkles her nose as she's getting the sense that this is kind of going off the rails. "And then there is that rapper who is a doctor but I don't think he's officially a doctor at all..."

Yep! A lot simpler than kindness!

"Say if I want to find you... Where would I go?" She makes a show of looking shyly at her feet. "I don't know any other kaiju like me so..."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        "Humans are like animals..?" Anti is surprised by that one; humans don't look much like cats or dogs or squirrels at all. (Anti has never seen a monkey.) For all he was made to kill someone, Anti... knows very little about how similar living things all look on the inside.

        (He doesn't even realise that the animals he sees are edible, which might be for the best, really.)

        And then sometimes doctors know a lot about something, and sometimes doctors just strike things...

        ... much like the sun being yellow, the simple explanation obscures the fact that the plain facts are wrong, and the truth is far, far more complicated.

        He lapses into silence -- more pronounced than the lack of response he'd had prior -- as Nidaime ventures another question. His hands tighten, at his elbows.

        "... I don't know." He says, finally.

        "I have no place to go."

        Why does that feel... why does that feel, at all, when he thinks of a front door closed and locked?

        He looks past Nidaime, again, to the park. "... I sleep here," he says, jerking his chin out towards the bushes. "Since there's water, and humans throw out food." He's speaking more generally than those bushes, of course. The park's pretty big.

        (It would have to be, for them not to run into each other.)

        He's quiet, again, as he looks back to Nidaime.

        "... Akane doesn't look," he explains, finally, at length. "She calls me."

        But does Nidaime even have a phone..?

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

"Yeah..." Nidiame says. "Though they're also not quite like animals..."

She's trying her best. Anti admits that he doesn't have a place to go. Technically, neither does Nidaime. Another way they are the same, she thinks, but not quite because people have opened their door to Nidaime and kept it unlocked. She even used a window to get into Sayla's house just because.

But she also knows she really shouldn't. A home offered that she can't enter or she'd never want to leave.

And if she stays in the human realm...she can't fulfil her duties as The Second. More kaiju would enter their world until...

Nidaime looks down at her shopping cart quietly. Her eyes slant towards the bushes, then back to the shopping cart.

"So I guess... I should come here. And call for you."

She manages a smile, though there's something behind her eyes. A kind of longing that she can't quite keep under wraps in the moment.

"Like this...!" She cups her hands. "Aaaaaaanti!"

"Like that." She says, reaching into her shopping cart to offer Anti a vending machine sandwich. Maybe that's why she was thinking of vending machines. She takes one for herself and has a bite while she's at it.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        "Sure." Anti agrees, because it's not quite a phone, but it's the same general concept.

        "Call me, and I'll come to you."

        He wonders, immediately, frown ticking a shade deeper: why would he promise something like that? She has nothing to do with killing Gridman, so it's not really any concern of his.

        Just because she's a kaiju, even if she can't fight... is that the reason?

        Just because she --

        He takes the sandwich, anyway. Eating it is a process of pressing it into his face, mouth open. It's quite messy, and quite brutal. There are no survivors, except for the scrap of lettuce on his cheek.

        Without a word of thanks, he turns away, once he's devoured that snack.

        "I should go." It's gravel-low as anything he says, anger turned down to match his tiny size. He's rude enough to start walking without waiting for a response, too.

        Kindness is a feeling, Anti's quite sure.

        So why could a kaiju describe it?

        This 'Second'...

<Pose Tracker> Nidaime has posed.

Hearing that makes Nidaime terribly happy. IS it kindness? She's not sure. But it is... Well, it isn't that she feels alone, exactly, or even lonely. She always has her mother and her father is nearby and there's plenty of human friends who are kind. But there's something different about Anti. Because he's the same as her? A kaiju with human intelligence?

A community of two is still a community. Maybe that's it. Nidaime has a lot of time to think about it.

And seeing Anti eat, even like that, it makes her chest tighten but it doesn't feel bad. She wants to see him murder more sandwiches.

"Bye bye Anti...!" She waves after him--she isn't going to stop him from going where he wants to go.

She watches the space where he was just a moment ago even well after he's gone. Not saying anything, not returning to her business of which she doesn't really have any.

She just watches that empty space for nearly an hour as the time of it does not hold much meaning for Nidaime so she can loko at an empty space for that long and not get bored of it.

But eventually she does move, as the sun dips, and pulls herself into her sleeping bag and closing it up around her. For some reason, she doesn't want anyone to see her face right now.