2022-05-12: ~RETURN~ / Family
- Log: 2022-05-12- ~RETURN~ / Family
- Cast: Renais Cardiff, Akane Shinjo, Anti, Sayla Mass
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Mall / Tsutsujidai - Akane's House
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-05-11
- Summary: Renais returns to Tsutsujidai. Akane comes home. (cw: fairly realistic depictions of the fallout of an abusive household.)
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
It's only been a couple of weeks since Renais was last in Tsutsujidai. But, even so... putting aside that she nearly died last time, this unreal, unchanging ward feels completely different to her. Quite a bit of it is because of the poison that's no longer in her brain, granted--but the calm she feels here is more... genuine? It's hard to pin down.
Avoiding Starbows entirely this time, she makes a brief stop at an entirely different coffee shop for a drink. She's nothing if not predictable, that way. Still--a steaming cup of coffee on a Midsummer-warm day...
Well, perhaps it takes a phoenix, newly risen from the ashes, to enjoy such a thing.
A short time later, she arrives at Sevendarake--and after a moment's thought, she half-crouches and springs up onto the building's facade, coat billowing behind her and softening her landing. Not a drop of coffee spilled. Gold boots hang down above the sign, dangling idly as she sips... and waits.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
After last night's... proceedings, Akane has decided to treat herself. Maybe if she gets back to just pretending to be a normal high school girl she'll be able to forget all this. Get past all the things she did. Just... actually be a normal high school girl, albeit in her world of self.
Maybe she'll pick up the other half of the Tarabaman Hammer stuff today. DX Kaiju Nails... yeah, that sounds perfect, actually. (Despite being someone causing violence with kaiju herself, she's perfectly capable of divorcing her feelings on actual kaiju from her feelings on fictional ones. ... she thinks, anyway.)
She's exiting Sevendarake, at this point, having picked up at least... *most* of the collectibles she was looking for; something's out of stock, but that's okay. She's looking in her bag as she feels that 'I'm-being-watched' sense again -- and after last night's proceedings, she's inclined to pay attention to it. Stretching out a bit, she glances left, right...
... behind, and up.
Oh no.
Akane gives a strained smile. "Uh -- hi," is all she manages, with a hesitant wave.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais grins a bit at the sight of the girl below. Exactly who she was looking for. She simply... slides down off the sign, landing gracefully beside Akane.
"Shinjo-san. Good afternoon," she greets. There's a quiet moment. "... I'm to understand you are responsible for saving me. I, ah." A brief look askance. "I wanted to thank you for that."
%For the few things she can't remember from her time under the influence of Triple Zero... there are a few she wishes she couldn't.
'I do not need your help.'
She doesn't say it. Perhaps Akane can feel it--the regret for her anger, and gratefulness that Akane refused to listen to her then.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"You want to -- what, thank me?" Akane asks, genuinely surprised. She shouldn't be -- Sayla had brought up how happy Renais had been -- but still... "Uh, I think you're kinda barking up the wrong tree. All I did was lie to you a whole bunch and beg you to get even more people involved." She wonders if Renais *remembers* being asked to bring Rikka, Ako, and Marusan -- and then *their* friends -- along, on the off chance Renais won.
"And my actual plan sucked, too." If she'd known it would have taken two people, she would've approached the whole thing differently. ... well, then again -- how would she explain to Guy that no, 3G needed backup on scene? Do they even *have* that kind of backup?
And then she would have needed to nerve gas Renais, of course, which is screwed up no matter how you slice it.
Still, though... that feeling teases at the corner of her perception. "Then again, you made it! So, uh, great. Now you can get back to doing all the stuff you need to do in your world."
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
"There is such a thing as a noble lie, Akane-san. I don't think you believed I would win... and I certainly wouldn't have listened to reason." She takes a sip of her drink. "Leaving aside that you didn't understand what you were dealing with, I would guess that you did *that* to sweeten the deal for me, make me believe you were sincere... and to protect others you care about, if it went wrong."
She shakes her head. "I don't judge you for it, though it *was* stupid. And as for your actual plan... I don't think anybody was aware of that particular issue. It took two to purify me, correct? Counting Guy, GGG has three. Even if not for Alexis Kerib's... *unexpected* intervention, what I was doing would have caused critical injuries. I think they would have had the opportunity to restrain me, and take me somewhere I could be properly purified."
She steps around the fact that Hell and Heaven would have more than likely destroyed her body.
There's a smile--one of those rare ones, warm and sincere. "Stop looking for ways to blame yourself for all the flaws. You helped me, Akane-san."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Guy had asked Akane if she'd been ready to lie to Renais. She'd said yes, of course; she'd said that she already had been.
Being told *she did the right thing*? She hadn't gamed that one out.
It's now that Akane realizes Renais isn't taking the offramp to talking about her own world at all; she's genuinely reassuring her. Is Renais... in this for the long haul? Crap. This sucks for her. She doesn't even know what she's been doing with the kaiju.
"Ahahaha... you're giving me too much credit," Akane answers, rubbing at the back of her head. Starting to walk toward another shop, Akane asks, "This is it, though, right? I get coming by and saying thanks, I guess, but after this it's back home for you? You've still got that -- assertion, to get out of all your friends."
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais follows as Akane starts walking. She's quiet a long moment, considering how to answer. She can't simply tell her that she's here to destroy someone she doesn't even realize is exploiting her...
"Mm... non. For one thing, you're my friend, and I don't want to see you blown up by one of those kaiju. I'm also working with Dr. Mass, now, and... well, it seems she's still got quite a bit of concern for you, as well."
She grins. "I wasn't simply here because it was an escape--I'm afraid you won't be getting rid of me quite so easily, Akane-san."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Oh. Great. Hero Renais. Akane should have seen this coming -- but then, everything about Renais is something she should have seen coming. She doesn't really get what a hero is or does, at this point, and she *knows* that because it's been tested over and over and every single time she's guessed wrong.
"Uhhhh huh," is all she manages, at first. "I mean, do whatever you want, but it really feels like you've got more pressing stuff to worry about..." Rubbing at the back of her head, Akane affirms, "But, uh... *why*? This isn't even your world! Maybe if you guys from the other world left, the kaiju would stop, even!"
It's at this point she realizes she's raising her voice, and glances off.\
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais shakes her head. "My former compatriots are biding their time. We can't move until they do," she explains. "It will have to be a defensive war, as much as I wish it weren't."
She takes a drink, draining the last of her coffee and pitching it into a garbage can. "As for the 'why'... this is a place in need of help, non? Under siege by kaiju--and I doubt very much that simply leaving would stop the threat." The fact that Alexis intimated that same idea to her certainly doesn't help the matter.
"But more personally, Akane-san... do I really need to tell you that I'd rather not allow my friend to die in a kaiju attack?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
... Rrgh. That isn't even a threat to Akane. But explaining *why* it isn't a threat would probably jog Renais's memory -- it's certainly a risk. So instead, she just offers, "Huh. Guess not."
She needs to get a little sharper, she realizes. "*Are* we friends? I don't know how much of what you said before that was even real." That much, at least, is true; Renais insisting or no, Akane feels like all of that was unfair. She had a leg up on getting to know Renais because of how isolated she was.
Rubbing at one of her temples, she says, "There was another attack last night. I went home for curfew right beforehand... this one was an ambush, apparently. Came right out of the fog and everything."
A little sharply, she notes, "If they're attacking from out of nowhere now, it's not like there's anything you can do."
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais stops.
Now that she's not wallowing in it the way she was, it's... harder, more painful to dredge up that anguish, those moments from her past. She wouldn't have offered them nearly as easily, or as quickly.
But the fact remains that she's shared quite a bit with Akane. And Akane's done quite a bit for her in return.
"I don't want to destroy because of it, but... everything I told you about myself is true." She pulls her hand out of her pocket, clutching a kaiju sofubi. "I picked up this Emprilan a few weeks ago--before you saved me. Taraba Q figures are pretty rare, even here, so I was happy to find one..." She turns it over in her hand. "I loved it as a child. Reminded me of some of the kaiju in our world... Neither good nor evil. They just are. Simply living their lives, the same as people and animals."
She chuckles softly. "A convenient illustration, I guess, but..."
The talk about the kaiju attack makes her wince, though. "That is..." It's a problem. But not in the way Akane's thinking, especially. "That's hardly a reason to give up. A subtle enemy just requires subtle methods."
Subtle methods, says the cyborg carrying upward of 100 pounds of guns under her coat.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"I mean, I figured that much, but... I kinda thought you'd just wanna bury it." Akane doesn't linger on that, in favor of Taraba Kaiju -- a topic that she finds easy to wrap her head around by comparison.
"Kaiju... just are," Akane agrees. "Which means they only exist if they're convenient to humans, right? Like, sure, sometimes people die clearing them out, at that point, but it's still -- a kaiju can't move *gently*. Things get knocked over. People get hurt. It's not like you can reason with them. Whether they're evil or not, it's a hero's duty to kill them at that point, right?"
It would've been that way with Renais, too, if Alexis hadn't stepped in, Akane thinks to herself. "... I think this is the kind of problem you solve by just letting it run itself out," she eventually offers.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais smiles. It's a sad smile. "Perhaps I would, if it didn't mean burying myself."
She looks down at the Emprilas figure in her hand. "Do you remember how this episode ended, Akane-san? Emprilas was attacking the researchers, but they didn't kill it. They created a sound gun, because it was sensitive to certain frequencies. Used it to repel the Emprilas, rather than killing it."
"The thing that struck me was that there was space for both the kaiju and the humans. Perhaps they had to live apart... but they could live." She holds out the figurine to her.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"... yeah," Akane says, accepting the figure for a moment. She gives it a look. "But... if you kept going into Emprilas's house and poking at its stuff, you'd be a jerk, right? So why do you keep coming back here? Everyone going back and forth between the worlds is probably just making the holes even bigger."
... Akane's just not ready for friendship, at this point. Besides -- it's unfair. These people don't even know what she's really like. She's a pathetic person who can't cope with a world where she doesn't wield absolute power -- where she can curate exactly the gentleness she wants. And when that gentleness is broken...
... well, she's already from a cold, ungentle world. It doesn't taint her to make sure this one stays warm and gentle.
"... Wow, it's warm," she notes, as she holds the figure for a little bit. "You must be pretty happy they switched plastic types after the One Year War to one that doesn't melt easy." A beat, before she realizes: "... did that happen in your world, too?"
She already knows the answer. It's best if she pretends, though.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
"They did in our world too, yes." Renais smiles a little. "I have a couple of original Tarabaman sofubi that I don't dare touch without gloves. They might not melt if I handle them, but... I don't want to take the chance." A half-hearted laugh.
"I... don't think that's true," comes Renais' reply to the more pressing question, with a sigh. "I don't believe that's why the kaiju here keep coming. Or at least... I don't believe the solution to them is to walk away. There are others here fighting--people I think may not be as interested in isolation."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
A thought intrudes, unbidden. Akane could threaten Renais. She could blow the game right now. Admit she's God. Admit she's the one attacking people with the kaiju. Throw Alexis's charity in the trash.
She's seen the guns under that coat, after all. For that matter, she's seen what Renais can do with her hands. It might not be so bad. Would it be the burns or the force that --
Oh. Better plan. "You *really* wanna stay committed to this 'oh, I just don't want anyone to suffer' thing? Even after that -- assertion," her tongue *always* hitches a little on getting it out, "turned that into killing everyone? I feel like that'd be tainted for you now."
She stops walking. "You need to learn how to leave something alone before someone dies. Everything will be fine here eventually."
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais frowns. There's a sort of jab out of her. Annoyance, frustration. Regret. "It's... far from tainted, Akane. Really, it gave me clarity." She lets out a long sigh. A little bit shaky. "I've killed quite a lot of people. Bad people. From the moment Chasseur put a gun in my hand, I was spilling blood."
Quieter, she continues, "Like I could exact a price out of the ones who did this to me. Exterminate them to the man all by myself." She looks at her gauntlet. "But perhaps I run too hot for a dish as cold as revenge."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
What?! *WHAT?!* Renais got hurt and used and abused by something that didn't even care about her and came out of it -- *less in pain*? She got lied to and manipulated by someone so bored they're barely even human and wants to *thank* her?
"Well... if you're not gonna get even with the ones who hurt you, like, what's even the point?" Akane asks, still cold. "Those are pretty much the options, right? Figure out how to pull away or get even. It's not like you can *undo* all the bad things that happen. You can't just un-happen them."
Akane, of course, can. It's what makes this world so nice. The bad things just stop being true and everyone forgets and everyone who caused it is gone and the world fixes itself.
That's neither here nor there, though. "If it's not gonna be revenge, it's not gonna be solving your world's problems, and it's not gonna be letting go of stuff, I feel like you kinda ran yourself out of options."
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
"Did you think I was being metaphorical earlier?" Renais holds up her golden hand. "What I am is entirely because of them. I cannot simply *bury* something that defines me so bodily, so... completely."
She shakes her head. The next words out of her mouth are resolute, firm. "Maybe I've trapped myself in a corner. But I know that I'm not leaving your world or mine behind... and I know that I can't continue as I was."
"... I don't know what the answers are. But you'll need to try harder to chase me away, Akane." A bitter half-smile comes to her lips. "You're too much like me. I know the same tricks."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The same tri --
"You don't know a single thing about me," Akane says; it's clear that at this point she feels pressured -- which means her *next* move is...
... she needs to go. "Anyway -- I wasn't really planning on seeing anyone, and my guardian is *kinda* expecting me home at this point," she says. "Do whatever you want."
Not human... responsive to her pain... wants to move to address it.
Maybe if she wants to get away, here, it isn't Renais's hands that should be around her neck, but *hers* that should --
... no, that's... still a little much. She feels worse for thinking that than all the previous things, which *really* says something. "Good luck figuring out what to do with all the being used by jerks problems if you're not gonna stick to revenge!" Akane fake-enthuses.
... notably, despite saying all that, she hasn't *quite* managed to take more than a few steps away yet.
<Pose Tracker> Renais Cardiff has posed.
Renais sighs. She doesn't respond to the first assertion... and she nods when Akane says she's expected home. "Mm, fair enough..."
After a few silent moments, as Akane *hasn't* left yet, Renais finally decides to say something more. "... be careful around him. I'll see you around, Akane-san."
With that, the cyborg pivots on her heel, hands in pockets, and opens the distance Akane is hesitating to.
She'd hoped this would go better, but even with her lack of social skills... that had been a pipe-dream.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane tries to find some last thing to say to Renais, but she can't quite manage it. "... Fine, then. 'See you around.' " Akane isn't happy with that -- but she's not really very happy with herself for how she's acting right now, either.
... surely she'll be better off once she gets home. She could use some time alone, maybe.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Waiting.
So much of life comes down to waiting.
Waiting for the first leaf to fall. (Days, months, years.)
Waiting for the clock to tick over to the hour. (Class lasts forever.)
Waiting for the air conditioning to kick in. (It's so hot.)
Waiting for
her.
The sun hits the pavement at great force and velocity -- so hard you can SEE it, bouncing back off, mirage-waves of rising heat which throw a soft filter over reality. It's a heat which starts at the nape of the neck, where collar meets skin. A heat whose damage can be felt, moment to moment, broiling against anything bare. Shadows are just another KIND of heat, in this weather: just a slower boil. It's the sort of heat to make your fingernails sweat.
One shadow cuts sharp across the path. Its sundial is a boy, small and slight. Long sleeves over pale skin, white hair, red-gold eyes. A scarf which hasn't been washed in --
He hasn't moved for some time. The sun has changed its approach; he has not.
He stands in front of the gate.
He does not go inside.
He waits.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane at least picks up a couple of things on her way home, rather than just sprinting dead away from Renais. She'll feel better tomorrow if she can give these out, she thinks; it's not a home-cooked meal, but at least it's the bare minimum.
As Akane returns home, then, she's got new Tarabaman toys stuffed in her book bag and a tied-off plastic bag full of yogurt drink boxes and special dogs. The bag hangs off her left wrist; in her left hand, she has her phone, and in her right, her book bag. She's looking forward to getting inside and chucking these in her fridge, especially as the temperature gets more oppressive.
She nearly bumps into that sundial, but the shadow it casts saves her from *that* indignity. She looks up to see its source --
"Why are you even here?" she asks, coldly. "*Apparently* 'handle the situation with the Vessel of Light' meant 'attack my kaiju and get over-worried about a bunch of randos,' somehow. Sure. Ruin my best efforts to bait out a Vessel of Light and deal with a bunch of creeps in my world. Great work on the handling it."
Her grip on her phone tightens a bit. "You are *such* a useless brat. Do you even understand what kaiju are for, or do I need to spell it out for you?"
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Her plan had been to see how close she could get to the inert Kaiju that towered over the town. Investigate them, maybe get a sample, some close up photos, identify what they are. It unfortunately became evident this wasn't going to happen during the day, in this interminable heat.
So Sayla Mass was walking back towards Aya for a coffee, maybe a cake and wait out for the night. She's dressed subtly. Black tee, blue jeans, sneakers, sunglasses and the cowboy hat she sometimes has. And then she feels it. The resounding anger, louder than anything else in the town. If that wasn't Akane then they have an interesting new visitor.
Unfortunately, it is. She's staring down a little boy. A brother, maybe? She can see similarities, certainly. It's certainly not impossible, she knows so damn little here. She positions herself behind a wall, to observe. She considers moving closer, but that would be a giveaway. She puts her back to them, using her phone camera to watch. She breathes, and lowers the barriers a little. Why is there so much anger here?
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti orients towards Akane, when he notices her. The heat is... making it difficult to notice things. (Like, perhaps, women lurking nearby.)
He turns towards her, hands limp beside him, regarding her with that same intense expression he's been wearing this whole time. Her voice is cold; he blinks.
Why is he here..?
Where else could he be..?
"I..." He starts, as if to explain himself, only for his gaze to catch the way her grip tightens. He silences himself; he stops moving, tension in the curl of his fingertips as he grows very, very still.
His gaze drops, though -- the slightest tilt of his head, and his bangs cast a long shadow over his face, obscuring his expression from view. It aches. The pain is only worsened by knowing what she would say, the way he's already chastened himself in this manner so often between the concert and now.
He doesn't try to say anything else. His opinion isn't part of this.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Not even any attempt to defend himself. That's fine. It makes the next steps easier. "You aren't supposed to -- help helpless little girls you find at concerts. That's not your *job.* Kaiju don't need to care about people's feelings. They just act."
She closes her eyes for a moment. Takes a breath. It'd be easy to lash out immediately -- but better to give him direction. Like Kaworu said. Maybe he just needs help finding the right things to do.
Akane brings her hand down to her phone. 1-E photos... scroll past Namiko's birthday. Scroll past the sports festival. ... hm, lunch a couple weeks ago. Perfect.
"This is Yuta Hibiki," she says, leaning in close and turning the phone around to face Anti. "You know what to do." She drops to a conspiratorial whisper. "Find him and kill him, and I'll forgive you for all the stupid stuff that just happened~"
Despite sounding enthused, she's not any less miserable; the roar of her heart doesn't quiet.
To someone observing only the most surface of levels, granted, this interaction looks positively benign. Someone whose hair color would naturally continue down from the pink-to-lilac-to-grey gradient of Akane's own, with a haircut mostly like hers, eyes like hers -- talking. One of them leaning down a bit to show the other something on a phone. A rare glimpse into Akane's family and its business.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
The roar continues to echo, but by letting it in a little more, she can try and make out the signal to the noise. Just enough to pick it up on the edge. Another 'real' essence, quiet to almost inaudible. She has to strain to find it, to try and see it. Is that the boy? She's at the wrong angle to see what she's showing them.
So she tries to read body language instead, moving slightly closer, her steps quiet, small, a little irregular. The boy is tense, practically standing at attention. Akane is leaning down, but not close. Gh.
rHer inherent uneasiness puts her on edge. Maybe she's just being paranoid. Looking for problems that aren't there.
And then she chastises herself for her denial. Something is wrong in that family, that house. She can't keep pretending it's not the case. She's spent too long doing this to miss the signs.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
There's a little flinch -- which is at once more and less noticeable, given how motionless he is -- as Akane lambasts him for trying to help helpless little girls. He isn't supposed to help people, and that's why she fell.
No. Kaiju just act...
But if Anti doesn't need to care about people's feelings, why is he so afraid, listening to Akane's?
He lifts his gaze, to stare at the phone. His brow knits in consternation. But Akane just told him not to care, so he denies her, flatly: "I thought I said this before. The only one I'll kill is Gridman." His gaze slips from the phone, back to Akane. He speaks quietly, because he always does, low as gravel and ember-hot.
"I'll definitely handle it," he insists. "I'll get rid of the Vessels of Light, too." There's a word he doesn't use, when he refers to the rest of them. "But I refuse to kill that human."
His 'self-respect'...
Does it mean something like not letting little girls fall to their deaths?
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Ugh. You were that close to Ultraman Geed showing up and you *still don't get it*," Akane hisses under her breath. She's already put the image of Hibiki in front of him, so she withdraws her phone for now. "*He's* Gridman. I don't know how *exactly* he does it, but he turns into Gridman."
Even if Renais was stupid -- even if it was wrong of Akane to think of using her like she did -- at least she *got* it. She didn't have whatever weird hangups about killing anyone but Gridman *Anti* seems to be developing.
Akane's teeth grind, and before she knows it --
There's a rustling of thin bioplastic. The stomp of inch-and-a-quarter Mary Jane loafers on pavement. And --
-- Anti is covered in yogurt drinks. The two out of six boxes that actually made proper impact explode on contact, leaving him drenched, too.
"I shouldn't need to explain everything to you!" she shouts, abruptly, loud enough to be heard. "Look at literally anything for once!! Figure -- *something* out about how the world works!!" Akane shouts, loud enough to be heard a fair distance away. "Just -- do what you're supposed to!!"
It's only once she runs out of things to shout that she notices, processes.
Oh. Happened again, huh.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
The quiet one tries to stand in the face of the roar. And in response, the roar gets louder. Sayla sees Akane move. She's not going to be there in time to stop her. She could maybe intercede if she was closer, or could close the distance as fast as Chibodee or Sagara.
So she doesn't rush. She walks calmly, and takes off her sunglasses. She can hear the yelling. The screaming. She can put pieces together. Parentification, maybe? By the parents or the guardian? But she can work through the details later she needs to do something now.
"Akane. Stop." She doesn't raise her voice, but it's firm and cuts through the air like a knife, as she places herself between Akane and Anti, turning her back to Akane to kneel down to make eye contact with Anti. She doesn't try to touch him, or dry him off, or anything. She just looks at him.
"Are you hurt?" Her voice is softer now, all threat removed from it. Sayla's body language is controlled and unaggressive. Beyond being between the two, she's making no movements. Are you okay is an unhelpful question here. Just start with the easy ones, one at a time.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti's eyes widen, when Akane spells it out. That boy... is Gridman? He turns into Gridman? Then, that means --
He's so busy iterating on the possibilities of Gridman (turning into an unarmoured boy) that he fails, in that instant, to hear Akane's teeth grinding together. It's only when he hears her stomp that he looks up, teeth grit, breath catching in his throat --
"Guh," is the sound of his breath being forced out of him by the impact, one-two, a handful more sailing past him. The misses were pure chance, because Anti didn't even try to escape, didn't move, didn't throw his hands up to shield himself. His face scrunches up, but it's just because of the yogurt dripping through his unbrushed hair, down his face to his chapped, dry lips.
The second rebounded off his cheek, with a nasty splatter, to get caught in that well-loved scarf: it drip-drip-drips down his front from there.
His eyes stay shut. It might be the yogurt, except for how it isn't, not really. His lips press togethe, tightly.
He did... figure out...
He was looking at...
Maybe he was looking at the wrong thing, he supposes, dismal.
Because... Anti doesn't know why Akane would say there are creeps in her world at all.
"I understand," he says, muted, just -- accepting it.
And then -- all a sudden -- his entire existence shifts. He hears someone addressing Akane, and Anti moves forward, with purpose and intent, to put himself between Akane and whoever's telling her to stop. He glares through the yogurt, hands lifted -- it might only be a last-minute save from Akane that stops him from pulling out a weapon, the way the anger's building in him.
But somehow, Sayla does manage to get between them. Anti keeps watching her, an ugly grimace on his face, scowling -- entirely unfriendly. He looks at her, as she kneels down. What is she doing...?
Confusion enters his unwelcoming expression, as she addresses him in just that way -- asks if he's hurt.
And, tellingly, he doesn't reply.
He looks over Sayla's shoulder; he looks at Akane.
Looking for direction.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Everything happens so fast, and --
Apparently, Sayla's here. How much did she hear? How much did she see? Enough to get between her and Anti, at least. "I --" she starts, stops, stammers. Having Sayla so *there*, so present, addressing her cuts through the fog of her heart for a moment. She doesn't want Anti and Sayla to come to blows here -- she reaches out and moves a hand toward Anti, subtle, placating. Sayla is friends, not food, she says with a gesture.
But -- what to do with *herself*? Sayla told her to stop. She doesn't exactly have much else to throw -- at least, not things that would be sensible *to* throw. Before she realizes what she's done, she mutely drops her bag, then her phone.
She swallows hard. Just as Anti looks to her, she looks to *him*, trying to find some way to squirm out of this one.
There's no path out of this. "It's none of your business," she eventually manages. "My little brother is just an idiot." ... explaining he's a kaiju would be... a lot. 'Little brother' hits plenty of the notes, anyway.
Well, triple-threat ace of her class is out the window now. At least this ought to make it easier to push Sayla away by validating all her worst inferences. "Well? Go ahead and answer her," Akane murmurs, knife-sharp and just as cold, to Anti.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla is silent for a few moments. She can see Anti's confusion and looking to Akane. She looks up briefly, and sees *her* looking to him. Her heart knots. She can hear the knife in Akane's command to Anti. Her little brother, then. It fills in a few gaps. Just a few.
Sayla continues to make no sudden moves. "My name's Sayla. I'm a doctor. Would it be okay if I took you to the hospital to make sure you're okay?" She gives a calming smile. Her focus needs to be where it is. She can approach Akane later, the main thing she's doing is trying to be a barrier. How much worse could it have been if she hadn't been here, in the middle of this mostly empty street.
When not a single person even stopped to look.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
No one looks; no one sees; no one hears.
Akane placates Anti, and Anti is placated. It doesn't make him pleased.
Her 'little brother'... does that mean Akane has made the same conclusions Anti has, about how their business is organised? It hurts to hear her call him an idiot to an outsider, but she lays down the law clearly enough: it's none of Sayla's business.
Anti... had a certain sense that other people shouldn't be involved. All the secrecy, perhaps.
His gaze slips away from Akane, looking down and away, as the girl he owes everything to all but dares him to give voice to his pain.
"I'm fine." His voice is gruff and pressured, at once like someone under constant stress and like someone under constant COMPRESSION. Akane may soon regret how nonspecific her knife was, though, because she told Anti to answer Sayla -- and so, he answers. "Because I'm a kaiju... it takes more to injure me."
The yogurt drip, drip drips. In his eyes, in his hair, in his clothes.
"This is just correction. It's because of my actions." The same logic he used with Renais, back then; it applies as well to himself as to Akane. "I'm undamaged."
Is that what he hears, when he's asked whether he's hurting..?
Maybe he realises enough to know he should be more exact.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane looks to Sayla. She knows... not this specific dance, necessarily, but she gets it. She considers playing along, at first, but she's still that sort of half-tilted, lost in the upending of what has become a very normal moment.
Anti says four words that change the whole situation. As soon as they come out, Akane looks -- first angry, then mortified... then just scared.
Sayla gets the separation she wanted, but maybe not by the *means* she wanted. "... I can't handle this," she says, *singularly* certain that everything is over now. "I'm going inside." She reaches down, nudging her phone into her book bag and picking it up.
Well, this is gonna work out great for her, she supposes, as she attempts to step past both Anti and Sayla, and -- if left to her own devices -- heads into her house. At least now everyone Sayla knows will know to hate her. After how hard it was to get Renais to leave her alone, she was kinda worried for a minute.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
The four words hit Sayla hard. And then, her barriers down, her head is filled with roaring anger, then embarrassment and then fear. It's so loud this close. So, so loud. So messy. Sayla grimaces with pain. So much there. So much it hurts.
"Akane." Her voice is still firm, but softer. She can't be comforting, but she doesn't have to be cruel. "After I'm done speaking with your brother, we should go somewhere and talk." She has to leave a door open, if just out of her own denial about the girl. Now that she's chosen to look, she has to keep watching, she can't turn her head away again.
She reaches into her pocket for a handkerchief, and holds it out with two fingers, palm upturned, for Anti to take, if he wants it. There's one thing she has to clarify with him. The noise in her head disappears when Akane crosses the threshold of the door.
"I'd like to ask you something. When you say you're a kaiju... Do you mean a kaiju of the heart?" She pauses. It's...
It's not a long shot, actually. This is where she and her father lived, after all, their world. And it's a small, flat, empty world. "Like Nidaime?" She's on first name basis with two kaiju. She may as well namedrop.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Akane... can't handle this.
Guilt stabs into Anti; he resolves that he'll handle it, the way he didn't, during the concert. He doesn't follow Akane inside, though his gaze does, watching as she closes the door.
He looks down at the handkerchief, frowning; he doesn't understand its purpose at all. His confusion is coloured by his fear and his conflict -- but he scarcely understands those emotions at all.
He is a shallow, superficial creature, a hollow thing barely filled by the experiences given to him. He's not human, after all.
He doesn't entirely understand Sayla's question, at first -- one more speck of confusion, with the rest. But when she clarifies with that name, Anti blinks, and nods. "I'm like the Second," he says, using her very proper title.
Anti doesn't think he's lying; he doesn't understand the difference between a kaiju of the heart and a kaiju of the knife. He knows that Nidaime is shaped like a human, and so is he.
He pauses; he looks back, to Akane's door. He is silent, for long moments, before he looks back to Sayla.
Akane told him to answer her, and something like this isn't none of her business. It's... fine, to tell her, he arrives at, slowly.
"... the Second was teaching me." Which places them in a certain position, relative to each other -- Anti might look a little older, but he is also much, much newer. "But... I was distracted by her."
Oh, he realises, too late. He's started talking. Now what is he supposed to do? He could stop talking, but then he wouldn't have handled it. "So I ignored Akane's orders. And I owe everything to Akane. Without her, I wouldn't even be alive."
Is that why she considers him his little brother..?
He looks to the door, and to Sayla, again. "That's why." Closed statement, closed case. Anti thinks he's explained expertly just why he deserves this.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Sure," Akane says. There's no use in trying to squirm out from under it. Sayla's going to yell at her and tell her she ought to know better. She's going to be treated like some stupid kid. After that, Sayla will... what, refer her to child services? Tsutsujidai barely even has that. Certainly not the kind that do anything. She slams the door behind herself. Heads back into her room.
Stockings off. Glasses on. Akane doesn't bother to sit down in her chair. She just curls up to the side of it, a bit, hugging her knees.
The monitor -- fixed again, as always -- buzzes to life. "Hooh? I was expecting you earlier, Akane-kun... did something come up?"
"Anti's an idiot and Sayla saw me throw something at him," Akane says, giving the simplest digest version.
"I see," Alexis offers. For a little while, that's all he offers; both of them need a chance to think, it seems.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
His emotions are as hard to read with her mind as his unemotive face, his cluelessness in regards to what a handkerchief is... And with Akane slamming the door.
It reminds her, faintly, of a very odd little girl Narcissus asked her to look after one day, not long after she'd taken in Leina.
"You can wipe off some of the yogurt with it. You probably don't want to deal with the smell. Or the stickiness." Sayla is so calm, her voice so light. She also smirks. "...The Second, huh." She rubs a temple. Has *someone* been establishing herself as an authority. "Will you tell me your name?"
She comes back to the comment earlier, on correction. "Correction like that... tends to not actually improve anything. It can often make things worse, speaking from experience." He probably doesn't have the frame of reference for that, as vague as she puts it. She pauses.
"Oh? What was she teaching you?" She's keeping the conversation going. She needs him to be comfortable with her before she can get the situation more cleanly together. She pauses. Having this conversation outside the house probably isn't a good idea.
"...She distracted you?" She raises an eyebrow. What did that mean? And then it follows on. She does not seem at all eased on this. "...I see." She doesn't see the details, but that's not a story she pushes for yet. That's going to be thorny to untangle, and an easy topic to get an angry response on. So she let's it be, for now. But Sayla... does not look convinced, but wants to know more. So time for the tried and true. "We've been standing here a while. Would you like to get a drink, or a snack or something? My treat." Getting food means moving away from here. And maybe still talking.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Once Sayla explains the purpose of the cloth, Anti reaches out to grab it and employs it in its function. Wipe, wipe. He gets the yogurt off of his face, at least; he doesn't really think about the rest.
He's stubbornly quiet when she asks for his name, though. He frowns, when Sayla says it's making things worse. How could she say that about Akane?
But... Sayla wants to know what Nidaime was teaching him, and Anti can tell her that much, he supposes. "... how to get food from the boxes," he says, at length. "About humans. Doctors, and shopping carts, and her family. And being kind." The word sticks in his throat like a chicken-bone, a little twitch of his brow, tension in his cheeks, lips all drawn down too, too sharply. It bothers him.
"She called to me... she needed help. For that reason..." He trails off, staring with that same broiling intensity.
Somehow, there's a faint edge of condemnation to his statement. An edge which surfaces, moments later: "I was wrong. That's not how anything works."
He falls into sullen silence, again.
His stomach growls.
"..." Anti says, dry lips parted without sound. The cracking is characteristic of dehydration.
"... fine."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It's Alexis who breaks the silence in Akane's room. "I'm shocked that she intruded so quickly! Then again, you do have quite the fiery temper... if she'd thought he was something other than one of your kaiju, she'd --"
"Oh, no, she knows that now, too. This is pretty bad -- she's friends with Rikka and everything. Now everyone is gonna know..." She breathes out, letting her eyes shut for a moment. "This only made everything worse. I guess it's my fault for not letting Anti into the house, but, eugh. He'd track mud everywhere. Gross."
Alexis practically coos back, "I suppose that's true... Do you want to make another kaiju? I noticed the one you made off to the side... that might be the perfect fit for this."
Oh, jeez. He knows about that one...? "... That one won't work. I was gonna use it to seal up the place myself, but that was a dumb idea," Akane explains. "A kaiju can get something to stay the same, cover things up... but it's not gonna fix things."
Saying all of it out loud, to Alexis -- walking through her whole thought process on so many of these things at once is a bit of a release. "... if things *don't* fall apart after this... I'm not sure what I'm even gonna do," she admits. "This is starting to look like another one of those kaiju-can't-solve-this-problem problems."
Alexis stays silent for several seconds. He settles for:
"Worrying indeed, Akane-kun."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla can see the cracks as he takes the handkerchief. It's something. She nods, and stands up. "...Alright. Let's get you some water, first of all." She listens to Anti, and walks toward the restaurant district, stopping at the first vending machine or shop she can find to get Anti a bottle of water, that she hands him.
"...Sounds like her." She can here the trouble in Anti's voice. She pauses. "It's a tough one, that one," she says of kindness. "Lots of people never quite learn it. But I think it's important."
And then, Sayla stops. "...I don't know what you think was wrong, but lots of us have ignored orders for people in danger, or those they care about. I certainly have. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts." She pauses. "But as Nidaime's auntie," she was never escaping that title. And she kind of liked it. "I appreciate you trying to help her. Even if you think you were wrong to do so."
So much for expertly managing this. It's already personal. She may have screwed up already.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti recognises The Box, which is to say, the vending machine. He also recognises how water bottles work, and screws the cap off rather than biting it off. He learned that trick already! If he saves the cap he can put it back on, and carry water around. If he bites the cap off, the water spills everywhere.
There's no water to carry around now, though. GLUG-glug-glug, the whole thing disappears. He was in the sun for... a while.
But -- he pauses, looking over to Sayla. He frowns. Auntie...
"You're the doctor," is his conclusion. Nidaime told him about doctors, but now he realises she was talking about a specific doctor.
He folds his arms, tightly, across his chest. They're connected... and Akane can't handle it. Fine.
Anti's voice falls like a gavel: "You should all stay away from us." If Nidaime hadn't let her guard down during Akane's concert -- if her mother hadn't trusted them -- they wouldn't have gotten hurt. If Sayla weren't here, she wouldn't have seen that happen. It's... a familiar sort of logic.
"If you're her aunt... you'll see to her."
Why does Anti sound so sure, about that?
It's for the same reason he starts walking away, in the blistering heat of summer's afternoon.