2022-10-01: Motion
- Log: Motion
- Cast: Anti, Yuta Hibiki (as Calibur and friends)
- Where: Near Mass Villa, AEU Spain
- Date: 2022-10-01
- Summary: When Bujack appears, Anti doesn't quite succeed at asking Gridman for assistance, but Calibur offers him help anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Outside the villa, Anti's neck bends up, and up, and up, as Bujack renders into existence. It's one of Akane's; he knows with no confirmation, in just the way brother knows brother. The shape, the form all fits -- if not the violence, a mirage against the sky.
"What's with this?" He growls, gutter-low, as his fingers curl into his palm. "How come Gridman isn't appearing..?"
The kaiju appears -- and Gridman appears. Those are the rules.
They're rules which were already violated -- when Gridman appeared before the kaiju appeared.
But the kaiju is here.
The kaiju is here, and so is Sayla, and Leina, and Nidaime.
Sayla and Leina, who gave him shelter while he was injured.
Nidaime, who believes in him.
And Anti, who...
Anti knows this is one of Akane's kaiju, because he should be that large, too. He's bigger than his body, but he is so, so small.
His fingers tense, and twitch, and release. In a flurry of violence his arm flexes, plunges into his pocket, pulls out a phone. One of the numbers saved there --
As soon as Calibur's line opens, Anti yells, from where he's connected somewhere in Spain:
"Bring Gridman here! Crushing him is the only thing that matters to me!"
Voice sharp, demanding, pitched, and Anti leads with entirely the wrong piece of information, because he can scarcely bring himself to admit he's trying to ask for Gridman to come defeat this kaiju before it can harm the women he's sheltering with.
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
The Junk Shop is quiet and dark. Mama and the kids have left for the day, leaving just the Neon Genesis Junior High Students milling about with Gridman looking on from Junk. Calibur rests his chin and upper body across the bar, not reacting for a moment when his phone rings.
"Hey." Borr says, not looking up from playing some kind of wooden tower game with Vit. "Hey. Calibur. Get your phone."
Max has his back to the rest of them, hair messily swept up in a ponytail. An apron covers his suit as he washes the cafe's dishes. The least they can do is pull their weight, after all. Even if he's the only one actually following through with that platitude.
Calibur blinks back into reality. "Y--yeah." He pulls out his phone, letting a little sword charm dangle from it. "...it--it's that kid."
"What kid?" Vit asks, pulling out a plank from the block tower with inching movements. "We know a lot of kids."
"Hello." The samurai answers his phone, ignoring his companions.
The unmistakable voice of Anti can be heard through the cafe, even with the cell phone pressed against Calibur's ear. The rest of the NGJHS stop what they're doing and turn to Calibur.
"Calibur," Gridman calls from the far wall. "Put it on speaker!"
Doing so, the cafe is treated to the last bit of Anti's declaration. Borr rolls their eyes. "Not this again. Look, we've been through this. No kaiju attack, no Gridman."
"Though, he's helping out with other stuff lately, too -- fuck." Vit pulls the plank out the rest of the way, wincing as the whole wooden tower sways.
"Not in front of the children, Vit." Max chastises, going back to the dishes.
"W--where are you right now?" Calibur asks. "Why this, all of the sudden?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Don't screw with me!" Anti yells, as he hears Borr's voice from further out. "When there's a kaiju, Gridman appears! Right?! So bring Gridman here! I'll crush him, damn it!"
Anti thinks he's communicating very well. After all, it's hardly uncommon for a kaiju to appear, prompting Gridman to appear -- so that Anti can burst into the scene and destroy him.
Well, sometimes it's not a kaiju, but that's just the world they live in.
He yells: "I'm at that woman's house! The doctor!" And this, too, seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation, to him. "Stop messing around, and bring Gridman here!"
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
There's a moment of confused silence. Everyone looks at each other, then back to the phone, then to Gridman. As the leader, does he know what to do..?
"Young man." Gridman says, as Calibur holds the phone out toward Junk. "There's a kaiju attack where you are? And you are with the doctor..." The Giant of Light glances up to Max, who puts his sponge down.
"I believe he could be speaking of Dr. Mass, guardian of Leina, who Yuta visited in Spain. She recently started a charity in Tsutsujidai."
Gridman glances around. "...I'm not getting any clear readings, but something is abnormal. I can't quite identify it."
"Well, what does THAT mean?" Borr asks, tapping a game plank against her chin. "What are you seeing, kid?"
Calibur holds the phone back close to his face. "Anti. I'll make my way over and check it out."
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Right!" Anti snaps, when he hears someone talking about Dr. Mass. "I told you! Gridman's supposed to be here! I'll crush him, so bring him here right now!"
A note, between these aggressive words: Anti still doesn't really get how 'please' works.
And then Calibur says he'll come check it out, and that man isn't Gridman, which Anti is very sure about, because he knows what a Gridman is and how much he wants to kill him. "Rrrgh... if you keep messing around, it'll be too late! WHATEVER!"
He shuts off the connection, shoves the phone haphazardly in his pocket. What's even the point -- of asking Gridman to appear?
What? He was going to ask Gridman for help? He was going to ask Gridman to protect these women?
Forget it!
"All right," he decides, for himself, as his hand draws back -- and he pulls a circular saw from himself, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, nonexistent one moment and whirring the next.
"Stop retreating..."
Anti bursts into a sprint, and LEAPS, circular saw lashing forward. "STOP RETREATING, AKANE SHINJO--!!"
And there, in the middle of the air -- much higher than he ought to be able to go -- he meets Bujack --
-- goes THROUGH Bujack --
-- and the kaiju warps, briefly, before he lands on the other side.
"Rrrgh!" Anti snarls, as he scrambles in the gravel of the driveway, one hand to the ground, both legs scattering for a moment before they pull beneath him. His knees bend, and he jumps, again.
Goes through, again.
Lashes out, again.
Anti just isn't on Bujack's level, and it's not just because of his size.
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
The phone goes dead. Calibur looks at Gridman for confirmation, who nods, and in a heartbeat, the samurai is gone.
Max takes his apron off, coming around to sit at the bar. "...a kaiju's presence without a proper reading. There was no lie in that young man's voice. What does this mean, Gridman?"
"I don't know." Gridman admits. "There's never been a kaiju we couldn't detect before. Could it be an advancement in Akane Shinjo's techniques?"
Vit pulls his own phone out. "Should I wake Yuta? If there really is a kaiju in a civilian area, we're in big trouble."
Gridman hesitates. Yuta has looked so tired lately. Is it fair to send him out when the only report they have is from a child who wants to kill Yuta?
"Not yet. Wait for Calibur to report."
"Nothing we can do until he arrives, then." Borr says, sighing. Leaning forward, he motions to Vit to take the next turn at their game.
"Alright. If you say so." Vit places his phone on the bar. "Easy does it..." Carefully, he slides another plank out from the tower. It immediately collapses, sending Borr into raucous laughter.
"Fuck!" Vit drops the wooden piece, scowling.
It takes a few hours for Calibur to arrive. Despite his great speed, even he can't outrun a train, and so stands on board, lurking next to the doors. He wouldn't risk sitting down, not with his swords attached. It wasn't worth the spectacle.
Anti's phone rings once again. "Give me your address." Calibur says, in way of greeting.
Should the young kaiju cooperate, it's only minutes before Calibur appears at his side in a blur of motion. "Wh--where is it?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Bujack lurches across Spain, with no care for the boy trying to plunge a saw through its heart. It shimmers, again and again, as Anti phases through it. He's chased the kaiju out of Sayla's villa, out into Spain... but not too far.
Because -- on one of those innumerable lunges -- it shimmers, and derenders, and doesn't form again. Anti lands on the path, and looks up, and then down.
"Did I... destroy it?" Anti asks, but his circular saw buzzes, without a single indication it ever caught flesh. "... no," he realises, and sinks down to sit right there, on the steet.
His hands are empty, by the time his phone rings. He brings it to his ear. He looks straight up, at the signs all on poles. "... Garcia Street," Anti reads off, all the violence stripped from his voice and replaced with something numb.
He hangs up. He puts his phone back in his pocket.
As it happens, he's leaning on that street sign, slumped down like a puppet all strings-cut.
"It's gone."
And so is all the fight in him.
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
Calibur looks down at Anti, then crouches, getting on his level. It's clear the little kaiju is exhausted. There's no way this was a prank, or a trap. Anti wouldn't have worn himself out right before fighting his nemesis. "I--I see."
"Y--you did your best. You protected them."
Calibur puts a hand on Anti's shoulder for a moment, then looks around the area. A nearby puddle seems to have lost most of its water. With deliberate, slow movements, Calibur walks over to it. Once more, he crouches, lanky legs folding easily beneath his body. "Hmm."
"A--Anti." Calibur takes his phone out, snapping a picture. "A footprint."
Indeed, there in someone's yard a patch of mud seems to have been stepped on by something very large. It isn't a full print, but it's far larger than anything that should be native to this area. Calibur stares at it. A few taps to his phone sends the picture home to Vit.
Turning back to Anti, Calibur speaks up again. "I--I didn't doubt you. But this is proof. Something was here." The phone is hidden away into a pocket. "Gridman got a strange reading. W--we can't find anything concrete, but there must be something going on. Can you describe it? W--was it hurting anyone?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti doesn't move away from Calibur's hand, but neither does he respond much at all, aside from frowning. It's not terribly easy to tell, because he was already frowning, just by default.
"It wasn't enough."
His best, that is.
His gaze follows Calibur, as he goes over to snap that picture -- though he doesn't bother getting up. His visible eye narrows, briefly. A footprint...
Does that mean he could have brought it into reality to kill it, if he'd just tried harder?
"Tch... what good is Gridman if he won't appear?" Anti spits out, drawing up his knee and grasping it with a hand. "I'll deal with it myself!" His declaration is angry -- he still remembers anger -- and fiercely, fiercely alone.
He still can't admit he wanted to ask for help.
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
Calibur weathers Anti's changing emotions, expression never changing. It's clear this little kaiju isn't going to give him any useful data. "G--Gridman's far away. It's a big planet. He wouldn't have made it in time." Standing, the samurai thinks of his long journey home. Thinks of the conversation he'll need to have with his companions.
Moving slowly, Calibur walks over to Anti, standing directly in front of him. One arm goes behind his back. Metal slides against metal. Calibur has drawn his topmost sword. He stands still for a moment, considering Anti, considering his sword. Then...
Gently, he lowers it, holding the hilt out as an offering. "I--if your best wasn't enough. Improve yourself. Learn to do more." Calibur's words have no malice, only his own brand of non-emotional pragmatism. "I--I'll teach you."
Calibur waits, his eyes fixed on Anti's bandaged face.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
It's as far as you feel it is -- as far as Anti is concerned. But Anti is still a creature of Tsutsujidai, fashioned for its beating heart.
Unfair, he glares, up at Calibur and at Gridman's excuses. "Then it's pointless!" He snaps, despite all Leina's attempts to convince him that others are trying to help Akane, too.
(Then it's pointless to try.)
Anti is rather short, and Calibur, even hunched over, is taller; when he's slumped down like this and Calibur is standing, the contrast is even starker. His eye widens, fractionally, as soon as that man reaches behind him -- a twitch of tension in the fingers around his knee --
-- he pulls on it, a counterweight until his other hand presses to the streetpath. His weight rocks forward, pressed by the lever action of his elbow straightening against the ground; his knee extends, heel to the ground, one leg pushing upwards even as the other pulls in to get underneath him. Mechanically, the action can be given a great many words --
-- functionally, in an eyeblink, Anti goes from slumped against the street-sign to standing, circular saw grasped in a hand.
He moved before Calibur even drew his weapon.
(Somewhen, somewhere, he learned to move before Calibur had time to draw his weapon.)
Anti snarls, defensive; Calibur was right about one thing in his apprisal, and that's how tired Anti already was, by the time he got on the scene. He really threw everything, pointlessly, into trying to destroy Bujack. It means Anti doesn't want to throw the first punch, in this situation -- but he has to be ready.
Ready for Calibur to --
The man extends the hilt out to Anti, and Anti's snarling grimace pulls upwards as his teeth part, and clack together again, brow scrunching in confusion atop aggression.
"..."
That's the wrong end. Calibur is pointing the wrong end at Anti to kill him. What kind of trick is this?
For long moments, Anti stares at the hilt of the blade, in silence. It's silence enough for Calibur to fill.
Anti -- the auto-intelligence kaiju -- was created to learn and improve.
Anti, who is still an auto-intelligence kaiju, finally dismisses his circular saw (blink and you'll miss it; it's there, then it's gone. Into his sleeve? We'll say it was that.) and reaches out -- slowly, hesitantly -- to grasp the hilt of the sword. When he takes it, he takes a step back, but still he takes it.
"... all right, then."
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
Calibur lets Anti think its pointless without challenge. Maybe it is. He isn't one to know the struggles of a little organic kaiju. As long as Yuta and Gridman keep fighting, Calibur will too. He doesn't overthink things.
It's unsurprising that Anti sees his movements as a threat. Calibur hadn't exactly taken any steps to be non-threatening. Anti's immediate reaction gets a singular eyebrow raised from the samurai. "Y--you're fast. Good. That's very important."
Moving more quickly this time, Calibur draws another one of his swords. "First lesson." He stands directly in front of the kaiju, far enough back that a swing won't threaten Anti. "Strength comes from simplicity of motion. You want to make a straight line with your slice." Calibur demonstrates. He raises his sword in a fighting stance, then slowly brings it down in a diagonal arc. Just as he says, there is very little movement, overall. Nothing is wasted.
"Practice slowly." Calibur adds. "Then speed up. You can't add anything fancy until you've mastered the basics. Nothing is more important."
Turning his back on a kaiju wielding a sword, Calibur walks up to the street sign. Using the same movement he just demonstrated, Calibur raises his sword, then brings it down in a relatively slow, precise arc. With a clean, chiming sound, the pole of the sign is split cleanly in two. Calibur half-crouches as it comes down, then repeats the movement twice more at top speed. With a clatter of metal, four equally sized parts hit the ground in unison.
"D--do you understand?" Calibur asks, lowering his sword and turning back to Anti.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti doesn't trust praise.
He watches -- very, very carefully -- a student with many eyes, and one.
The first lesson? One lesson, certainly. The lesson Calibur sets out to teach, and the lesson Anti remembers, war beneath his skin. His hands curl very, very tight.
Despite all that's passed, he neither bolts nor plunges the blade into Calibur.
Straight lines... and simplicity, huh.
The basics -- he was born knowing them. Anti places the words 'know' and 'master' beside each other in his mind; evaluates them together.
He looks at the street sign -- two -- four street signs. (Parts of a street sign. Does the distinction matter?) "..."
Anti blinks, and looks back up to Calibur.
"I understand."
He keeps staring.
"But Leina Ashta says that destroying things in the house isn't allowed," Anti says, finally, with that same flat tone. "Outside the house is still 'in the house'. So I don't know if she means out here, too."
..................... Anti......................
... is a very good boy who follows the rules.
<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.
Anti is a good student. Calibur's lips tug upward just a hint. He can tell the little kaiju has absorbed every single one of his movements, clinging to the sword as though it's a lifeline. It will serve him well. Down to three swords, now. Chairs will become all the easier to navigate.
"V--very good." Calibur hesitates at Leina's request. This is a puzzle. How far does the 'house' extend? He looks down at the shattered street sign. "Hmm."
Leina was someone kind to Yuta, and her rules must be law in Anti's dwelling. So be it. "Practice the movement without striking anything. T--that should be fine. Make sure you have plenty of space."
With deliberate movements, Calibur sheathes his blade. He walks toward Anti. "L--let's get you home. Tell me where it is, and I--I'll carry you. I'd like to look for more clues where the kaiju originated."
...and Calibur is worried for the little creature. He looks ready to take a nap here on the street, and if there really is a wild kaiju on the loose? Anti could be crushed, or eaten. The samurai is hardly going to leave a child to travel on his own.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti makes a movement like sheathing the blade -- except it's already sheathed -- and it's gone, just like that.
(Except -- and perhaps Calibur can tell, either through intuition or simple deduction from where that circular saw goes off to -- it's not, entirely, gone. Anti's taken it into himself. He's bigger than his body, more metaphor than man, and his existence still obeys the laws of kaiju... more or less.)
He straightens.
"I'll walk."
Anti insists, as an independent statement, before he points: "That way." And, as he said, he starts walking.
He'll at least show Calibur the damage.
It isn't much.