2022-12-17: Tartarean
- Log: 2022-12-17- Tartarean
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Orpheus Zevon
- Where: Tsutsujidai
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-12-17
- Summary: Orpheus comes across Akane in the throes of the weakness of her heart.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane has had a few days to find the rhythm of her escape. There is indeed a loop to her movements, if you look for it; it's a long loop, though, and her knowledge of the inside of her heart is intimate indeed. Chasing her down would take time and concerted effort -- and what's more, she doesn't need to sleep or eat.
She's taken up an obscure vantage for the moment -- an alleyway in the shopping arcade. She sits behind a dumpster, legs out in front of her, back against the wall. Her expression is exhausted -- she's never looked this tired, no matter how much time she spends staying awake. Whatever endless reserve of energy sustains her... it's hard to say if it's cut off, or if she's more in its throes than ever, able to remain awake even while this miserable and exhausted.
<Pose Tracker> Orpheus Zevon has posed.
Compared to locating her from the first time they met, identifying the pattern of her loop was a bit more of a challenge. Especially when attempting to find her in a short amount of time. At the very least, he had one clue to what would have been upon her route. Any place that sold tomato juice...
At this point, he wasn't sure if she even could stomach the stuff for herself. In a more drastic situation he might have emptied all potential vending machines excluding one in an attempt to smoke her out. Especially when the sky itself rained so unrelentingly. A regular person wouldn't have bothered in such conditions. As it would be though, whether it was because she was still having them, even if the weather had forced the streets of Tsutsujidai to be empty, if Akane Shinjo was one thing and one thing only...She was a creature of habit.
"It was already hard to get in touch with you before this..." It's hard to tell whether he actually surprises Akane with his presence. Even in a downpour where visibility is hard, and his approach was masked by the sound of raindrops. The only signs of his presence was the cold drip of rainfall dwindling, and the sound of rain hitting an umbrella overhead. In truth, he's not holding it out for her nor does he make it seem as such. Such kindness wasn't needed between them. He's just holding an umbrella, and she's simply under it at the same time.
"...What happened?" The bluntness in his voice as he asked his question was so contrasted by how open ended it was. Was he asking what had happened with Bujack? Perhaps asking about the most recent kaiju? Maybe what was happening in Tsutsujidai? Or...He wanted to hear what had happened to Yuta? Or what happened to her afterwards? Maybe simply allowing her to decide his meaning was the kindness in and of itself... Not that she needed such kindness, nor could Orpheus truly offer it to her.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Orpheus approaches, and Akane looks up at him. She's definitely conscious, at least. Her expression remains flat -- yet her shoulders shift back, the tension in them extreme.
Rain washes over her glasses, highlighting the cracks all the more while she sits there, taking in his presence. It's... a surprise, honestly. She wouldn't have thought that he...
... oh, right. School event. That just makes sense.
"I don't want people getting in touch with me. I knew something stupid like this would happen," she hisses, under her breath. She takes a deep breath, then lets it out. "Don't you get it? I -- I did it. I killed Hhh..." Trailing off here, she shakes it off and says, "Gridman is dead. My world is going back where it's supposed to go."
(She doesn't know that it started closing off before then. It's her best guess.) "I did what I set out to do and what I wanted to happen is happening. You're just unfortunate enough to be in here when it happens."
There's no thought of offering Orpheus a world of his own, giving him the carved-off pieces of her heart. After all: there's nothing left to carve off, she thinks. This empty feeling...
"I can't do anything about this. If 3G figures out some way out of here, just go. I'm not leaving." It's going to be worse out there than in this tiny, collapsing slice of a heart, as far as she's concerned.
"Is that all you wanted?"
<Pose Tracker> Orpheus Zevon has posed.
For a moment, Orpheus can only watch her. So tense, so twisted that it felt like one wrong move would break her. The hissing was so guttural that even the rain can mask the sound of it as she confesses what she's done. "I know what you did. I saw him." There's a bluntness that gives no foretelling of acceptance or judgment of her act.
"And? What's so stupid about me getting in touch? Are you expecting me to chew you out for what you did? Expecting me to pass a verdict on you? You wanted something, and you made a hard choice to get it." While it was true there was pain in his heart to see what happened to Yuta on that day, he also in the same respect couldn't find fault with Akane's action. Morality aside, what she had done aligned with who they were. People who wanted their own form of happiness even at the cost of others. "How can I judge you for something I would have done in the same position...?"
That bluntness in his voice comes out again. Akane should know him well enough by now that it's the truth. Even if she hadn't, Kaworu could have told her straight to her face that even someone as kind as he was told that should he ever try to truly oppose Orpheus' path, there would be no exception. So even if it was Yuta, even if he was his friend, if he had been in the path of his own goals Orpheus probably would have ended up putting the knife in him as well if there was just no other way.
The wind howls as the rain rides along with it, pelting them from the side in a way that not even the umbrella can offer protection from. Even with that chill in the air, even as the rain assaults them, he speaks as calmly as a gentle breeze. "I've never once asked you to leave this place, and I never planned to. I won't stay here though. Even if you can't do anything about this, or 3G can't, even if it means taking my chances with that person. I won't allow myself to be stuck here."
Of course there would be no thought of offering Orpheus such a world. Had she not offered him such before? Had she not known that he would deny such an offer? Even if she had offered all of her heart for him, he still couldn't take it. That's not what he needed her heart for.
"There's only one thing I want to know from you...Akane Shinjo...Can I still rely on you?"
In the time since the two have met, this girl has already experienced much, too much even. She's experienced loss. Loss of friends, loss of control, loss of her world, perhaps even loss of what she truly wants. She's been forced to tear at her own heart piece by piece that even the choices she's taken herself, for what she believed to be to her own benefit have brought emptiness to her core.
Even his question on some level must be painful. To be asked about their contract, to help in finding the one that had wronged their friend. Or at least, someone who once was her friend. The simple answer should be no. After all, what value was there for Akane now? It was a choice made when she thought better of Kaworu, when she still wanted to see him.
The contrast between the choice to help Orpheus and to help herself was obvious. the former only had value in the past. Though with things as they were now, with her sealing herself away again, she didn't have to get herself involved in it. The latter was a necessity. A choice she had made for her future. Her desired future. Now, she was being asked again to tear another piece of her heart away for another choice? Was that really what he was asking or...Was there a greater dichotomy to these choices.
The latter was for her future. A choice she knew she had to do. Yet...It was a choice in which she had to bury her heart to enact it, tear at it piece by piece till she was empty enough to take up the necessary resolve. The former though...Yes, it still likely hurt to think of those people...Yet, while Akane couldn't offer her heart to build Orpheus a new world for himself, had she not offered a piece of her heart at that time?
The day they made their contract, it was not because of Alexis Kerib's musings, it was not because her friends had begged her to do it. It was her choice. A choice where she hadn't been forced to bury her heart, but instead a choice she had put a bit of her heart into it. Now another question was coming into play, another choice to be made.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It's a painful question with a simple answer.
"No."
She remains seated in the alleyway, desperate not to move yet desperate to be somewhere else, anywhere else, having any other conversation.
Part of her wonders why he even thinks he could rely on her, having now seen her world begin to collapse. Why anyone would rely on the languishing husk of a god that now sits alone in the shadows of her own heart.
"Even if you could, I'm not letting my world stick into that mess again. I got what I wanted. If someone gets you out of here, that's one thing. But I'll be here, and you probably won't hear from me again." As far as she's concerned, this is the direct, just-the-facts answer. It's not that she can't help him; it's that help is an impossibility.
Closing her eyes, she says, "... I'll keep what I know about you to myself. It's my mistake in the first place that I even know it." She does seem to take that much seriously. "I don't see how I learn anything new about Kaworu from here, and we won't ever speak again once you leave here."
"I don't mind if you make sure, though. Do whatever you want to protect your stupid secrets."
That, it seems, is her final answer. Her head tilts down, her lilac hair obscuring her eyes.
<Pose Tracker> Orpheus Zevon has posed.
'No.'
It is a painfully obvious answer. At the same time...
"Good. At least with that I know you haven't gone crazy." His response is blunt. As it stands, it really is unfortunate, but obvious that as she was, she really was incapable of helping or much at all. The fact that she responds with so much pain, with so much honesty, with it being so apparent to her, it's a bit of a relief for him to hear. Though, maybe having him tell her that, after what she's done...That she's still considered sane by someone, might not make her feel the most reassured.
He continued to listen as she made this clear. This might be the last time they meet. That their paths from here on out would diverge. "I see." It only made sense. A perfect world for this girl would be one where she stays here and everything else stays out. "So this is goodbye then..." For a moment it's hard to tell if he's reaffirming the statement, or asking a question if it truly was. The quiet between the two only emphasized more as the rain continued to downpour within the alleyway.
As she speaks up again about keeping his secret he at least believes that. Regardless of her state of being, one thing he took Akane Shinjo for was a rat. On the other hand though...
'I don't mind if you make sure, though. Do whatever you want to protect your stupid secrets.'
She lowers her head, and in doing so, is incapable of seeing the annoyance on Orpheus' face. "And if I wanted to make sure to protect my secrets before we say goodbye...What do you think I'd do?" He wouldn't allow that to be a final answer. For surely she knew enough about him, to know what that sort of phrase insinuated. He wants to affirm her words, yet as her head lowers...There's no way to see whether she's putting upon the mask or not...There's just an uncomfortable atmosphere left in the air...
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The laugh Akane gives is really more of a huff, as Orpheus tells her she hasn't gone crazy. It would be so much easier, she thinks distantly, if she had -- or even if she was just numbly stumbling her way through everything. The acuteness, the clarity of these moments makes them even less tolerable.
Still... it's not the worst, to hear it from someone else.
The counter-question has a simple-enough answer. "You'd kill me. That's how these things go. If you wanted to be sure, you could just kill me." The thought's been pounding in her head for days now. "That'd solve pretty much everything."
... stupid. She could have just lied. If she'd threatened to reveal his secrets, she realizes as soon as she's said it. He has no incentive to do it now.
Then again -- it's fruitless in multiple ways. So many times Akane could have died -- and every time, she's moved, almost unbidden, to save herself. No matter how sorry a state she's in...
... well, at any rate, Orpheus makes a poor choice. Monsters only kill monsters when one or the other is playing the heroic role, somehow. Right now, that doesn't seem like either of them.
"If you won't," she murmurs, "I don't see a reason for us to talk again. Or more, at all."
<Pose Tracker> Orpheus Zevon has posed.
Akane's answer is truly simple, in its execution.
"You're an idiot..."
As well as in its aftermath. "Not insane...Just an idiot." One has to wonder how long it's been since someone properly called her that word. Not out of spite for her actions, not as just an unnecessary insult, but just calling her the term to regard her intellect...In an insulting manner. "You're right, if I really wanted to guarantee my secret, the best way would be ending it here. I could make it quick and painless." Something he heard that Akane was incapable of doing herself at the time. "Though what then...?"
He gives her a moment to see if she can even bother reacting to any of that. To the insult, to his question, or just well...Anything. At the very least before he had gotten a huff. It was...Better than he expected. "If I do kill you, maybe I keep my secret, but then every single one of those heroes decide to chase me down as your killer till they find me. Even if I pin the blame on someone else like with what happened with Kaworu's assailment, it'd be unnecessary attention. And what's more...If you die, what happens to Tsutsujidai?"
She says she has no power here anymore, that she's incapable of doing anything in this place, and yet...She still was the God of this place. Tsutsujidai was still her heart, right? If she did truly come to pass...? What would become of it, and every person within it. It's not a gamble he's willing to take yet. "I feel like thinking ahead has always been your weak point. Also..."
There's a more grim stern look he has on his face for a moment as he speaks it. Like he's the one that should be holding his tongue. "Why should I be the one with that burden? If you really wanted to...You already had the knife to do it, don't you?" It's now a truly morbid conversation. Even if he wasn't a hero, he imagines the risk of asking such things is grim. Though, he's no hero, and he's not her guardian. If anything, asking this is just as much curiosity as much as treating her as someone sane enough to make her own decisions. No matter how drastic they were.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
'If you die, what happens to Tsutsujidai?' That, more than the idea of vengeance being visited upon Orpheus, is what gets Akane's attention.
"Never really thought about it," she admits. It's at this point that she pries herself up off the ground, at least -- still covered, for the moment, by Orpheus's umbrella. "Guess that's for 3G to figure out. They're the experts, right?" It's not... healthy response. She's still just as miserable and droning. On the other hand, it's at least a little animated.
And as for his final question... "... not anymore I don't," she says, of the knife. She'd dropped it at Aya, then had it moved away from her, still covered in blood.
She takes a step. It's a step out of Orpheus's umbrella, back into the rain -- but it's a step. "Go. Talk to NERV or something. I can't fix this. Get back to where you're supposed to be." Hollowly, she concedes:
"... I don't think we can do anything for each other. Not right now. Not as the people we are." It's no longer just that she sees herself as useless -- evidently, whatever assessment she's made of the situation indicates that Orpheus is just as doomed as she is.
She starts shuffling into the perpetual rainy gloom again. "Don't -- follow me. Even if you don't want to do it yourself... something bad is going to happen. Go -- check on Kaworu or something."
<Pose Tracker> Orpheus Zevon has posed.
Someone like Orpheus can't save her. That's not his role. It's never been his role. It'll likely never be his role. Though, even if he can't save her, if there's a way he can show her a path, have her think more of the future, that was enough. Maybe it made more sense that way. Heroes could save someone, give them the chance to reach that future. But someone, even someone who wasn't a full villain, could show those how to think ahead...How to prepare themselves for that future. Was that not what villains, despite all their flaws, are good at?
All the same though, he finds himself with a content grin less so at the remarks of her losing her knife, or the notion of finding 3G or NERV. He finds himself smiling for the fact that she chooses to stand up, for the fact that she chooses to step out from under the umbrella.
She prepares to step away within her gloom, telling him of their flaws, of their incapabilities to help one another, to not follow her. So he lets her walk for a distance in gloom...Though...Just as she steps away there's a sound of something. It's the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning. And with it...The sight of an umbrella being taken away with a violent gale of wind. The very same that had only moments ago been held by the one before her. With a bit more base in his voice he calls out to her from behind, "Not right now? That's a cute phrase to say to someone you're never going to see again. This is a rare occasion, where liars like us can get away with saying anything we want about the other and never face repercussions. So..."
Even if Akane Shinjo had chosen not to turn back to him, she could hear the pride in his voice as he spoke the next few lines. "From the first time I met you, I didn't think you'd make a good villain. Your plans were so simple, they looked like they came off of that Tarabaman show. And yet...Somehow to my annoyance you were able to mop me up in those damned video games, and then elaborate in such technical skill how you did it, that I almost wondered if you'd be able to do it again if you'd been piloting a real machine. Perhaps the most annoying thing about all of this though..."
Again, the sound of rain is more defined than before as the two are pelted by it without an umbrella. The two dowsed in the cold tears from the sky above. "...Maybe it's because of this fucked up world we lived in that we ended up as we are. That we became the people we are now. I've already told you before that I won't take the dream over reality...But in another life, I think I could have tolerated being your friend..."
There's a few footsteps that are taken towards Akane she can hear coming from behind. Almost as if he really is about to follow her along her path. "Maybe as people we can't do much for one another. But, there is still one thing I can do with the power that I have as I am now... If it was easy enough for someone like me to find you on my own, you'll be found eventually by others." Maybe she'd be found by friend...Though just as equally by foe. All he knew was that...She still wasn't ready for either.
"As I am now, I can at least throw them off your path. Having them search for Akane Shinjo in the wrong places. At least until I find my ride out of here. From there, it's all on you..." At this moment, Akane Shinjo is certain of one thing. She knows that Orpheus no longer had the umbrella, no longer was he trying to hold it over her head to protect her from the elements. But at the same time...He too was in the rain. He had casted away protection and warmth for himself, just for her to realize one thing... He can't protect her from the elements. She'll still suffer in the rain, she'll still feel the chill of the winter wind as she wanders the streets of Tsutsujidai alone. Though she can at least know that somewhere, there'd be another. That someone in Tsutsujidai would also wander aimlessly through the streets of Tsutsujidai. Just like her, he'd suffer through the frost without purpose.
This was surely not salvation. But for two that would possibly never meet again, perhaps the notion that at least this feeling of loneliness...Didn't have to be suffered truly alone, was the best one could do for the other. Regardless of what path she deemed towards destruction he was setting himself on. "Ya know, if this world truly is as twisted as we believe it to be...If we do end up meeting again one day, for better or worse, I'll tell you one final thing. For now though..."
"Goodbye...Akane Shinjo."
It is at this moment that a thought might come to Akane Shinjo's mind. In her final moments with Yuta Hibiki...Was she able to look him in the eyes? Had she been able to create a memory of the person before they'd fade away forever? What about now...Had she once looked at Orpheus...Had she ever looked him in the eyes during this moment? Was he mad with her, upset with her? Was his mask on? If he was wearing it as he spoke those words to her could she tell just from his voice alone. If it was off...What did it truly look like when he gave her a goodbye?
Whether she turned around or not though...She'd never learn it. For Orpheus Zevon had vanished like the wind. Once again, Akane Shinjo...Was alone.