2023-05-18: Study Break
- Log: 2023-05-18- Study Break
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Christina MacKenzie
- Where: AEU - Villa Mass
- OOC - IC Date: 0097-05-18
- Summary: Akane Shinjo gets acquainted with her temporary guardian's ex; they get acquainted and talk a little
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It's been a rough week. Akane's been struggling to balance her operator training, her actual schooling, and her personal goals on art output; she's also, frankly, being over-perfectionistic. At first her solution was to do what she always does and hole up in her room and get steadily more frustrated, but after a few text conversations about it, she's pulled herself out of that and moved to the dining room instead.
Her approach to studying looks like anyone else's nightmare. She has a high-end laptop for gaming/3D modeling purposes, a low-end tablet hooked up to it to use as a second screen, her books, her sketch pad, and a DX Black Hammerizer all fanned out in front of her.
Absently, she takes two of the Kaiju Nails and shoves them into the slots on the Hammerizer, pushing the button. It helpfully reports through its tinny speaker,
"Pyrilite!" Sparkle noise.
"Gaiakku!" Sparkle noise.
"Tarabaman Hammer... are these humans worth dying for?"
"Gaialite!" 10 seconds of dramatic violin sting.
Akane seems slightly less strained after this.
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
The scents of sweet palm sugar and coconut are carried on the air, as rice simmers on the stove.
Christina MacKenzie, cosmopolitan, had been spending a lot of time in Spain lately. With Leina away, and Sayla… Well, either way, the kitchen felt lonely to walk past. She's been cooking every now and again, simple things she's learned on her travels, but...if only to make the kitchen feel more lively.
She was taking a break from her work on Leina's Haro, moving around to stretch her back out and rest her wrists. MiniHaros are so much harder to optimize… –Chris, maybe you just shouldn't be such an overachiever? But she couldn't convince herself to compromise anything…not RAM, not jamming, not comm strength… Not storage capacity either.
When Chris emerged from the pantry with a mango in hand, she heard a strange piezoelectric murmur. It's with a fruit in one hand and a large knife in the other that she pokes her head around the corner to the dining room.
"...Akane? What are you doing out here? Do you need something to eat?"
She takes a look at the sprawling setup, and adds "Do you need time to focus?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The kitchen is a source of comfort for Akane usually, but not enough that she's constantly in it or anything; she does like to cook, but she hasn't quite worked up the nerve to ask for help with that. (Besides, she's got a pretty narrow range of things she wants to cook lately -- she's pretty focused on improving her basics.)
"Huh? Oh, no -- I mean, yeah -- uh, let me try that again," Akane starts. Taking a breath and rubbing at the back of her head, she says, "I could probably eat, and... nah. To tell you the truth, uh, I might actually want some help in a little while... though I could probably use a break, too."
She realizes she never answered the first question. "Eeeh... like seventy percent studying? The rest is scrolling To-witter and messing around with this thing, haha." She holds it up; in so doing, she depresses the trigger, and it lets out a heavily modulated, "Gaia Strasher!"
... may as well talk to the woman with the mango. "So you know, I never really got around to asking -- how do you know Sayla and Leina? I know you're around a lot, but..." Vague gesture with the hand still holding the Dark Hammerizer. "You know. Haven't had the chance to talk much."
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
Ah, the indecision of youth.
"Studying, huh? Well, how about you find a stopping point and eat with me? I came up out of the hangar to refuel, and there's definitely enough rice to share. I can make something else if you'd like me to, Akane, but I'm mostly good at street food, ahah..."
She also needs to check on Sayla, but the liquor cabinet motion sensor hasn't gone off today, so she's probably at least sticking to wine for now. Well. It went off once today. Buer tripped it early this morning. That was a fun phone alert.
"What's a Gaia Strasher?" Is the immediate question, though it's followed up with the almost-an-insight, "Is this from, what was it... Bataraman? ...That's wrong, isn't it."
The innocent confusion is replaced by a flustered expression as she reminisces.
"Well, that's, there's a bit of a story there! Uh, let me gather my thoughts while I plate us up." Time to think, at least.
Not very much, though, and two bowls of coconut rice and sliced mango sit before them. She hasn't really gotten anything sorted. Why couldn't she have picked a more complicated meal?
Still. She sets her bowl down next to Akane's and flops into a chair. "You know about the Titans, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"I love street food!" Akane enthuses at the idea. "Rice is great, too -- I can always go for a bowl of it, haha... though, uh, you're gonna have to get the soy sauce. Or the seasoning salt? Or, ooh, does Sayla have chicken salt --" (More than one of Akane's meds gives her salt cravings.)
"Tarabaman," Akane says, and it comes out a little flatter and more withering than she means -- but after a second, she forces herself to say, "... ahaha, that's honestly pretty close for someone who probably hasn't seen it in ages though. Anyway, it's an attack! See, I already put both of the Kaiju Nails in --" Tap, tap, "so it's doing the sounds for Gaialite, the Burning Tail Kaiju. Though, like, it's only kind of a kaiju, it's really more like it's Spike Parma's giant form, and --"
She coughs, cutting herself off there. Then she moves on. The question... gets a slightly dark expression from her.
"Yeah. I'm not that young." Akane pauses, before explaining, "And in like... 0092 maybe? Somewhere in middle school, I, uh." Rubbing at the back of her head, she tries to find a way to tell this story. "So -- do you remember the ex Titans war crimes trials? Uh, New Desides or something. They went on off and on from like 0089 to maybe two years ago? Someone left them on on a TV in my classroom after lunch, and the teacher scrambled in after we caught like ten minutes of it between periods..."
"... Iiiii kinda watched three days of it when I got home. A bunch of the really gory stuff about Cyber Newtype experimentation." With a grimace-smile, she explains, "Kinda... forbidden fruit, yeah? Anyway -- so... yeah! My working grasp of the Titans is pretty okay." The grimace reduces slightly.
"Sorry for the long aside. Let's, uh. Let's hear it."
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
"Sweet and salty rice?" Chicken salt on mango coconut? ...Actually scratch that, it sounds strangely amazing. "Sure, I'll grab all of those, but if you're looking for that taste I can make you something extra for you, you know? You can't study when your body's hungry! I'll make you anything. Maybe... hoeori gamja is more starchy and chuan'r is more meaty but they're both salty skewers! ...do we even have skewers?" The Mass Villa isn't exactly a classical Barbeque vibe...
Chris looks downcast for a brief instant. It must be important to Akane, so she listens attentively. "Only sort of kaiju? Huh, are there half-kaiju? I don't really know much about them, I never was involved in the Hell campaign or anything... Didn't-" she halts herself, remembering Leina's word of caution about Tsutsujidaian topics. "Did Tarabaman have kaiju because of real kaiju, then?" she salvages. She'd rather come off as old than as insensitive.
Chris ferries from the pantry with soy sauce, barbeque seasoning, a tangy sauce, garlic salt, and a stray bouillon packet, unloading them all onto the table next to Akane.
Her expression shifts, moving from matter-of-fact context of her history to worry and sorrow--and, for a brief moment, a glimmer of fury remembering their crimes.
"I'm so sorry... for bringing up a difficult memory." She kind of stammers a little, and ends up rambling about how "It's hard, because I don't think adults should burden children with adults' wars, but... we can't tell children nothing, either, because they'll find out once they're adults themselves. Or worse, even before..."
"No, I'm glad you told me. I just hate that... even once they were stopped, they're still hurting people." Were they stopped, Chris? Were they really? You were at Sri Lanka. And you've dealt with Manhunters.
"...Well, anyway," A mouthful. The seasoning of bitter memories elevated the sweet mango and coconut milk to ambivalent bliss. "In 84 I was working in space at Anaheim, I picked a fight with some Titans bullying some colonists... aaand it escalated to mobile suits. I got pretty banged up and Anaheim thought the best place to drop under the radar was a hospital on Earth. My doctors and I disagreed on my discharge date, but once they let me leave I was trying to hail a cab." [Read: 'I made a scene and almost picked a fight with my own healthcare practitioners.']
Chris takes a moment to laugh. "Prettiest blonde happened to be there when I was making my way out, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. I can't tell how much was just a doctor keeping an eye on a brash convalescent, but... that encounter changed my life."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"It wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've put salt on," Akane concedes, rubbing at the back of her head. When Chris offers to make something else, she seems a little anxious. "I'll try it without first, though!" she agrees, shifting in her seat a bit.
"There's all kinds of different stuff that happens!" Akane enthuses. Despite her close encounter with it, she's ultimately still a kaiju enjoyer. "When it comes to fictional stuff, kaiju are just big monsters, but some of them are more like -- Tarabas with monster aesthetic. Or just... combined power. There's a lot of angles." The other question... "You know, I kinda wonder about that? Like... most Taraba kaiju are kinda wilder than a Red King or something..."
Chris brings out every conceivable salt, and Akane blink-blinks. She does indeed try it first without salt, and -- "Oh, this is really good, but I do kind of want the flavors to pop a little more." She looks at the wide array of salt options, and settles for the soy sauce. Just a little dash for now -- she doesn't want to overload it. ... but she does have salt cravings.
"... yeah, it's complicated," Akane agrees, at the idea of burdening children with adults' wars. It's all she can really muster for it right now. The longer story is the part she's most interested in, anyway.
Listening to Chris as she explains, Akane... giggles. "Okay, so I guess it happens to everyone a little," she admits, at the mention of a fight with Titans escalating to mobile weapons. "Huh, though. ... Sayla seems like she's got an eye out for people in trouble at all times. Really can't let a problem drop, huh..."
She chews on that. "That's really great, though? Like... I'm glad it at least kinda worked out." It doesn't seem to have totally worked out, given they're not actively dating at the moment, but still. Taking another bite of food, she murmurs, "Wow this is good."
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
Chris isn't typically the one cooking for everyone, not in this house and not even in the field, but, she does like to keep in mind people's preferences--and files this one in her mental personnel dossiers.
"Big monsters, versus Tarabas that just look like monsters? ...Kaiju can combine their powers, huh?" Chris takes another bite, and portions some of her stickyrice off to the side, far enough. Far enough for what? For R&D, of course. "A Red King?" Unfamiliar with nonhuman opponents, she can only picture a mechanical monster like the Sazabi.Chris smiles to herself, watching Akane eat. "I'm glad you like it. I guess I can see why Leina defends the kitchen the way she does. Well, my turn."
Chris takes a bite of her Control rice, and subdivides the Experimental group, testing the forkfulls of rice with soy sauce, garlic salt, a pinch of the boullion... Methodical.
"I had a bit more of a temper back then..."
She chuckled a little. "I don't know how she finds all of us. But somehow, she saves us from ourselves--while never saving herself. How did, you and Sayla? I'm guessing, Tsutsujidai…"
As she closes her mouth around a test bite, her eyes widen slightly, "Oh, Akane, you're on to something..." Not an everyday alteration, but especially worth note in hot climates with sweat and salt loss…She looks up. "We didn't last long--you know how she is with secrets, and I...just pushed until I got through or something broke. Unbreakable and Unstoppable. And well, she didn't crack, but we broke.
"87, no, 88. I went back home, learned more than I wanted. I don't..."
"...I don't remember much until she--Sayla--found me again. Dragged me out of the darkness. Sayla was...taking care of Leina, and then me too. That's how I met Leina. Now, I'd..." Conflict, pain, resolve. "I'd do anything for her."
"Actually..." Chris played with her mango, dangling the fork over her bowl. "I was, um, wondering. You're close with Leina, ...right?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah -- like, Gaialite makes a lot more sense if you treat it as just, Spike's own way of being a Taraba... he was never given anything and never found anyone to live for, so he doesn't have any power outside kaiju," Akane explains. "The movie does something different with the logic there but the movie is also a mess."
... Tarabaman Hammer is really good and the fact that the movie's take on the Spike-Hammer dynamic is so radically different from anything she concluded doesn't seem to have changed her feeling that Tarabaman Hammer is really good, actually.
The Red King thing is more interesting anyway. "Oh, it's like -- a kaiju, but in the 'big animal' sense? There's a handful of them that live in Japan and then a few more in the rest of East Asia. I'm not that interested in 'real' kaiju, they're just big animals, even if there's some inspiration there..."
And then the question comes. How did she meet Sayla? "Rikka -- uh, I'm her girlfriend -- was working with her and Gridman to defend Tsutsujidai from..." ... she has to say it, "... my kaiju. I met Sayla riding the bus with her... she was -- nice. I mostly kept throwing it in her face. If you've met Knight -- uh, that's... my brother, but also a kaiju I made?" Rubbing at the back of her head and smiling awkwardly, she starts, "Weird family dynamic. Uhhh. Right. I was telling the..."
Breathing out, she explains, "I... his job was to defeat Gridman. Because I was scared of losing Tsutsujidai when I thought it was mine. Whenever he did it wrong, it was... usually because I didn't tell him something important, but I was so unhappy about everything that I'd take it out on him. I threw stuff at him. I don't even remember what, because basically every time he'd come back to my place I'd whip something at his face and yell at him."
"Sayla saw me do it, and basically demanded I talk to her about what was going on at home? I wasn't really ready to talk then, either..." Akane -- takes a bite of rice. It gives her time to build up her courage to keep talking. "I got worse before I got better. I got so wrapped up in the part where I told her 'I'm not going to hit him or throw things at him anymore' that I almost choked him instead. ...yeah, not, uh. Not. Proud of that one."
A long, shuddering breath in. "But she didn't give up on me. She could tell Alexis was... I guess that's what gaslighting actually means, it's not just an Internet person word for lying? Anyway, she kept trying, and when she couldn't try anymore, she gave Gridman and Knight and Rikka the tools to keep trying instead. And... she made it so I didn't have to go back to the crappy 1-bedroom apartment my parents shoved me into, when I let Tsutsujidai stop being 'my city.' "
She hasn't explained it to someone who had no involvement very often, yet. But here they are. She stares into the rice with a blank expression, trying to claw herself forward on topics.
"Yeah," Akane eventually answers, "Leina and I are pretty close. It's, uh -- one of my friends works with the Yumi Foundation too? So we actually met through her and not Sayla, hahaha..." That, at least, gets her to straighten up a little. "Why, what's up?"
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
A fourty year old woman is nodding, very seriously. "He doesn't have any other strength, so..." She's listening, she's like, actively invested in listening about this show. "So Gaialite is...his own power, his own way of being a hero..." She'll have to find some time to sit down and talk about what it means for Akane, since it clearly matters a lot.
That's for latter, though. By the time she considers an expedition to go sketchbook a Red King, the atmosphere has gotten a little more pensive.
Chris nods, she remembers Rikka from the meeting, and from HaroCon... She's been running around a lot since then, though, and hasn't heard much of her. Well, except for that strange eye-contactless run-in that one time in the corridor near the therapod. That was weird. Knight, she's seen but not heard.
"You ...*made* Knight?" Is that...how much different is that from developing a Haro? It feels like a much...greater burden. Like having a child? But a child the same age as you... Yeah, this is *way* beyond her pay grade. Still, none of her more complex thoughts really make it out of her mouth, and she's not thinking of how her first statement sounded.
Is *that* what she was doing those months she was gone... "Oh Akane... That's how Sayla is. I was pretty awful when we broke up, but she still... It sounds like you've had to take on more than you knew how to handle. I'm glad you had people there to help you get to where you are now."
She's not really sure what else to say. She's never been great at relieving others of their burden. She just sits there, embarrassed, until Akane pushes onwards.
"So," she glances around, but there's not really many people moving around the Villa at this hour. "I'm making a Haro for Leina, and I want to include messages from the people that care about her. Would you want to record something for her? Not in front of me! Of course. You can send it over VERTEX. Or a secure server."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah, though, uh... whooo, it's a hard road getting there. You only really see him be a hero in the last two episodes and the movie..." Akane listens to Chris working her way through the concepts, and can't help but smile.
"Hehe... sounds like it kinda hits for you. Hammer is like the last time I bought the physical copy of a show for real... I can lend it to you if you want!" If she can drag an adult woman into the swamp, she will become very powerful. That's how it works, right?
"Yeah -- I, uh... I was making kaiju with clay. They were kind of like... a wish," she explains. "And Alexis would make them -- real. And big." It's a gross oversimplification, but she thinks Chris is finding even the simple versions of it a little overwhelming. "With Anti, I wanted... a kaiju who'd deal with stuff I felt like I couldn't. Before I realized how big a mouthful it'd be, my first name for him was, uh -- so there's this loan idiom from Chinese, gashinshotan? This makes me sound super literate but real talk I stole it from this anime I watched in middle school." She rubs at the back of her head, saying, "Anti's way easier."
"I think Sayla kinda bites off more than she can chew, but... I'm glad she did this time," Akane admits, shifting a little. The topic change is welcome.
A message for Leina, huh... "Yeah, uh -- I can do that. I'm actually kinda worried about her... I don't think I've seen her face to face since Sayla got back. I hope she's keeping up with remote school, or she's gonna end up in the same spot all over again..." She looks down, then back up to Chris. "She seems like she's got a lot on her mind. ... hope she's eating okay, too. I figure I definitely owe her a good message, so, yeah, let me get that sent off for you before I head out on my trip!"
Even the thought of the trip has her a little more excited. Gosh, two weeks with Rikka, just -- seeing the world…
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
Well, this part at least is a little more familiar to the engineer. "Things you couldn't do on your own, things you can't become? Maybe it's not the same, but... XAIRO and MAIRO are like that. Actually, their full names are pretty long... Maintenance-Assisting Independent Repair Operant, and Chelate-Armed Intervention/Rescue Operant... it doesn't sound nearly as elegant as Anti's onetime name!"
"I...haven't heard much about Kerib, but what I have...I'm sorry, Akane, I can't imagine it's easy to have your wishes granted by someone like that. I'd much rather... you be able to grant your wishes yourself." She waves her fork. "Hey, you ever want a Haro of your own, or even just an automaton, I'll do what I can to help. That way, it'll be you making your own wish come true!"
Leina... "Yeah, she's...over in Japan. I think she's staying with Frau...? It's weird seeing the two of them," everyone knew which two, "Apart like this... She doesn't let people in easy, neither of them do..." A mildly concerned glance upwards. "She's been behind in school?" I mean...it would be hard to keep up even just having the life she has, much less her boyfriend and girlfriends' lives added on... "I really appreciate that, Akane. I... I need to make sure this Haro can protect her even when I can't! That's what I've been working so hard on..."
"No, um. Don't lend it to me," Chris adds, picking up on the lede from earlier. "I'd rather watch it with you, maybe when you get back from your trip!"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"That kinda stuff is all about showing off how you think as a designer, right? I like the rhymes... that's cute." She breezes along to Alexis. "... I say a lot that I hate him, but at the same time, like -- none of this would have been... Rikka wouldn't have been -- and Gridman, and Yuta, and..." She lets out a long sigh.
"It'd be easier if I could just totally hate him, you know? And he's still out there, and he's still doing all that stuff -- and like, I do hate him, but I..." She trips over her words. That suggests it's time to eat, instead -- and eat she does. It's a good, convenient way to cut away from the things she doesn't want to say.
When she starts over, it's on Haros instead. "Rikka and I are making a kitchen assistant Haro! I'm designing the case mods and doing all that kinda stuff. She's doing the internals. She's getting really good at this kinda thing... there's something about seeing her with her hands all scuffed up and covered in thermal paste that's like..." Her expression is a little dreamy. "I don't think I could've imagined falling for someone like that, but that kinda makes it better, hahaha..."
Right. Focus. "Oh, Kobayashi-san? I haven't met her yet." As for Leina being behind in school, Akane says, "Yeah. She got held back for missing way too much. And -- huh..." 'Can protect her even when I can't,' huh. Akane puts a mental pin in that one.
"Ooh -- sure, I'm game. Even if not every piece of Hammer content landed for me, the show rules? I can make time for that."
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
Chris scoots her chair closer so she can reach out and, hesitating for a moment to catch her eye and make sure she's not tetchy about it, takes hold of Akane's shoulder. Grasps it firmly, smiles sadly.
"As much as we want, we can't change what's happened to us. Can't undo what we've suffered... can't take back what we did wrong. Lord knows I wish I could."
Faces, she can't forget them. She herself spent time reviewing every obit from Ribo, from the neighborhood she crushed fighting the Kämpfer. Jesus, Chris. It's been almost twenty years, it was your first urban combat! ...Well, it's true, too, that she's gotten inured to the old pains. Not the new ones, though. Still, she keeps up the encouraging expression, recalling a positive anecdote.
"Uh, there's a farmer in the countryside, he had a crude... well, the direct translation is even worse, but when I found his grandson, but not his son... he told me, "Manure still grows good food." That's stuck with me, I guess. Sorry, uh, let me serve you seconds."
Chris transfers the last of the rice to another bowl, and tops it with a chunk or two of her own mango. She lets Akane end the pensive lull.
When it comes to Haros, the engineer lights up. "Rikka's good with hardware assembly? I wouldn't have guessed! A kitchen assistant…maybe a splash-resistant lacquer…? I can't wait to see it in action."
"I'm learning more about you two every day. You know, I have this friend who really likes fashion and Haros; she's on Banagher's forum and I think she'd love to see what you come up with! Maybe you and she will design my next kiddo~"
She chuckles a bit at the affectionate admission, and there's a twinkle in her eye at Akane's expression. "It's amazing to be with someone that makes you surprise yourself, you can learn things you never knew. I'm truly happy to look over both of you." Wha, is she just playing up the Old Widow bit, or is she really acting like that kind of stuff is all behind her??
"I'm looking forward to it. I'll be eagerly awaiting your return!"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane always hesitates at touch; her right shoulder twitches just a little bit, but after a moment she lets down her guard and lets Chris clasp her on the shoulder.
"Yeah, you're right. I spent... a long time trying to act like it didn't work that way," she says, lamely. Her thoughts drift to her own damage, both targeted and collateral. Tonkawa... Arcadia...
... the metaphor startles her out of it. "Oh, uh -- thanks." She wasn't expecting that. Taking another bite, she does her best to pull her head out of the spiral. ... talking about Rikka helps. "Oh, that's a really good idea. I still haven't painted the case or anything so that's a pretty good idea, and easy to slip in there. I'm used to stuff where I don't have to do that kinda step." It's a good catch, and genuinely appreciated. "And -- uh..." ... is she up for new people?
"... Toss me your buddy's VERTEX or something!" she eventually says. She elaborates, "It's a little easier if I can do that kinda thing on my own time..."
Another bite. "Jeez, this is really good. Thanks. ... Looking forward to it." Even if she already has one thing in the future to look forward to -- soon she'll have another, and another...