2023-05-28: The End of the Path
- Cast: Koji Kabuto, Rita Bernal
- Where: ???
- Date: U.C. 0097 05 28
- Summary: All has been lost. Imprisoned and weak, Rita Bernal reaches out to Koji Kabuto to apologize for her failure. Despite the weight of horror before them, Koji manages to rally his own spirits and rekindle the Heart of the Phenex.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
It has been... a long, long series of nights since 2100 Ra-Shalom. Koji has been awake for most of them, napping fitfully. The room in the Kabuto residence dedicated to his personal lab work is becoming more and more what would be termed an 'alarming mess' of papers, covered with indecipherable scrawlings in emerald ink and pictures of green whirlpools on endless black.
This knowledge has to be made physical, so he can look at it and have it make sense.
A distress call went out a short while ago, to Nouvelle Tokyo - and Sayaka took Mazinger Z. Koji had said "I might as well oversee the cleaning of the audio we recorded from the Banshee."
A bright, Original-Haro-Green flash drive sits in the slot of his computer.
A flashing green light indicates that the cleaning is complete - the pilot's voice has been descrambled and can now be heard clearly.
The man sitting at the computer is in no rush to click - fatigue has caught up with him.
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This is a fitful dozing, not yet REM sleep - an empty blackness, but not the same blackness of the Kafims' void. One could, perhaps, light a candle here without feeling like it would be immediately smothered by Her presence.
Indeed, something is alight here - a single tiny star, trails of gossamer light wisping off it into the infinite darkness - nigh-imperceptible but unbreakable bonds of brotherhood and family. Shiro Kabuto. Tetsuya Tsurugi. Sayaka Yumi. Jun Hono. Lisa. Baby Gai. Further away: Sayla and Leina. Guy and Mikoto. Judau and Roux. Kamille and Fa, among a myriad others deeply valued to this single point of light.
Look closer.
That light is Koji Kabuto - a mental image of him exactly as he is in the world - slumped in his office chair, papers of mad scrawlings strewn about him.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Koji Kabuto!"
A breathy voice calls, sweet despite its urgency. It's a voice Koji knows well by now, belonging to a woman who came to view him as something almost like family. Perhaps the feeling was mutual at some point. It won't be after tonight.
"Koji!" Rita calls again. It's a delicate sort of thing. She needs to wake him enough to render him present and aware of the dream, while not sending him all the way back to the waking world.
"I have to tell you something! It's very important!"
Hopefully sooner than later, Koji Kabuto will open his eyes. The sight that greets him will be the same as the one he fell asleep to, save one thing. The image of Rita Bernal, transparent and effervescent, bloodied and clearly unwell.
"Do you know how long I've been waiting for you to fall asleep?!" She chides, perched atop one of the nearby desks, somehow having not disturbed the maelstrom of papers. "Once this is over, I'm going straight to Sayaka."
Rita's face falls at that point. She's clad in her normal suit once more, a gaping wound in her chest and one of her arms hanging from the shoulder at an odd angle. There's no fire this time, at least, but she's clearly feeling the aftermath of her capture at Metis Colony.
"Thank you, Koji, for everything." Rita's hands clasp together in her lap. "I'll never forget what you did for me. You gave me safety, music, dresses, and family. It's more than I ever deserved."
Koji will surely wish to interject here, and so before he can, Rita continues.
"I've been trying to tell you this since I arrived at the Photon Power Labs." She lowers her head, ashamed, hiding her green eyes in shadow. "My sister. The Banshee. Her pilot is Leina Ashta. She's been tortured horribly, in ways that have destroyed her."
"If she was rescued, it would lead to Banagher and the Unicorn's destruction, along with the large marjoity of the Three Ships Alliance. The Banshee must be present in order to save them. She must be piloted by someone who loves Banagher." Rita speaks with no emotion in her voice, as if reciting a practiced speech. "But beyond that, if the Unicorn's path is not kept clear, my own path would be destroyed. And so I allowed this to happen to her. For the sake of the path."
Rita's hands clench each other tightly.
"I can't bear it any longer. She must be saved. No matter the consequence. But now, it's too late. And that's my fault."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
A voice that doesn't enter his ears. A voice in his mind, calling him... lulling him...
He slumps more in his seat.
Illuminated only by the light he believes in, for a moment he thinks he's woken up - it looks almost identical to the scene that last met his eyes. Perhaps that's why it's so easy to draw him into this space despite his... lack of Newtype potential.
After all - he's seen something Other himself, now; it's a miracle the Void hasn't drowned him out.
Comprehending Rita perched on one of his lab desks, cheerful despite her gruesome injuries - which he has come to understand as something like a presentation of the Phenex's physical damage - Koji is stunned silent for a moment.
"... I can't sleep," he admits, "without trying to get what I've seen out of my head."
The Void itself might be imperceptible to Rita, but are its effects on those not beholden to it? Even around her - cracks of emerald that seem to suck in the light of her presence, as Koji perceives her.
"Yuliana... showed us what her world is like. How she sees it." He shakes his head.
Rita has things to say - she thanks him for everything they gave her that she never felt she deserved. Koji has a sense of foreboding, and opens his mouth -
Leina.
Even though this is a dream, he grabs out at the desk to steady himself. Even though he does this...
Have you ever been about to fall asleep, and had your brain go "AAAHHHHH WE'RE FALLING" and wake you up?
No, of course Rita hasn't - not for a long, long time.
Well.
It's a lot like this.
It's impossible to say how long this sensation, of an invisible floor vanishing underfoot and emotional gravity taking hold, lasts - but there is a psychic sensation of 'impact' - of hitting, not floor perhaps, but... 'core'.
What emotion is core to Koji Kabuto? What drove him to take the fight to Doctor Hell, all those years ago?
You might say 'rage', and this, superficially, is a valid guess. Koji is certainly angry right now.
"... All this time." The words are choked. An image surges to mind, unbidden (how could it be? He has no control over this space) - a brunette woman's body, wearing a pink dress and a green apron. She's dead on a nice carpet, but no blood - the Staff of Bardos left no sign of its work that day.
It's the same image he saw when he first confronted the Banshee - his memory of seeing his grandfather's housekeeper's - Rumi's - body on the floor of the entrance hall of his grandfather's mansion.
Back then he interpreted it as a threat, that the Banshee would take people he loved from him - now it feels more like a prophetic warning - that he had already lost someone.
"I knew you knew something," he says. "And I had a feeling Leina in particular upset you."
A spike of self-loathing. "I should have seen it. I knew something was wrong, I've known that girl too long to not notice when she's going through the motions at her own birthday party - "
'thanks for doing this for him' she'd said, of Banagher, at the party. Not for her, even though the party had been for her and Banagher.
As though she didn't deserve it.
Baleful yellow eyes alight in the darkness. Rita's seen them glare at her enemies, before - the eyes of Mazinger Z.
No - they're sharper, more angled. Something else. And they're glaring at her.
Doubtless she expected this.
"what gives you the RIGHT - " he swallows back bile, even though this is a dream - "to decide somebody should SUFFER just because it's the WAY THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE?"
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Yuli was the same way, back when I was alive. I've never been able to see it." Rita's voice is strangely fond. "'Eyes in the dark.' She'd grab me, panicking. It was the only time she touched me without being forced to."
There's a sad, soft little smile. Perhaps this is the form 'nostalgia' takes, for Rita -- your best friend almost hugging you after having a traumatic nightmare from beyond physical reality.
"Things were so easy then. Everything made sense. It hurt, but it was easy. Now, nothing hurts, but nothing makes sense, either." As if to contradict Rita's words, a stream of blood trickles down her normal suit. "I think I liked the way things were before."
A sigh. "It's not Yuli's fault she's like this. It's that awful witch who seduced her, and the doctors of the REA. We can still save her."
This statement doesn't have the same weight to it Rita's prophecies usually do.
Koji's world has to recenter itself, and the dream spins around them. Rita reaches out a hand to keep their meeting place spiritually viable, doing /something/ with the blue radiant power she wields so easily.
She feels no nostalgia toward the sensation of 'falling'. Spirits forget the realities of the flesh so quickly, especially one who ascended with such determination.
The impact, however, still draws a pained sound from Rita. Green eyes squeeze closed. Perhaps she wasn't being perfectly honest when she said things didn't 'hurt' now.
"All this time." Rita echoes, in agreement. She raises her head to observe the image of Rumi's dead body, visibly unphased. She's experienced millions of deaths at this point. What's one more?
"You were right." She adds, simply. "And it isn't your fault. She purposefully kept you from realizing the truth, and I helped her when she needed me to."
Rita looks Koji in the eyes. "Once, I told Leina if she asked me, I would stop this from happening to her. It was purely for my own sake. The brainwashing had taken hold in her very soul, and she could no more ask to be saved than she could save herself."
"I have the right because I see further." Rita doesn't appear to react to Koji's baleful glare -- though there's a hint of tears in her eyes, just for a second. They vanish, as though erased, before anything can come of them. "I have the right, Koji, because my actions will save the lives of billions."
"And by the time I let myself forget that, it was too late." Rita's voice is even. Always so even. "Martha Carbine-Vist has taken the princess, the Unicorn, and her pilot. The path has been lost, as have my sisters."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Don't." She's heard Koji roaring defiance, before, hot and passionate.
This is ice.
"Don't you dare use those 'billions of lives' as your justification." He glares up at her, matching the floating Mazin eyes behind him. "You've said it yourself - Michele and Jona are your entire world. They're all that's ever mattered to you."
"Don't pretend you care about Leina, either, only choosing now to come tell me. If you're here, it's because things have progressed to a point that they can no longer be stopped. You let them torture her. What, is it okay just because it happened to you, too?"
This is crueler than he means to be, but... this is a realm of the heart. However conscious he might be - his true feelings will out.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"It's the truth. It's not a nice one, but it still exists." Rita says, calmly. "The path I found saved the Earthsphere /and/ Jona and Michele. There were many that would've saved one or the other. They both mattered to me."
Rita, finally, looks stricken as Koji questions her love for Leina. "She's my /sister/!"
As if that's all that needs to be said. As if that makes a difference.
"You have no idea how hard this has been! Every time they'd put her in the deprivation chamber, I'd pull her soul to the Resonant Plane and help her endure!" Rita's temper flares, but is quickly extinguished, returning her to that calm, emotionless state.
"No." Green eyes meet the Mazin eyes floating behind Koji. Is this his true self, or just a manifestation of his rage? "None of this is okay. I have never had a chance to make things okay. Only to make them so humanity will survive."
Rita looks back to Koji. "We discussed this once before. Do you understand now? Sacrificing a few people that you love, or sacrificing a world. No matter how many brave words you have, choices have to be made."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"No, the Banshee's your sister - you've made that clear. Leina's just a girl. Just a girl who's been through TOO DAMN MUCH ALREADY!" Tears of his own are filling his eyes - hot, stinging. "Just because the Banshee's needed... She deserved none of this!"
He falls quiet, closing his eyes. "God. God DAMN Carbine. I knew she was mocking us, broadcasting the trigger phrase. I guess the joke ran deeper than we thought." He opens cold grey eyes, staring back at Rita. "And you and Michele, too."
"It's not just 'words'." The sharp pain she feels suddenly - that is an insult to him. "I would never abandon anyone I loved for the sake of the world. A world without any of them would be unforgivable."
He could never forgive himself. Not after helping 3G claw themselves out of the lightless void of a teenage girl's unbearable depression, just to get back to Sayaka.
"If choices have to be made, then I choose both. Every time."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Rita endures Koji's tears. Again, her own eyes get watery -- but just for a second. They vanish like steam before the sunlight.
"Leina doesn't deserve any of this. It was supposed to be someone else. But he never set foot onto the path. The role had to be filled." Rita's voice echoes, otherworldly light shining in her eyes. "And I could not take it myself."
Pain lances through their spiritual connection, and Rita crumples for a moment, sniffling. It hurts. The hurt was supposed to end when she died. It's not fair.
"Michele." Rita whispers, lowering her head again. "Didn't know. This is my fault, not hers."
A few glimmering teardrops fall down Rita's cheeks, hissing into steam as they impact with her lap.
"Koji Kabuto." Her voice rings with strength, again. Here, in this dream realm, she is at her strongest. "How easy is it for you? With your family. With your castle. You've suffered, you've been through war."
"But you haven't done it alone. Your choices were backed up by others. Validated and respected. You had the brain and body of an adult, by the time fate came for you." Rita's head raises, then tilts to the side.
"I told you from the start I didn't deserve your kindness. I told you what I was." Rita's voice is nearly visible, warping dream-space as she speaks. "If you would choose differently? I'm thankful it was me, and not you. I did choose 'both'."
Cracks appear in Rita's spiritual form, exuding golden light. "This is the path of choosing 'both'. I will not sacrifice humanity, even for my own heart. The future waiting for them is too important."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"... It was never easy." Hospital room after hospital room. Sometimes looking up from the bed; sometimes looking down on Sayaka in traction - and the guilt and dread that he couldn't protect her, and might lose her (combined with, deep down, a shame that he'd made her worry whenever he ended up there himself). "We lost good people." Lori and Loru, Professor Morimori, Shun, Masao...
Lorelei.
As ever, the image of the android girl who was built to be the control component of a mobile weapon comes to him - and how her creator grew to love her as a daughter and took her away from Hell rather than let her be used that way... Only for Baron Ashura to kill him and drive Lorelei into a despair that saw her become the machine in the end - to fulfill her father's wish for the Rhine X1 to surpass Mazinger Z, the only way she understood - and destroy herself when it became apparent that the Castle of Iron would not break before her.
She looks about seven or eight, in Koji's mind's eye, before the destiny her father tried to protect her from came for her anyway.
"What's the point? Why is this future so important, if getting there means more and more people suffer?"
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Again, Rita weathers Koji's memories, though she visibly frowns at the sight of Sayaka in traction. "I know you've suffered. I know you've lost people."
There's a whole museum dedicated to that fact, after all. More than enough for a ghost to stroll through one evening after it closed.
"And I'm sorry, Koji. I don't want that for anyone." Rita's mental gaze lingers on Lorelei. She's reminded of LiSA, of course, and another frown appears on the spirit's face as Rita witnesses Lorelei's death.
"Getting there means humanity still exists." She murmurs. A hand waves in the air before her, banishing the residue of Koji's memories. "You still don't understand the scale of the future I fought to prevent."
There's a long pause. If she could, Rita would search through Possibility for the words that would make Koji understand, but she has been torn from her visions now.
Maybe there are no words. Maybe Koji simply cannot ever understand Rita's viewpoint, in any branch of Possibility.
"It doesn't matter anymore. I've failed. Vist has my sisters, and soon they're going to have LaPlace's Box. Even Zoltan is redundant now. Thorean will use his monster to destroy Possibility when he finds he cannot have what he's programmed to desire."
Rita's hands knit together once more.
"All I can do is try to stop him. But I am not my sisters. I am not enough on my own. And if I use myself up to stop Thorean, Jona will use the second monster to punish the world for the way I betrayed him."
Somehow, the Phenex's Heart looks small, perched on the edge of Koji's desk. She hasn't physically changed, but her force of will is greatly diminished.
"All I'm here to do is to say how sorry I am. I can't offer anything else now. With Jona taking the monster, my visions are gone. I wanted more than this. But it's like you said. By acting for the things I wanted, I made everything bad happen instead."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
It's strange. Surely Koji should be furious at her? The anger is still there, but... something feels different.
"No."
What is he rejecting?
"It's not over yet. I won't accept giving up here - and neither should you, if you really do care about Leina. If the future you were chasing is broken... Then these hopeless outcomes can break too - and we can build something else."
A thought occurs - a guess.
"You only ever saw one fate, didn't you? You never saw the Mycenaean Warrior Beasts overrunning the world. You never saw the Primeval War - " An inexplicable monster of a memory, this one, a creature howling ZONDEEEEEEEEEEEER to baleful skies " - and that very nearly did end the world. You never foresaw New Yark, or the invasion."
These things all would have happened while she, Michele and Jona were in custody, after all.
"It was never your sole responsibility, Rita Bernal. You were just a child. You were all just kids, dragged into something of scope and scale you could never have understood - and all three of you have blamed yourselves for the actions you felt you were forced to take. You didn't fail - all three of you were failed, again and again, by this world. I suppose, from your point of view, I'm one of the lucky ones."
It's not an unfamiliar feeling to him... but that just means he needs to pay it forward. Just like for Sayla and Guy, with their own loneliness and struggles.
Oh god. Sayla.
"... How much do you understand of what they did to Leina? How did they make her turn on you again?"
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Rita's head tilts again -- this time in a more normal, curious fashion. What is Koji rejecting? How many times does she have to tell him what's ahead for it to sink in?
"My visions only went so far." Rita says, quietly. "Possibility becomes too dispersed. But once I died, there were always around five outcomes at the very, very end."
Rita raises her hand, one finger extended. "The future I fight for."
A second finger. "Absolute nothingness."
A third. "Something... very strange, that I've never understood."
A fourth. "Something always changing. Different things. The Primeval War. The Devil Gundam. All kinds of things."
Finally, her thumb. "Something familiar. Something that's already happened."
"I never saw that far when I was alive. It was only ever the singular path." Rita's voice is soft, still, as she lowers her hand. "Only ever the monster. Even when I heard about things like the Primeval War, I knew it wouldn't matter, so I didn't pay attention."
Koji tells Rita it wasn't her responsibility. It isn't the first time he's said that, but the reaction is much the same. Her shoulders tremble, and she glances away, suddenly very interested in one of the papers near Koji's elbow.
"It doesn't matter if I was a child. I had the vision of a goddess." Rita's voice wobbles. "The fact that I still failed only means I got too greedy."
Koji /is/ one of the lucky ones, to Rita. She can't help but look on his past, present, and future with envy, as much as she tries to ignore the feeling.
"...it shouldn't have been the way it was for Jona and Michele. They should've just... told the Titans it was me from the start. I should have told the Titans it was me. I shouldn't have been so greedy for time with them."
Green eyes well up with tears, and this time, they don't immediately fade. Koji's question sends Rita's entire form trembling.
"I know everything they did to her. I watched. It was the least I could do, so she wouldn't have to be alone." Rita squeezes her eyes shut, letting scorching tears sizzle down her cheeks. "They have a command phrase they can use to do many things to Leina, most often just to force her compliance. It's a lot like what was done to Yuli and I in the Institute."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Rita..." He's going to have to give the speech again, isn't he. "Just before grandfather died - before he passed Mazinger Z on to me - he warned me that with its power I could become a devil or a god - and it was a warning. Humans aren't supposed to be either of those - we can't handle it. Maybe we can take on the mantle of one of the two, for a time... but it's not our place to claim it for good. The closest we've come to that kind of manifestation to date has been Axis Shock - and even that sent Amuro to the worst possible place as its price."
"It does matter. I can only imagine how much it shook you to see Operation British, let alone... everything else. To have that weighing on you... I don't know that I would have made it as long as you did. A child with the vision of a god but none of the understanding... how could it not be a tragedy? The fact that you think of wanting more time with those closest to you as 'greedy'..."
He sighs, and tries a different tactic. "You said you would go away, when you'd saved Jona and Michele."
"What's the point in saving them if you're not there for them? If they're not happy afterwards? Most of us don't have a perfect future to wait for - so many people will be left behind. We have to make our happiness while we can."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"I remember. Devil or god." Rita nods, listening politely. "The world of the living can only be changed by the living. It shouldn't be for people like me. And even I didn't do it right. Maybe your grandfather was right, Koji."
Perhaps it's sinking in this time. Rita looks thoughtful, though her face falls as Koji goes on. It wasn't just /seeing/ Operation British. A freshly awakened Newtype as powerful as Rita was, then, she felt each and every death.
"I... could've..." Rita begins. Her form wavers. "I could've saved them so much pain. All I can do to make up for it is to go. For them, and for my sisters. I'm not a person anymore. I shouldn't be with the living. This is their time, and their world."
Green eyes dart up to look at Koji, guilt radiating through this shared dreamspace.
"I wish I could stay. I want to talk to them again. I want to see Jona and Michele smile. I want to listen to Yuli talk about her projects. I want my sisters to be safe and happy like they used to be."
Rita's hands trace a little pattern against the desk she perches on. "But it's too late now. Even if I want to stay, I'm not strong enough to fight two monsters. The Phenex has been hurt too many times, and my spirit is too thin."
"I tried. At the end, at Metis." Rita admits. "I was going to throw away the path and bring Leina home. I wanted to believe in things the way you do. But."
A hand comes up to touch the wound in her chest. "It didn't work."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Who says you're not a person? You have desires. Hopes. Fears. You can still act upon the world, even if you think it's a mistake to do so."
"God knows, I've made so many mistakes."
"What matters is what we do in the wake of mistakes - how we get back up when we're pushed to the limit. That's why the Castle of Iron is invincible - because even when it falls, I will rebuild it and get it back on its feet. That's the promise I made."
"It's not easy," he repeats, "to believe. I used to not, myself, when all I could see in front of me was revenge against Ashura and the next Kikaiju fight. Sayaka and Old Man Yumi, and everyone else... they believed in me, like you said - and that taught me to believe in changing the future. It's not without hurt - people like the Vists push back whenever they can - but part of believing in the future is to keep walking forwards to face it."
"Tell me what you want, Rita. If your vision of the True Path is gone, and all that's left is the fallout of failure... tell me what you want most, above all. Be as greedy as you like."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Rita wants to counter what Koji says, but somehow, she can't quite bring herself to do it. She looks at him with an expression somewhere between curiosity and wariness. Of course Koji can make mistakes. He's alive. That's his right.
"It's not easy." Rita murmurs. Her green eyes are clear as she continues to listen. "Sometimes it doesn't work. I don't have anyone i made a promise to. Maybe that's why it didn't work for me."
A soft nod. Failure is all that's ahead.
"If there's nothing left anyway." Rita tilts her head back, staring at the ceiling while she thinks. "I want to see my mom and dad again. I want to wear a dress, and listen to music. No."
A soft laugh. This time, a memory echoes from Rita -- perhaps loudly enough for Koji to witness it, here in the dream realm. A tiny blonde girl sitting on a woman's lap. They both wave glow sticks in time with a concert playing on a television.
"I want to go to a concert and dance." A teeny-tiny smile stays on Rita's face. "I want to go to a wedding and catch the flowers. I want to go on another trip with Jona and Michele. I want to help Yuli with one of her projects. I want the Phenex to meet her sisters and not be afraid they'll hurt each other."
As if by fairy dust, Rita starts to float above the desk, taking a few loose papers along in her wake.
"I want Banagher and Leina to go on the best date ever, and I want you and Sayaka to make LiSA smile." Ideas string together in a chain like pearls on a string. "I want to touch a real bird! I want to go home to Australia again, and play on the swings!"
"I want to take a picture of myself and all the people I love together, and print it out and put it on a wall." Rita laughs. "Until it fades from the sun, and you have to tell people who all the faces were, because they can't tell anymore."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Despite the gravity of what he's been told, as Rita speaks - allows herself, for once, to be selfish, and list want after want - some so small they'd almost seem irrelevant - a warm smile blossoms on Koji's face.
"So be it." He finally gets up off his chair, approaching Rita and extending one hand.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Huh--? Oof."
Rita, having lost track of her position in space, bonks into the ceiling of the dreamspace. Flushing with embarrassment, she floats back down to the floor, standing just in front of Koji.
A hand is reached out. Rita looks at it for a moment.
"Did I say something wrong?"
Despite her worry, she takes the hand offered to her, squeezing tight.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
(( OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgrbL3b1M6Q ))
As Rita cautiously takes Koji's hand, the glaring eyes behind him - change. They can't change shape, but they become... warmer. Gentler. Then they flash and reshape into a silhouette limmed in light. Mazinger Z? No - the wings are too grandiose, too flared; the horns too pronounced, with drill bores that shouldn't be there curving around its arms, and a shining jewel on its chest, with a burning Z emblem.
This is Koji Kabuto's dream. His hope. A promise to the world. Something he wishes to bring into being to achieve his goals.
A promise to Rita.
"Rita Bernal," he announces, gravely. "In the names of Juzo and Kenzo Kabuto; on my honour as the pilot of Mazinger Z; I swear my strength to yours, to fight to make sure you get everything you want. I will help you save Jona Basta."
"I will show you a future worth believing in."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Rita flinches back as those eyes change, almost wrenching herself from Koji's grasp, but... It feels warm, and gentle. Wings appear. Nothing with wings can be bad, right?
"Who are you?" Rita asks the new robot, as it shimmers before her. "Do you exist yet?"
But Koji draws her attention back, and she blinks widely at him. He is absolutely sincere, the love and truth of his words bringing light to the dream until everything takes on a soft glow.
"You... will?"
Green eyes search, once more, for a lie. For any cruelty.
None can be found.
Rita presses herself forward, wrapping her arm around Koji tightly, hiding her face in his shoulder. Despite being overcome with longing, no tears come to her eyes. All she can do is cling to Koji, as if terrified he'll vanish.
"I believe you."
Her voice is small.
"I promise I'll fight too. For the future. /My/ future."
Rita pulls back. Green eyes shine, and for the space of a heartbeat, the room fills with golden cubes of light.
"And for all the ones waiting for you."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
The light of dawn (but not the Dawn) trickles in through the window into Koji's lab. Somehow the touch of daylight makes his work getting the visions of 2100 Ra-Shalom out into physical form seem... less mad.
Grey eyes open. His cheeks are stained with tears - he's been crying in his sleep, but it feels... different. Cathartic.
He looks down at his right hand, squeezing it and feeling a phantom of Rita's desperate clinging to him. The promise remains.
He looks up at the computer screen. The blinking green light. He already knows, but he needs to hear it.
He presses play.
"No. I am alone. And I deserve to be alone." Leina Ashta's voice. Unmistakable. Cold. Heartbroken.
"You're wrong," he whispers to the recording, which cannot contradict him, "and we'll prove you wrong again and again, no matter what."
He picks up his phone and dials a number. "Shiro. I know, it's early. Code kuro. Let Tetsuya and Jun know."
Kuro - black. Family emergency.
There is more work to do.