2023-07-31: Where Are You Stepping?
- Log: Where Are You Stepping?
- Cast: Knight, Gridman
- Where: Junk Shop 'Aya', Tsutsujidai
- Date: 2023-07-31
- Summary: Knight goes to visit Gridman, to thank(?) him for helping rescue Liam. Gridman tells Knight about Duma -- and Knight gives a conclusive response about whose lives he's prioritising, even as Gridman feels conflicted about ending a life which tried to connect with him. Knight tries to teach Gridman why school is about connection, too.
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"I'm going out," Knight says, the very day after they get home.
"Mouuu! Seriously?!" Nidaime stomps her foot, gesturing with the still-suddy plate she's in the middle of washing. (Yes, the Mass's Villa has staff, but Nidaime doesn't expect them to do everything.) "We just got back, Knight!!"
Knight turns to the window, and looks -- vaguely, specifically -- up. "I have to see... him."
Nidaime sighs, and reaches out a hand. "Fine, fine," she accedes, "give it here."
Knight hands over his dirty plate, and says, with a completely straight face: "Thanks for your hard work."
"Don't thank me yet!" Nidaime chirps, as she takes it. "You're doing the dishes all through next week!"
"I accept it," Knight says, and leaves.
~*~*~
Ring-a-ding goes the bell, as the Junk Shop's door opens, and another man's treasure steps through.
"Oh! A customer..?" Orie turns, and smiles, when she sees -- "Knight. What can I get you?"
"Lunch," Knight requests, helpfully, as he walks inside. Orie chuckles, to herself, and knows just what to get him.
He stops, in the middle of the room, and turns. The camera turns, with him, and beside him his crushing intent.
"Gridman. Where are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
A world away, dishes are also being washed. Battle Tracto Max, with his sleeves rolled up and a nice apron covering his suit, carefully tends to each plate and cup from the cafe. Despite the monotony of the chore, he seems in high spirits, humming along to softly-playing music.
Ring-a-ding goes the bell, and the largest Hyper Agent looks toward the door. Knight is given a nod, and then Max returns to his task. They don't have much to say to each other. The real reason Knight is here must surely be to speak with...
"Huh?" Gridman raises his head, pencil still in hand. A few textbooks sit open in front of him, surrounding a stack of worksheets. 'Practice Entry Exam', reads the one he is currently working on. "Oh, Knight! It's good to see you."
Orie is already handling refreshments, so Gridman simply gathers his schoolwork, haphazardly stuffing it into his nearby backpack. "Just working on some stuff. You never show up without a purpose, so what's going on?"
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"You responded to a man in need, didn't you." Rather than making Gridman get up, Knight comes to him, and -- it's not to attack him, for once, despite the pressure in his bearing.
He sits down in a chair like a normal person.
"Liam," Knight adds, explanatory. He must not consider his serial number part of his name. "He taught me how to cook an egg." That's not the extent of their interactions, of course, but...
Well, Knight's the sort of guy who would focus on something practical like that.
"It's good you were there."
Knight looks to that backpack, all stuffed full of knowledge. "What are you doing," he asks, too straight-faced to be a question.
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Gridman, though he trusts Knight as an ally and something like a family member now, still watches him approach with a sort of caution in his eyes. All is well, thankfully. No attacks, no sawblades.
"Yeah, we heard about how he was captured and headed out as fast as we could. Got in some fights." Gridman offers, a little sadly. "I'm not sure how much we actually helped in the end. We just wound up fighting other test subjects... More conditioned human beings. I never wanted to fight a human, not to mention one suffering so much."
Max wipes his hands on a dishtowel and moves to the coffee machine, putting together Gridman's signature order. It'd be awkward if Knight was the only one eating.
"Were you there too? Rescuing Liam?" Gridman asks, before glancing back down at his backpack. "Oh, uh... It's time for college entrance exams, so I'm trying to prepare. I keep bombing the practice tests. I'm really not good at school things, and I hate it, but Akane said I owe it to Yuta. So I'm... giving it my all!"
There's a sort of half-baked determination in that last sentence. Gridman is, as he would say, fighting bravely, but to little result. No matter what he tries, the knowledge seems to resist sticking in his mind.
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
He did get him pretty good that one time. That's where Knight learned that human blood is red.
(Later, in an alleyway...)
"He's all right. And the others." Well. 'All right' is relative; amongst other things poor Liam's got to be nursing a bruise after Knight punched him in the face. It was necessary. Don't worry about it. "Since the Crucible were launching their mobile suits to deal with the threat, we were able to sneak inside the ship where they were holding them."
Which means, presumably, Gridman's fight wasn't in vain. Knight leaves him to draw the conclusion on his own, as his attention turns to the backpack again. "Oh," he says. "I see. Elementary school, middle school, high school, and college school." An extremely logical way of naming things which Knight doesn't realise has been shattered. "I went to school, once. I don't think I'll go back."
He delivers it with the same stoic-faced expression he delivers everything; there's not much hint it's a painful memory.
"Why are you struggling?"
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Gridman visibly relaxes. "I'm so thankful that Liam's okay. I felt like we were in the way, so we didn't stick around, but all of us have been worried."
"Oh, so... We did make a difference..." Gridman says, as if this is greatly surprising. "Thanks, Knight. It's really good to hear all that."
Otherworldly yellow eyes track down to Gridman's backpack as well, then back up to Knight. How long has it been since Knight's eye turned blue? Blue like Rikka, and Utsumi, and all the Neon Genesis Junior High Students. Blue like every Repli-Compoid (save one, here in the Junk Shop). Even Yuta. Especially Yuta.
So why is it just Gridman that has these weird eyes? He knows they make people uncomfortable. Why can't he have this sign of... being a part of things, being a part of Tsutsujidai? Why does he have to be different?
"I'm struggling because..." Gridman says, absentmindedly, still looking intently at Knight's blue eye. "I'm trying to learn all this high level stuff without having any idea of the low level stuff. It's like trying to build a house with no foundation. I'm not like everyone else. Even if I memorize a concept or an equation or something, it's just... I don't understand it, not really. It's just repeating information back."
A little self-conscious laugh. Gridman looks away. "And it's boring. I don't see the point in wasting my time on this. There's so many people in danger in the world... If it wasn't for Yuta, I would've stopped attending school the second I woke up as myself."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"When people act, something happens." Knight's saying the obvious, in a way, but -- well, if Gridman was worried, it's worth pointing out cause and effect.
On his eyes -- his one visible eye -- Knight is silent.
"You've already solved it." He says, at length, once he's listened. "Learn the foundations. Learn how to learn. You won't get anywhere before then."
He's silent, for a moment.
"You're bored. Do you understand why?" Beat, "Why you're learning. Schoolhouses are the place where human children learn to connect with each other and their world. They learn that they exist in context. They learn that when they act, something happens."
Knight frowns. No decoration. "If you don't understand that, you won't understand them."
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
"I can't exactly learn twelve years of school stuff before the exams period closes." Gridman sighs, rubbing at his eyes. "I've been watching online explanations, and Kaworu's been tutoring me, but I'm not making any progress."
Max sets a mug of coffee in front of Gridman. "That is not true, Gridman. Your grades have improved in all areas."
"Yeah, by like two percent." The young Hyper Agent scoffs. "...thanks for the coffee, Max."
With a nod, Max returns to the dishes. Somehow, there's always more to wash...
"Why I'm learning?" Gridman turns back to Knight, tilting his head slightly. "It's so that Yuta can get into college if he wants. It's got nothing to do with me as a Hyper Agent." Sip. "Connect with each other and their world, though... For someone who only went to one day of school, you make it sound pretty important."
Setting his mug down, Gridman frowns as Knight does. "When I act in a school room, nothing happens but getting papers marked with red ink handed to me. I guess the dance club is pretty great, but, that's not going to help Yuta at all."
It's still a connection, says something in the back of the Hyper Agent's mind.
"I thought I understood them really well. Then Duma attacked Tokyo-3, and... I realized I was fooling myself the entire time." Gridman shakes his head. "There's no way to understand humanity for someone like me."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
"You're not making any progress because you don't see the point." Knight is an auto-intelligence -- he knows a thing or two about learning. A thing like...
"It wasn't me, so it doesn't matter if it was one day," Knight explains, then, patiently. "That's why Akane Shinjo built a school." He only went for one day, but she constantly repeated it, over and over...
People don't do things for no reason.
He stops, for a moment. He's thinking. "What is Duma," he asks, at length, "to make you think that way?"
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Gridman listens. "That's true, school must be important for Akane to specifically create one in her city. Maybe I should take it more seriously." Another sigh. "I don't know. I'll figure something out."
"Duma? Do you remember that glowing cloud that was living on the other half of Tsutsujidai's PLANT?" Gridman pulls his phone out of his backpack and scrolls through his pictures. Eventually, he comes upon one clearly taken in Tsutsujidai's park. Gridman himself holds the phone up for a selfie, with an odd... aura-like creature behind him. It really does look like a glowing cloud with a few tentacle-like arms. One of those arms is holding a ramune, for some reason.
"That's Duma." Gridman hands the odd, squishy phone to Knight. "He's an Angel, but he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He's been hiding out here for a long time, and..."
This isn't going to go well.
"He wants to do something kinda like what Bujack was doing. Take away humanity's free will so everyone lives in peace." Gridman looks back at his coffee. "Sigma and I tried to talk him out of it, to make him understand that humanity wold never accept something like that, but Duma refused to listen. So I thought if I could just get him to communicate with people, they could work something else out."
"Then he attacked Tokyo-3 and put everyone in this placid state. He even managed to affect me, Calibur, Vit, and Sigma. I transformed to try and defend him from NERV, trying to get NERV professionals to communicate with Duma. Imagine what they could learn from each other! But... It just turned into an awful fight."
"Now I'm banned from the Geofront and working with NERV." Gridman takes a loooong sip. "And who knows where Duma is."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
OST: https:''www.youtube.comwatch?v=ccZuKOTb6ug Regina Spektor - Blue Lips
"Ah. That's Duma." Different emphasis; Knight is localising a name to a feature. He was never able to fight the clouds, and so he never tried.
Tentacles...
Knight frowns, as he hands Gridman's squishy phone back. (He holds it a little gingerly, as if he's afraid of hurting it; it LOOKS as if it ought to be alive.) His frown only deepens, as he listens to Gridman's explanation.
"No. Bujack was Akane Shinjo's attempt to communicate her abusive relationship with Alexis Kerib. The peace which Bujack offered ended with a knife." It's a pointed analogy for a boy who's gotten the point. He meets Gridman's eyes, unblinking. "Bujack put people you care about in danger. Duma is, too. Are you prepared for Yuta to die for a possibility?"
Knight shakes his head. "If you've guessed wrong, and Duma doesn't have a heart, people will die. When that happens, it will be too late. A human made me justify why I wasn't looking where I stepped, once... I never had to explain myself before then. Sho Utsumi. Because of him, I keep thinking about it. If I'm going to step on humans, it's because if I don't, I'm not able to fight."
His eye is blue.
"If you're fighting for humanity, you'd better be able to justify yourself."
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Oshansoo-san can take being squished. He won't mind. It is, perhaps, his purpose in life, even more than 'being a phone'.
Gridman lowers his gaze further at Knight's interpretation of Bujack. He should've done more. He should've done something, back then. Anything more than he actually did. But when Knight raises the possibility of Yuta's death, Gridman's eyes fly open wide and he looks back at the human-hearted kaiju.
"No!" Gridman cries. "Of course not! After everything I've done, letting him die--!"
"Utsumi really said all that..?" Gridman manages a little smile. "I see what you're saying. I'm willingly risking all those people in Tokyo-3 in the hope that Duma will choose to understand. Or even just the hope that he won't be violent like the other Angels."
The sound of dishes being done has ceased. Max is still looking down at the sink, but listening closely to Knight and Gridman's conversation.
"There's no way to justify it. I can't... I can't protect Duma anymore." Gridman's voice is weary, more than anything. "I can't put his one life over so many others."
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
It's a cruel thing to jump right to; even Knight, who doesn't understand everything about the situation, grasps that much. This boy they insisted was Yuta calls himself Gridman, now... Gridman, studying because Yuta can't.
There's a line of best fit.
Knight cuts through it, because it's the best and quickest way to demonstrate his point. He explains, steady, despite the way Gridman cries out before that little smile: "You were occupied." He was occupied being stabbed and fighting for his life. This is, technically, being occupied.
"You're thinking of me." It's something between a question and a statement; an assumption he progresses forward with. "But sentimentality will distract you. I'll prioritise humanity. I won't make that decision for you."
He pauses.
"But if the kaiju is a threat, I'll kill it without hesitation. That's my resolution, Gridman. You should choose a path you won't regret, too."
<Pose Tracker> Gridman has posed.
Cruel or not, Knight's tactic works. Gridman looks rattled. He takes a shuddery breath, wrapping his hands around his still-warm coffee mug.
"I -- guess I was. I still feel bad." Gridman mutters. "I feel bad about a lot of things, when it comes to Yuta. But I can't go there in battle. I'll get distracted, and people will get hurt. Or die."
Maybe Knight's right about sentimentality. Gridman considers this briefly. It feels like the opposite of what Knight said earlier, focusing on connections made through school. Which is the right path?
"I understand." Gridman's eyes are clear as Knight lays out his resolution. "I won't stop you, Knight. I won't help anyone kill Duma, but I won't interfere anymore. I think, if Duma appears again, he'll be a threat. You should be ready."
A resolution... Gridman closes his eyes. "I want to make more connections. I think that's the right path for me. I just have to figure out how to do it."
Max begins washing the rest of the dishes. There are very few left now.
<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.
Humans and kaiju aren't the same. Knight appreciates their differences, even as he acknowledges that the boundaries aren't impermeable. If Duma had a human heart, he wouldn't reject it; equally, he cannot equivocate with vague hope as Duma threatens humanity.
Yes: he knows that a kaiju, admiring humanity, can become human-like itself. He isn't even the only example.
But humans are more vulnerable than kaiju, too. It isn't an equal relationship. One kaiju, without regard for his path through a city, can end dozens of lives -- without launching a single attack.
Utsumi left him some red marks.
"I understand," Knight nods, firmly, just the once. "For both our sakes, then... I won't hesitate."
If Gridman can't bring himself to do it, Gridknight will just have to, instead.
Knight supposes Nidaime is almost done scrubbing off the dirt, now. What's left behind was beneath the life all built up on top and washed away.
He pauses, for a moment.
"Show me the red marks."
And if Gridman is willing to show Knight his failed homework, Knight will go through and proceed to explain why his teachers were correcting his essay that way. They correct his incorrect kanji because humans use kanji to reach each other even after they're long gone; they correct his misunderstandings of history because humans connect with their history to understand why they're in the situation they are now. They correct his sources because the secondary sources he's used don't consider those historical figures' actual positions the way contemporary accounts do; the first step to understanding someone is to understand what they're actually saying, and not some easy misinterpretation.
Knight's never been to school, but he's a being who learns. He understands correction, too.