2023-09-15: The Shadow, the Wanderer, and the Yakisoba
- Cast: Gai Kurenai, Shota Hebikura
- Where: Tokyo
- Date: U.C. 0097 09 15
- Summary: Orb's Shadow comes to him with a concern, a confession, and a request for aid. What can Gai Kurenai do but accept the call for help before him?
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
No matter how many Earths there are, no matter how the universe turns... Tokyo is Tokyo.
Gai Kurenai recognises many things about this city, but many other things still remain foreign to him. He's been wandering around the city, only now stopping at a hole-in-the-wall yakisoba shop and fishing some money out of his coat.
He looks at the coins and notes in his hand, pondering this difference too, for perhaps slightly too long - when the vendor asks if he's okay, he shakes his head to clear it and smiles, handing over the money and being handed his noodles in a thick take-away box. "Thankyou," he says with a nod, turning away and looking for a bench to take a load off on.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Yakisoba is a particular kind of food, and if you are a particular kind of person you find a habitual attraction to the raw, flame-kissed comfort food of a good yakisoba noodle. If you're a governmental officer you can basically just tell every Yakisoba place in Tokyo, over a large order, that a certain cowboy might roll into your shop, that they're a dangerous individual, and you should give this help line number a call.
So, of course, when the vendor turns away to call someone, it's all very normal. The long time spent with the change gives plenty of time for a surreptitious phonecall placed. All it takes is a text, a tip, a--
Gai turns around to look for a bench. A certain parted-haired and red highlighted man leans in the doorway, wearing a black blazer jacket, a black silk shirt, a red tie, and matching black pants. His belt and shoes are a sable-black leather that leaves the only reflectant part of his outfit the bronze-copper cuffs and belt buckle. He smirks at Gai and brings up a finger - indicating the classic and language-less 'I'm on the phone', while holding a several generations old smartphone in his hand.
"Mmmyes?" He subvocalizes. "This is the STORAGE tip line. Thank you. Someone's on their way. Thank you for your assistance."
Gai can read his smirking lips as he "ja na"'s the line and thumbs the 'call end'.
Dropping the phone into the pocket of his jacket, he strides forward to a two-person table, plastic chair pulled out to drop into, and across, the partner kicked out.
Jugglus Juggler indicates Gai should sit, but with proximity, the smirk turns into a gravely serious look. He really is here looking around for Gai. He just hit on his yakisoba pop-up shop scheme of all of them.
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
Juggler can get plenty of satisfaction out of seeing Gai startle and that familiar "You!" out of his mouth - intensified of course by the fact that he's not dressed as STORAGE officer Shota Hebikura, but in that much more familiar black-and-burgundy garb. The wanderer does, however, fall quiet in respect to the universal 'I'm on the phone' gesture.
Rolling his eyes, Gai follows his old friend/rival/something out to the table, taking the seat opposite him. An assessment of Juggler's face tells him: This is not to be their usual verbal sparring.
He opens the takeawy box, taking in the smell of the yakisoba. "I haven't been able to find exactly the same taste anywhere in this Japan," he remarks, idly. "I suppose everyone's got their own spin on the recipe."
He cracks open the chopsticks. "You're worried about something," he invites Juggler to speak.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
'You!'
"Me." Mouths back Juggler, but the call takes his attention until it's done. Sitting at the table, Juggler's attitude is a direct-eyed business tone. An affectation, maybe, of the Defense Team captain repurposed for its use, or just simply the straightvoiced directness of the man fresh from the mountain. "I am." Juggler begins, simple and honest. "And I'm worried enough to say so. I asked you to help the girls from That Woman's-" Akane Shinjo. "-world. And then I..."
Juggler's eyes dip, fail to find Gai. Table, shop, paraphernalia on the walls, but not Gai Kurenai.
"... went back to my 'job'." 'Kuh!' goes his breath, sharp, a laugh with no humor and just force. "Pathetic as it is-" His eyes roll, over Gai but not on him. "Compared to you. Spare me the wrapping."
Finally, he manages to look at Gai again. He doesn't make eye contact - he just looks at Gai's chest mostly. "Did you help them? Did. . . Ultraman?"
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
"I do think the butler look suited you better than those jumpsuits," Gai remarks with a sly grin as Juggler calls his own job 'pathetic', "But the people working for you seem like good sorts."
Juggler asks the important question, and Gai nods, swallowing his mouthful of yakisoba. "Alexis Kerib is dealt with - Gridman returned to his own organisation to bring him in, leaving his host behind. Akane Shinjo has returned to work with 3G. Tsutsujidai appears to now be a stable part of reality; the other girls you were concerned about have found their footing together, too. All in all... mission success, I'd say." He smiles.
He gets a second pair of chopsticks, turning his box around to face Juggler, and pushes it across the table to him. "Have you eaten?"
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Juggler rolls his eyes back the other way, a bit of his stiff seriousness cracking, until he completes a full circle and lands back on Gai. He catches the grin and his second 'kuh' has less edge, a puff ending in a smirk of his own. "The work's too hard. Can't get anything done. Children are too needy, and NERV is full of nothing but the youngest. There's no fun in causing them problems, and things became bad enough I bought off problems or threatened them myself. There was nothing to prove."
Exhaling, Juggler's shrug sweeps wide. "They were good, but they needed time off and weren't getting any. They were even deploying me, and do you know how hard it is to plot-" Juggler's brass-cuffed arms come in to a tight cross, shoulders forward with a lean. "-when you have to keep fighting? You can't get anything done. You do nothing well."
A tale of his journey by another way. He got 'nothing done' but trying in his own at-times failing way to guide STORAGE. And Gai. . .
"Of course. You can do anything." He drawls, dripping with sarcasm, but swallows it and unloops his arms, placing hands to tabletop. And then, of all things, his head drops a little. "Well. I'm glad those girls were spared the worst of my mess. They had a hero to save them. When you find that man again, could you tell him 'thank you', for me?" Juggler pleads with a faux indignity, the most honest way he can say anything.
'Have you eaten?' hangs in the air for a moment.
"No." Juggler admits. "I haven't eaten recently."
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
"It was Gridman's mission," Gai deflects Juggler's bitter half-compliment. "I just offered guidance and support where I could. Still... I'll pass your thanks on." He offers the other man a half-smile, then pushes the yakisoba box more firmly over as Juggler admits he hasn't eaten, thinking for a moment. "Then eat. Food like this is good for the soul - or so I've heard, anyway."
"... I knew you were plotting something," he admits, after a moment. "It's you, after all. Nothing to prove, huh?" He drums his fingers on the table. "Prove to who, even?"
After all, he wasn't even in this part of reality until the situation with Tsutsujidai worsened. Still, despite Juggler's complaining...
"... You're fond of them," he guesses, trying his best to capture his opposite's gaze with his own.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
"It was your mission too." Juggler insists, and not just because he passed his part along to his opposite. "If you're going to hold onto all of those things you do, it is your mission."
Hands to the table, Juggler remains like that. He doesn't really want his soul nourished. He has a particular view on the consumption of food, especially the food from Earth. The food from most places is no different, and yet... Earth had a particular brutality to it.
"I have nothing to prove to you, or anyone, Ku-re-nai Gai." Juggler drawls, sitting back from his honest forward. "But you, of all people, of all *men*," He means it in a stellar way, a way that means something really only to him. "Should forgive me for wanting these idiots to be loose with one robot. I am not especially picky," A wan smile, dagger thin and self-effacing. "But they put such locks and leashes on every thing. They are damaged people, Gai."
Juggler looks down. He leads damaged people. Tries to shield them from the worst of it. Does badly, at times. It's no wonder he fits in.
"They deserve better." He deserved better. So he knows.
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
"Perhaps my part of the mission was to help Gridman achieve his," Gai concedes, with a nod.
He doesn't miss that Juggler isn't going to partake, and his lips thin. "Hmm." Juggler in turn dances back from his own almost admission, and Gai again allows it.
"You said before, that this world was cruel enough that its people built robots to replace Ultraman." He considers. One robot, huh? "Is that what you were plotting to take?" Something that could replace - surpass? Ultraman...
'They deserve better', Juggler says, looking down, and Gai clicks his tongue. "It's like you want me to punch you in the face again, Juggler."
He leans forward. "You said it yourself - you and I are two of a kind. If you think they deserve better, then be better." His dark gaze is steely. "I know you can."
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
"Do better? Hmm? Better?" Juggler doesn't like that. "Rich, coming from the beloved wanderer. Coming from the man that's given things." Mutters the blazer-jacketed man, as his fallen eyes assist adjusting the buttons across his chest, to test the top button - slid through - and then the second, unbuttoned, to stroke thumb and index finger against the cloth-hidden broad stud of brass.
His fingers slip the button into the second hole while he continues to refuse to make eye contact. "Why? Because I worked for it, this time? Why? Because it's not easy to shoot a beam at me? Hmm? Is that it? Is it because I pushed my work onto you, Ultraman? Isn't your *lesson* about asking for help? Hmm?"
With every question his eyes raise, incensed at the implication that being punched *again* might be the answer and showing it. "You were late, Gai. Ultraman was. You've cleaned up, now -" Sarcasm builds in his throat. His hands jazz up. "Hooray! Ultraman!" His voice announces in deadpan, while his hands fall to the table again. "-but *these people* don't grow in size with their dreams quite as lit-erally. They have to be coaxed. And..."
The heat deflates. He has to think about the children again. Tisking, Juggler's eyes find floor and table-edge again.
"I like them, damn you. I like some of them, so don't ask me to be better than *you*. *You* get it much easier."
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
Gai sits back down as Juggler's anger rises, silent for a while. Rising to the barbs would be so easy it's almost automatic... but it would be falling back into their old pattern.
He doesn't want that.
"... It's not as easy as you think," he admits quietly, one hand coming to the bead necklace he's worn for what feels like an eternity, tracing the shape of the plastic rings on the leather tie. "To be constantly moving on - leaving others behind, with only their memories for company." His brow furrows. "You know as well as I - there are many beings like us, but still... the universe is vast, and so many voices cry out for help. Choosing who to help... is also choosing who not to help. If anything, I should be the one thanking you - for being in the right place at the right time when I could not, for doing what you could to help."
He bows his head, sincerely. "Thank you, Juggler."
He then smiles - a little wan. "It's insidious, isn't it? The way you start missing their little idiosyncracies when they're not around."
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Juggler sighs, settling back into his chair, knees forward and back slumped. His shoulders arch open across the back of the chair, arms down.
"I know it's not easy, too. I've tried it. Done all the moves. Even said the words."
His arms limply cross over his chest, "Breast-" and then languidly pantomime at flexing. "-Fire!" He calls, at a stage whisper, and then drops to slack again. The front legs of Juggler's chair clicks forward when his pose drops.
"It is awful, Gai. Awful in every direction. From the inescapable rim of a black hole, to the places of the truly abundant, glittering in every color of crystal and mineral. Every universe, *rotten*, and not because of people worse than me. Petty, petty, petty tragedy befalls people, and there's nothing to be proven. Just a sick laugh. And it is a laugh!!"
Juggler has his passions, but Gai did not rise to them. So he is not, quite, the object of Juggler's anger. Instead he is the witness to it. Juggler, wide-toothed grinning, laughs, bursts out in effortful, long draws of laughter, and it is not until his lungs begin to empty the sobs roll underneath.
The clerk tries the hotline again, a little more concerned. Juggler's phone buzzes in his jacket pocket. The laughing-crying man drops his tone, abyssally, practically a retch. Two lines of moisture run from his eyes down the curve of his nose, hard to catch but for all the face time he is doing "And it is sick." A pause.
"..."
... "You're welcome, Gai." Juggler mutters, the red-highlighted bangs across his eyes askew from his mad laughter, from the utter revulsion at a certain kind of person to a certain kind of people.
"It's worse. I can see..." His eyes squint, seeing past Gai, but looking at him. This way, almost, he can seem honest, and think about better people. At least, better to him.
"... I can see them being better than both of us, if they live long enough." And the sick truth of the wan hope in him. It's just not that simple.
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
Juggler is, of course, not saying anything Gai doesn't know - he, too, has seen the myriad sights the cosmos has to offer - seen the pointless tragedies that befall its denizens, too.
As such, he is silent, but sympathetic, as Juggler works through his sobbing laugh - he does spare an apologetic glance to the poor yakisoba vendor.
"... Yes." He agrees. "There is far too much suffering and misery in the universe." He doesn't say something like 'that's why people like me exist' - that feels too self-aggrandising for the situation. "All we can do is... make things better, for a time. Even a little bit."
"... And inspire others to carry on in the face of that misery," he concludes, as Juggler says he can see these youths being better than either of them. "You want to see them reach that potential."
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Wiping his face clean with both hands, and slicking his frizzed bangs back up and over his brow, Juggler resets his expressions, and attempts to bring a restraint to his emotions -- for the clerk! -- to some effect. Juggler isn't used to being this loud about his feelings in general.
Juggler is a lot more used to being the adult in the room. Interacting with someone from his own cohort is different - and altogether more naked when it is the wandering star.
Gai knows when Juggler is being literal, and using metaphor. Gai knows the references *for* the metaphors, and so...
"A lord monster, a dying copy with a spark of light, and that unfortunate and rushing child. . ." Juggler closes his eyes. "It'd be a slightly less miserable place if their stories didn't end poorly."
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
Gai nods, slowly. "Yes. I agree." He's missing some of the references, but the principle at least... "Every story deserves the chance to blossom."
He drums his fingers again. "So what does Jugglus Juggler, Master of the Serpent Blade, Illusion Majin, STORAGE Captain Hebikura, plan to do about those stories?" He arches his brow, throwing his opposite number another challenge.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Juggler looks Gai Kurenai in the eyes.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Gai?" Juggler's head tilts.
He leans forward. Gai asked him a question. He had the answer. He was willing to give it. Reaching forward, he touches the back of Gai's hand. "I'm asking Ultraman for help. So don't run off until it's done."
He withdraws, smirking. "Now you can't say you didn't hear my 'cry' for help after." He chortles --
--and chomps down on the last bit of yakisoba clutched between two black plastic chopsticks. He had hidden the steal with his eyes - a clever ruse that is sure to work again later.
<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.
"You have it, partner," Gai says, nodding firmly - and grinning when he notices Juggler had, in fact, swiped the yakisoba from under his gaze. "... You're incorrigible," he concludes, fondly.