2024-05-04: Office Work
- Log: 2024-05-04- Office Work
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Guy Shishioh
- Where: Bay Tower - Intelligence Office
- OOC - IC Date: 0099-05-04
- Summary: After some time spent recovering, Akane and Guy have a chat about practicals -- and a few other things, too.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It feels weird to have an office.
Akane has gotten mostly accustomed to it, admittedly -- Bay Tower has very nice offices, and ones that Akane often hides in to do homework or muddle through Intelligence duties -- but it still feels weird to have an office. She's managed to make it her own, though, by this point...
... since her tiny apartment (and Rikka's good taste) prevent her from filling the apartment with sofubi and henshin devices, well. They have to go somewhere. It's not quite as bad as her old room in Tsutsujidai, but it does give the room a slight sense of claustrophobia and a need to move with care.
Akane sits at her desk, laptop open, working on something. Whether it's her homework or information pursuant to the recent appearance of a mecha-kaiju on Huffman Island is anybody's guess, but it's certainly something that has her attention.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
The door knocks twice and then opens.
Guy Shishioh lost something ineffable in the battle against Betterman Lamia and the transformation into the final and ultimate King of Ruin. Or, perhaps, he was liberated from it. He hasn't surged back to the role of Chief or foremost combatant; even now, he's ghosting around GGG sites dressed in the powder blue robes he wore for recovery, rather than the GGG Uniform he wore for seemingly every waking moment of the preceding several years. He's no longer the Superhuman Evoluder, no longer gleams with heroic energy at every prompting. Still, he has a smile as he leans against Akane's doorframe. "Evening, Miss Shinjo. Sounds like Huffman had some surprises for you."
His eyes flick around to the surroundings, arching an eyebrow. "Ah, taking some cues from Entouji on using your space?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"C-come in!" Akane calls, though there's a bit of a flinch there; even now that she's felt the courage necessary to open the door herself, it's still a little startling to have someone knock. Sitting up straight, she looks up to see Guy. It's... jarring, still -- to see him vulnerable in that way. Then again -- he's seen her in the same state, hasn't he? It's fair, at least.
"... yeah, it definitely did," Akane says, with a nod. "I don't think it's any more dangerous than Gillvalis was, just looking at what we've got... but that's still pretty dangerous. The location's a pretty big problem, too... I'm not really crazy about the NUNE monitoring post, either. Like, they kinda need it, but I think it's pretty risky to have any NUNE monitoring that close to Freedom..." She doesn't want to say 'this could make a war worse, or even start one,' but it's obvious she's thinking it.
The other topic is easier. "Ehehe... it felt bad to have a bunch of my favorite stuff just sitting in a storage locker," she says, with a small smile.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Maybe he's letting himself get used to it. There's certainly nothing stopping him from putting on the black coat again, he just...hasn't.
Guy nods, letting himself step in and rubberneck a bit, hands sliding to the overcoat's pockets. "I wasn't there for the fight, but just the reports you've sent over are incredible. Something like that loose anywhere is a huge threat." He nods at her: "Huffman's not huge, but it's got more than one city on it. Either way it heads could be disastrous."
He grimaces at the point about Freedom, too, hands emerging from his pockets to lift upward helplessly. "That one's what we have Taiga and Munakata to worry about. If they have any input, they'll let you know."
That said, he leans up to a storage shelf. "This one's...Gomess, right? I remember STORAGE had a whole protocol for handling them since they were so common."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah. And it's not super far from the border... it could go either way in about the same amount of time." Akane doesn't seem happy with that thought. "I guess you're right, though -- it's not my call." Her job is to equip Taiga and Munakata -- and Rikka! -- with the information necessary to make good calls, not to obsess over the calls themselves.
"Hehe, yep! That's one of the first realistic ones I picked up... I usually like the suit stuff better," Akane affirms, as Guy pokes at her kaiju. "But it's good to have a mix. I don't have a lot of toys of the tailed types for some reason and they're kinda useful props for some presentations here, too..."
Finally, she decides to address the elephant in the room. "... You kinda look better," is what she settles for. "Sometimes that brave face of yours looked kinda plastic, and I don't mean because you were a weird rock guy, either."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"You taught me we do have to think about more than just what's in front of us. Still...we can't calculate for every possible problem and organization." Guy thumps his chest. "Trust in your gut and your courage. Then let the rest of the team pick up any pieces. That's why you have one."
"Oh, yeah?" he asks, craning his head to look at more of the figures. "Yeah, I kinda see it. I guess I've been more about robots..." If he's fighting kaiju, it's usually been either with some grim thought of Betterman subconsciously bothering him, or just Bionet very consciously bothering him. "Heh, using them for illustration? Is Utsumi on camera for those? He's good at it."
When she decides to address his state directly, he straightens up a hair. "I guess? Even now I don't feel like I was faking anything. But it does feel pretty good to take a long break."
He sets up against a free spot on the wall. "Galeon's physically mostly there now, but who even knows when his Black Box will finish regenerating, to say nothing of the Genesic Machines. And with my change to a Semi-Evoluder, we're still researching if the old methods of Fusion even still work. Means i just get to spend a lot of time with Mikoto." He smiles, a great big happy grin, goofy and free. "It's great, honestly."
He tips his head then. "You holding up? College and this can't be an easy balance."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Let the team pick up any pieces... it doesn't feel great to Akane, still, even years out. But then -- there's no way to improve that but to keep doing it. "Not always," Akane says, at mention of Utsumi. "But sometimes." Maybe she'll need to enlist him a little more often...
Akane looks like she's deep in thought as Guy talks about his own situation -- and Galeon's. ... and Mikoto's. That part gets a warm smile out of her -- it is, probably, the most relatable topic on the table. "Hehe... I bet she's happy about that. You two have a lot of time to make up!"
Guy kicks the topic back to her, and she takes a breath. She's -- doing fine, right? Closing her eyes for a moment, Akane taps her finger a few times, letting the question breathe. "... It's pretty hard. I think Rikka's having a harder time than I am, but it's not easy for me either..." Shaking her head, she adds, "3G Red probably needs more personnel a bit, to be honest."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy can't hide a bigger grin at the thought of Mikoto. "Yeah. I am, too. There's a lot of lost time, but...we can take a little while to treasure every moment."
As for the ongoing problems, he nods thoughtfully. "3G...Yellow, I guess, and what became Green, was built heavily around the legacy of Taiga's old ID5 team. Blue had a lot we left behind to build on. Red..." He smiles, faintly. "In some ways, us still being around gives you less to make your own, I guess. Sorry about that. How's the guys from Munakata and Tamura's team working out? Have they been able to take any load off?" He pops a little grin. "As I remember, most of 'em are analysts. Might be able to give you a hand on your Galactron problem."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Hehe... good." Akane always did think that what was going on with Guy and Mikoto was terribly unfair. Now that they've had the chance to move forward... it really is a miracle. "Take it easy, you two. We don't need you back that fast even if they do get Galeon up and running for you again."
She listens to the background of the organizations -- it makes sense. "Huh, so we're the first time there's been a new branch that wasn't rebuilding out of the old ones... I guess that's not a bad thing or anything but it is kinda a surprise." She reaches into her drawer, pulling out a box of tomato juice. Tapping the straw against the foil, she says, "Yeah -- that's definitely been helping. I think we'll do better as we get our feet under ourselves a little more... a lot of Red is kinda new to the job. It's weird to think that I'm actually pretty senior around here."
... well, technically, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Yeah," Guy says, with a soft smile. "I intend to. May as well get used to not being the one on top of every crisis. Who knows what comes next, ya know?" He might actually already be thinking of something, talking like that.
"Oh, yeah, being the senior sneaks up on ya, huh?" he laughs. "The world will keep giving you new adventures. That's not gonna stop. Just gotta go along for the ride, sometimes. I'm still not sure how 'Chief Shishioh' feels." He laughs, lightly. "...gotta be wild, for Rikka. Barely as old as I was when we were fighting the Zonders. I'll do my best to help her out on my side, too."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah... and I mean, you've kinda earned the rest," comes Akane's fairly good-humored answer. As the topic shifts, though, Akane looks a little more serious. "Right? It kinda feels like just yesterday we were all fifteen... I'm already thinking about my coming-of-age ceremony," she says. There's a little to mourn there -- she spent a lot of her teenage years being absolutely miserable -- but... it wasn't all bad. And 'here' is pretty good, too.
"I know she'll appreciate that," Akane adds, after a little more thought. "Having people who know the legal stuff around helps a lot... especially with how fast stuff keeps changing." It's hard to say the alternative history of Tsutsujidai even matters that much in navigating the present moment, anymore -- so many bets are off...
She weighs a comment... then decides to skip it. "Hmm," she says, instead. "... You wanna see some cat pictures?"
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Life'll come at ya fast. The most important part is finding somewhere you can stand to take it on," Guy decides, nodding with wisdom he just invented. "Coming of age..." He chuckles, faintly. "Had to sit out of mine, come to think of it. You enjoy that." Big grin there.
And then, Akane bounces them to the far better topic. "Absolutely," he says.