2024-06-24: What Can Be Shared Without Being Bound?
- Cast: Asciel Colette, Sizumu
- Where: Huffman Island
- Date: U.C. 0099 06 24
- Summary: Desiring the clarity for the space between "kaiju" and "human" to be simpler - living between their worlds in two different ways only complicates the ways their shared answers diverge.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Ever since the first sighting of Galactron all those weeks ago, Asciel Colette took a special interest in setting herself up on Huffman Island.
It's not like keeping an eye on it and waiting for the inevitable was all she could do here. After all, the island itself is a fascinating flashpoint of potential conflict, and she already had associates via Amalgam's involvement in the battle arena economy.
In fact, the latter was a fun side project to bend to her whims and liven up a little more!
"How fascinating~", Asciel Colette can only exclaim, as four of the local OCU police aim rifles at her in front of their smirking old chief. It's a hotel overlooking the site of a battle during the First Huffman War - one where the Britannians had built an ornate palatial estate deep in the jungle, only to have it bombed to ruins and its territory claimed by he OCU in the aftermath. ...It's also not too distant from the spot where Galactron's crash-landed - the towering kaiju is visible as a landmark off in the distance, giving the massive windows a two-for-one deal on monitoring what matters on this island.
It's here that the high-stakes underground arena battles are held, with live ammunition, to the death- all for the entertainment of Huffman's most important VIPs. And it's here that negotiations over said battles have...soured.
"You really think you can come here alone, unarmed, and threaten me? Hah! Cheeky grin on you, for a girl who's about to regret everything. Let's not forget that I rule this town where it counts." Smiling from ear to ear, the toady chief of police leers at Asciel, who - beyond her imposing height, is otherwise dressed in summery jean shorts and a waist-tied floral print blouse.
"And you use your oh-so lofty power to make something as exciting as the ~secret underground arena~ a grim, boring affair? Please~ You should consider me showing up and spicing it up with a little more festivity a mercy!" Waving her hands dismissively, Asciel folds her arms behind her head, resting against a column in the hotel's penthouse. "Now, be a good doggy, and take your friends back outside to run security. You should feel blessed! Insignificance is one of the greatest gifts a human can receive, and I'm heaping it upon you in spades!~ This room's for company that's actually important enough for me to waste time on."
Naturally, all it's accomplished is making the chief pop a vein on his balding head, and he growls out, "Enough yammering! Take her out like the rest of the trash!" The cops open fire in three-shot bursts on Asciel - and are met with metallic pinging and clattering behind where their bullets riddle holes in Asciel's clothes. More than enough to give the chief pause and bolt upright from his chair.
"You really don't get it?~" Asciel sighs, pointing a finger at one of the cops...and launching a little wire-mounted dart that surges paralyzing electricity right to his neck, sending the man toppled and curled over in pain. "Using such blase human empowerment to defy a goddess is textbook hubris." -She may be one to talk, really, but in a moment like this, knocking down each heavily armed officer one by one - it's clearer now than ever that there's an incomparable divide between her and these men. Finally, her finger falls on the sweating police chief.
"Another valuable gift is the searing agony of broken ~promises! A gift so sweet that it's poisonous to humans, a gift so cherished I plan to deny it to you all! But since I'm in a generous mood, I can drown you in it all night long! You're sure to ~transform into something brilliant once I'm done with you!~"
The gift is, of course, refused - the police chief scampering and screaming out of the hotel room as fast as his stout legs can carry him, leaving his unconscious men behind in his wake - and leaving Asciel to sit in triumph on the desk he once occupied. A few injured people aren't liable to deter her plans to use this room as a meeting with those of BioNet she wanted to talk about that kaiju with, right?
<Pose Tracker> Sizumu has posed.
Galactron looms high in the horizon of Huffman.
But life here goes on in all its conflicted glories. Of course it does. Is this even the strangest thing the island has seen in its bloodied history?
Maybe that's exactly why the kaiju has made its slumbering perch here of all places.
Even today, even in the bombed out ruins of former Britannian glories, life continues, and blood still sheds. Violence begets violence every day in this hotel. But sometimes even it finds more than it's bargained for.
The redfaced police chief scrambles in the face of something that is severely beyond his paygrade. His silhouette is a retreating blockade; it's only when it shoves past the shattered front doors of the hotel room that he stumbles out of the way enough to reveal someone there who was not there before -- like a magician parting a panicking curtain over their latest, greatest trick.
He's young, dressed in whites and purples; short. Maybe that's why it was so impossible to tell he was there before. He barely even reaches the fleeing police chief's shoulder as the older runs past him like he didn't even exist. The brim of the hat he wears is pulled towards a jaunty angle, overshadowing crimson-red eyes and purple pupils tracking the stumbling man as he goes. His head tips, gold braid tossing over his shoulder as he follows the fleeing man until the exact moment he's completely gone.
"Bye," he offers simply, before looking back Asciel's way. He watches her for a second, those strange eyes giving nothing save for curiosity.
And Sizumu lifts a hand, waves, smiles a placid smile.
"Hi."
Like today is any other day.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
The simple offered gesture does swiftly make Asciel turn her head over her shoulder. ...While Sizumu's presence is perhaps a difficult one to notice ordinarily...to Asciel, that's most people in general. It's the act of making noise, of taking up mass, that alerts her.
At first, the idol raises an eyebrow - what, some kind of lost kid? Here, of all places? No - that's patently absurd. The only ones who should be here are those she has business with - the only ones she has business with are that man who scampered out of the room, and the associates she explicitly called upon. And so-
"Well! Welcome, welcome!~" Oh so merry and full of showmanship, Asciel spins around on the desk, arms spread wide to frame the view of Huffman in both her arms. In her specific posture, it places Galactron on her right shoulder, from Sizumu's vantage point. "It's splendid to meet you. It's none other than me! Asciel Colette, Virtual Sage, undying goddess of renewal, and archon of humanity! Tell me to whom I owe the pleasure on this evening!"
Tipping forward gently, fingers curled under her chin, Asciel's smile grows a little cattier at Sizumu. "Are you alone, or have you brought company...mmm. Something about you gives me the impression you'd prefer to travel solo. I'm much the same, in most respects..."
The cyan-colored butterfly of light deep within her chest raises its wings - a tiny little manifestation of desires, tethered to the cage of Asciel's mechanical shell by a red-hued umbilical cord - using that very cord to make this puppet speak and react.
"I take it you're here for the kaiju, of course. And how we'll harness it! Do be warned - I'm a possessive idol when it comes to these things, and I fully plan to seize that thing for myself once it inevitably awakens. But, it doesn't hurt to share insights so that we don't get in each others' way~"
<Pose Tracker> Sizumu has posed.
It's none other than me! Asciel Colette, Virtual Sage, undying goddess of renewal, and archon of humanity!
Sizumu's head tilts a curious twenty degrees leftward; red eyes blink. The introduction may be lost on him; it's a little hard to tell. But at least he seems interested, in his way.
"Sizumu," he greets. "I look forward to working with you."
And he seems to mean that, too. Just as much as his curiosity is genuine when he follows this greeting up with:
"Do you want renewal?"
As if it was that particular part of her introduction that stood out to him most of all.
The question lingers. But in time, his attention turns towards the sight of Galactron in the distance, looming large still over her shoulder like an angel, or a devil. Is he someone who prefers to travel solo? He watches that kaiju, utterly still as it was when he first saw it.
Still sleeping.
"I travel freely," he answers instead, before looking her way. There's a light in her. His brows lift, just a little.
But for now, he doesn't remark on it directly. Instead, he considers her words of warning, a calm smile touching on his lips as she offers to coordinate.
Does he want it for himself? Is he here to take the kaiju, and harness it?
Right now, his interest seems to primarily be in Asciel as he turns to face her fully and ask in that nonchalant way of his:
"What would you do with it, if you had it?"
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Tapping her lips once, Asciel rolls that name over her voice a bit. "Sizumu...Sizumu..." Noises that emanate from a speaker behind her mouth - its motions mimed solely to complete the illusion. "Hm. Yet again, a surprise. Most of the time, calling upon associates of mine leads me to pitiful sights like that man who made a sorry sight of himself just earlier. Or, well, like these even more unfortunate cases." Asciel rolls the nearest unconscious body of an officer under her heel.
"...As for whether I 'want' renewal or not - that's immaterial! Reshaping myself as I desire is needed to reshape the world as I desire. It simply continues to happen to me." The butterfly flaps its wings again upon its littler perch.
Twisting around upon the desk, Asciel outstretches her arm, palm-down - now giving the impression that Galactron rests upon the back of her hand, for her to appraise as a little miniature. (An effect ruined if Sizumu moves, of course - but it's the initial thought that counts!)
"I take one look at that kaiju, and get a very dreadful sense of what it is. It is quite clearly built for conquest - it is quite clearly artificial. I would describe it, quite easily, as a fallen god of war. And this planet doesn't have room for two of those. Why, the very reason 'renewal' was needed was that it couldn't really tolerate even one of them!~"
Her hand flips over. With half of her gaze, Asciel stares at her palm - with the other half, out the window at where that kaiju properly is. No matter how much she may present the illusion that something faraway is like her, an idea she can hold in her hand - she cannot delude herself. "So, in my hands, I would share what I have learned to it. I've learned well what this planet does to its kind - it will be damned if it does not learn itself. As part of that, though, I cannot allow it to be separate from me. Anything and everything that can be used to wage war must eventually become my arms and legs. It will understand, it will attune with me, or, if this is impossible - then, I will tear it asunder."
...it is something Asciel would 'consume', then...
"Which begs the question of your own aims, Sizumu~" That wistful, careful tone of voice chirps right back to cheery hospitality and a beaming smile Sizumu's way.
<Pose Tracker> Sizumu has posed.
Immaterial.
Sizumu seems to chew over this answer for a time. Gold brows furrow for a brief moment.
"That's how it should be," he says, as if it were some sort of distant, platonic ideal -- something that could only be understood in an abstract.
One hand slipping into the pocket of his coat, the golden-haired youth walks forward, casually stepping over one of those prone officers without even so much as a downward glance -- like they might as well not even exist. His trajectory takes him closer towards the open sight of Galactron in the distance, his every step making the silhouette of the kaiju a larger and larger thing on the back of Asciel's hand until it grows too large to be 'perched' from his perspective.
He only stops once he's at Asciel's shoulder. He's so small, so unassuming. Yet there's something about him, and the way he carries himself. An unmistakable sense of presence.
A simple, mysterious certainty.
"It's a kaiju made by kaiju," he says to her, as if to confirm her suspicions about the artificial nature of the great stationary beast so close, yet so beyond them. "A kaiju can only do what it was made to do. Its existence lies beyond constraints and concerns."
His chin tips up, indicating the Galactron -- no, the entire island around them.
"It wouldn't be here if people didn't want it here. It answered a call."
Still -- it's Asciel's motivations that seem to interest him the most, at the moment. So as she speaks, Sizumu watches her with a quiet thoughtfulness from the corner of that calm gaze as she lays down her terms. Teach it, or destroy it. He considers this for a precious handful of seconds. His gaze shifts forwards towards that portal to the outside world once again. And then:
"People bind themselves to cycles. Life, death, renewal. Over and over. They say they're free, without ever seeing the shackles that hold them. But kaiju transcend that. They can be more than a renewal of a cycle, if you let them be. If you acknowledge how much you need them."
He looks Asciel's way once again, and under the shadow of his hat, those purple pupils practically shimmer.
"You have that potential, too. I can feel it."
Staring at her, through her -- as if directly addressing the butterfly light that fuels the shell that is 'Asciel' today.
Sizumu's shoulders lift.
"The kaiju will wake up one way or another, because it was called here too. I just want to see the way the world reacts to its awakening."
And he looks back to her, eyes squeezing shut within the slight berth of his smile.
"You should steal it."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"A kaiju made by kaiju..." Asciel's eyes narrow, the gleam in her left eye - the one facing Sizumu - brightening like a sunset.
"It can only do what it was made to do..." That jovial little smile falls to a slightly bitter frown.
"It wouldn't be here if people didn't want it..." Her tongue clicks, and that outstretched palm clenches to a tighter fist - before rising up to cover the right side of her face. The eye she's kept hidden from Sizumu. The eye she normally keeps closed. The one that can see Galactron for what it is.
"...Kch. ...You're another one of those people with eyes that see places that really don't wanna be seen. I know exactly what Galactron is, because I know exactly what I was." Asciel's arm falls, her leg sliding up, foot clanging upon the wooden desk, as she finally looks at Sizumu more directly. More intently. -Her normally hidden right eye like the full moon amidst a sclera of the night sky.
It is still something she feels averse to. That being gazed "into" that she sheltered herself from for so long. The instinct to draw up that barrier of repulsion is still so extant. To guard that butterfly from being seen. ...But it's nothing she can retain for that long.
...And when she lets it, Sizumu's words...
...loosen a strange tension she didn't know they had. Lips slightly agape, before Asciel can't help but let out a laugh. "...H...hah. ...Do I really have that. Is that how you see 'kaiju'...then, I wonder. What about a kaiju that finds that latent nature...confining in and of itself? Binding to be away from that cycle? ...Kch...I don't want to think about where I'd be if I just let myself exist the way I was. Renewal...was hope."
"I should steal it," Asciel concludes. "The world will react poorly, but the world is a damnable place. I want to know if a thing like Galactron can feel it. The same thing I did. ...the freedom of altering one's own nature."
"After all, Sizumu - kaiju have always seemed damned to opposition and destruction. I like your perspective on them. Maybe I'm too much a realist to see it...to see beyond the way they, too, perish much the same way humans unjustly do. In that way, maybe the two are more similar than they realize~"
<Pose Tracker> Sizumu has posed.
"I just see the way things are.
"But I'd rather see things become the way they could be."
It's such a detached statement. There's no wistfulness in Sizumu's tone, no bittersweet edge. Just an inescapable apathy, a remove that can't be crossed. Like even in casual conversation, the young man is constantly on the outside, just...
Observing.
It's the same way he observes -her- as she turns to face him fully, his fascination a muted thing as that right eye is revealed to him. His smile doesn't falter, but neither does it spread further, either; he just absorbs the look she casts in this moment, the sentiment that carries with it. And when the tension unwinds from her -- when she asks that question...
Sizumu exhales.
"Hope is poison," he says, voice a softer contrast to her more robust theatricality. "People turn to renewal because there's a promise that the next time will be new and different. But what happens?"
His crimson gaze casts out towards the small portion of Huffman Island's battle-blasted landscape almost demonstrably.
"... Embracing kaiju means freedom. You can be whatever you want to be, do whatever you want to do, if you accept that. But people are afraid of real freedom, so they reject kaiju. They don't know how to live outside of bondage, so they just bind themselves even more tightly."
There's an inevitability to the things he says; like they've already happened, and they'll happen yet again. Sizumu paints a portrait of what could be - but what will never be, as long as people are beholden to their all-too-human natures. But as Asciel talks about freeing Galactron from its own nature - of the way kaiju die so unjustly, just like humans - he offers an encouraging smile all the same.
"I'd like to see that," he says, and it sounds as genuine as everything he's said today.
"I won't interfere. This kaiju isn't for me; it's just the sign of a new possibility. If you want it, you should take it." He looks back Asciel's way, head cant to the right.
"And after, we can talk again. Whatever happens."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
...Oh too bitter and understanding a look crosses Asciel's face.
"You've seen it too, huh. ...Hah. Who doesn't see that it feels insane to have any kind of hope in this day and age? ...Yeah. You're right. They <promise> themselves that it'll be different. They look to the future and imagine this shining utopia that's there if they build a little higher - push a little more, bleed a little longer...!! And the engine of this, "hope", drives them deeper and deeper into this madness...!"
Asciel's eyes widen for a moment, before shifting back to Sizumu. A shock coursing through her system. "You've...you've seen it too. You...you really have...!" The sound of "sucking a breath inward" expels outward from the speakers in Asciel's throat. "...I...I really thought...I was alone in that. Hah...hah...A...ahahahahahahaha...aaaaaah...for so long. But you get it. There's something your eyes see that I don't...but at the same time, it's like I've finally met someone who's seen the same problem I see. ...That they're all looking...in the complete wrong direction for what "freedom" means!"
Asciel covers her mouth, trying to stifle that laugh - trying to hide that she's laughing. Dizzying, like an unspeakable weight just was hoisted just that little bit off her shoulders. "...Kaaaah...you seem to have a solution in your spirit. Mine must seem ridiculous by compare. ...I will 'poison' myself with hope, alright. I will empower myself with its strange compulsion. But I want to relieve everyone else from it. ...That's it. I want to use the power of ~hope, drinking in all of that toxin, to make everyone ~hopeless, and free. You can laugh. It's fine. ...I know for myself that it's far from ideal."
There's a higher levity in her heavy body, as Asciel hops down from the desk, patting herself free from some invisible dust only she perceives. Now she actively reaches towards Galactron in the distance. "...If you believe I should try taking it, then I will. I gladly will! I'll give it my all! And we'll get one step closer to that faraway 'way things could be' we've shouldered for too long alone..."
For a moment, Asciel wants to extend a hand towards Sizumu. Her arm slowly rises to do just that.
...But then she stops. She knows better. For herself, and for Sizumu alike.
...It'd be the wrong kind of pain. A bond neither asked for.
<Pose Tracker> Sizumu has posed.
Asciel's seen it too.
She understands. ... And Sizumu, in turn, understands her.
Asciel finds a kindred spirit. And that kindred spirit is like an unmoving anchor in the turbulent storm that is her passionate realization: Sizumu barely even budges from his position. That placid expression of his barely even shifts. But he -does- smoothly pivot to face her fully as she tries to cover up the laughter rolling off her.
I will 'poison' myself with hope, alright. ... But I want to relieve everyone else from it.
"..."
That stoic expression doesn't falter. But it does grow even more unreadable in those moments after Asciel makes her goal known. Sizumu grows lost in thought for a few precious seconds as his newfound comrade (in a given definition of the term) hops off the desktop. He doesn't offer any verbal answer to her, not for a while.
Her hand lifts. Crimson eyes glance down at it questioningly.
His own, fingerless gloved hand stays at his side as she pauses.
He just smiles, eyes shutting closed once more as he offers in that sincere yet distant way of his,
"I'll be rooting for you, Asciel."
There's no gap crossed today. That barrier remains between them just as solid as it was when they first introduced themselves.
Perfect strangers, perfectly understood.
Just how it should be.