2022-02-15: Alchemy

• Log: 2022-02-15: Alchemy
• Cast: Alexis Kerib, Shota Hebikura
• Where: Cafe Kei, Japan
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-02-15
• Summary: Alexis Kerib teleports in on Jugglus Juggler in an unobserved moment. He gets a lesson in what 'unobserved' means. Actually he gets a lot of lessons and all of them are buck fucking wild.

---

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

The act of moving relationally is, of course: quite simple. Alexis picks unobserved places for a void to be, and then, there is one.

He often does so mostly-blind; despite his considerable age, he has little life experience. Alexis has spent much time simply observing the dramas of others, and little cultivating his own; his grasp of the theatre-play he participates in is actually quite weak!

He can tell, however, when someone is alone and if the space they operate in has unobserved areas. His inclination toward the former is quite natural at this point, and the latter is necessary for this type of movement at all. He simply picks a time when Jugglus Juggler is alone, and appears just barely out of his field of vision.

There are ways this movement is quiet and ways this movement is very, very loud. For one not accustomed to this type of movement, it would be as if Alexis simply existed, right here, right now, just outside visual arc. For one who *is*, it's as if he's thrown wide the door such that the doorknob hits a wall and leaves a dent.

In the end, there are some flavors of unsubtle you just never shake, even if you try.

His voice gives him away, if nothing else does; while his demeanor is calm, relaxed, even genteel, absent of the impetuousness of his (relative) youth, sound shapes the universe and Alexis's is distinct indeed. "Excuse me," he says, with the gentle approach of someone making sure he's walked into the right office. "I believe you left your card, with the expectation I'd get back to you."

It's only *after* he says this that he bothers to actually check the situation beyond the bare minimum necessary to actually speak to Jugglus Juggler.

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

'Unobserved'. An interesting context for a concept. On a battlefield, or for those whose eyes are wide open and seeking, flickers of motion can find incredible lives of staggering surreality from moments of being Seen.

And then there's the insides of restaurants.

And then there's the insides of fast food restaurants.

And then there's the inside of fast food restaurants, located entirely inside Shibuya Ward.

And then there's glass-window open-to-the-street inside of themed fast food restaurants.

One moment, Jugglus Juggler (AKA Shota Hebikura), in black suit and red shirt and real skin and fabulous hair looks down to his plate to pick up a rather well-constructed fried pork sandwich on novelty platter with rose petals on the bun and a side of fries arranged with a burned-on pattern of someone's vague face.

When he looks up, a bite of rose petal bun fried pork sandwich in his mouth, there's someone in the front and street-facing booth in front of him.

"Ah?" He looks up, and instead of answering just chews r e a l l y s l o w l y.

After about a minute of chewing, a girl dressed like a goth vampire maid arrives with a second cup of icewater for the second patron.

She doesn't even look at him right. The menu she carries declares the terrible trap he's fallen into: The CAFE KEI

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis takes a moment to glance from side to side, taking in his surroundings.

... This??? This is where Jugglus Juggler spends his time??? This??????

Alexis has absolutely zero schema for this anymore. He settles into the booth. It's a situation that forces him to move like a human -- forces him to shift in the seat, forces him to hunch a little because he's the better part of eight feet tall in a Japanese establishment. He looks cramped. He looks *ridiculous.*

Oh, to be sure, being cramped into just such a seat would be easy, if he simply committed fully to not being animated at all. But he's not that person anymore.

Alexis is inclined, by the situation, to fill the verbal space. "... I really wish you hadn't taken out her garbage, you know." He tries to figure out how to say what he means without immediately giving the whole game away. He settles for: "Even if the Venora put it back, other people claiming her trash is such a risk, yes?"

He remembers, after a moment, to give the goth vampire maid waitress a pleasant, "Thank you," the next time she passes. It really wouldn't do to be rude to the staff.

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

Jugglus Juggler sits at the center, rumor has it, of a vast dark empire - another telling has him as the herald of a bleak living singularity. Most have him as the villain, but the records are... spotty. 'Large dark warrior, uses sword, vaguely red' could as easily be the true Juggler as a particularly vicious incarnation of the Red Comet lensed through pterodactyl warrior-people having 'a bit of an argument over the rights of psionics' escalating to extremely prominently-beaked weapons of war.

There are others, stranger and more far-fetched, but those at least are the common wisdoms. The Illusion Demon had many-and few faces. The Illusion Demon chased the Wandering Sun, and in chasing, followed. Cries for help in echo, trading source and voice.

And now he is here.

In CAFE KEI.

Jugglus Juggler's chewing becomes louder for the absence of speech, until Alexis fills the verbal negative space with... The Passive Voice.

Because he talks - because he doesn't wait, Juggler obliges with a gentle cheer, taking a second crunching bite at the final 'yes?'.

The maid doesn't leave, her second time around. She waits, looking down at her menu. Then she looks up at Alexis Kerib.

His hair burns, because he left it burning. He remained motive. Expressive. Real, at least on the surface. The vampire goth girl chews on her lip, and then, with clearly fake fangs she dislikes speaking around, asks: "Do you want to order something?"

Juggler begins his second agonizing chewing.

HE MUST SELECT FROM:

> Visual KEIraage Chicken.

> House KEI-ry (Spicy)

> EroGuro Blood Orange & Tomato Salad

There is no pork sandwich on the menu offered. The menu does not appear doctored. Juggler eats from a house tray.

The waitress spins a pen while she waits, staring at Alexis.

Finally, either after - or during, if he takes too long - Juggler finishes his bite. "So you -do- get garbage service."

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis is put quite off his guard; he has not eaten in a very, very long time. He blinks once. "... Ah, yes, I'd like the Visual KEIraage Chicken and the tomato salad," he answers -- albeit with a glance toward Hebikura's pork sandwich. ... He is utterly out of his depth at the sheer near-normalcy of it, but at the very least, he has managed to order. He even has money, if it comes down to it.

He shifts into the seat again, becoming just slightly smaller. His head continues with the endless flick of the flame, ever burning. He answers any necessary follow-up questions. The whole situation feels bizarre. Alexis is in a situation he has no control over for the second time in two weeks.

"Oh, yes. She could have that in an instant, as if from nothing," Alexis says, at the answer. "She could have a devoted maid service! This is simply the world she chooses -- or at the very least," he says, with the tone of someone letting a friend in on a particularly mean-spirited joke, "the one she feels, in her heart, that she can inhabit."

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

Juggler places his sandwich down, a pleasant shift in demeanor. The food order sent away, he messes with a specific fry among the artful fan, selecting with great meaning the third-longest fry from the left, with most of an 'eye' of some character or other browned onto the surface. There's nothing dismissive about any part of his eating, some grand ritual of the whole action...

A fry, an eye, and then--

Ah, Alexis' food is here. Fried chicken dripping with a soy sauce based 'black' sauce, and a chili sauce based 'red' sauce. It's -- actually capably made and at least surface-level imaginative. It's damning, that it can even be good. And where did he get a sandwich with rose petals?

The salad looks like a murder scene of arugula and 'bloody' red fruits, with a vinaigrette dressing - again, competently made and executed on. They're just basic dishes with KEI added, but the simple audacity has a quality to the shamelessness. It Would Simply Be That Good.

"What a -terribly- human condition." Juggler observes dryly.

Then he sits there for another few moments, chewing.

"And the area looks like one of those..." He gestures like thumbing something onto the corner of the tablecloth. "Stamps? It is like a stamp, a picture on a stamp. Flat. Is that the limit of human imagination?"

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

There's a moment where Alexis considers actually eating it. "Oh, it looks delicious," he says. ... Has he eaten, even, since the turning of the cycle? It has been so long, and he has moved so much, at any rate -- and yet that movement has been less movement and more simple translation.

In the end, he leans close. Observes the characterfulness of the dish. "Humans are so inventive, when it comes to food."

He does not eat it. These are ultimately human affectations -- and ones that, as Alexis turned his observations over in his head, he concluded Juggler would have been better off discarding. "Hm... the limit of human imagination? No, not at all. Not even the limit of hers, really," Alexis answers. "But even when it isn't, she can't sustain it. It exhausts her. Even having such things persist past a week is such effort for her. They crumble. In the end, the flatness is all she can maintain."

He finally thinks to ask a question he doesn't know the answer to. "What drew you to her, at any rate? Surely you realized I was in the area as well," he offers. "Something seems to be happening, in this world, you know. Kaworu is here as well." With the faint disinterest of someone discussing last week's mildly inappropriate dinner party anecdote, Alexis notes, "He's decided to play the concerned citizen when it suits him, this time... though he still only *really* cares about the Third." Every panel on Alexis's face lights up in an approximation of a smile, as he says, "A paucity of imagination isn't *strictly* a human affliction."

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

Now there's a question. Now there's a notion.

And so Juggler sits back. There's a shift. The already low-gain lighting around them shivers, as Juggler fully adjusts his posture 'properly', the angle-specific bend of full alignment that comes with more of a hiss than any muscular-spinal series of pops.

"Observe the ritual, Alexis Kerib. Eat, and I'll tell you answers until the ritual is complete."

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis is put in an impossible position. He is, in a material sense, in check, unless...

... Hm. He weighs. It takes some time. He stares down at the food. "... Normally, I'd refuse. Such things are a strain on this form," he answers -- a truth, if an incomplete one. "But if you truly insist on this..." There is an audible sigh.

It is punctuated by an audible *hiss*, the same length, at just slightly a higher pitch. The cables that connect from shoulder to mask plop off, one after another. Each of them hangs limp. He reaches up, slowly pulling the mask away, revealing --

-- a skeletal jaw. Equally unemotive, even similarly shaped but for the fangs. It almost makes you wonder what the point of the mask is. His hand reaches out, experimentally, for a fork.

He begins to eat. It is a curious process for one like him -- the food moves to his mouth and winks out of existence. It is alien, and surreal -- but he is, in fact, eating.

"What a fascinating interplay of flavors," he reflects. He isn't sure he likes it -- but the choices are distinctive. Sweet and salty, yet not enough of either to overpower the base flavors.

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

'Normally'.

Hebikura says nothing. Does nothing. Barely moves. Impassive - no, judging. Judging in the way of an unmoving gaze. And then Alexis moves. And so Juggler moves. A hand reaches out--

To take a fry.

And eat it.

Just like Alexis-Kerib. And the more he eats, considers, engages, leans into it, the less imposing, less threatening Juggler becomes. The slouch resumes. Eventually, he picks up his sandwich, and takes a third bite. Half done.

When he looks up, there's a bottleable, commoditizeable rarity - a bit of a smile, not a smirk, a smile, that is left on Juggler's face, that hides in a coincidental-or-calculated lean-in.

"Ul-to-ra-man, of course." He oozes, and then giggles, and then is giddy. "An experience with the sort, of course. It's good, isn't it?" He rotates back to the food with his eyes, and then his words. "It's a selfish pleasure, one the humans devised. Brutal, isn't it? They've found a way to take everything good, and living, and right, out of these ingredients. And then..."

He looks down, and cannot help but laugh again. Infectious. The sheer, complete ridiculousness of it. "... they take such delicate pride in machining them into 'good shapes'. And those shapes, at least, are -better- for consuming than before. Nothing so simple as fire to heat food, some wisdomless fruit, but..."

He seems so pleased. Like a teacher fawning over a favorite student. "... they manage to hide the endless cruelty in every bite. The infinite hardship, to drizzle... alchemy on your ball of bread and meat."

He hiccup-giggles. "Darling, isn't it? It's why your girl can't imagine more than a postage stamp."

He taps his temple. "Their brains crave stimulation. I've developed a talent, for 'hearing like an Ultraman'. There's only one heart in that world to cry out for help. . ."

He tilts his head. "Isn't there?"

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Juggler carves lines into Alexis's past, as Alexis -- if anything -- has been forced to exist *more* completely, *more* personally than he ever did back then. He spears salad onto his fork. Looks at it thoughtfully. Eats it.

He's neutral on this flavor, he decides. Not horrible. Not something he'd seek out, but worth paying the experience as a price of admission.

"You've always had a knack," Alexis remarks, "for finding the yawning void at the center of a situation." He plays with his food, a bit. It is strange, to show his real mouth, even if it offers -- if anything -- *less* insight into him than his mask does. "You are right -- she is... sensitive, to such things. The cruelty is too much for her -- and in opting out of it, she becomes but another monster."

That skeletal jaw shifts back the tiniest bit, as if it wanted to smile and simply could not. "As for the alchemy of cooking..." He laughs. It's not a chuckle. It's a genuine laugh. "There *is* a pleasure to be had in carving something into a pleasing shape. You, I, the humans, and even Akane Shinjo... we can all agree on that."

Alexis receives a question, and he muses on it for just a moment. "... Yes, and no," he eventually concedes. "The farces she creates... mmm. Perhaps they can simulate even such a cry, in their final moments. But in the day-to-day of such things, yes, Akane Shinjo is the only real person within her world -- Vessels of Light notwithstanding, I suppose."

He thinks about that. "There are three of those, now, within her city. One has slipped the bonds of a sure death, and remains such a persistent thorn in her side. The others... seem content to play with Akane's refuse. They wield no power, and do not bother to cry. It is an arrangement Akane Shinjo ignores, and I tolerate."

Ultraman... "... As for *your* Vessels of Light," Alexis says, "they have made -- occasional, appearances. It seems we have a bumper crop of young ones, and few with much experience."

Experimentally, he moves from the steak to the chicken, next. It comes up to his teeth -- and disappears. This is better, he thinks.

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

Juggler makes a gentle laugh, and Alexis finds the odd reward of a shot on target that hits and simply... Hits. Nothing untoward happens. He calls something interesting, Juggler makes a pleasant affirmative flutter without comment, and reaches for a fry by the end of the stack. One from the last, without pattern. Clean and just slightly-past-white. "People like us exist in the space defined by the ring of knowing. We must contemplate lack. If you lose sight of the ring of wisdom, you must refine it within yourself. Can you find what you're looking for, Alexis, if there's nothing around you at all?"

"You won't even find illusions." Juggler adds, a hint oozing chummy-smugness, as he gestures with a short fry.

Leaving that there, even the chumminess, for processing for a few moments, Juggler reaches down and takes a large bite of his sandwich, leaving only one small bite left. This he puts down, with meaning, at the center of a few smushed rosepetals.

Artful and loud.

"The young ones, ahh, yes. Zero's disciples. If they're both here, Zero won't be soon behind. He'll arrive at the worst time, because he's the weather pattern of light." Smirk. "A monsoon, if your little girl can imagine one. Like..."

He flips a card out of his jacket's breast pocket. Maga-Bassar, that same rainbow-slick texture of something other than holofoil cardstock between his... slightly fried pork sandwich greasy fingers.

"... A gust of wind, that blows away all your designs, even if you're just in the way."

He flips it around the back of his tight fingers, and it's gone in a feat of quiet sleight of hand - Alexis could tell. It's natural - and he might be stunting.

"Zero's disciples can be drawn out... but if they reach -your- vessel of Light, it could be a boon in disguise. Put pressure enough on your Vessel's new allies, and perhaps the Grid-do-man" the full, extended phrasing. "will join them. If your darling girl is fed something stimulating - a prompt? She can provide the cruelty all on your own."

Juggler leans forwards. "And you just have to make sure she's guided to a wicked, vicious trap to await Gridman when he's back. All that time, she could change anything about that postage stamp. . . right?"

Meaningfully, Juggler reaches for his last bite of sandwich.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis thinks about that. Quietly, at first -- in part because: he's eating. It doesn't actually take too long for him to eat any given bite, but it takes a sort of thoughtful, meditative concentration for a Devil of the Hyper World to grab the world with his hands. Or maybe that's just Alexis, who has let that atrophy so much that it has become intolerably difficult to manage.

"... Hm," is all Alexis offers, for several seconds. It's difficult for him to understand why Juggler is being so helpful. He's been presented with a *genuinely good plan* -- one that would give Akane a chance to isolate herself further with her inclination to violence. It even includes Alexis's favorite part of the exercise: free hits on Vessels of Light.

"She *could* change it, certainly... though for some reason she seems to prefer so much of it remains exactly the same. On the other hand, every now and again, she can be nudged to... experiment." Alexis sounds like he's talking about visiting a niece's sports game as he notes, "She dreamed a whole theme park for two of her classmates last month. Draining all that sentiment into friends who can't even really care about her back."

He laughs. As Juggler takes his last bite, Alexis glances down at his. ... he'd been eating faster than expected. "... I suppose all that's left to do, then, is execute it."

The appetite has never really struck him; once Juggler is taking his own last bite, Alexis decides to skip out on what remains of his own. The mask is produced -- and once again, he is back to presenting as a void. "... Should you have need of a kaiju," he offers, tone casual, "Don't hesitate to call. She'd be unhappy to see them out and about, but what she doesn't know will hurt her more if it ripens."

<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.

Jugglus Juggler sits at a window seat. Out, past him, is the screaming lights of Shinjuku, bodies pressing with colors. In a way, the whole world sees them.

In another, this was one of the most private meetings in the entire world.

It's a Visual Kei cafe, playing that music, with that atmosphere.

"It's quiet, in here." Juggler offers quietly. "And the food isn't bad. The humans make some pleasant things, between what we're all really here for."

Juggler looks up, his last few fries in hand. He makes no gesture for Alexis to continue. The man is done. He indulged Juggler's prompt wholly and without grand pretense.

"Unprompted." He repeats. "And understimulated. A child her age and power could fill Tokyo with an alternate reality layer. I want to see."

A finishing bite of fries. "Diamond-shaped stars and twinkling nebulas. The last moments of an entire people. But the sky at dawn... None of them look up, to see it. Just down. At the ground."

Juggler turns, just slightly, in his booth chair, and so his back is to the window.

"Are you looking, Alexis?"

"I want to see."

He bubbles with a light giggle, and then turns to start people watching. Away from Alexis. To watch people, who do not see the pretty man in the window.

They don't see Alexis, either, but he's probably not there any more.