2022-03-28: Provocation ~ Interlude

• Log: 2022-03-28- Provocation ~ Interlude
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Anti
• Where: Tsutsujidai - New Mountain Range
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-03-30
• Summary: Akane corners herself. Whether she wants it or not, she's getting a little bit of help with it. Takes place fully within the sceneset of 2022-03-30: Provocation.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane has once again ruined something kind and beautiful for the sake of getting one up on Gridman. It never makes her happy -- but it's okay. She'll just make sure Ako and Marusan remember having a nice time. That's the important part.

It's pretty chaotic here, all told. 'A bunch of unchaperoned teenagers' is not exactly the type of thing that has an evacuation plan; the whole situation is a little bit theater, though. There's the occasional burst of flame, the shuffling of the enormous monster... but the real goal is Gridman. Akane would honestly rather *not* lose control of the situation.

Go'yavec -- imbued with a power Akane never dreamed of -- thrashes a tail she never gave it. It curls and punctures a mountain; the debris crackles with green lightning. The volcanoes spread across its back pump lava, which drips down and sets the world ablaze.

Akane Shinjo watches from too close. She could've gotten a mountain vantage, but she would've had to slip oh-so-far from her friends before the attack even started, and that's too suspicious. Having read Hibiki and his friends in a little bit means she has to be *extra* cautious about where she disappears to.

It's been a few minutes. The fire blazes, at this point, and Akane, in her lovely white swimsuit, is starting to feel a bit dizzy. It's more annoying than serious, but it does leave her throat scratchy and her pace just a little slow. Her hand comes up to her mouth.

"Rrgh -- where is he? It's been long enough... are they calling for help from the outsiders? But usually Gridman would show up right away for something like this..."

It's only once she's forced to stop moving -- as she comes across the wreckage of a landslide, far too high for her to climb -- that she notices how horrible she feels. Her body isn't supposed to feel this way, she thinks, as she lists slightly to one side. She wasn't supposed to be weak, here.

She gasps for air -- and then coughs a bit. "Nngh -- I gotta get somewhere higher, so I can see what's going on," she mumbles, letting out another cough. This one comes with that horrid feeling of nausea that hits when a cough is just a *little* too much for your throat.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti did not come for a class trip.

        This is not to say that Anti was not swept up with the class trip; only that his intention was not summer fun. Rather, he noticed Akane -- Akane -- was going to the station, and he was compelled to follow. The station leads Outside. Akane never does.

        Did something happen?

        He blended in well enough with all the students, even if no one particularly wanted to sit next to him. He has no intention of mingling, anyway. In the treelines, he has plenty of places to lurk, which means he has plenty of opportunity to witness just how hapless teenagers are at play -- and at evacuation.

        It doesn't concern him.

        What he is concerned with is the girl in the woods. Anti may not be the 'he' in question, but he is here. His lungs are unbothered by the smoke; his eyes do not water or sting. He feels the heat more as a distant footnote than a pressing matter. It is a thing demonstrated in the way he approaches, steady footfalls which cease a few feet from where Akane sways.

        Anti keeps his balance as he looks to her, eyes burning bright as the forest. He doesn't ask her if she's all right -- that's a human expression of care which escapes him, when she clearly doesn't have control of this situation from where he's standing. Neither does he explain why he is here, because this, too, is plain to him: Akane is here, so Anti is here. All these things are so painfully obvious...

        ... just like the way he waits for her acknowledgement.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Unfortunately for Anti, Akane's going to need just a hair more explanation than that.

She doesn't really understand what makes her feelings swell in her gut, here, threatening to burst out of her. If sone dispassionate observer were to explain them, though, it's simple: she hates that Anti is here, now, seeing her not as God but as someone weak and trapped and in need of help -- real, tangible, physical help -- to get where she needs to go. It's a vulnerable moment, and if there's one thing Akane hates showing anyone -- outsiders, sure, but her creations most of all: it's her vulnerability.

"Why are *you* here?" Akane asks, sharp again; she doesn't mean to be, and right now, she doesn't have the spare bandwidth to step back out of herself and explain it, doesn't have the tools to articulate why she's so annoyed he's here.

Her stance shifts very slightly; legs move out to a posture that's just a bit more stable -- makes it easier to present herself the way she'd like, as powerful. There's only one light Akane wants to be known in.

The exertion makes her cough a bit, again. This one isn't as bad as the last one...

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Well. Anti hears the hate, anyway. One more rejection. Add it to the others. He doesn't -- visibly -- flinch.

        Anti prefers it when Akane is kind, but he's coming to understand he can't expect that. After all, he thinks, she's explained it very well: why is Anti here, when she made another kaiju to defeat Gridman?

        ...

        It's a valid question. If a kaiju is here, Gridman will appear, too. Anti should be preparing for him. (To kill him.)

        But God is vulnerable -- something which makes much more sense to Anti, who is not, let us note, a student of comparative theology -- and Anti, at least, has no intention of letting her suffer. Something like this, he can handle.

        He looks to her, with level gaze, intensity smouldering like the underbrush. He starts walking -- around -- in front of her. He comes to a stop, and leans down.

        Throughout this motion, he does not bother to keep looking to her. Even lowered, his gaze is forward. Deliberately, he does not dwell on Akane's concern. Instead, he processes the view in front of him, smoke-wavering.

        Instead of an answer, he gives her instruction.

        "Get on."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane needs help. Anti -- radically more powerful than her, in a position like this, she realizes, able to access the full power and wonder of a kaiju's form -- is offering. No, more than that: he's *ordering*.

It startles Akane -- even feeling the way she is now, it's enough to just shoulder past her usual assumptions about how the world works and how things... are supposed to go. She nods, moving forward before she realizes she's doing it. Something about being told to do something by someone she expects to be ordering around...

She stabilizes a bit more before she crawls onto Anti. Her arms wrap around him. She closes her eyes a moment and holds her breath, getting ready to grip -- and she definitely needs to grip. She knows how a kaiju can move -- she needs to be careful not to fall... especially in the state she's in now.

It's not exactly riding in comfort -- but it's better than being stuck here, miserable.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Being fair, no one new had to teach Anti how powerful it was to just tell people what was going to happen. He learned that lesson right after he was born.

        What he learned, instead, was that sometimes God makes mistakes, and needs help to get where she's going.

        'So I talked with someone and they said I couldn't expect you to go along with what I was planning if you didn't know what the plan was and why, and... I guess I should tell you what's up with Renais, huh?'

        Just like that.

        It takes her long moments. He waits. He is listening for the sound of collapse. It never comes. Instead there is the weight of her, clutching tightly about his shoulders. He reaches back to hold her in place. This is not a comment on her capacity.

        It's a comment on his.

        Trees are strewn as sticks in front of them, massive trunks made horizontal and stripped. Any one of them would be difficult for Akane to clamber over. Anti is shorter. One falls into another into the other -- the literal trees, not the metaphorical -- all crushed, all broken, sunk into dirt and rock.

        Anti sees this.

        So he doesn't try to climb.

        Rather, he JUMPS -- and to call something like this a high jump is disrespectful to Olympians and kaiju both, the sort of airtime to clear buildings, not bars. He does come down, now and then. He doesn't have to pause to catch his breath in the smoke.

        He brings her to a clear path, and crouches down, wordlessly, to set her free.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

For just a moment, Akane glances back -- and then the leap comes.

She'd simultaneously expected it and not *really* expected it; she hangs on for dear life, and she allows him to support her. The leaps are almost disorienting, in their way.

The smoke climbs. At this point, it'd take more time and effort for them to climb to a sufficiently safe vantage than they have -- already, 'heroes' have begun to assemble. Akane doesn't seem to be doing especially great when they touch down, either. While getting above it all for a moment and taking a deep breath has helped, once they get back down...

She coughs again. Her body can't -- *quite* -- handle whatever's happening. Once she gets down, she immediately brings a hand up to her mouth again, trying to keep herself from breathing in... *quite* so much smoke. It's at least thinner here than it was where they started, though, so she doesn't cough again -- and after a moment, experimentally brings her hand back down.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti is, after all, a kaiju. A kaiju shaped like Akane, right now -- but a kaiju, nonetheless.

        There are few things which could destroy him, even like this. Smoke is not amongst them.

        But, Akane...

        Once she's free, he begins to walk away. He listens to the cough, the sound of laboured breathing all struggling to normality.

        He isn't the point of this exercise. The most important thing to him are his footsteps. Let us presume the rest of him is as he always is -- glaring, intent, purposeful. Hands all clasped to fists at his sides. Ready to spring.

        Let us presume that he pauses, and those footsteps stop, for a moment.

        And then hurry, slightly, as he turns back, walks back to Akane. Not quite so close -- not quite so much. He stops in front of her, and reaches around his neck, freeing the scarf she gave him.

        He lets the hot wind carry it to her face, tossed loosely by a hand.

        Anti, here, has observed several things. The smoke is impeding Akane. It's hard to see, but it's tangible, in the air; because of those particles, she can't breathe. She isn't wearing enough to make a mask of her own. Fine. He'll give her one.

        He has to kill Gridman... but if Akane dies, what's the point?

        All of this is for her.

        Without a single word, he turns, and walks away a second time. His neck, bare, shows the same high collar of any student, were there a uniform as outlandish as his. His chin, exposed, reveals no smile to his lips, the same faint scowling line it ever is.

        The heroes assemble. The villains have to show up, too.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The wind carries Anti's gift to Akane. She's so startled by it that she doesn't realize it's coming -- still in the startled, almost dinosaur-like pose she'd found herself in after removing her hand from her face and herself from Anti. The scarf nestles on her for a few seconds. Her eyes flutter a tiny bit, even as Anti turns himself back to the grim purpose that Akane gave him.

She brings the scarf up to her face, taking a few shallow, tentative breaths. It's better than the smoke, at least. There's something about it, though, that she doesn't quite identify yet, until she brings it a little tighter around her face to protect herself.

Ah. That's what it is. "... It stinks," she murmurs softly, to herself. She knows *why* it stinks, of course -- but what's she to do about it...?

... nothing for it now but to wait, though.