2022-06-30: Sorting

• Log: 2022-06-30- Sorting
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Liam 7-020
• Where: Tsutsujidai - Near Starbows
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-06-30
• Summary: While seated at a bus stop, Akane meets the subject of a previous conversation with NERV. It's a learning experience.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

It's... getting easier. It's best not to think about what that means. Where previously the introduction of a Vessel of Light to her ecosystem had been such a shock *to* her system that Akane started skipping class after... editing... again, here and now she's feeling fine. Maybe a little too fine.

She needs access to facts, but she can't really get them; all she can do is wait, and comb Tsutsujidai a bit for new people. Right now, though:

She needs some coffee, because for only the first or second time in months, she feels like she's going to wilt.

Which brings us to the present moment: Akane Shinjo, sitting at a bus stop, drinking sugar sludge with the suggestion of being coffee. ... the very vague suggestion, honestly.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam isn't even supposed to be here.

        The young cyborg has been avoiding Nouvelle Tokyo and its trains as much as possible since the incident with Anti, but some criminal syndicate picked a fight with Mightgaine and caused a massive obstruction that in turn caused rail detours. Liam could only hope that this one trip home wouldn't deposit him in Tsutsujidai instead.

        He was wrong.

        He awoke to an empty train, parked at an empty station, and didn't see another person until he started making his way to the street. There, at least, was something vaguely resembling a crowd: a bus stop, a nearby Starbows, a place to try and choke down his fear until the next train comes.

        Liam steps into the bus shelter, phone held tightly in one hand, eyes scanning the area. They fall upon Akane for just a second, and he notes her as 'teenage girl with coffee'. He takes a seat on the bench, his back still straight with tension as he tries to figure out what to do. The first time he came here, he had no idea it was secretly full of monsters until he got here and saw them. Now, he can't ignore the looming silhouettes on the horizon, and he finds himself glancing up at them as he tries to load the local train schedule.

        Liam doesn't blend in very well. He's big and broad-shouldered and probably-Britannian; he wears a sleeveless athletic hoodie with the hood pulled up, cargo shorts, and sandals. Alexis would have pictures. But then, has Alexis involved Akane in that little transaction?

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Not directly, at least!

The fact that Liam doesn't blend in very well really gives him away. Sometimes Akane isn't sure if someone is a local or not; she doesn't have that level of fine control over who exists in her space. On the other hand, Liam *really* is not the type of person she'd expect in her space.

She chews at her straw for a bit, trying to figure out what she's going to do. "... Let me guesth," Akane starts, mouth around her straw. She takes a sip, then disengages it, before continuing: "Got lost on the trains? Not sure where or when you are?"

As she looks him over in earnest, she starts to wonder. "We've had a lot of pilots and staff officers in town lately... are you with the Federation?" She kind of... has to ask, at this point -- she needs to know, with outsiders, where they stand.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        'Teenage girl, with coffee' speaks up as Liam thumbs through the outbound trains. Nouvelle Tokyo, Nouvelle Tokyo, wrong terminal at Tokyo-3--

        And he realizes, as she sees right through him, that she doesn't look like most of the rest. The people here are individuals with lives and jobs and families, but so few of them stick out in his mind. It's not like the other cities he's been to.

        "I... yes," Liam says, which is the absolute truth. "My train took a detour. Are you..."

        Something else hits him. Age this young lady down a little and change the gender presentation and eye color slightly and put the resulting person in a flame-detail suit, and--

        "...Do you live here?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

It's now *Akane's* turn to be Assessed, and that's a little uncomfortable for her; she can tell she's being looked over and thought of. She's... never the biggest fan of that particular experience. Nevertheless, she answers:

"Mmhm. I moved here about... a year and a half ago, give or take a couple months?" she asks, now turning fully to face him. She can tell that something's clicking in his brain; that 'are you...' piques some curiosity.

"Why do you ask?" she asks, in turn; she brings her head down to chew at her straw a little bit.

'Chew' is insufficient, actually; she works it with such force that it's basically instantly crinkled. Pulling her lips off it again, she keeps watching, deciding that in the end she's better off waiting for more information.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam's whole body tenses. It's not even subtle. He remembers what Anti told him when he was walking him to what he hoped would be a safe space at a shelter. He felt threatened. He was hurt, or was going to be hurt. There was a 'she' that he kept in mind, a person that Asuka identified as Anti's handler, after a fashion.

        "Oh," Liam says, "you reminded me of someone. Do you have a little sibling?" It's a poor stab at acting, if that's what it is. If it's not one fearful person dropping an experimental breadcrumb in front of another, and gauging their reaction.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... well, may as well own it. "Yeah, I do," Akane says, with a small shrug. She's used to talking her way around things with Yuta, with Rikka -- the sorts of 'talks around' that are really just admissions. Those have gotten more and more frequent lately, and she minds them less and less. "He looks about two years younger than I do. Maybe three. And he's short."

On its own, not much. But it's part of a fact pattern. ... and come to think... "I'm a little curious about you, too," she says, tapping her chin. "My little brother," may as well keep owning it, "gets in a lot of fights. Is that how you know him?" Nothing committal yet. Keep working her way around...

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        'Yeah, I do.'

        There. Admission. A frisson of fear works its way down Liam's spine, echoing its twin, which races through neural wiring. His thoughts race back to what Alouette found in that chip--the signatures, the protocols she'd identified. BioNet. Anti tried to bring him back. Is the 'she' Asuka claims is Anti's master one of them?

        Is that her sitting in front of him right now?

        Another admission. She knows what he's talking about. Liam feels tension in the small of his back, where he'd hide his knife if he had it. "Your brother was half-starved," Liam says, and an odd, hollow intensity settles into his voice as the confrontation responses spool up. "On the street. Looking for someone. He fought--but said he had no choice."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"That sounds like him," Akane replies, a little distant. The pretension level lowers. Lowers... "I don't get why he'd volunteer for something like that, though." Volunteer? That's a bit of a strange take, if she's really the one pulling all the strings.

'He said he had no choice...' But didn't Alexis say he'd volunteered for these things? Neither description really fully fits her mental image of Anti or of the situation, so why?

She takes a long moment to drain a sizeable amount of her coffee-sludge.

She glances at the bus schedule. Thursday... ...they've got time.

"You know what you need? Something to eat. Maybe a protein box?" she says, diverting a bit instead. "My treat. Want to head in? It's kinda hot to be sitting outside like this anyway." She glances over to Starbows, still close, still open.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam keeps his phone in hand. He can send out a silent emergency-dial with the push of a button, if the phone network can carry signals out of here. He's picking up reception, but that's no guarantee.

        "Volunteer?" Liam's right eyebrow rises. It's bright red, and it arches a little. "Odd choice of words. He was distressed. Desperate, even. That's why I asked."

        That unsettling intensity drains out, just a little, revealing something more vulnerable. "Does he have a home--"

        Akane makes her suggestion. Liam trails off, and follows Akane's glance towards the Starbows. She might be the enemy, insists that little inner voice. You don't have to. If you must, use strategy.

        "...all right," Liam says.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

For the moment, Liam has signal -- but only within Tsutsujidai's borders. Getting deeper, around, between -- that takes effort. (Or proximity to Junk.)

Akane gathers herself, standing up and starting to walk. "He mostly sleeps in the park. That's kinda his thing," she says, quite honestly; it must take... callousness, disengagement, or something yet more dire for her to just shrug that off.

"Our guardian said he volunteered," Akane offers, looping back to the last question. "I don't really have any reason to doubt that." She isn't quite sure who she's dealing with, yet, but...

"Hm. So: Do you have any dietary restrictions?" she asks, curiously. "I know sometimes... Coordinators and cyborgs and stuff have different stuff they need to eat." Is she really this (un)lucky?

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam's face twists, his brows knitting in a look of muted distress. Akane doesn't look like she's been sleeping on the streets, and that by itself is deeply troubling. "School?" He asks. "Friends? Hobbies beyond getting into fights?" But he follows, keeping pace with Akane.

        "Your guardian?" Liam echoes, and a knot starts to form in his throat. They reach the door, and Liam steps ahead, pulling it open and holding it for Akane. Her capacity for empathy seems dire based on her thoughts about Anti alone, but he has kept his mouth shut about worse things, and around worse people. The smell of coffee washes out into the street.

        Akane might note that Liam isn't sweating at all, despite the intolerable heat.

        A prying question. Liam shakes his head. "No," he says. "Odd you'd mention, though. Was wondering how Anti managed to leap five stories after he'd been thrown into three different walls."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Coincidentally: Akane isn't either. No matter how much she *says* she's going to wilt in the heat, she never sweats.

"As far as I know, not really," Akane answers, not walking that one all the way out. "Well, scratch that, actually. He does like to save little girls from kaiju attacks, I guess." She doesn't sound enthused about that.

"Hmm. Two protein boxes, please! I'm thinking... cheddar and uncured salami? Unless you're vegetarian. The cheese and fruit one is pretty good too." Once that's squared away, though, it's back to practicals.

"Oh. I see," Akane murmurs. "Well... he can just do that! Pretty wild, right?" It certainly doesn't seem like the idea of him getting whipped around into walls and leaping over buildings is *foreign* to her.

She notes, "That's just him, though. We're not family like *that*." He looks so much like her, yet they're not... physically family?

Akane pulls out her phone while she waits for their protein boxes. While she's pretty discreet about it, and she doesn't keep the flash on... she's probably taking a picture. (More curiously: There's no way in hell that phone works. The screen is spiderwebbed the whole way through, and the backside has a thin layer of caked-on dirt that's probably only flaked off from *use* rather than active cleaning.)

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam's eyes darken. It takes physical effort to keep his fingers from twitching with anger--Akane's seeming nonchalance has jabbed him right in his own instincts. They helped keep him sane during the worst tortures of his life. They helped keep him useful, to an extent, to his captors. He stares into nothing for a moment, choking the emotion down.

        "That works," he says, turning away from the display of sandwiches and pastries. "Water to drink."

        Liam remembers the stories his mother told him. Places like these are 'liminal', culturally-speaking, a word that means 'in between'. Sometimes, eating the food there is dangerous, especially if it's offered to you by an entity that lives there.

        "What is he, then?" Liam asks. He glances at the phone, which does look like it's been on the street for months.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Hmmm..." Akane weighs whether to say it. On the one hand, it gives away several steps of the game for free. On the other hand... he'd answered 'yes,' ambiguously, about both his train and the Federation. He probably knows -- or if he won't, he might know soon.

Still: she hedges a bit. "... Not human," is all she really can give him. "Sorry -- that's... rrrreally complicated." He's a kaiju -- but a specific type, a specific shape. Articulating how that makes him different is a little beyond her, right now.

She worries at her mostly-empty coffee cup now, instead. "Hmmmrmr... mrmr..."

"So... why're you so worried about him? I'm guessing you two whipped each other around a bit..." She decides to go for a best guess. "Are you from southwestern Japan? I know out there they call it something else." If she knows nothing about him but that he's Britannian, this is harmless and a little weird; if she knows a lot, of course, the question becomes... pointed.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        She's thinking. She knows what's going on here--more than Liam does, anyway--and is trying to figure out what she can tell him without compromising one or more parties involved. The answer only raises more questions. "Thought so," Liam says.

        He falls silent as Akane peppers him with questions. Why is he so concerned about Anti, anyway? The proper move here is to run out that door and find somewhere to hole up in the train station until the next departure. He's already pushing himself to the limits of his emotional endurance--he forced himself to go to the bookstore Asuka told him about, and enjoyed it, and it almost felt like he was less afraid, but then... this. Is he cursed?

        Liam stares at the menu boards as he fights his own inner turmoil. He tries to think back to what Lucine and Guy and Ranka told him--what his parents told him before that. He's afraid. He has every reason to be. But courage is listening to that fear, and respecting it, not pretending it doesn't exist. For a moment, he looks like he's about to choke up, and then, suddenly--

        "No, I'm not from Japan. I'm--Irish. I live in Tokyo-3. And I think your brother's being used by some terrible people. I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Hmmm. Inconclusive -- but the freak-out, the choke-up tells her more than the negation. He may not be from there -- but that meant something to him. The follow-up doesn't exactly hurt her assessment of the situation either.

Protein boxes arrive, as does water. Akane leaves them for Liam to pick up. "You're thinking it's BioNet, right? And I mean: you're right, but not in the way you think you are?" She pushes her feelings to the back of her mind. They sort of... sit there, unaddressed.

(Her next kaiju, once she works up to it, will no doubt be magnificent.)

Assuming Liam picks up the boxes, she moves to sit; if he doesn't, she waits. "He was kind of made to be used!" Akane points out, either way, bland sparkles about it. "Don't worry, though. *I'm* not working with BioNet. As far as I'm concerned, I kinda wish your world would just make a clean break with mine!"

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam picks up his order, and glances over the dining area for a free table. Something that's not right next to the window--ideally, not visible from the window, but given the shape of the store that's not going to happen. He spots a smaller table with a pair of chairs that's just been cleaned--

        'You're thinking it's BioNet, right?'

        Liam's heart jumps against his ribs. His eyes go distant for a brief but very illuminating moment. The expression falls off his face. He walks after Akane, and takes a seat, and he does not let her out of his sight for a moment.

        "So was I," Liam says. He almost doesn't want to eat, despite the growing emptiness in his stomach, but the habits drilled into him by food uncertainty are strong. He picks out a piece of salami and bites it in half, chews, and swallows. That eerie intensity is back. She knows too much. He's going to keep digging himself deeper, but he has to.

        "'Alexis Kerib,'" Liam says.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

This time it's Akane's turn to react. Liam knows Alexis...? How? She doesn't flinch in quite the same way -- but the world contracts in on her in a way that's almost vertigo-inducing.

The salami is salami. It's pretty good. Better than you'd expect random over the counter garbage to be.

"Oh, okay. You're pretty read in already. Cool." She checks out. "It's not just Gridman. *Everyone* is on the ball. Well, that's fine." She looks down at her phone again. Ah, so this time Alexis doesn't leave her on read. Perfect. She gets the confirmation she was going for. "Liam 7-020, right. Okay, great. Listen. I have no problem with you, actually. In fact..."

Her lips curl up slightly. "... Wanna join me? Right now, you're BioNet's lost little puppy, right...? They'll chase you forever if they're your enemy. But if you're *my* ally... they're going to have to start making choices." A moment passes, before she affirms, "I'm -- not with BioNet. That part's still true." She needs the offer to be specific.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Liam glances down at the phone for a moment, and his face shifts into a slightly more neutral expression. Inwardly, the gears keep turning--he caught her off-guard, but she's texting someone on a phone that should not be working. He sees his name in the text before Akane says it out loud. This speaks volumes about Akane's place in things.

        None of it is good. She might not party to BioNet's crimes, but she might be someone they're grooming to join them--or even a potential experiment. Why not both?

        Liam eats a piece of cheese as she talks. It's not bad. For Starbows, this is entirely acceptable. It gives him something to focus on that isn't the horrific, sinking dread. He thinks back to Kaworu and the other NERV pilots. To Ranka. To Lucine. To Guy. To Chibodee. To Nidaime. The very last is Anti, the scraggly, neglected child without a home or a family. He might not be human. He might be made to serve. But Liam thinks further back, remembering someone else who also fits that description, someone who cared for him. It steels his heart. Liam's face tightens as the adrenaline drip starts. "Good deal, aos si," Liam says, invoking the words as if they were a charm. "But I can't accept. Not when they're counting on me. Not from someone who treats Anti like you've done."

        Liam wishes his mother were here to guide him. She researched things like this--stories, language, legend, culture, the way they intertwined--before they fired her. "I accept this hospitality. I can't accept your offer."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane doesn't know what an aos si is. But she *does* have a phone, and a curiosity about language. "Just a second. Irish, right? " 'Irish ace she'... 'Iris Aes see'... She eventually gets there with 'Irish aes si,' which is not actually right but gets her to the right definition.

She parses it, primarily, as 'not human.'

She doesn't seem to mind. "Mmm. Okay. Up to you! I thought you might want a way out, but I guess I can't really stop you." He's an idiot. Alexis could give someone lonely like him an offramp. (It never occurs to her that if Alexis knows about him, he could have done that himself, on his own recognisance, in his dealings with BioNet.)

"... Likewise, I can't really stop you from telling people about me. I'd like it if this stayed between us, but not everyone's willing to take on that kinda responsibility." She sounds... a little checked out, a little flat, now. Even as her words come out chirpy, there's a sense that that's... not all there. Like now that she's gotten rejected on her offer, her brain just kind of shut off. "Anyway. Do whatever you want. If you check out on the train, it'll take you back to your world. Good luck with BioNet!"

She stands up and leaves, leaving Liam with two protein boxes and a glass of water.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.

        Akane goes on a language hunt. A spike of irrational embarrassment shoots through the fear; for a moment it's like he's back in school and being the Dumb Hibernian who cares about stupid old stories. But they're all he has left of his family, now, and the steel this gives him stays.

        "Understood," Liam says. The more casual tone that popped up for a moment there is gone entirely. Akane isn't the only one who can do that trick. "Not the logical decision, yes. But one I can live with. Or die with."

        "Good luck," he adds, to Akane's back.

        And then she's gone. Liam feels, for a moment, like he's going to collapse into his food. That took way too much out of him. But even if he can't tell the others about Akane, he knows things about Anti, now. He might be able to help. He has to.