2022-12-23: All Our Many Faces

• Log: 2022-12-23: All Our Many Faces
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Sayla Mass
• Where: Kamesan Park, Tsutsujidai
• OOC - IC Date: 23 December 0096
• Summary: Two people who know too many of each others secrets speak. Kindness came too late.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane Shinjo has made herself a hard woman to find on purpose. Not only is she nearly perpetually moving, stopping only in obscured alleyways to sulk for extended periods, she now has a coconspirator in this matter -- someone who can wear her face long enough to confound people searching for her.

It's hard to hide forever forever, though. Right now, she's making her way around the periphery of Kamesan Park. Her feet carry her from one end to the other, along the standard Tsutsujidai bus loop. (It's the path that her thoughts take through her city -- so naturally, it's both the bus loop and the place her feet carry her, with the buses largely out of service.)

Her face is still covered in blood, as are her hands. There's a little splatter on her parka hoodie. No matter where she goes or what she does, nothing can wash that away. She has always clung to the remnants of her sins, after all -- even before she consciously knew they were such.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla's been having people keep an eye out. The NGJHS when they're running messages, 3G operating as they will and members of the Yumi foundation. But they aren't the ones who reveal her location- it's a feeling on the edge of sensation. The despair of a kaiju. Sayla excuses herself from her work, grabs something from the Yumi foundation fridge and an umbrella- then makes a run for it.

        Getting Calibur and Renais to leave her alone for long enough had been the hard part- but it was done. She'd apologize later. This was a conversation for no one but them.

        Sayla approaches from a blind angle, walls up to hide her presence. She had no intention of letting Akane ecape. She reaches for something in her bag as she closes and-

        A tomato juice is thrust in front of Akane, as Sayla circles round to face her. "We're talking." Sayla's voice is quiet, to make sure she isn't oveheard- even in the now quiet park, at this imperceptible hour. "About my dream, and about what you know about him." No wriggling, no escape, Sayla presses on.

        "Char Aznable. My brother."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

It's not until Sayla is nearly in front of her that Akane realizes she's not alone. Her heart is shut off from the world.

As above, so below.

A bribe appears. Akane looks at it numbly, as if she's forgotten what a box of tomato juice is for -- or maybe as if she never knew. She looks up to Sayla, and she seems so impossibly lost. She looks smaller than she ever has, and the pretense of a mighty villain is gone. Her walls are so impossibly high -- and yet, the screams and laughs and cries of a monster are louder than ever, drowning out whatever might exist beneath them.

"Most of what you know," Akane replies, expression dull. "I thought knowing would make it easier. You really don't want anyone to know you, though."

They're a little alike, in that way.

Akane still hasn't bothered to take the tomato juice. "I don't really have any plans on doing anything with that I don't think I care but if you want to be sure I keep your secrets you can do whatever it probably doesn't matter because it'll fix itself soon." It spills out all at once, like she's reading a script and doesn't care about its delivery.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla pauses. She hadn't expected Akane's full fierceness but not.... This defeated. This lost. She expected venom and bile, maybe some snark. But the pain the Kaiju's in is so loud, so pained, so painful. She should have sone something earlier. But it's too late for earlier, she can do something now.

        "I see." She moves her umbrella, but instead of covering the two of them, she takes it down, and holds on to it- lets herself be soaked by the rain too. "But it didn't- knowing just confused you more, right?" She sighs."...You're right. I don't. I'm scared of what them knowing would do to them, what danger it would put them in." This is... raw for Sayla. Her walls lower with it. It's hard to be open like this without being open fully. "I'm worried about betraying the people who sacrificed themselves for Sayla Mass to exist. But most of all, I'm scared that them knowing might change them... and me. When I stop being Sayla to them..." She takes a long, deep breath. "And start being Artesia Som Deikun." She hasn't spoken her birth name out loud in so long. It hurts.

        "...So tell me, does that make two of us?"

        The read from Akane... hurts. It's terrifying. "...That's the only way this can end, is it?" Sayla can read between the lines. "With you no longer here." She pauses deeply. "And that doesn't mean going back to that lonely apartment."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"No I kind of get you," Akane admits. "I'm not confused." Her words become just a little bit less of a jumble as she orients on thinking about Sayla instead of herself. "You hate the part where you couldn't fix the Red Comet, so you've been trying to fix a different 'red.'" That much, at least, feels obvious to Akane, now that she's actually talking with Sayla. "It won't work."

The other part of this... does require some honesty from her. "... yeah," she says. It's unclear what she's saying it to. It's probably all of it.

Wait...

"... you tracked me down? There?" she asks, startled. "You... why?" She looks down to the sidewalk, unable to meet Sayla's gaze. "There's nothing I need in there anymore, anyway." She folds her arms, curling in on herself. "Did you... go alone? What else did you see?"

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla pauses. Can she deny it? "I do hate that I couldn't stop Casval becoming who I did. And I constantly wonder how different the world would be if I had pulled the trigger on Side 7." She does pause, though. This isn't a good line of questioning. "But I think it might have been trying save someone like me rather that someone like him." She thinks to the Akane of the dream. A lot of that wasn't an act.

        Sayla bites her lip. She needs to talk to Guy, to Koji, maybe even the NERV group. But right now... that is how someone like Alexis would play it. Stack the odds so he wins either way.

        "I did, sometime after we saved Renais. You know who else I am by now too, don't you? Alexis... probably didn't hijack my comms in France just to upset me when he could upset multiple people." She sighs, still holding out the juice box. "...Do you think the level of not wanting to be known I have doesn't come with some paranoia?" She's being open, honest- it's uncomfortable and it shows. But the discomfort is part of it.

        And a part of her worries she might not get another shot.

        "No. Renais found the information, and I took her and someone else to provide overwatch." She doesn't have to mention Sousuke yet. "Photos. Your last meal. Obvious parental neglect. The parts of yourself that you show here that you felt you had to hide, even in a place that was just you." Sayla looks... not just sad but a little angry. Angry at the situation. Angry at those people who claim to care for her daughter. Sayla can't excuse what she did but... Akane deserved better. Much better. "I had a camera set up to see if anyone else looked. As it stands, only four people know what was in that apartment. Two of them are here and I swore the other two to secrecy." She decides to take... a very big risk. "It may not matter soon, which means there's no nothing to lose telling you, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... in some ways, that's worse. Being known comes with pain -- a lot of it. To have Sayla admit she was hoping to save herself through saving Akane is heavy; she can scarcely comprehend it, yet it's all the more painful. Knowing that, if Sayla had had the chance to escape into the shadows of her heart when she was alone...

Only four people know -- and two of them sworn to secrecy. The other two are presumably Akane and Sayla themselves. (Photos, though -- that carries some anxiety.)

"Guess not," she agrees, on the final point. "And yeah. ... I know all of your faces, and you know plenty of mine. I guess we're even... and it's not gonna matter what we tell each other." 'Plenty,' not all -- and saying it comes with a bit of a slump.

There's a question she wants to ask -- but she shoves it down. It'd hurt more to know the answer.

Instead... "Sucks that you're stuck in this mess. At this point neither of us are gonna get a chance to fix ourselves." For her, that's just her just desserts, but for Sayla...

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla comes to the full conclusion a little after Akane, but now it's there. Hanging in the air. "...There might be one I haven't seen. But I think I've heard it. Felt it." There's something... that lets her breathe about all of this.

        "...I think... if Alexis had come here twenty years ago, this place would have been some mix of a Spanish village and a Side 3 colony." She's quiet, as it all comes out. "And I'd be the one wandering it's ruins." It wouldn't have played out any differently to this point. But Sayla wouldn't have had anyone talking to her now.

        Sayla pauses, silently. She can feel that. "...Maybe it'd hurt, but if it does't matter what we tell each other now, maybe it's time to just speak." There's sadness in her voice- Akane's sadness and melancholy meet her own, mix. With so many of the people she counts on gone, Sayla's struggling. But better to face the hurt and melancholy here and now.

        She's silent for a moment. She knows what that implies. "...No, you're right." That should be the end of it. "I think maybe... we don't fix ourselves. Which is a hell of a problem for people like us. We're so focused on making sure no one else knows us- and that means hiding what might be fixed, right?" This is not the woman she has portrayed for so long. "Sometimes we need someone to come in and hold us down until we stop thrashing and we can listen." Sayla seems tired, weary- lonely. "Good thing there are people who don't know what we do."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... so she admits it. That she's just as weak as Akane is -- and just as closed off. There's a small part of her that feels angry hearing that -- that Sayla could have fallen like this.

After all: why didn't she? It just makes Akane feel worse about herself.

"I don't want you to touch me," she says, and perhaps she means it metaphorically as much as literally. "I don't think there'll be much listening after I stop thrashing, either." ... still, if that were that easy, she probably would have done it already, right?

... so if it's not going to matter, they can keep talking. Just a little longer. "... I know why you didn't give up. It's... because you have someone else." She looks down, the rain soaking her. "I don't. Maybe I did and I was too stupid to notice."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        "Okay." Sayla responds- she keeps herself from reaching out as best she can. Walling up without closing herself off. It's hard, but Sayla is a practiced woman. She shifts her grip on the juice, slightly, so Akane *can* take it without contact- but she's not taking it back either. She can keep her hand extended still.

        "...With the dream?" She asks, making sure. Still... she nods in acknowledgement. "...I think that's part of it. But it's not the only reason." She looks to Akane. "I don't think you could have known, but less than forty eight hours before that dream... Amuro Ray came back. Because of Triple Zero. He nearly killed Leina and put her back in a wheelchair for a month. I neardly killed myself blocking the attack." Why explain it- it's all past now. But Akane seems to want to know. "Choosing that moment, without that context... is probably why it didn't work." She takes a long time to think, as she soaks in the rain. What to say to her? "...It wasn't just my having someone. It was not having someone whose been whispering poison into my ears." Her mind looks back to Lalah. To Kamille. "You can have someone... but you can't see them if there's interference." The rest of that... that's Rikka's fight. After a long, quiet moment, she talks again.

        "I won't make you answer. I won't even try and make you stay if you don't want to, but I'd like to know- even it would hurt me." She thinks she knows. She's reasonably confident, in fact. But... Her own stupid, selfish desire makes her ask. "I was one of your earliest targets with that Kaiju, wasn't I?" A beat.

        "Why?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane takes a small step back, as Sayla shifts her grip. She can't accept the kindness of others right now -- not even as a transaction. ... She can't quite bring herself to leave, though.

"Amuro what."

She looks incredulous. Amuro Ray died at Axis. It's... even with how horrible the results are on top of that, that's...

... well, it's still a miracle at enormous cost. No different from any of the rest of them, in that sense. Miracles still feel like such a powerful cruelty -- and the kind that will extract a price sooner or later.

After all, her miracle did just that.

"..." She stares at Sayla, processing the information. "... Alexis is leaving me alone right now," Akane answers. "I told him... I can't make kaiju anymore. So maybe this will all end soon." There's no one whispering poison in her ear anymore. ... but it feels like the damage has been done.

Still -- there's that question. Why. Why, why. Why target Sayla so early.

"... I hate that you showed up too late. And I wanted..." ... to hurt her for it? To have her anyway? To show her the futility in it all?

"... something."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla simply nods, confirming that it happened. She'll answer questions if need be, but lets Akane have the silence. "I see," she says in a tone that indicates this isn't in any way reassuring. "Maybe," Sayla responds, that sadness back in her voice. "Just... You don't have to wait alone. If you decide you want off the street..."

        Akane can't even accept the juice, can she accept any help... "... there's parking lot across from the Foundation offices with a nice blindspot. I'll be able to know if you're there. We can work it out from there." Sayla has to try.

        ... I hate that you showed up too late.

        Why... Why did you have to appear now?

        A voice from someone else's dreams echoes in her head. Sayla remains silent for a while longer. It seems like she was too late so often...

        Quietly, she places the juice on a nearby bench. The offer remains open. It's not discarded. The words stick in Sayla's throat until, finally..."I am for the you that was then," if she'd been sooner, she might have been able to be there for the girl she met on the bus. Maybe Alexis did his damage. "...But on the long shot that this doesn't go the way you expect, then... You can hold me to 'something'." It's a seed. A seed for a girl who might have been saved. A girl who deserved much better. "I'll go now, if you want me to. But you know where I'll find you."

        She can't save everyone. She knows that, no matter how hard she tries.

        "But I'll stay if you want to me to, as well."

        She can damn well put all she can into saving Akane. And that's what she's going to do.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"... go where you want. Do what you want." Akane doesn't accept the juice; she doesn't accept the offer of help; she can't accept... any of it, as she is now. But it's got her thinking about who she is -- and that off chance that this ends in a way that lets her follow up on 'something.'

Her gaze turns up toward the sky -- toward the arm and head of one of the maintenance-type kaiju, tangled up in a power line. "I get what you're trying to do. Save it for a better person."

To make it easier for Sayla to leave, she, herself, begins taking step after shuffling step. It hurts to move on -- but it'll hurt both of them more for her to stay.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

Sayla shrugs, and waits. Far be it from her to contradict her. Still, when Akane says her piece, Sayla shakes her head. "Nope," She says, tapping the umbrella. "I'm going to take your advice and do what I want." It's a little pithy, but... she's made her decision.

        "Besides, this would be wasted on a better person." As Akane finally starts to move away, and she steps back and unfolds her umbrella. The juice stays right where it is. Sometimes help is an offer to anyone. "This sort of things for people who've lost the person that could have been helped by other means." She puts it up over her head, and looking out at the trudging Akane- before she's too far away Sayla would have to meaningfully raise her voice. "This isn't for an Artesia. It's for a Sayla."

        She turns away, walking off into the rain. Hopefully Akane will understand. Hopefully Akane will have time to understand. Sayla starts walking off to the Yumi Foundation office. If she's done all she can herself... it's time to see what others can do with the right help.