2023-01-21: Awakening (Inside)

• Log: 2023-01-21- Awakening (inside)
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Anti
• Where: ?????
• OOC - IC Date: 0097-01-21
• Summary: Anti reaches out to a failed creator, all trapped in a creation that was never really hers. For the first time: she lets herself be grateful. Takes place before the final pose round of 2023-01-21: Awakening.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Zegga screams at Anti that 'Gridknight' cannot save her -- that there is no other way for things to end than this.

It is Anti, then, that falls through the porcelain mask at the center of Zegga's false body, piercing through the forehead as if leaving a place for something new to adapt there. The sensation is strange -- it is at once so, so wet and utterly featureless, utterly bereft of even the smallest hint of light or context -- and the same as the air outside. (Then again, given the rain: outside, too, is wet.)

Hands pull at her from all angles, grasping at her, trying to drag her further under -- away from the music she desperately clings to, away from the love of a bigger world. The only world she deserves is her heart, and it is so, so small and so, so dark.

She is reminded again of the things she has done -- the people she has hurt, the Repli-Compoids she has killed for transgressions so much smaller than her own. Her eyes try to screw themselves shut -- so a hand plunges into her lilac hair (so grey in this light) and yanks her upward, fingers digging into eyebrows to tug her eyelids upward, force her to see.

This space is so strange -- so abstract -- and so dark. It seems as though whatever is pulling her down, though, is starting to win again -- the sheer barrage of images in front of her feels so hard to refute, so hard to do anything but concede that she is the kaiju and that her feelings are all monsters.

It's hard to even tell which way is 'up,' here, in this place. But Akane begins to sink.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti begins to sink.

        In this place there is no definition or form. There were never hallways, in Akane's house. There was no need for transitionary areas. The footprints he left to reach her room simply weren't; an idea, unexpressed.

        What matters, here, is the expression.

        The Venora were an expression.

        Ghoulghilas was an expression.

        Devadadan was an expression.

        Anti was...

        From above -- enforcing the CONCEPT of an above, brutishly -- a kaiju's claw slices through everything.

        From above -- positing the CONCEPT of an above, insightfully -- a great palm made of shining light engulfs all that Akane is, and all which surrounds her.

        A kaiju, and a Vessel of Light.

        "HhhhrrrraaaarrrRRRGHHHH...!!!"

        From nowhere, above, shatters the sound of Anti's screaming, as he plunges his hand down and grasps Akane's own. For the first time he touches her, hunched over her pool of porcelain tears just as he landed. One arm flexes out, as the other wrenches her high, knees bent and teeth grit. He extends his legs; he lifts his arm high.

        Those tears fleck from his hand, and hers.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The form matters, and yet -- the form doesn't really matter at all. Whether the hand that grabs her is like a human, or like a kaiju... it's reaching out -- unlike the ones which seem to trap her.

('Seem,' here, the operative word.)

Akane is enwrapped, all at once, by that hand -- ripped from hell by force in hopes of heaven. It's a solution she would never have thought of; 'kaiju' do not heal, they only fix. Kaiju do not save, they only remove. (A solution she was discouraged from thinking of.)

In this moment, though -- there is no difference between the two. (Was there ever? Or was the part of her that could tell one of the parts of her heart carved away to make a world (kaiju)?)

When Akane comes up through the porcelain, through Tsutsujidai's endless rain -- she is exactly as she was, and yet, she is not. Her hoodie -- so often a tool to make her bigger after she'd made herself so small, to hide herself when she'd wanted so desperately to be seen -- is gone. The blood is still on her face -- and yet, it is just blood, now, smudged by the water.

She looks up toward him, and for what feels like the first time in eternity she allows her body to look -- and feel -- tired.

"Why did it have to be you?" comes her question -- and it would be easy to take as accusatory. But the sharpness of Akane's accusations, of her blame, is gone from it. Akane Shinjo does not stand, does not stomp, does not reassert her control. Her hand is held, and she looks up, allowing herself to be beneath him -- allowing 'above' (no, 'above her') to exist -- as she asks it.

It's answered in the asking. Every one of her (Alexis's) kaiju -- her successful creations, all hollow things -- had been made to offer her isolation. And Anti, in turn, then --

"You really are -- a failed creation," she offers him, and even in her exhaustion she feels so overcome with joy in it. To be imperfect, to live in the world anyway --

She is so tired. It hurts so much to think she's allowed to smile and mean it.

And yet, she feels just the tiniest shift in her cheeks, her lips, her eyes, beginning.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        As above, so below.

        Anti stands, and does not release Akane's hand, extended out before him. (Like so many others stretched out, before him.) He is severe, but it is not as he was. He has lost an eye, and gained knowledge; there is no question of his agency, as the wind which now exists scatters his hair forward.

        He lets her sag, and he lets her speak.

        "Yeah," he agrees, when she is done. "I'm the failed creation you made."

        Did Anti carve off a piece of Akane's heart to cry for help, just as Ghoulghilas and Devadadan before him? He was a kaiju, and Alexis Kerib gave him life. Now, he says, he is no longer a kaiju -- and he's not claiming to be human.

        He's just found his own way to live, now.

        And he could not have done so if Akane Shinjo had not wished to explore the power of change.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

He acknowledges her -- sees the meaning behind her words, and gives her no less a puzzle than her own in exchange -- and she wishes she could have done the same for him so much sooner than this, without such heartache...

... but then -- what time is there to do that but now?

She lets out the smallest sigh. Akane Shinjo takes a deep breath -- needs a deep breath -- as the sky starts, bit by bit, to clear -- as the rain starts to slow -- as the world returns, and sunlight returns to Tsutsujidai with it, for the first time in more than a month.

(And Tsutsujidai is so much more than it was before, in so many senses. People have planted many gardens inside this one, in the time they've spent trapped here -- the kind nourished by the sun and which nourish others in turn.)

The smile she gives him doesn't hide the blood on her face, even as the water takes it further down toward her neck. The gratitude shines sunset-bright, though, in spite of it.

It's hard to say when they emerged into the light; doubtless someone else will have that answer, though. So many stand here to witness it -- to refute the notion that the Earth Sphere cannot rebuild anything. The narrative observes every angle on itself, rather than just one.

There's no space for the devil in the details here; if he were to hide between the lines now, he'd place himself in turn between Scylla and Charybdis.

Akane spares Anti a word -- two, actually -- as she's now allowed to, in this world where she could come to meet people who could see the things in her that she herself could not.

"Thank you."

Two more.

"... I'm sorry."

She wants to say them a thousand times. Part of her still wants to carve them out of every vein and artery, not just her heart but every part of her, in hopes that redemption lies in the carving alone -- but...

... perhaps, in this world of finite things, once -- truly from the heart -- is enough, for now.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        The best time was a year ago; the second best time is now.

        (True of trees, and other things. In her walls was built a garden.)

        Slowly, slowly, the sky stops crying. Even so, Anti doesn't release Akane's hand. Carried in his fingertips -- holding fast but not crushingly tight, with care given to the weight of his strength -- is his concern and his connection.

        He saw her in the darkness. Now he sees her in the light.

        Two words, and two more, and Anti's head dips and raises in a nod. He is not a boy given to smiling; even so, in his fashion, he can accept Akane's feelings and intentions.

        She doesn't have to say them a thousand times, because he can hear her.

        His response is deceptively direct: "I wanted to go here."

        Anti could have left, and sheltered in the Villa. Few would blame him. But his own decision -- his desire -- was to save Akane, too.

        And he does not say it a thousand times, because he feels she can hear him, now.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane remains where she is, for now -- holding that hand as long as he'll let her and maybe just a second longer. Tears stream down her cheeks even as the rain comes to a stop; Tsutsujidai's climate is no longer a weight her heart has to bear, which makes it all the plainer that she allows herself, at last, to cry like a human, rather than a monster.

With reality comes its needs, of course. She'll need to be examined at Orbit Base -- need time to recover from her ordeal -- need to apologize to so many more people -- need to decide what tomorrow, and the next day, and every other day after it all look like.

... but she can't displace those needs onto monsters, anymore.