2023-02-27: Free Energy

• Log: 2023-02-27- Free Energy
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Koji Kabuto
• Where: AEU Spain - Villa Mass
• OOC - IC Date: 0097-02-27
• Summary: Koji Kabuto makes a stop at Villa Mass to keep its inhabitants in the loop about the recent events at the Photon Power Labs. One of them gets a little free energy in convenient pastry form.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane has had time to sleep, and attend class remotely, and... honestly, she's not feeling either of those things. That's a feat, because Akane has really struggled to stay awake more than 13 hours on any day she doesn't either have a lot of time to herself or see Rikka.

The last few weeks of progress feel so fake right now. Part of her is trying to remember that that isn't the case, but at the same time... it's not easy. She feels sick to her stomach, and not in the fun I-ate-too-much-paella way.

This sucks.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

She's in her room -- well, Sayla's room -- at the villa, lying on her side blandly scrolling To-witter after class. It's that kinda day. At least she's created a second feed to be just full of Truthseeker Serena fanart and is scrolling that one.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

The Double Spazer cruises leisurely over the Atlantic, cutting a sleek line towards the Mass Villa. In the cockpit: A pair of Kabuto brothers, still feeling the burn of the previous night's combat (and a late-night VERTEX exchange).

"You sure about this, bro?" Shiro asks as Koji brings the fighter/shuttle/science craft in to touch down not far from the Villa. Its propulsion sounds utterly unlike any other common aircraft - a strange hybrid of rotary thrum and thruster growl.

"What, you want everyone here to just spend days worrying about Sayla? They need to know how she's doing."

"Yeah, but - "

"But nothin'. Like I said - the most important thing is supporting our friends and the people we think of as family." The Double Spazer touches down, its wings and rotary photonic thrusters folding upwards to make space for the two to disembark. "Go see if Leina's here and make sure she's okay, I'll check in on the rest of the house."

The two brothers bump fists in a gesture of tacit support and head up to the Villa, where, once the staff recognise them and let them in, Shiro promptly heads up to Leina's room. Koji inquires after the other inhabitants.

And so:

There is a gentle tap on the door to Sayla's room, where Akane is just-barely-not-doom-spiraling. "Miss Shinjo? Are you in there?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Nnnn?" Akane hates knocks on her door -- there's a reason she made it kind of impractical to do so in Tsutsujidai. She's at least out of the space where they'd prompt an immediate slam-shut of her laptop, but she's not having a great one already. It takes her a second to clamp down the reflexive panic reaction.

"... Dr. Kabuto?" It's taking her a second to realize where she recognizes the voice from, but at least she's managing it; having to engage with the rest of the world is, bit by bit, waking her back up.

"I wasn't expecting you here," she says, heading over to the door. "I'm... not decent. Couldn't make myself shower today. Can we talk through the door?" It's true, but there's a lot she's obscuring or misdirecting there. "Is this about..." She trails off. She doesn't want to say 'my kaiju' here.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"That's right." There's the sound of a larger body settling itself on the other side of the door, as Koji sits down. "Talking through the door is fine, I don't want to pressure you too much."

Akane asks if this is about... and trails off. Koji thinks for a second and concludes that she's already heard about CK-01.

"I wanted to ask if you knew what happened to that screwdriver I handed you last time we spoke, actually." The tone of his voice suggests this is an attempt to lighten the mood. "Can't seem to find it anywhere!"

A beat.

"I just felt like someone should check up on how you're doing, since Sayla's still at the Lab. It... can't have been easy to hear about the kaiju."
Leina Ashta (Leina) has paged Akane Shinjo and Koji Kabuto with, 'Hey hey mind an observer? No pressure if you'd prefer not!'

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Oh, I actually have that in here. It's in one of my moving boxes... hold on." Akane is a little relieved that she's not being asked about her kaiju first or even second; there's the sounds of a box being dragged closer to the door, and Akane takes a seat with her back to the door a moment later. There's a bit of a thud.

Over that faint rummaging sound, Akane continues, "I'm... okay. Last night was worse. Gridman and I talked about it on VERTEX. It kinda blew my momentum... I was talking about a Truthseeker Serena comic I was gonna throw up on my To-witter with Leina when I heard."

Rubbing at her temples for a bit, she keeps talking. ... may as well, right? "Wait... what happened at the lab? I didn't get that part of it. The kaiju was further northeast, I thought." Her thoughts are already racing, even though she sounds... passable.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"Sayla came by to commission us for a project, like she did for Renais's new look, and G-Hound rocked up to throw their weight around and demand we surrender some people to them. She helped us out but got knocked out during the fight, so we kept her in for observation. She's doing okay but we're gonna keep her in for a couple days. The kaiju showed up almost simultaneously, we're talking over any strategy that might've been intended with 3G." It's an answer riddled with half-truths that are probably fairly obvious to needle - Koji doesn't like lying and isn't very good at it.

He chuckles a little, hearing her rummage around in the box. "I'm surprised you remembered about it. If it were me, I might've put it down somewhere else and forgotten about it all over again. Oh, I brought something, actually. A gift basket for the house, but I set aside some home-baked goods for everyone. Swap?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

G-Hound... demanded the PPL surrender people at the same time as the kaiju? "That doesn't make any sense," Akane says, as she continues to poke around. This... was the box, right? "Alexis works with BioNet." She knows that the line between science criminals and the government is thin, but the intel doesn't suggest that particular link -- that she knows of. She elects not to press on Sayla; that much does make sense, even if she's pretty sure the worst of it is getting kept from her.

"I was pretty fussy about tools. Just having something in my room that wasn't one of mine kinda stuck out," she answers, pushing a Yaldagoaz statue aside and -- ah, there it is. Sliding her hand slowly out of the box to avoid damaging the statuette, Akane says, "Sure. Swap."

She opens the door a crack, waggling the screwdriver. "Maybe he's after Shiro again?" she suggests. "Alexis does strike me as the kinda guy who hates losing... I could see him watching for an opportunity to split you and Shiro and try to get a crack at him without you there..."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Koji places a bento box at the foot of the door. "... Hm." He doesn't want to push the door open any wider, but there's no angle at which the box will cleanly enter the room. He does take the screwdriver, though, and opens the lid of the bento to show off the still-warm pastries inside. "Some of my best work - but I say that about every batch." He grins at her, twirling the screwdriver between his fingers before hooking it through his belt.

"Mm. I feel like if that were the case, then either he badly underestimates what my brother can do with that Ichinana of his, or he was messing with us. But maybe he doesn't just work with BioNet? I mean - " he waves a hand. "You didn't have anything to do with them when he showed up to 'help' you, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane opens the door a little wider to snag the bento; it gives him a small glimpse of her. She's definitely in her underwear, so she does her best to hide herself around the door, but she's pretty adroit. The whole exchange is a little bit fumbling.

Once she's situated again, she takes a bite of pastry. "Oh... yeah, vhese awh rrrly good," she mumbles around a mouthful. She swallows by the time she gets back to serious idea-bouncing, though.

"That's true, yeah," she reflects. "And I guess I could see him playing a lot of sides, but..." ... as easy as it is to catastrophize about this, Akane's a little past the worst of it, which means now she's thinking about Alexis in a much clearer light. "Maybe it's not that he underestimates what Shiro can do with his Ichinana, but overestimates how much he relies on you? Like, the last time he tried this stuff, he lost 'cuz you were all there. Splitting the Third Company off from you seems like it'd mess up Shiro's rhythm, right?"

Now she's thinking about it, though. What would Alexis get out of working with G-Hound?

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"He actually got his unit unlocked to come help us - G-Hound managed to engineer an authorisation from the OCU to do their bullshit - and turned around when the kaiju appeared. He's Company Captain, after all - gotta do right by his troops." Put that way it's pretty clear that it's more complicated than just splitting them apart. "But - yeah. I kept thinking about the ambush attempt he tried, trying to work over what Alexis's angle would've been. Best I can figure, his objective was to get Tetsuya and I charging into Tsutsujidai with a full head of steam looking for the creator of the kaiju to nail to the wall - and if he'd succeeded, it would've worked... ten years ago, maybe."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane chews on that a little bit. "I mean... we can't totally rule out coincidence here. If he did something again, that'd be one thing..." Akane lets out a whine, gently tapping the back of her head into the door. "... Hrm. That's probably part of it, but... that was June, right?" Sorting through her own timeline is a bit of a pain, but...

"I think it might've been as much about me as you guys. He did something in Tokyo-3 around then too... I think he just wanted me to feel like I was on the hook for all that stuff." She groans, admitting, "... it worked. It still kinda works. I do feel like I'm on the hook for this one."

Another bite of pastry. "Hhgh," she offers, eloquently. "Even if Shiro ran off on his own, it'd probably be kinda inconvenient for G-Hound to have to clean up a friendly fire incident with the OCU... seems like that'd be more fun for Alexis to let happen than defuse, though..." Too much they don't know. "He texted me the other day to tell me not to trust anyone," she volunteers. "Like... what he was pushing was that since I dunno Judau and Roux at all, or most of 3G, one of them might betray me. Or someone from BioNet might pick up Alouette or Renais or even the Gridman Alliance and turn them against me."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"... What a jackass, there's not a deceptive bone in Judau's head - and he's proud to be a bonehead. He trusts Sayla, she's taken you in, he'll trust you. Simple as that." He shrugs. "You can depend on him, and he and Roux are thick as thieves so you can count on her too. We flew together, if that counts for anything."

"And - yeah, I meant it was about putting you in a corner by collecting enemies for you - people who wouldn't think twice about what happened and would just go charging straight in. Like I said - a ten-year-younger me definitely would've fallen for it, to say nothing of Tetsuya. That's part of why I was trying to help get you out of there."

"As for BioNet... They're BioNet, messing with people's heads is what they do, it doesn't change the fact that anyone they've done that to is their victim, no matter how dangerous they are. Right?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Ahaha, yeah, I know. I didn't fall for it... I just talked it through with Marusan over food," Akane says, at the reassurance. "And yeah, that makes sense. If you'd showed up mad, I would've felt pretty cornered." She drums her fingers behind her, against the door. "Nnh. I feel like we have more questions than answers at this point..."

She slumps forward, taking a deep breath in. "I know it's not as bad as he says it is. But... I worry like I'm going to totally blow my intensive on Wednesday... -- oh, uh, I'm in 3G ops training right now. Dunno if that one got around to you!" She tries to sound enthusiastic, though it comes out a little uneven.

Is this something she ought to even share with Koji? ... may as well, honestly. "... this isn't doing a lot to make me feel like once you start being a victim you ever really get to stop," she admits. Her gusto for sorting through Alexis's movements fades a bit; now she just feels bad.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"... I know what you mean. Remember what I was trying to tell you back when you showed up in the hangar? About how trying to go it alone and push people away didn't work out for me?" Akane is very clearly making an effort to trust him with personal worries. Koji returns the favour.

"I know there's this... image of me around the world as this... hotheaded Man Of Justice who took to the fight against Hell for the sake of all of Japan, and I guess going into Free Energy as a career didn't really shake that idealised image. Lemme tell you - back then, back when it all started? I was a mess - hotheaded, sure, but aggressive, cantankerous, an idiot daredevil on my motorcycle. No parents, a grandfather who was distant at best and just gone at worst, all I had keeping me grounded was the awareness that Shiro needed me to be his Big Bro. Even Rumi took loads of heat from me that she didn't deserve just because she wasn't the mother I remembered."

"And then Baron Ashura showed up to our home in the dead of night and killed her looking for gramps, and the Photon Power Lab found me trying to figure out how to pilot Mazinger, and the rest is history. I'm only here now because of them, and the unconditional kindness Professor Yumi showed me."

"I guess what I'm trying to say is... It never goes away. Your experiences in Tsutsujidai will always be a part of you, but with support, you don't have to let that define you, and you can redefine what you take away from it. It's not easy - it took me years just to stop snapping at Sayaka over every little thing - but it's possible, and we'd like to help you on your path like I was helped - if you'll let us. 3G training sounds like a great start, to me - and since Orbit Base has artificial gravity, you don't even need to worry about Zero-G." Koji.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Ahahaha, yeah, I do remember that," Akane agrees. The food does a lot to keep her thoughts off the very worst of it, even if it's not enough to totally boomerang her mood. "And yeah, you definitely do! That's... actually really hard to imagine, though, like... ahaha, before I moved to Tsutsujidai I used to get in a ton of fights. No motorcycle, but before --" a catch, "-- some health stuff, I was pretty scrappy."

The conversation takes a dark turn, and then a less dark one. "Unconditional kindness... ahaha, that kinda thing is hard to swallow. I'm still getting my head around it." After a long deep breath that shudders just a little, and a little time poking at her phone... "Thanks. I'll try to trust you guys about it."

Something clicks in her head. "... if you tell me the other half of what happened at the labs. Your story's kinda too clean here..." It's just musing at this point, not accusatory. "Something's bugging you about the G-Hound side of it that makes it just a little too plausible that everyone was on the same page, right? You're fighting me a little too hard on Alexis acting on his own for it to be nothing."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"... You're good." He grins. "There's some darker stuff going on, but it's really not my secrets to spill - we were sheltering some people the Federation really wants to get their hands on over some messy conspiracy I don't have a complete understanding of - those were the people they wanted us to hand over. Even aside from that, though - the timing lines up too perfectly," he admits. "Not just the fact that the entire Third Company was grounded and couldn't reinforce the Lab when G-Hound showed up, but that they got specific deployment clearance pretty much exactly when CK-01 showed up, plus the distance from the lab where it showed up - even with his Ichinana's thrusters at full burn, Shiro didn't make it back to the lab until the fight was over and done with. Basically the whole thing stinks, and a mysterious conspiracy that people will attack Institutions of Peace over seems like exactly the sort of thing Kerib would stick his craw into."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane takes a little time to take that in. "... Hm. OK, when you put it like that... yeah, it probably is coordinated on some level. I dunno if it's the top level... he might actually want you guys to think it is even if it isn't." Akane's no big fan of the Federation, but she can see why Alexis might coordinate with some mid-level functionary to make it look like the whole apparatus is rotten. Can't rule it out.

Akane reaches into the box again. This time it's to retrieve one of the few kaiju sofubi she didn't just will into existence. It's fine to keep gifts, and she needs a rubber duck on this side of the door to talk to.

"Hm... wait, it's just Mr. Full of Hot Air. Alexis didn't want to kill anyone, or he would have pulled something bigger out... maybe all he really wanted out of this one was to pull Shiro away from the fight. But why do that?" Less and less making sense.

A lightning bolt hits. "They're trying to keep the OCU military out of the conspiracy part. If it's just the Photon Power Labs and Sayla, that's safer than ruining a cross-bloc unit, isn't it?"

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"... Yeah. And sabotaging the train lines - he had a better tool for that, too, the same one he used to attack Shiro. Move in under cover of fog, hit a power controller with a well-placed electrical discharge, overload the entire grid. Photon Power can't go anywhere if the lines are fried."

"I think you have something. They still want to keep up plausible deniability and keep things as quiet as possible, and provoking a full-blown military response is the last thing they want - their boss woman was making a big deal about being compliant in the face of the law but they showed up with mobile suits, not a search warrant, so fuck 'em."

He nods. "Okay, that helps a bunch. Thanks, Akane."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

'So fuck 'em' gets Akane to absolutely lose it. She starts laughing, and it's a shockingly genuine laugh. "And here I thought you'd be totally fine with the cops," Akane teases, before taking another bite from her baked goods infusion.

"Yeah. I think you gotta assume... Alexis is just here to screw with us. Mostly me, but... a lot of us, actually. That's all the incentive he needs to help out here... whoever he's working with in G-Hound is probably the one setting the agenda. He was like that with BioNet too, for the most part." That... honestly wasn't so bad. Even if it was personal, she managed to sort through intel and come up with something about it that made sense.

"Thanks, Dr. Kabuto," she replies. "... and for the food, too."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"No problem, baking is one of the few things that lets me tune things out and properly focus, so any excuse to make something sweet is one I'll grab onto eagerly." He grins.

"Honestly, there are so many things I want to ask about... everything. But I bet you've got enough of that from 3G, and I don't want to push you too hard, sooo how about we swap VERTEX info and if you need anything - even if it's just to vent - you can get in touch?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"I like to do soups and breakfast food," Akane replies, with a laugh. "Baking isn't super expressive for me... I can see why it'd hit for you if you're wired for science stuff. It's definitely more like that." She stretches out, saying, "Oh, uh, aumerei_seijin," and then she gives her extended digits. "I'll be waiting for the request."

She nods once, and adds, "I'll see if I can get you 3G's file on me, too. Just so we can skip a lot of the boring stuff."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"Oh, I'd appreciate that. I can always just ask Guy if you'd prefer, of course." Oh, right. They're actually friends.

After a short moment, she gets a contact request from a 'mazin-dr.z'. Really?

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"... Yeah, that might be better. I don't wanna go over some of that if I can avoid it," Akane admits.

Looking down at her phone, Akane just... stares. "... You nerd," she teases, as if she isn't posting fanart for a three year old anime on To-witter. "Thanks for stopping by, though. I'm gonna try to shower in a bit. Hang in there with, uh, whatever it turns out is going on!"

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"It's what we do best!" He grins. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Yeah," Akane affirms. "You too, Dr. Kabuto."