2023-06-25: Family Matters

• Log: Family Matters
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Knight
• Where: Tsutsujidai - Buffet
• Date: 2023-06-25
• Summary: Knight and Akane discuss Alexis's involvement with the Vist Foundation, amongst other things.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

There's a breakfast buffet place that Akane favors for conversation that straddles 'strategic' and 'personal.' She'd always meant to take Knight there, back when he was a kaiju in full. He never beat Gridman, so she never got the chance.

Now, of course, the moment has passed -- but she's still agreed to meet with him there for an entirely different reason: to talk about family stuff.

Tsutsujidai feels less and less like 'her city' the more she goes out in it the way she is now, all dark hair and imperfect dye job and taller and more slender than she'd like to be. It's not set up for her -- crosswalk lights feel random, and sometimes on the day after a rainy day (colonies still have rain, you know!) a car passes by and kicks up a little too much water.

... and it's nice, she supposes, to feel a little less like everything in this world is set up the way she wants it -- to feel a little less like its existence obligates her to its perpetual lonely stewardship.

All that to say: she's feeling pretty good today, settled in waiting for Knight at the buffet. She brings her gaze down, absently tapping a steady rhythm at half of a breakfast sausage, the bottom carved out to flare like an octopus, with her chopsticks. After a moment, she turns it back up, looking thoughtful.

<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.

        Park's still there.

        And Knight is here. He pushes open the door with a hand -- he shifts sidelong; he is wider than he is tall, thanks to Calibur's blade, and has to calculate for doorways. (As he did.) He puts his umbrella on the stand prepared for them. It's not raining, but it might, later. Who knows?

        He does not put his sword on the umbrella rack. He just kind of sits down on it, when he slides into the buffet booth. His feet plant on the floor. He is grounded.

        "Akane Shinjo," he issues, in greeting.

        He wastes no time on small talk.

        "Tell me about Alexis Kerib."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Knight sits down with the sword, and Akane watches him do so. ... that really seems like a lot of effort, but she can't exactly act like it's that silly.

She scoots forward a bit, saying, "I already paid for your buffet access, so whenever you want to, you can. I also snagged you a first plate!" Evidently, she's at least a little interested in pleasantries -- sliding a plate with eggs, sausage, and hash browns across the table to Knight.

She doesn't use the food to evade the question, though. "Alexis was working with the Vist Foundation. I think he's the one who encouraged Dr. Murasame to take an interest in Repli-Compoids... and in Rikka. Most of the photos and security footage they had wasn't stuff they got on their own."

Chewing at the straw of a drink cup as she tries to sort out what else needs to be said, she considers, and -- "He wasn't on the Garuda much, but when he was, it was always about... making it obvious he was doing something. He came to my room once just to mention that they were sending fake texts from my phone and that calling Rikka that name was about getting me to notice he was involved."

She doesn't think this is news for Knight, though some of the particulars might be. What might be news, though, is --

"... I think I'm starting to get why he does this stuff."

<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.

        It's complicated.

        "You should eat, too."

        She never did.

        Knight nods, just the once, when Akane confirms what was written in the hollow colours of that circular saw. Alexis was involved; Alexis sparked Murasame's interest. "Who did he put aside?" He asks, as he matches the pattern to the puzzle.

        He frowns, and he thinks, and he listens. And at length, he says: "Why do you say that?"

        Knight has his own conclusions, about Alexis's motivations, but he wants to hear the ones Akane has drawn.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Yeah," Akane agrees. She'd wanted to wait for Knight, and then she'd gotten wrapped up in explaining, so...

... well, now she pops one of those sausages in her mouth. She chews and swallows, appreciating the mildness.

(Sausage is so different in the AEU -- so spicy, and unafraid to have texture. Japanese-style sausage has an almost cute quality that she appreciates more now, having been out in the larger world.)

"Alberto Vist would be my guess. It's a family thing for him, too. This stuff is a little different, but that part's still there." Letting that hang for a few moments, she takes a bite of egg. After swallowing, she says, "I tried to get him to think about where he's stepping, but... all I could do was send a couple messages, in the end."

In the end, though... things get back to Alexis. Akane takes a long sip of her drink as she wrestles with saying it.

"When I was on the bridge taunting you guys," Akane starts, "I kind of realized that... if I stopped caring about how bad it felt, like -- that'd basically just be what he does, right? Pushing people to make desperate moves, acting like you're the bad guy but not the real bad guy..."

Distantly, Akane offers, "I think he's been lonely so long he's forgotten he's lonely, so all he has left is just... pushing people until they're the same kind of miserable he is."

Putting it into words, in order, in front of someone else... doesn't feel great.

<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.

        Once Akane eats -- and only once Akane eats -- Knight takes an entire breakfast sausage, and eats it in a single bite.

        CHOMP.

        "It's good," he asides.

        But going forward, to future problems: "Alberto Vist," Knight files away the name, categorises it. Another breakfast sausage disappears. Where did it go? Swallow, and, "... all you can do is send a message."

        He sounds like he approves, anyway.

        Knight frowns, though, thinking of Alexis. "Could be," he says, gruff and monotone. He chomps another octo-sausage. It disappears, like magic.

        "Alexis Kerib is alive. And he moves through the world, too. Even though he hides it." He blinks, but just the one eye. Akane disappears for a single instant. "He's not a force of nature."

        Beat,

        "We're not him."

        It's Knight who leans across the buffet -- above the table, to rest his fingers against Akane's arm, meeting her eyes for a moment.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The touch startles Akane -- but not in a bad way; it gets her to pull back out of her own head.

It has always been something of a dangerous place for her to put herself, after all.

"I know," Akane says, though the words are heavy on her lips.

Moments pass in silence. The two of them have time to eat. This time, Akane eats too -- eggs, sausage. A Britannian-style biscuit (or an AEU-style scone; they're much the same thing, you know) that's just a bit too buttery for Akane's palate. All the small cruelties of the world, possibilities cut short for the sake of other possibilities.

After a little while, she asks: "... I know I apologized for what happened with the security team, but... I think I owe you one for what I said at Dakar, too."

'Find somewhere else to be, hikari~ no~ kyojin.'

"Thank you for not giving up," she murmurs. It's her hand, now, that gently moves toward his arm. "If they thought I wasn't backsliding, they'd... well, I read my own file. I know what they would have done if things didn't look like progress. But I probably didn't have to go that hard."

She swallows, without any corresponding eating.

Mentioning the violence of 'no apparent progress' to Knight, in particular, requires no follow-ups.

<Pose Tracker> Knight has posed.

        The words are heavy, and so are Knight's fingertips, for a moment, pat-pat. Then he pulls back, and returns his hands to the task of breakfast.

        He just really likes those little sausages, apparently. CHOMP. It's like defeating a kaiju with every bite!

        Knight pauses his own consumption, though, when Akane speaks up again. He sighs, but lightly, all tumbling from his lips like a draft through the doorway. In time his other hand comes up, to rest, gently, over Akane's fingertips.

        "You did what you had to do. I would have done the same. Honourable tactics... don't account for reality." He blinks, a shade overlong. "... it was," effective, "painful," he edits his own style of reassurance, hearing her swallow down nothing at all. Is that word more honest? They both are, in their ways. "But I knew you were in a desperate situation. It's easy to say you could have done less now you're free. I doubt it felt that way at the time."

        He nods, just the once, with that same steady, calm tone.

        "I won't give up on you."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Knowing Knight would have done the same... is reassuring, though for a moment Akane worries that it's because she taught him the wrong lessons.

... He learned better lessons, too, from other people, though. If the two were incompatible, well...

"I know," Akane says again. "Rikka told me the same kinda stuff, ahaha..." Her lips turn up in a strained smile, and she rubs at the back of her head.

"I still want to be family," she affirms. "I'm glad I have the chance."

She takes time to eat, again. The pauses make the conversation easier... those little moments of relief between the heavy topics. And indeed, when she has a spare minute to think, with those topics handled...

... she gets a little more playful. "So, about you and the kaiju girl Sayla takes care of..." Akane asks, her tone almost teasing.

Sometimes you don't need to finish a sentence; it completes itself on its own.