2022-12-17: Darken Red Sky

• Log: 2022-12-17- Darken Red Sky
• Cast: Alexis Kerib, Kaworu Nagisa, Gai Kurenai
• Where: Tsutsujidai - Kamesan Park
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-12-17
• Summary: A wanderer makes himself known in Tsutsujidai, after old acquaintances share a few choice words.

---

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

If it weren't for the upside-down, computer-like sky, and the sections of the city that have become something less than real around the edges, here and there... why, you could mistake the skyline for one most people of the Universal Century would recognize. It's important to remain where you are, though -- not get bogged down in some other place. There's only one you in the universe, after all -- isn't there? Appreciate the sight that that 'you' gets to see.

This is Tsutsujidai, after all, not Ogikubo.

Alexis has decided to gaze out toward the city from a nostalgic vantage. He stands amid a small patch of damaged greenery in what is otherwise a fairly intact park, only marred by the tossing of a single car into its borders. Only a single tree sits on its side; everything else remains just as it was.

"Hmmm," he murmurs to himself. "To think there'd be this many people here when she made such a play... is this quite all right...?"

<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.

        Nostalgia is a powerful force, isn't it? Those with long memories tend to treasure what can be called the 'good old days.' Kaworu is hardly immune to this. He accepts that he will continue the cycle, and he makes the most of the 'now'--but that doesn't mean he doesn't think fondly of 'then,' that he doesn't think it would be nice to be able to stop repeating.
        
        Then again, that last part is a different issue than getting bogged down with nostalgia.
        
        For the 'now,' Kaworu stands atop the Kamesan Park gazebo, hands tucked into the pockets of his school clothes. The park has withstood the recent chaos with relative grace; it hasn't escaped unscathed, but much of it remains intact. From there, he gazes up at the upside-down computer world. It's only a momentary break from his current task--he'd thought to examine the park for resources, and the top of the gazebo seemed the most stable vantage point--but what pulls him from it isn't a return to that task, but the return of a certain man.
        
        He turns his unsmiling gaze towards Alexis, there now in a nearby patch of damaged grass, murmuring to himself. Though he might be talking to himself, though they may be a not-insignificant ways away from each other, Kaworu hears him well enough.
        
        "Concerned?" he asks at conversational level. He is confident Alexis will hear him just fine, despite the distance.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis turns to face Kaworu as he's addressed. "Hm? Hardly. It may require more from me than 'nothing,'" the ancient seijin muses, "but I don't think there's anything in this city that can change the course of what's happening, in its broadest strokes." The teal panels on his face dance as he speaks, resting in a cruel mockery of a smile -- and one Kaworu is one of the few to know is not as inflexible as it appears.

"This isn't the first time we've seen a city rot this way, after all," he thinks aloud, happy to have an old acquaintance to tease with the memories of everything that has passed before. "Oh, to be sure, her malice and his are different things -- but she wears it better, doesn't she...?"

Alexis needs to laugh, and so, he does. "He gave her a sign of something that marked the end when he passed this way, actually -- as if to identify himself by. Such a gift may well have doomed her to reenact its premise."

Certainly, there is a room in Inoue Hospital that tells the story of a different gift whose premises Akane took on. She wielded it with a malevolence its original owner could never quite muster, even.

<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.

Approaching Kamesan park, a mid-twenties young man walks the city. His bearing and manner of dress, a black t-shirt and jeans, could be taken for unassuming - were it not for the brown leather duster coat and matching hat he's also garbed in.

The Sunset Wanderer, Gai, patrols this strange city, hands tucked into his coat pockets and head bowed, navigating not by sight primarily but by another sense entirely.

'A scream is a telepathic cry for help' he'd said once, so very long ago, and this entire city, full of cries of distress in its own right, is itself a psychic scream echoing across the firmament.

How did he enter this lightless realm, now it's fallen into the void of despair? Perhaps he was already here, resting after a long journey in an unlikely place (like the back of a freezer truck), only to be roused by the terrible self-destructive violence of the Nameless Kaiju. Regardless: He is now present.

His is, of course, not the only such presence he can sense within this broken heart. Drawn towards the park, he raises his gaze to watch the black-cloaked, flame-haired figure and the 'ordinary schoolboy' at a distance, tucking one hand into the inner breast pocket of his coat.

The first announcement of his presence is music, cutting through the tension between the two: A soothing, bittersweet-yet-hopeful harmonica melody that should be eminently familiar to both the entities in the park, as Gai casually walks towards them from a position that somehow happens to be outside both of their peripheral vision, playing his Orbnica without any apparent care for the situation.

Once he has both of their attention, he stops walking and playing both, lowering the Orbnica from his lips and tucking it back into his coat, then looking between both of them with familiar brown eyes. His gaze settles on Alexis, narrowing.

"How should I address you now," he doesn't-ask, observing how differently the seijin is presenting himself.

<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.

        Talking to him now, it strikes Kaworu how lively Alexis becomes compared to when he's all alone. He may be lively with hatefulness, but he's lively all the same. From the teal panels that approximate a smile to that viciously jolly laughter to the various verbal knives he flashes, there's a giddy glee to him now compared to only a moment ago.
        
        Did he really just need an audience? Or was he trying to bait Kaworu into engaging with him? And is there ultimately any difference?
        
        All the same, Kaworu lets him speak without any particular shift in his expression or even in his body language. He doesn't even turn to fully face him.
        
        "Certainly you've made a star pupil out of her," he ultimately states. She absorbs lessons as well as Anti does--as long as they're negative ones.
        
        Anything further, though, is interrupted by the sound of a certain harmonica. Kaworu lifts his gaze to its source, the approaching man in the cowboy hat. Now he smiles, now he turns, to appreciate both the melody and the bittersweet hope that resonates within it.
        
        Gai doesn't address him, so he doesn't speak. But it does seem appropriate to encounter him now that the other topic of Alexis's giddy malice has decided on a certain movement, too.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

It's been long enough that Alexis forgot the person approaching from that oblique angle had such an acute sense of who people were -- even this far gone from the person he used to be, there is some part of him that is still 'him.'

"You may call me Alexis Kerib," comes his answer, a little sharper than he intends -- though the situation has evolved such that there's certainly no hiding who he is and what his heart desires from the Sunset Wanderer, now.

"But with that out of the way -- my, my. This is a surprise, and yet so utterly predictable. I should have expected you to show up. After all, 'he' wasted no time in presenting himself, once this place opened up." With a low, sonorous belly-chuckle, the seijin slides through reality, moving to capture both Kaworu and Gai within the line of his gaze. "And he is, of course, drawn as ever to the red sky as it darkens."

The tone from Alexis as he turns to address Kaworu as well is... surprise, but hard to tell if it's honest or feigned. "I haven't changed her a bit -- indeed, she cannot change. It's her most endearing feature." A thing Alexis had said of Anti, too, to Kaworu, a year ago. "Even the parts of her she chooses to cut away are things that were so atrophied when I found her that even she hardly notices the difference."

<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.

"It's been a long time," Gai allows, glancing away from Alexis just long enough to nod at Kaworu. "He's here?" His lips quirk in a tiny smile. "Of course he is." He does not allow himself to be distracted with news of the 'illusion demon', though; things between the two of them have changed a lot, such that he does not feel an immediate urge to chase his rival down.

Folding his arms across his chest, Gai looks back at Alexis, up and down the tall cloaked form, listening intently as the two discuss presumably a girl. Cutting parts of herself away... That certainly accurately describes the psychic texture of this place.

"It would be impossible to look away from a place like this," he says by way of explanation as to his presence.

<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.

        Kaworu nods once back at Gai, both in acknowledgement and in answer to his question. "He's been around for quite a bit. You might well be surprised to see how he's been composing himself," he adds.
        
        He steps forward off the gazebo. Normal physics would have him slide off once he reaches the incline. Instead, his footfalls follow the curve until he chooses to hop off, landing lightly several meters below and continuing to walk forward as if he hadn't been interrupted.
        
        When he stops a respectable distance away from the other two, Kaworu considers Alexis in return for a moment. Then he shuts his eyes and smiles. "Is that so? How ironic. That's the most hope-inspiring thing you've said yet."
        
        After all, he said that about Anti, and Anti has changed in enormous ways--was always changing, all the time, even as he maintained certain surface traits. Whether Alexis is actively lying or is simply deluded, the fact that he continues to assert this wrongness means that he doesn't or can't see the differences, either blatant or subtle.
        
        She (he) may not want to change, but she (he) has changed. And if she (he) can change for the worse, she (he) can change for the better, too.
        
        Still, an inability to change as an endearing feature... Kaworu understands that sentiment very well indeed. It's another unpleasant reminder of how he (Shinji) and Alexis (Akane) are alike. It's why that smile doesn't last. He looks from Alexis to Gai as he speaks.
        
        "Quite true," he tells him. "Akane Shinjo won't be pleased to see you, but she's been pleased by very little."

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

"Oh, of course," Alexis affirms. When Gai tells him just why he's here, though... "I'm surprised you found your way here -- though perhaps not surprised you leapt into the breach with such enthusiasm. That has always been your way."

He considers, for a moment, just how much of his hand to play -- but surely he can save a card or two for later. "Well -- so be it, then. Play around inside the heart of a god as it breaks around you! You're a little late to see a horizon cast in vermillion, though."

Alexis allows Kaworu to turn his words over in his head whatever way makes him most hopeful. The crushing loss will be its own reward, later -- after all, the greater the hope... the greater the despair becomes when that hope is dashed.

He elects not to move further. He has a comfortable vantage against both of them -- he can remain where he is. "I can agree with that much. I doubt that making her acquaintance will be terribly enjoyable, Ultraman. If you could solve the problems she faces..."

A single, mirthless 'heh.' "The course of your life would have been quite different."

<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.

"Sometimes 'a little late' is just in time," Gai replies, watching Alexis keenly. So. A name to go with the heart.

"Chipping away at something so boundless as a human heart," he says, thoughtfully, "it's no surprise that she'd not be receptive to a new arrival. All the more important that we meet eventually, then."

Alexis makes a certain remark, then, and may be rewarded by the sight of Gai's eyes narrowing sharply again - but he does not rise to the bait, only allowing the seijin a "Perhaps. Then again, perhaps what my life has been will help, when the time is right. What could have been isn't nearly as beautiful as what might yet be - dawn and dusk are yet sisters, after all."

<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.

        Dawn and dusk, hope and despair, light and darkness... All sisters, they, though the way they bear up or down remains universal.
        
        For a moment, Kaworu simply watches and listens to Alexis. Both unpleasant, but he manages. The way he doesn't move--the way he now tears into his new audience member--prompt him to decide to walk to one side, out of Alexis' line of view towards his back, opposite where Gai currently stands.
        
        Will it make a difference? Perhaps not. But Kaworu would like to see for himself further what Ruri has told him.
        
        "She's been hiding herself away of late, ever since she took it in her own hands to kill Gridman," he says to Gai, conversational despite the dire topic. "It won't be easy to find her. One thing is for certain: where there is warmth and comfort, she will not be."
        
        It's an acknowledgement of how miserable Akane is now, on the one hand. And on the other, it may well be an important clue to lead Gai to her. Kaworu doesn't know how much he really understood Akane after all, and he doesn't believe she'll listen to him anymore if she ever did in the first place, but if he can be a guidepost for those who might reach her... that's enough.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Just seeing the change in Gai's mood as he's needled is enough for Alexis. It's enough that every teal panel seems a little brighter, lit up a little more evenly than a moment before. One might even see a hint of yellow behind that opaque red that splits his mask.

"In love with the transitions, but unable to appreciate the darkness itself -- even after all this time. Unfortunate, Ultraman Orb. I'm sure he'll be disappointed to hear that, too."

Kaworu moves -- purposefully, it seems, to try to shift the conversation such that Alexis cannot quite have a full audience at once. Alexis allows it, for now.

He intimates that Akane will be difficult to find, and that much is true -- true enough to be funny. "Combing every square inch of a dying city in hopes of finding the hollow god that created it. Oh, this is quality entertainment. Do as you please! I'm sure you will find the experience enlightening."

As a smug aside to Gai, he notes, "The Vessel of Light she faces lies waiting to die, now. If it excites you to join her previous creation as the next 'Gridman' in line, by all means."

<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.

Gai shakes his head with a sigh. "Feel free to see it that way; what he makes of me is his business." He quietly appreciates Kaworu moving around behind Alexis, curious as to what the other long-lived being intends and willing to let it play out.

"I'm sure you would appreciate that as much as you delight in his fate," he replies drily to the notion of his rushing to replace the Hyper Agent. "I'm sure it thrilled you to put her in that position." There is much Alexis is revealing even without explicitly saying it; is it just gloating, or is it out of a sense of fair play to a guest to the table?

Either way, caution and observation should be his watchwords here; there will be better moments for direct action.

<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.

        As Kaworu moves out of Alexis's direct field of view, he nonetheless sees the way his mask of a face lights up at Gai's souring mood--the faintest hint of yellow that forms an eye. Then he is behind him, and Kaworu notes that while he may have left the audience, in return, he can't see him back. Perhaps that's why Alexis doesn't do anything about it.
        
        At least this way Alexis doesn't see the way Kaworu's own eyes narrow, tension rising in his shoulders, when Alexis claims that Gridman is only waiting to die. It's gone a moment later. Yuta had been stable when he'd gone to see him, but apparently he'd crashed later... A good thing that Eisen had become available to do a proper surgery on him, particularly given what Kaworu has heard about their scuffle. Yes, if Yuta does slip off the mortal coil, it won't be because those around him did nothing. Another reason for hope amidst despair.
        
        Gai's retorts get him a slight smile. It occurs to Kaworu that he could tell him how 'he' described Gai lately, but he opts not to. They'll have that conversation on their own soon enough, he imagines. For now, he settles in at Alexis's back and listens.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

It's hard to say just how much Alexis likes the games he plays. Certainly he is giving much away, though.

... Maybe too much, which is why he ultimately decides that now would be the time to retreat. He turns from both of the men before him, saying, "I look forward to seeing what the two of you can manage, in a situation like this," before starting to translate away. His movement remains leisurely, but make no mistake: he is leaving, and once he reaches another of the park's trees, he'll likely be gone, leaving the 'heroes' before him to their own devices.

<Pose Tracker> Gai Kurenai has posed.

As Alexis removes himself from the area, Gai turns to Kaworu, allowing his expression to soften and smile properly at the other. "... I suppose we all get stuck somewhere sooner or later," the wanderer says of their old acquaintance. "Sorry I'm late."

Tucking his hands back into his coat pockets, He looks around the city. "Being able to create something like this... it would be fascinating, if it weren't being turned to such sad ends. It's good to know there are others here, trying to help. It'll make it easier to familiarise myself with what's transpired."

He walks over to the Angel in human shape. "Juggler's not causing you too much trouble, I hope. It's been a while since I've seen him, too."

<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.

        Hmm... So once he no longer has control of the audience, he chooses to leave. Kaworu watches Alexis go without trying to stop him. Once he's behind a tree and has ported away properly, he looks back at Gai.
        
        "Nothing to apologize for, Gai Kurenai. You are a wanderer, after all," he reassures him, smiling in return. "As for Juggler, he goes by 'Captain Shota Hebikura' these days. As this Captain, he's actually been a great help, both in general and to me personally. I hope you'll praise him."
        
        There's humor in his smile, enough to convey that it's a joke. What the joke is might be somewhat more opaque, though.
        
        "It is fascinating, though... as well as sad," he agrees. "I've been observing it for some time now, so if you have any questions, I'll answer them as best I can for you."
        
        There are many things best experienced for oneself, though, so if he'd rather see for himself, Kaworu won't be offended.