2023-01-22: Reality Fissure

• Log: 2023-01-22- Reality Fissure
• Cast: Alexis Kerib, Shozo
• Where: Tsutsujidai - Sluice Gate
• OOC - IC Date: 0097-01-22
• Summary: In the stable-instability of Tsutsujidai, something emerges from a crack between realities. Alexis has a conversation with this something -- until this something chooses a name.

---

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Less than a day has passed since the use of the Galeoria Pliers to fix Tsutsujidai in the material world. It's an imperfect, unstable solution -- but perfect solutions don't always come right away, and the perfect is the enemy of the good.

The imperfect is the enemy of Alexis, who has taken up a perch on Tsutsujidai's 'south' (insofar as a PLANT has a north and a south -- but this was once a false Nouvelle Tokyo, so it's still got the suggestion of terrestrial direction) sluice gate. He looks out toward Tsutsujidai -- toward the vibrant world that yet remains a weapon against its creators.

"Mm. This is difficult," Alexis says to himself, fairly certain no one is looking or listening.

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

A sickening snap breaks the silence- a violent sound, like meat and bone tearing, as the horizon fractures mere meters away from the looming Hyper Majin. Perhaps it was the weakness in reality caused by the city's hasty entrance into material space, but spiderwebbing cracks began to spread from the first, bleeding red into the innocent blue sky, longer, wider. Pieces of the sky begin to fall to the ground breezily, the space somehow lightly drawn downwards by gravity despite its emptiness. It soon began to bulge, a fumbling, tiny handprints distending the firmament, like the curious touches of a toddler against a wall it has not learned is fragile.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis turns toward that fissure immediately as it starts -- he recognizes the tears and cracks from the instant they start. He's seen much in his roamings, and this... bodes singularly ill. It's not the worst portent he's faced lately, by his own metrics.

... It's close though.

He rounds on the form emerging from the tear, and curiosity strikes him. "Hoh -- what's this...?" he asks, translating slightly across the ground, circling the cracks.

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

Like a wound being torn open, the sky finally gives way and shatters like glass, pieces flying in every direction to reveal roiling, unsettling red beneath, complete with what one could swear was the screams of the damned. Whatever could be lurking in that unearthly red...?

The answer, oddly enough, appeared to be a child. Stumbling out with the grace of a toddler freshly in possession of motor skills, a young boy steps onto the cool afternoon, gently clenching his hands curiously as he stares at first them, then upwards at the boundless, beautiful world that seemed to stand in sharp contrast to his point of origin. Finally, his roaming eyes lock on Alexis -- deeply inhuman eyes, glittering red crosses that seemed to contain the entirety of the madness behind him.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

... Alexis had been expecting a choju -- and then to be blamed for its existence, no doubt. (After all, he has made so many empty, bondless, terrible monsters out of the malice and despair in Akane's heart. Why would it be a surprise for another one to be his concern?) What he's greeted with instead is...

Challenging. "... Hm." He doesn't want to make assumptions -- but neither making them nor not making them feels safe, at the moment. He is immortal, but there are a lot of horrible things between his present state and death.

So he goes to his default script. "Hello," he says, simply. "You may call me Alexis Kerib. May I have the pleasure of knowing to whom I'm speaking?" Unfailingly polite as always.

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

For a while, there is silence, save for the hellish sound from whence the boy came. His eyes maintain a lock on Alexis the entire time, completely stationary and unblinking. After a few moments..

"Hello-LO-lololo," he parrots in Alexis's voice, albeit a distorted, unsteady version. "You may call me-Callme-call ME-me-me-me-"

The boy shuts his mouth, wiggling his jaw slightly as if unused to it.

"May I have the pleasure-sure of knowing to whom I'm-" he cuts himself off again, this time more... deliberate.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

This is the funniest thing Alexis has seen at least since Akane decided to make people understand her by using a kaiju to force them to think the way she did. He meets it with laughter -- not a full-on belly laugh, but he does sound amused.

"Oh, this is quite a lot to take in. You're a brand new entity, then. You've picked an interesting place to make yourself known," Alexis says, with a sensible chuckle. "I suppose it does make sense for a place in transition to pick up new plot threads as it does."

He orients his attention toward the city rather than the fissure and the boy -- but he does keep the boy within the periphery of his vision. "Please. Take your time. I'm hardly in a hurry."

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

After a moment, the boy mirrors Alexis's laughter without changing his expression, dark, bassy laughter coming from someone who it does not suit. He then turns his head to follow Alexis's, looking out into Tsutsujidai. Slowly, he raises his arm to point-

Why does he have that?

A rectangular white and blue device sits in the boy's palm, and he looks down at it suddenly, staring silently as he seems to notice that he is holding it for the first time.

"Inte-teresting," he echoes quietly, suddenly fascinated by his possession. He raises his other arm, robotically, to grab the other end, and he slowly begins turning it in his fingers, unsteadily, to examine it -- while making it clear exactly what it is.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis watches the boy slowly piece together mannerism and behavior from observation. (It's an uncomfortably familiar sensation in more ways than Alexis cares to admit. It would be easier for him to simply exist as a person without a past -- but he, too, is a composite of experiences he's had the pleasure of having.)

... a device like that, from a portal like that... there are admittedly a few reasons Alexis could construct for that -- but to emerge fully formed from the aether, out of that kind of fissure, with that kind of device...

... Alexis's shoulders shift slightly. "I think you would, perhaps, benefit from some time spent in this city," he offers. (He finds himself less sure he's understood with each passing moment, but it's worth putting out there.) "Consider it a safe place to explore this new... extension? Reflection? Of yourself." And if it causes a little chaos, well. Alexis certainly doesn't mind.

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

The boy slowly looks up from the device, and up at Alexis again, before out at the city. Behind him, the screaming wound in reality begins to close as if being rewinded, shattered shards of sky rising from the ground and back into place.

"An interesting place," he parroted again, "A safe place." He walked up next to Alexis, looking up at him, again, and gently reached out, to pat the cloaked Hyper Majin once. The meaning? Unclear. "I Consider you a Interesting . . . Alexis Kerib," he said, stringing together individual words spoken to him into new orders. "I sense threads . . . you Spent time in this city." What is he seeing, exactly?

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

As the wound begins to close, Alexis's tension drops -- though it doesn't fully release. He returns to being fully still. When he's touched, there's a -- flinch, though, in his mantle. The effect is subtle, rippling through the clothlike material -- but he is definitely not comfortable. Right back to being a little tense, it seems!

"I did. And many like it, before it," Alexis alludes, though the question of his relationship to those many cities like this one before remains open. "It has been a project of mine for the last two years or so... I'm quite fond of it. I'm looking forward to seeing how its story ends."

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

"Fond. . ." The boy releases Alexis's cloak, but an impression of his touch remains, a stiffness. ". . .Yourself." he pipes up, still looking out at the city. ". . .Looking Forward to Seeing how Your Story ends, I Suppose." What is that supposed to mean? Is it a threat? And yet, the face of the boy remains inscrutable, staring out into the city. Slowly, the crosses in his eyes are growing, dilating as if they were human pupils. Interest, perhaps? Slowly, he kneels down to touch the water, watching as ripples echo from his fingertip.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis flinches a bit at the idea that he's of interest to this... person-and-not, with what he can piece together of the boy before him. He sticks close as the young man explores his surroundings, but not too close -- watching as he touches the water.

"Ah, of course." Alexis can appreciate the metaphor -- and it's an easier topic than approaching the notion of his limitless life. "Having extended out into the human river, you have made ripples and perhaps become a ripple in it yourself," Alexis allows. "The resultant wave will be fascinating, I'm sure."

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

Perhaps it is the boy's sudden awareness of the metaphor that causes the change -- as the slow, lazy ripples suddenly stop in the water, before drawing back towards his fingers. The lapping current of the river is overtaken by a stillness, suddenly, as its flow is arrested by the boy, drawing its progress into him like a whirlpool.

After a minute or so, he is satisfied, and stands back up, watching the water drip slowly off his fingertip as the river returns to normal. ". . .Human. Yes." He looks up at Alexis, and for the first time, there is a glimmer of some sort of emotion in his utterly alien eyes -- what it is, who can say, but it is definitely there.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Alexis thinks about the tools he's given the boy so far. They're fascinating to think about, to be sure -- and he needs just a little more texture before the sort of thing Alexis enjoys best will work. (He could certainly do plenty of damage using the boy, now, but... it raises some of Alexis's own older ghosts in a way he finds more vulnerable than useful.)

"Ah. You choose to make no waves at all, then," Alexis says -- though he notices the drip, too. "That, too, will be interesting. I look forward to seeing the way you move, then." He remains still, again, translating only the minimum necessary to remain with Shozo, the faint gold outline of an eye regarding him behind the deep red visor.

"Should I call you anything in particular? Or would you like more time to assess," he asks, as unfailingly polite as ever.

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

The boy remains silent again, and in the void of speech, one could SWEAR the sounds of the city were crisper and more loud -- clearly so, as they become DEAFENING, countless conversations, arguments, confessions, mixed in with just noise.

After a minute of the din, Shozo opens his mouth -- and the world went silent again.

"I like Shozo," he said, in a new voice, synthesized from a city full of sound. "I choose Shozo." He takes a single step forward, and stands on the water, no more unsteady in his gait than he was on land. He turns back to look at Alexis -- and smiles.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

That smile at self-... discovery? Self-creation? unsettles Alexis in a way he couldn't name even if he tried. Something about this feels dangerous. ... but that's part of the fun. Watching the Earth Sphere gradually tear itself apart --

-- and now and again placing a finger in the stream.

"Then Shozo it is. Do your best to enjoy your time here," Alexis says, and it is difficult to tell how honest that encouragement is. He translates to one side, around the corner of the sluice gate --

-- and then he is gone.

<Pose Tracker> Shozo has posed.

Shozo watches Alexis disappear, still smiling, and his head seems to move as if watching the Hyper Majin travel through the underside of reality, following it back towards the city.

"Good bye, Alexis Kerib," he says aloud to no one in particular, and spreads his arms out as the flowing river once again becomes a smooth pane of glass. One step at a time, the boy walks towards the city, unsteady but unquestionably moving forward.