2022-03-08: Rooftop Meeting ~NOTEBOOK~

• Log: 2022-03-08- Rooftop Meeting ~NOTEBOOK~
• Cast: Guy Shishioh, Akane Shinjo
• Where: Tsutsujidai Rooftops
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-03-08
• Summary: The King of Braves takes a moment to think about Tsutsujidai. In the end, the city draws him back to Triple Zero.

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<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

The Triple Zero situation has sort of semi-stabilized, in that there's not REALLY much anyone can do except batten down the hatches while the egg heads try to think their way around the labyrinthine schemes Kotarou Taiga could be cooking up. Which means Guy...well, he doesn't have infinite free time. But he does have enough that he can afford to bop over to Tsutsujidai on the 11 AM train to nowhere and spend the day looking around. Now that he's less disoriented by five layers of Weird and a few bonus layers of Trauma, he can more fully take in the lay of the land, take a look at those silent Kaiju...you know, the usual.

Come the end of school hours, Guy is sitting on a rooftop overlooking a park, kicking his legs and watching the horizon.

He can't help but say it out loud: "What is this place?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane likes high places when she's thinking really hard about something. The sluice gate is her favorite, but she likes a lot of them; Tsutsujidai has a lot of nice rooftops to stare out from. She's heading up to have a nice think herself, when --

'What *is* this place?'

She freezes up for a moment. Guy. ... well, she thinks to herself, there's a lot she can do if she approaches him -- and he might be the one who can actually do something about this. She takes a breath and puts on her normal face again. Fluffing out her hair a bit, she goes on approach.

"I've been working on that too, actually!" she says, all smiles. "Want some company? I could use someone to go over my notes with." A beat, before she says, just a little more honest, "... Renais showed up again. We had an argument." At this point, Akane is well aware that people talk -- she can't lie, she just has to... be careful what she says. She moves to sit next to Guy, putting her bag on her lap.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

He senses her, such as it is. His Evoluder senses don't reach deep into connections the way some awakenings do, but between what he's got and combat training, someone walking up behind him is easy enough.

Her voice is the rest, though, and he turns to look. "Ah, Shinjo," he says. Dialing back the familiarity a bit, perhaps. "Sure, sit with me."

What's she doing here? Of all the places? He doesn't have a conclusive suspicion about Akane, yet, but the fact she found himself AND Renais AND Sayla tells him there's something to this. It's just, what is it?

And she's wondering what this place she's from is, too. Is she just a particularly awakened citizen of the space? Something else...? No data, no data. His father would be tut-tutting right now. Guy instead opts to look a bit worried at the mention of an argument. "Everything alright?"

Normally he'd trust Renais to hold herself back, even with her spectacular temper. But...can he, right now...? Hopefully it was just some traded words.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Yeah. We went for coffee again, and... She said she didn't need anyone's help, and I told her I knew she did. It... got kinda bad," Akane answers, rubbing the back of her head. "She ripped out a chunk of the table. I think she started crying." Akane sounds pretty nonchalant about it -- but it's that practiced, conscious disengagement. Akane can *hide* feelings, but she's pretty bad at feigning anything but happiness.

"I've been taking some notes on the stuff she says... I'm actually trying to figure out a way to help her." A beat. "I have some about our world and yours, too." ... Things she wrote down to help her keep the different world histories straight, but she doesn't need to tell Guy that that's why she's doing it. A beat, before she admits, "... your history is so different from ours. It kinda cooked my brain trying to keep it straight during exam week!" Oh, right, it's early March.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy hems at that, keeping his eye on Akane as she talks. That's a pretty muted reaction, but he ultimately writes it off as a teenager attempting to grapple with emotions. Guy's teenage years were, let's go with *unusual*, so he doesn't always have the Teen Experience dialed in. "Crying, huh. I guess that is what'd happen if she had to hold it in." Here he means 'hold it in' as 'was unable to beat you to death with a Honda.' "Sorry. That whole situation's a mess. I wish it didn't have to be this way. But still, thank you for being there for my cousin, Shinjo. Even if it's rocky right now, I think connections like this will help her."

"Hah, yeah? I ran into a friend of mine the other day, Sayla Mass, and we compared notes on that a little. I guess 'the Zonders never happened' would explain why nobody even looks at me twice." He chuckles. "I guess it'd be hard."

He focuses in on actually looking at Akane's face, rather than generally in her direction. "Things going well, there?" he asks. He may be weaponizing his status as a Known Nosy Adult.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Zonders? Is that a space group, or some kind of monster?" Akane asks, giving Guy her best genuine wide-eyed expression. (That stuff happened mostly before she got really good at doomscrolling, anyway. She knows the answer but she doesn't... *know*, know, the answer.) She can feel those eyes on her -- so naturally, she has to perform. "That makes sense, though. If whatever thing you dealt with didn't happen, of course people aren't gonna know you."

She moves along, fumbling in her bag a bit. "My exams went great. I knocked it out of the park -- I went and studied with some of the other kids in my class. Have you met Utsumi, Hibiki, and Rikka?" Surname, surname, given name... She doesn't linger on it, though. "... Or Ako and Marusa?" More given names. "It kinda seems like everyone who comes here meets the same, uh, six or eight people..."

She doesn't linger. "Anyway, uh -- here. I've got some notes. Aaaaactually I have a lot of notes." She fumbles in her bag for a notebook, annnd... shows it to Guy! There's more than this -- lots of circles, loops, crossed-out parts... a doodle of an amusement park and a dinosaur with several question marks next to it.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The following comprises the current contents of Akane Shinjo's notebook -- or at least what she presents to Guy.

AURA OF DAWN STUFF
* It happened to everyone in her group at once (except guy)
    * artificial implantation of ideas - they tried that during the one year war but it didn't really go anywhere and i guess it was mostly a zeon thing (i Gelgoogled it)
    * i'm getting off on a weird tangent...
    * I think the best way I can understand this is an "assertion" -- a set of ideas renais has separate from her being renais
        * from what guy told me and what i can kinda piece together, physical? like. lives in your brain. needs to be removed.
    * this place is last on her list if she can get away with kicking it down the road
        * Does it want to destroy ALL sentient life in ALL realities?
        * that's a bit of an ask.
        * why??? why.
    * In terms of strength, Renais is only about as strong as one of the local kaiju, even with the Aura of Dawn
        * but just losing isn't enough to fix her - tool to fix her, tool to get her not to teleport away. tool to
            * fix - you mentioned 'purification' - can fill in the blanks on what that is
                * you need second options, right - possible purification won't be enough?
                * our hospitals probably aren't a good option for advanced surgery or anything
            * portal - between other universe and mine? that's some portaling
                * it seems like that giant left the border between universes kinda thin, though i can't be sure -- hard to say how long this has been going
                * closing it from our end is probably a fake idea
                * better option - stop her from physically moving into portal BEFORE she gets damaged enough to think of running away... OR make her so scared she does something stupid
                * too dumb to abandon something if she cares about it...
                * i bet i could convince her to stay and fight for something
                * she's really lonely
                * USE MYSELF AS BAIT - dead either way if she wins - costs me nothing to offer to go with her if she wins
                

REALITY STUFF
    * renais's goal is to destroy reality
        * her reality isn't this reality, or at least it doesn't have the same history?
            * two more wars at minimum
            * PLANTs independent in 0091 here, there PLANTs at war for independence now?
                * Federation used nuclear bomb on them - maybe something else.
                * people get from there to here - maybe different weapon? not nuclear?
            * NERV exists - someone from there came to school? - federation organization
                * pilot got pretty
            * places people enter here from:
                * other Nouvelle Tokyo
                * other Junius 7
                * i think maybe somewhere else?
                * sometimes they show up when they're sleeping?
                    * one of them referred to it as a 'psychic rupture' - not sure what that means

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

HOO BOY. "Monster group from space," Guy says, with a slightly crooked smile. It's strange to think of the enemy that destroyed so much of his life - to say nothing of so many others - as a passing amusement. But she did seem curious. "It's a long story, but they were what GaoGaiGar and I started out fighting. They had the power to turn negative thoughts into matter," wait what, "so they'd find someone stressed and turn them into a rampaging Zonder Robo. We had a lot of tough calls. They had all sorts of strange powers. But fighting them taught us a lot about how to fight back against things like that, and how to keep people safe against strange enemies."

He might end up coming back to that thought. For now, he nods at her test report. "Good, good! I admit, you said you were skipping and I was a little worried." He laughs. "People like me get nosy, I guess. Hm...no, I don't think I've met any of them." Surname, surname, given name, given name, given name. Actually, a lie though; he's pretty sure Rikka was on the field fighting Renais and that Kaiju she called up. But calling that 'meeting' her is generous, anyway. "Yeah? Well, something to look forward to." He chuckles. But that's also weird, isn't it? Another strange thing about this place. He's heard Newtypes are drawn to each other; he wonders if it's something similar, here. More awakened people finding each other in the sea of this place's relative quiet...

And then...he gets a Key Item!!

He notes the doodles. Actually...he can't access 3G's database from here, but STORAGE and NERV uploaded a report about an operation in an amusement park in yet a second Anomalous Space reachable through here, right? He'll have to check that later. He's not sure if it means anything even if she does just know.

Instead: Notes.

The first thing he says is: "Purification is something I can do," and looking up from it to look at Akane. "Me and a couple others at 3G. It can cure most things that have affected your thoughts. That's how we fixed the Zonders who got turned into Zonder Cores. We haven't had a chance to test it on Triple Zero infections yet, but it's Plan A when we can get one to hold still."

His eyes hang on that last line.

"Another thing from the fight with the Zonders," he says. "3G has a few tools stored up that can work on dimensional spaces. They're not really optimized for dealing with spaces with a texture, like this one, they're more for if someone's using a pocket dimension like a hidey hole. But the Gatling Driver should be able to shore up the dimensional wall if we need it to stiffen for a few minutes."

The Dimension Pliers...he doesn't even mention. Not so much out of intent to hide it as because they're usually used to just rip Dimensional Spaces to shreds and that's Not An Option.

He looks up again. "Use yourself...are you sure? There's a lot more to that than a Descartes Square."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane gets... confirmation on childhood memories, at least. It's something -- at the very least, it lets her actually use that information. "That makes sense. That must be why you're so good at it," Akane reflects aloud. "I can definitely see why people would remember you, if you fought something like that."

She gives Guy time to read the notebook. Her lips purse a bit, as he does, but she does give him time. "So that's how it works," she says, on the topic of Purification. "Good to know, at least." Things that have affected your thoughts... that's a bit of a specific thing. Weird magic to have and be able to use so consistently.

So even normal people have something that can fix holes in a dimensional wall... if that's true, why can't Alexis do it? He's so much more powerful than a normal person. Akane frowns a bit at that, thinking it over. "... That sounds like it would help."

That's all dancing around the real question, though. The Descartes Square -- the question of what happens if she makes this decision or doesn't. "I don't really have a choice, ahahaha. She's... kinda attached to me." Rubbing at the back of her head, she says, "As far as I can tell, like -- she just goes where she wants to. Between your world and mine. She'd need a reason to be here, and..."

She glances off. "She wants to be my friend. She keeps stopping by. But... I can't really be her friend if she's stuck like this, right? It's pretty screwed up to be friends with someone you're trying to set up to fight someone else!" Actually, Akane can't really be her friend at all, because it's best if the world closes off and she never sees any of them again. But Guy's probably not ready for that one.

She chews on that, for a bit. NERV has a weapon they can use against someone using a pocket dimension like a hidey hole.

... Even more reason to enable them to get Renais and stay out. "So yeah," Akane ultimately says. With a firm nod, she turns to Guy and says, "I don't have any better ideas at all. I'll ask her to come here, and... we'll figure it out from there. The buildings already repair themselves after kaiju attacks and stuff, so..."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy is too Guy to process that 'close the door and leave things as they are' might be an intended end-state. Or rather - he hasn't really started to think about end-states. Akane seems open and friendly enough, after all!

He thumbs the paper for a moment, considering. "I guess we're causing you some trouble, huh?" he says, with soft concern. "...I just want you to be sure you're ready to lie to her. I don't plan to lose, but the consequences for you if I do are a lot worse than just death. And it's a lot harder to lie to someone's face than you might be thinking, if you care about them." He grins.

"Well," he admits, "most times they need me to lie to someone they put my head in a blackout visor, so maybe I shouldn't talk about that one." He chuckles at himself.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Huh?" There's a blink as Akane processes that comment about the consequences. "... Oh, because she'd... right, yeah. I guess that makes sense. If it can happen to her, it can happen to me too, huh." Akane's inference engine starts to fire. "Well -- if this *didn't* work out... we wouldn't have a lot of other options."

The truth, of course: she hasn't priced in losing because she has the very literal invincibility of youth and imagination on her side. If it's a physical problem... well, this isn't her physical body in the first place. At least she's *pretty* sure it isn't.

The question of whether Akane's ready to lie to Renais... "... Iiiii kinda already did that," she admits, with a rub at the back of her head. "I told her I was fine with her hanging around me, exactly as she is now, with everything I knew..." The nerves go away, as she says, more directly: "So I've already been lying to her. I'm used to it."

The last comment gets a very direct question: "Is that a joke, or are you completely serious?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

GGG's Braves take the time to consider the consequences of failure. It's built right into their organizational structure, with two of the highest-ranked positions in GGG existing solely to advise the Chief on a plan's likelihood of success and the consequences for failure. Maybe it seems strange, for an organization that routinely rolled the dice on virtually impossible odds. The reason is simple, really: Knowing the cost of losing bolsters their resolve that they absolutely must not allow that to happen.

Guy nods to Akane's understanding. She doesn't quite get where he was going, but...maybe it's better he doesn't try to explain why he's completely certain they're DEFINITELY not stopping with Earth. "True, I guess," he says, with an unhappy tip of his head. Still...he brings it up, tapping the page on the bullet point about destroying ALL life, EVERYWHERE: "They have the technology to take it to other dimensional spaces, and I know they're planning to continue past Earth. At least one of them is immortal, too, and another is a robotics genius, so..." He shakes his head. "Hah. I guess in a thousand years they'd be some robotic space terror." His eyes get distant. "All the more reason to stop it here. If your plan is to get her somewhere I can act...I understand." He smiles, and says some of the most important words he can say to someone: "I'll believe in your courage. And I'll make sure you're protected when the time comes."

Porcauto could use a change of scenery, anyway.

As for the joke, he laughs out loud. "Well, I might've been in disguise as an astronaut at the time! So I suppose I'm cheating to count that, huh?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... Past Earth. Past dimensional spaces. Past everything.

Renais really wasn't kidding. She's really like a kaiju, right now, Akane thinks. She sets the terms of the episode. Guy is the hero -- to banish, to purify, to restore. And that leaves her as...

... Dammit, Akane thinks to herself. Stupid. Stupid stupid *stupid*. There's a flash of -- something, on her face. Guy's distance mirrors Akane's anger, as she looks out on the city. She made herself the *victim* here. She just managed to dress it up enough that she didn't think about it. Nails dig into the skin of her legs, through her stockings -- not enough to draw blood, but...

... if Guy's believing in her courage, Akane thinks to herself, he's an idiot.

... The feeling passes. He jokes. She giggles, though it's a little hapless. "... Ahaha, it's hard to imagine you in a normal suit or something," she admits, laughing. "It's kinda hard to imagine you lying, too. You seem nice." There's a brief laugh. "Anyway, uh... good luck, 'Brave.'"

'If you're betting on me, you're going to need a whole lot of it,' Akane thinks.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Maybe he senses some of that frustration in her. Evoluders have strange senses, sometimes, and this is a strange place for him. But, he chooses to believe in her courage, whatever he detects.

"That was my dream," he says, almost in passing, but his gaze turns up on the faraway heavens. "Not just working in space, lots of people do that. But going out there to discover, and explore, and learn. There's so many stars in the universe, and we're still discovering miracles around our first. Maybe some day things will quiet down enough I can make good on that again."

... He coughs, rubbing under his nose uncomfortably. "Sorry, started reminiscing there. I'm barely 25, I swear!" He laughs at himself.

But to her final quip, he gets that confident smile of his back on, and looks at her side-on. "I won't need luck. If the odds fall short, we'll make it up with guts. Yours, and mine, and everyone else. That'll be our Key to Victory."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... For the second time in two meetings, Akane desperately wants to feel her hands around Guy's throat. 'Guts,' as if it's a real thing. 'Guts.' As if every problem in the world could be solved just by -- what? Believing in yourself?

... she's never had anyone else to believe in *but* herself, and that's mostly set her up to become a very stupid god.

"... That kinda suits you. Heh, it's kind of funny -- it sounds like no matter what, one of you two is gonna be heading out into space looking for miracles!" It's... a joke, but not much of a tension-lightener. It mostly just reminds Akane of the stakes.

Her feelings are all over the place at this point. *All* of them are going unexpressed. "Oh, uh -- you can keep the notebook, if you want. It's end of year, so I'm gonna need a new one anyway," she says. "Hope it helps!" A beat, before she asks:

"... All the stuff in there *is* right, right? I'm just working off what Renais said..."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy'll do that to people. He'd have some things to say about believing...but he'll say them to Akane some day.

He chuckles, a bit grimly. "Mm. I'd say hopefully we both can, but I don't think she's the type. She'd rather hunt down BioNet's goons." He huffs a breath. "I knew she was torn up about it. But I never knew it went as deep as it did. It's obvious, in retrospect. ...I'll have to apologize for that, when she's better."

He holds up the notebook. "Oh, I can? That'd be good, actually. That'll help." Will it? ...he'll think of something. If nothing else maybe the Three Doctors can use it as a dimensional anchor or something.

"And your notes are accurate, yeah," he says, looking them over again briefly. "As for why..."

He does not give Akane his whole five-pose spiel. Instead he says, "Triple Zero...it's an energy. A huge amount of energy, but it's just energy, it doesn't have a will. But somehow, it does have that assertion, as you called it. A set of principles and attendant conclusion it enforces when it reaches a certain level. It..."

He scratches his cheek, not entirely certain. "Actually, I get a similar feeling thinking about it that I do about this place. There's some piece of the logic of it all that doesn't hold up as happening strictly by nature's logic. Like someone put a human - or...intelligent, I guess, at least - thought, somehow, into it."

Siiiiigh, a bit for drama. He laughs with a shrug afterward. "Somehow!"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

A thought someone put into this place... A way in which Triple Zero and Tsutsujidai are the same. ... Well, Akane thinks -- if that much is true, then...

... she's a better steward of that anyway. The 'assertion' undergirding her people is love. Isn't that a good thing?

"... that's kinda heavy for me," Akane says, instead. "The idea that my world's not..." She glances off. "... Ahaha, it's a dumb idea anyway! But thanks for the heads-up. It'll give me something to look into, at least. I'm kinda curious about some stuff I saw when people from your world went to Fumo-Fumo Land, anyway." 'Look into' -- it sounds like she really takes her world's mysteries seriously. It's a bit of a weird stance, isn't it? She's not tied up with all this stuff, except through Renais... but she's still *seemingly* doing what she can as just one person.

It's... hard to actually lie to Guy. The fact that *he* doesn't lie to *her*, and treats with her like a peer -- it makes it harder. More honesty would break her world apart, but... sticking to the parts of the truth that he can help with? That part's easy.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy laughs!? "Sorry. It's just how we work, I guess. When you're dealing with things like Zonders, you just have to accept that common sense isn't going to help. Don't worry. Even if there is some kind of shocking truth to this world, I won't hesitate to defend it." He gives her that big grin again, full of confidence. "The more I understand, the better I can do that."

'Look into'... "You're pretty on top of things here, huh?" Guy says. Earlier he was assessing whether Akane might be a Problem here, and the thought hasn't entirely left him, but...it's not part of how he approaches this conversation. That's for when he circles back with Sayla, later. "It's good. It can be scary...terrifying, even, to look at what's going on around you and really see it for what it is. But you have to look at that fear and face it in order to get the courage to overcome it."

Hm. "Well, maybe I'm just talking, now," he says, and laughs, and hops up to his feet. "I should get going soon. Let's compare notes again, OK?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Well... I'm kinda stuck with it. There's only a few of us that remember kaiju attacks and stuff, so if anyone's gonna be on the ball..." Rubbing at the back of her head, Akane decides to move on. "Sure -- we can compare notes again, after things wrap up with Renais. See you soon, maybe!"

Akane takes a few steps back toward the roof entrance. ... she's going to have to lie to Renais even more than Guy realizes. ... it's fine. She can deal with that, for now.

The idea of the terror of seeing things as they are... that gnaws at her, as she makes her retreat. Then again -- she came here to get away from that kind of terror, right?