2022-07-11: Intrusion

• Log: 2022-07-11: Intrusion
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Anti, Alexis Kerib
• Where: Tsutsujidai High School; Tsutsujidai - Shinjo Residence
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-07-11
• Summary: Akane stumbles on Anti at school; he asks her to open a path for him. She can't even open a door, so Alexis does it instead. (cw: relatively grounded depiction of domestic physical abuse.)

---

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Tsutsujidai, bit by bit, develops tensions it didn't have before. Worries. Fears.

Today's bit of strangeness is a subtle one. The attempt on Kaworu Nagisa's life has meant he can't show up on campus to do the things he'd been exploring before that attempt. This has left the Dance Club without piano accompaniment for practice.

Marusan asked Akane to fill in. It'd be nice to have her, but more than that, it'd be doing them a huge, huge favor. After all, there are a few interesting choreography opportunities with this particular song smooshed down a bit to fit a piano soloist; it's not the same, not quite, as dancing alongside a recording.

Akane has no responsibility for Kaworu's assassination -- she can't put together a universe, in her head, where an assailant other than Anti is her responsibility. The kaiju... if it came after, could that even be her? Sure, she's trying to push him away, inch by inch, but... it's not like she was particularly worrying about him in mid-June. Indeed, just the opposite -- he'd been out of sight and out of mind for a couple weeks, and they'd parted amicably with a clear sense of each other's boundaries.

Despite that, though, she feels responsible for cleaning up the holes his non-presence leaves behind. He's not even dead, so she can't just make everyone forget him. She has to do this the slow, boring way, and that means sitting in on Dance Club.

She looks less tired, Akane reflects. What's up with that?

Dance practice is over, though, and that means that we reach the tail end of the active day of Tsutsujidai High School. It's a second period of students moving around and through the halls with a little urgency, getting last-minute faculty check-ins, gathering their things, and then heading home. The sun hangs high in the sky -- though it feels like it could start setting at any moment.

Akane's plan is a simple one: leave. Down the practice building steps, past the gardening equipment, and on toward home.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti was right. The school Rikka was so concerned about was where Yuta was.

        But he refused to bring out Gridman. Without a kaiju, Gridman won't appear...

        At least Anti got something out of the confrontation.

        Unwashed, unkempt, and without uniform, the boy who doesn't belong rips a hunk out of his special dog, torn with his teeth, gnashing. The movements to and from his face are almost mechancial; even so, he lifts the food to his face, now, instead of lowering his face to meet the meal.

        He's learning.

        He is, after all, in a house of learning.

        ... he's too young to be in high school, though.

        His other hand holds another pilfered special dog -- and a more normal sandwich, held in two separate little plastic bags. Someone's lunch, certainly.

        He scowls, as he eats.

        That bastard wouldn't even bring Gridman out!

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

An out-context situation, and yet, so familiar in its shape. Akane stands as a dark silhouette, cast down over the stairwell. Behind her: fences and baseball netting. Despite the starting-to-be-late hour, no sound comes from behind her.

She stares down at Anti, motionless. Her hoodie slouches halfway off her, almost to the hem of her skirt. The layers almost obscure her arms, making them seem to melt into an undifferentiated dark mass.

More than that, though, her entire expression seems off. Her posture slouches; those arms are limp, the shoulders slack, head tilted just slightly.

When coupled with the stark silhouette, it all adds up to make her look like an altogether different person. Every part of her -- save her unmoving legs -- melts into a static, shapeless mass of dark fabric.

Her expression might look a hair expectant, at best, if someone devoted their whole heart to looking for a meaning that might not even be there.

The wait for Anti to acknowledge her stretches out into a ten-second infinity.

Eventually:

"You mind telling me why you decided to come by here?" she asks, tone one of light, faint exasperation.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        At the bottom of the staircase -- sitting by the wall -- Anti continues to eat, wrapped entirely in his meal and his anger. He sits on the stairwell, no matter the amount of shoes which have trod past. He is a kaiju; he doesn't think of it.

        He thinks of that voice, though -- that tone. Too, too often.

        Anti pauses, in his chewing. He straightens, just a little, as his eyes move back to the sound behind him.

        Akane.

        ... it's been a while.

        He closes his eyes, with a brief, almost imperceptible breath inwards, before he opens them up again to turn around and look at her. There's a tension in his own eyes, in the emptiness of his expression.

        "I want to crush Gridman." He uses words she understands; words she carved into him. Nothing of trust. Nothing of belief. Nothing of the danger she is in. If it sounds callous... he's learned this, too.

        But there's an edge to his eyes which is more complicated -- an intent shade, wanting, searching. "Once he shows up, I can become a kaiju by my own will."

        How Akane wished for him to be...

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Anti searches. Anti wants.

Akane has nothing for him. No, Akane has less-than-nothing for him, at that; she remains singularly static.

Perhaps this is her understanding of a fixed relationship.

She does understand the implicit request, though. For Gridman to show up, there needs to be a kaiju. Juggler taught her that. Giants of light -- Vessels of Light -- appear in response to human cries for aid.

She's had enough of making kaiju for the moment, though. Right now she's sorting through the mess of kaiju already made, trying to find her way around to an understanding of a web she's spun.

"Was that how that whole thing was set up I honestly can't remember," Akane less-asks-than-says. Telling him she has no interest in taking an action that baits Gridman out just yet would imply a weakness she's unprepared for.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        She didn't bother remembering something that important..?

        That stings. For all Anti has tried to operate within the bounds of his bindings, for all he effort and anguish he has poured into finding a way to help her -- Akane doesn't even remember.

        It wasn't... important enough for her to remember.

        He wasn't important enough to her to remember.

        At once he stands, spinning on a heel to face her properly -- angled forward, teeth clenched, food gripped tightly in his gloved claws. (There's a scrap of sauce newly-marring the white fabric.) "Give me the order!" He snaps, he demands, he tells her what she wrote underneath his skin. In the face of her crystal stillness he is all passion, all anger, movement trembling beneath his muscles as he yells. "To crush him! That way, Gridman will--!"

        His voice carries, through the echoing hall, now everyone is getting ready to leave.

        Carelessly, heedlessly, he is making a scene.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Strictly speaking: Everyone will forget an out-of-place movement by tomorrow.

This is, after all, a kaiju-scale incident, in its own way; talking about crushing Gridman is a tug at Tsutsujidai's false mask.

And yet: Akane wants to do something besides clean up yet another mess with the Venora the way she has dozens of times.

Anti orders Akane -- a reversal, again, like what happened in the mountains. That time, Akane understood the danger. Akane listened.

This time, as best as Akane can tell... she is, herself, the danger. (Then again: she was, then, too. But at least she understood how she was hurting herself.)

That tense, passionate movement meets with swift movement. It's honestly hard to tell how Akane moves -- she remains fully slouched. It's quite possible she jumps eight steps down the stairwell.

An arm slips out of her hoodie. Despite how hot Tsutsujidai gets, Akane has never removed her hoodie in front of Anti. She's never once shown him the bared skin of her arms.

Here, she does; a single hand comes up and out of that floppy sleeve.

She grips her kaiju by the throat.

"Keep your voice down," she commands, tense; for a split second, she starts to grip a little tighter --

-- realization sets in, for just a moment --

-- a release, and a shove of the palm at the top of the breastbone, instead. Akane... has told people she'd try. At the moment, this is what that looks like.

"We are at school, you know," she replies, the tension sliding... only partway out of her voice.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti is a person who is a kaiju. That still makes him a kaiju event.

        In an eyeblink Akane orients in front of Anti, and his eyes widen, all the colours of the sunset inscribed there. His teeth grit, as her arm snakes out of her hoodie, baring her arm the way neither of them do. It's not right --

        Her hand grasps his throat. There's no catching the way his heart plummets through to his gut. All the anger falls from his face, flooded with blanch fear.

        Unbidden, Anti thinks of a broken music player, choking on whether we were. His breath comes shallower -- and shallower still. Useless. Stupid. He knows how disposable he is. He knows how little he matters.

        But would she really --

        He staggers back, more from the force of his own terror than from any gesture from her; uncoordinated, unsteady, his special dogs and the wrapped sandwich fall from his hands to the floor as he presses himself up against the wall.

        Moving out of her way.

        He can hear the tension still carried there; the rest has slipped into his shoulders, his hands, his heart.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Thoughts and feelings flash through Akane's mind; none of them feel coherent enough to matter.

Drowning as she is in those feelings, none of them reach her face. That icy anger lingers, a bit -- and then it falls away to

--

Akane begins to walk. Her footfalls take her through Anti's special dog. The wrapped sandwich is too close to him for her to walk through.

The still-intact special dog, though, is not so lucky.

"Don't do anything stupid again," she mutters, as her white athletic shoes carry her, step by step, away from him.

It's hard to be sure who she's addressing. The world does not bend to show where her gaze lies.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

A landing. Another exterior stairwell, almost to the rooftop. A black-clad figure stands passively watching, silhouetted much less by the bright sky and much more by the flicker of the blue-white flame at the back of his head.

"Hmm."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti's chest heaves; his breath is entirely visible, drawn in past his teeth through his hungry throat. He hears her chiding -- chiding him? -- and he sees the way she leaves, just like that. Just like that.

        No: the world bends to show the crushed special dog. The yolk of the egg is fragmented to pieces, the whites all pushed to sick angles. The bread has warped to two equal sides, all rent in the middle, delineated. The lettuce has squashed inwards, crushed low. The edges of the hot dog jut perilously against the plastic, applying pressure to two equidistant points, as if they might escape at any moment.

        ... but despite all the care Tsutsujidai takes to show the state of the special dog, Anti's gaze doesn't track there for a moment.

        With that same intensity, he watches Akane leave. His brow knits over his eyes, but it's as much concern as it is fear or rage -- a thing written in the twist of his lips, the wideness of his eyes and the pinched nature of the rest of his face.

        He is afraid. Even so, he doesn't regret telling everyone that Akane Shinjo is the one who needs help.

        No, if she's acting like this...

        If this is how she's still acting towards him, even after she was caught in the act, then it's even more important he make everyone realise the danger she's in.

        She's escalating, Anti thinks. She can feel the doom clock moving to midnight, too. He's sure of that.

        He's not too proud to pick up the wrapped sandwich, when he finally musters the bravery to leave. He leaves the special dog Akane crushed where it lies.

        She's crushed it. It has no more use.

        He has to keep moving.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane takes the long route home. She has something on special order at Sevendarake. It was supposed to take 'a few days to arrive,' and now is as good a time as any to wrap up one more thing.

This leaves the Shinjo residence unattended.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Anti keeps moving.

Alexis places himself in Anti's path. Where?

~ earlier ~

"Ah, yes, it's me again. The guardian of the Shinjo residence? Our youngest has snuck off to cling to his sister. If you could just --"

~ now ~

The bicycle parking area outside the school. Alexis stands, staring down at Anti, motionless, as if Anti was always meant to meet him here, in this place, in this moment. As if the universe was born to lead Anti there, and Alexis here.

"Anti-kun!" Alexis starts, tone obliging and pleasant as it always is. "I came to check up on Akane, and couldn't help but overhear the tail end of your conversation... I had meant to say something, but she left with such a start."

It's easier to see than it had been -- the ways in which the teal panels of Alexis's mouth aren't quite so perfectly square. The ways in which they deform to make a less rictus smile than they seem to at first glance.

"Ah, be that as it may -- you are here and she is not. Is there something I can help you with...?"

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        It's not that Anti meant to walk into Alexis. He wouldn't have tried. Not now, not with his recent activities. It's too dangerous. He's too dangerous.

        But someone found him in the school, escorted him out here. Some adult associated with the school. Unimportant. Even so, if he ran, he'd call attention to himself.

        Again.

        By the time he's in front of Alexis, he can't just get away.

        He is written in tension; one hand crosses his body, to clasp the other. (White gloves. A hint of something grey, in the gap between fabrics.) Anti doesn't know how much Alexis knows, but he knows enough to assume he knows everything. Looking over his shoulder was always more for his nerves than his health.

        Perhaps the anger in his eyes isn't for Alexis. It's possible that's true. His twisted-spring muscles, all locked in on themselves, are more difficult to argue. His nostrils pinch, deliberately, so they do not flare; his lips press together, into a thin, pronounced line.

        Gridman won't appear without a kaiju. Akane doesn't care to give him the order. The solution to his problem is his problem, and he is here and she is not.

        "Make a kaiju," Anti snaps, all but dares him, eyes locked on that visor with that barely-compressed anger. "Make a kaiju, so Gridman will appear. I'll crush him!"

        The hatred in his voice isn't feigned. He hates Gridman no less than when he started.

        But this is the language Alexis speaks, just the same, all layered down.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

The administrator departs swiftly. There is a moment where he glances back, looking between Alexis and Anti, as if trying to piece something together.

It passes. Anti remains alone with Alexis.

"... Hmmmm...?" Alexis starts, gaze tracking down... then back up. Anti demands a kaiju. Alexis can of course make do with what he has; such things, after all, are well within his remit as guardian of this space.

But to 'make' a kaiju... that is something of a different request, and so, Alexis meets that request where it lies instead. Besides -- Akane reached the limits of her personal violence at this stage with Go'yavec, and even with borrowed power besides, the kaiju of many difficult matters faces many difficulties itself.

"I'm afraid making kaiju, within this space, is beyond the limits of what's within me," comes Alexis's answer in short order. He turns from Anti; his movements remain unhurried.

"However... if you wish for there to be a kaiju for Gridman to fight, Akane hardly needs to know about it!" With a chuckle, as if at his own private joke, he extends an offer:

"Come with me to Akane's room, if you would? I'm sure she'll be busy for another few hours yet... if you wish for there to be a kaiju, you can surely make your own."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Alexis turns, denies him, and in the process Anti learns something else:

        Why he's sucking Akane dry, here.

        He considers -- briefly -- cutting a hole in Alexis's chest, while his back is turned. His fingers twitch, releasing each other to curl into a different grasp. It would take nothing for him to change himself into someone with a weapon. He could take the shot. Carve through the to the other side.

        'Violence or completing something like killing Gridman won't reach her.'

        His fingers fall slack.

        He listens to Alexis pit them against each other, and his head tilts down, shadowing the features of his face. "Yeah," he growls, stepping forward.

        "I'll do it."

        He's playing into Alexis's hands again; he knows it, feels it, tastes it. But if this man intends to let him design a kaiju...

        He knows just what to say.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

"Perfect. Come along," Alexis says.

Another way Alexis, alone, is not like he is with Akane in the room (or the car, as the case may be): He is not a conversationalist by any means. This is a cross-town trip light on conversation, light on words, light on context.

---

The pair stand outside Akane's door. Now, Alexis moves swiftly; he has a rare opportunity, after all. "I'm sure you'll make a magnificent kaiju," comes his first compliment. "You've inherited much from her, you know -- no doubt the artist's knack is included, Anti-kun!"

Alexis opens the door, letting Anti in. "Come in," he says, inviting Anti through the aperture.

Still, his movements remain urgent. Now he's conversing -- but he's also practically sweeping up those steps toward Akane's room. "More than that, however, you've inherited that capacity for raw feeling... and the stronger the emotion, the stronger the kaiju. No doubt the seething hatred in your heart will make for something far beyond anything Akane has brought forth."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti does as he is told.

        He starts no conversation.

        To the door --

        And he's stood here many times. Outside here, many times. He is not allowed inside; he is not invited. His feelings, looking to the door, are...

        Well, maybe that's why the compliments start coming. Anti certainly doesn't think Alexis is celebrating his creativity for no reason.

        He is invited, but not by her.

        Anti feels a pit in his stomach, as he steps over the threshold. He is acting -- but Alexis is acting, too; can he really out-think Alexis, dwarfed by him like he is? He's dripping poison in her ear. He'll use this to twist some knife or another. Anti knows it very well.

        But he has to hurry to keep up. His footfalls come heavy against the stair, all covered in the dirt where he sleeps. He doesn't think about where he's stepping. He can't think about that, because he has to be able to move.

        "The stronger the emotion..." Anti echoes, as with all the vagueness of pressure he moves.

        Eyes fixed on that black cloak, he assures Alexis Kerib: "I'll do it."

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

A kaiju's heart no doubt approaches the limit of what it can be in short order. Alexis doesn't mind wringing one more kaiju out of this sad little story before something breaks.

"Hmm... well," Alexis says, "There isn't anything particularly special about this place, when it comes to kaiju creation." The tools, yes. Alexis has carefully cultivated Akane's options, there -- built up and carved down the means by which she can engage the world. "But it is where she keeps the kaiju seeds."

And that much is true -- many, in different stages of... cultivation. Some look like nothing quite so much as a pearl; others have begun to twist into familiar shapes. Humanoid frames are the most common, but occasionally, the spindly, wire-like limbs take on draconic casts, with long tails or hunched shapes.

That's on top of the ways Akane has started working on some of them, too. Some have actual hobby wire run around them to alter their shape; others have already entered the clay-design stage.

"Review for as long as you like," Alexis says. "You could even borrow one Akane has started, if you like. It can be our secret."

Save, of course, how Akane will know exactly what's transpired in this room, no matter what it is that transpires.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Alexis lies again.

        This is the most special place in Tsutsujidai. Its central point. The lynchpin of the prison, where Akane hides -- is hidden away. Even if he were only to refer to creating kaiju, this place, Anti is sure, is central to the process.

        Because her misery is, too.

        But it's also where she keeps the kaiju seeds, and Anti is a kaiju -- knows nothing of honouring places. He at once sees the implications, and is blind to the way his shoe jostles a plastic bag, as he plants it on the floor.

        He wrenches the drawer open and he looks at his body and his soul, the same as so many others. The shapes are familiar. They are so, so familiar.

        "No." Anti denies him that much. "This will be different." That much is a promise.

        He takes one of those pearls, and begins to work. Wire like a ribcage; a torso with sweeping armour like the memory of wings; arms with claws, feet just the same. Spikes, at the scaffolding of the head. He uses cardboard -- harvested from cartons of eggs -- to give texture to the armour, allowing it to pit and curve.

        Is it any wonder the monster a kaiju would dream up...

        ... looks so very human?

        Anti doesn't hesitate. The clay on top shapes into defined muscles and sweeping, pointed arcs -- the paint is grey as DG scales, save for those portions neighbour to black, inert and evaluating. The horns atop its head are a crest worthy of any king, complete with spike on its chin like some Phaorah's beard. The protrusions at its shoulders and hips are given all the detail needed for effortless flight. At its fingers, he attaches fishing line, an imperceptible tether...

        ... to four other models, attached to each limb. These, he offers no kaiju seed; they are part of the first. Anti has seen fin funnels at work -- he remembers the Qubeley well. The strange UFOs he crafts are not such a dissimilar copy... though they are quite a ways more pointed.

        Just like the metaphor.

        It is incomplete. The final piece of the thesis is crafting it here; the ace in the hole Anti holds, even as his efforts against Alexis Kerib are overseen and enabled by Alexis Kerib. But certainly it looks a complete sentence -- a puppeteer which cannot hold, but only tear gashes, who sends disposable minions to do her work.

        Its work.

        The stronger the emotion, the stronger the kaiju, but it isn't Anti's hatred for Gridman which went into this work.

        His pain lies closer to home.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

Somewhere far away and yet near, Akane sulks outside Sevendarake. They'd gotten a shipment of old sofubi, sure enough -- but someone else has purchased the one Akane was looking for.

Something still unfinished. For the moment, it still holds sway over her heart.

That is there and this is here, though, in the space where Akane's garbage rests. Anti nudges over a bag; a deflated, scorched ball pokes out of the corner of a bag, as it's knocked over.

Alexis watches with rapt interest, the flicker of the flame behind his head continuing apace.

"My -- so quick, too. Akane loves the labor in itself -- but your anger and pain are all the fuel you need. And working so quickly!" When he's at last finished his sentence -- insofar as Alexis can read it -- Alexis gives a small nod to him, saying, "It's an interesting design... there are things that are terribly familiar about it, and yet, it's very distinctly 'you.'"

He pauses. "... If you wish to call it forth now, you need but ask. Of course, if you'd rather wait for a more opportune moment... we can pause for the day."

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti has no love for creating more creatures like him, to be destroyed.

        (Like him?)

        Work with such anger and pain... well, it might be difficult to imagine any other feelings involved in something like this.

        It might be difficult to realise how complicated it is.

        But Anti, as it happens, is a quick study.

        "... not now," he pauses, and decides, as if he has to think about it.

        "When it's least expected."

        He doesn't go so far as to mention the subject of the sentence.

<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.

"So be it, then," Alexis agrees. "I'd suggest you head back out, then! I certainly have no problem with reconvening on your schedule," Alexis says, with his characteristic ambiguous magnanimity.

"As always," he offers, "If you need help, you need but ask."

He translates around a corner, behind one of Akane's display cases, full of sculptures and sofubi.

He is gone.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        "Yeah." He can't stay here. Akane would kill him.

        (Notice, here, that Anti isn't much for jokes or hyperbole.)

        To that final offer, he grunts, noncommittally. He's smart enough not to tell Alexis just what his help really is.

        He's a kaiju, so he doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't even realise he's being rude. He thinks he's being plenty polite by looking away from Alexis, in that moment.

        He steps through the door, and in the next moment, exits Akane's den.

        He doesn't look back as he walks down the street.

        His nerves can't take waiting for her tonight.