2022-07-05 Equals ~BROTHERS~

• Cast: Guy Shishioh, GaoGaiGo Team
• Where: Dive Chamber, Orbit Base
• Date: U.C. 0096 07 05
• Summary: Mamoru plucks up the courage to confront Guy about what's been bothering him.

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<Pose Tracker> GaoGaiGo Team has posed.

The Dive Chamber is a well-loved 'home' for Mamoru Amami, even before the return of Guy Shishioh. Training means a lot of time down here with his partner Ikumi Kaidou, drinking tea and coffee and eating lots of snacks before violent battle with Zonders.

But this time, Mamoru has come for another reason. He asked the whereabouts of Guy Shishioh, having sensed in his intuition something was wrong! (Actually, he just missed hanging out with him, but people were probably saying Guy was off or something.)

Which is why as the lift doors to the Dive Chamber ding, Mamoru steps in, eyes scoping in a specific pattern. Cookies and cakes, check. Coffee, check. Guy Shishioh...

"Guy, are you down here?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

It's not too hard to guess - Orbit Base went to Intruder Alert a few times in the last week, both times because people had dropped in on Guy with unknown powers. One was Betterman Lamia, who made an abortive attempt on Guy's life that nonetheless left the Superhuman Evoluder rattled.

Then Soldato J warped in, not to challenge Guy to battle but simply to make sure Mikoto Utsugi got away after they used her to drive as many stakes into Guy's metaphorical heart as possible. The GaoGaiGo team was very likely called to return to base during that last, as it presented a rare opportunity to snatch a purification. But...to no avail.

Guy hasn't quite been the same since. He spent yesterday down on Earth at the Bay Tower compound, but today has seen the Acting Chief-Slash-Mobile Division Captain-Slash-Only Member of the Gutsy Galaxy Guard return. Indeed, PhantomGao has just rcently docked and is undergoing standard daily maintenance now, which means Guy is...

...right there!! Guy has found his way to one of the side tables in the Dive Chamber, a cup of coffee in front of him and a somewhat inscrutable expression on his face. But, he brightens up the second he hears Mamoru's voice. "Mamoru!" he calls with a grin. "Yeah, I'm over here. C'mon over! I just got back."

<Pose Tracker> GaoGaiGo Team has posed.

Everything's been tough. But that's why they need each other, Mamoru has decided, as he approaches with a smile, grabbing cookies off the main table (and a napkin, of course) and joining Guy. He divides the cookies into two shares, places them on the napkin, and takes a seat at the side-table he has now turned into a picnic table.

"Wa-ha! I'm glad you can grin, Guy. If you ever stopped, I don't know what I'd do..." It's half-serious. He really would freak out.

Part of Mamoru's philosophy is, knowing Bad Things Shook Guy, is to not talk about them. They'll come out on their own if he wants to discuss them, and if they seem like they're needling him and they need to be talked about, he'll broach it then. "We were just called back recently. Ikumi's off in his quarters, so I thought I'd check on you! We haven't hung out in-"

Oh, that's right. Years. They've both been so busy, and also Guy was in an evil vortex. Well, he doesn't mean it negatively, so he plays it off. "-a long time! BioNet's been so busy being evil and Chief Akamatsu's been putting us through our paces in training that I can barely breathe."

A pause. Mamoru's philosophy may be not to poke the bear but that doesn't mean he won't try to draw it out!

"So how are you holding up?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy chuckles, and his smile holds. Even when his body was falling apart with him in it back in the Primeval War, at the very worst of the Zonder threat, Guy always kept his smile up. "I guess I do make it look easy, huh?" he says it as a joke, and laughs.

Cookies!! Guy sips his coffee as Mamoru gets snacks situated. "I bet. It's tough stuff, huh? BioNet's always up to something, somewhere. Once you were off in the Trinary Solar System, poor Volfogg barely got a moment's rest from sniffing them out." He hems, then adds, "You've been holding up 3G on your own shoulders for this whole time, Mamoru. I'm really proud of you."

The question makes his smile freeze a bit, then weaken. "I'm alright," he says. "There's a lot to worry about right now, with the Ruin Apostles, plus BioNet's not slowing down, the situation with the Tsutsujidai rift, and the attack on NERV's Administrator. We're lucky NERV has a lot of branches holding their end of things down so 3G can keep an eye out and intervene carefully."

Wow! That was: Completely nothing about himself!

<Pose Tracker> GaoGaiGo Team has posed.

If there's anything that can make Mamoru pause, it's what Guy says to him about holding up 3G. It's not a negative pause - but it certainly makes him consider the weight of the world on him.

"Thanks, Guy. But you're busier!"

And then Guy explains how busy he is to deflect all the emotional stuff. Mamoru considers his strategies of attack. If he's going to help Guy, he needs to handle this delicately, but go on the offensive...!

"We'll get our friends back, don't you worry! We believed in you all for so long, I'm not allowing a potential apocalypse to get in the way of it. Besides, we already have one success, right?"

A pause, as he moves towards the stuff he's actually puzzled on. "Do we have any updates on what happened to the Administrator? I finally read the report, but it's so vague...Tsutsujidai is also out of my league. With everyone else investigating it, the Chief decided to keep us on the 'homefront', so that we don't get eaten by a kaiju." His goofy smile indicates the half-joke.

"Oh!!!"

Mamoru remembers something, as he gets excited. "Me and Ikumi are throwing a party for NERV this Friday! Get everyone together, cheered up, eat Italian food, play some video games, strategize..." A pause. "You'll come, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy reaches for snacks because cookies. Cookies. Yum. He nods with Mamoru's assertion. "Yeah," he says, though maybe it lacks the spark of boldness he can usually muster. "We're not gonna stop until they're all back home."

       'We'll meet again on the battlefield, Guy.'

He knuckles his lip to discard some crumbs, and smiles for Mamoru. "Yeah. Renais is doing pretty well, now. I'll try to catch up with her, soon, just to make sure she's OK. She's always been a lone wolf, so I'm not too surprised she wanted some time to herself after all that."

Heh. "Well, given the nature of Tsutsujidai, it's pretty likely we'll need to dimensionally manipulate it more sometime. Doubt we'll get them with the Gatling Driver trick a second time, though. As for Kaworu..." He sighs, theatrically, holding up a palm in a faux-shrug. "I mean, if he were dying, I'm sure they'd've told me by now. That's about all I got. Kaworu's a strong kid, he'll make it through. NERV really does clam up about their people, though."

Oh!! Mamoru perks up. Guy grins. "Yeah, I remember! I oughta be able." He chuckles. "Unless the old folks at the Federation Council decide to tear a piece out of me for something, I guess."

<Pose Tracker> GaoGaiGo Team has posed.

Mamoru told himself he wouldn't poke the bear. But even if Guy is being cheerful, he can feel some pain behind his mentor. He doesn't think Guy's grinning is fake, but...damn it, he needs to at least offer.

"Guy...I'm not going to pressure you. But you've had two scary incidents, and I'm old enough to help you, now, with this kind of thing." A pause. "Haha, I'm being a downer. But I just can't accept a Guy Shishioh who doesn't spark at the face of danger, who lets his fear give him doubt. But it's not...something you need to be strong about alone, or shoulder yourself."

"We're peers now...! You have friends!" Mamoru says, resolutely, even if it's still hard to mentally accept.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy blinks a few times, surprised, as Mamoru just...goes for it. And then his face cracks out into a much more tired smile than what he had before. "You're right, Mamoru. We're practically the same age, now, but I'm still treating you like a kid." He gives Mamoru a slightly teasing grin, quipping, "Heck, you got married way ahead of me, even."

The mirth fades down to a more neutral look, Guy pushing his mug around gently. "Taiga using Mikoto and J to get at me like that...he really knows how to get under my skin. It's...tough, to think of all of them as enemies. And making me let Mikoto walk back through the ES Window...maybe was worse than anything she actually said. I wonder how much of that was in her head, or stuff Taiga told her to say."

"It's easy to say we'll fight and win. It's easy to resolve that all that is true. I'll fight like hell, and I know you will, and Koji, and Tetsuya, even Sayla and the rest. But it's gonna hurt a lot, in between. I'm just...coming to terms with that still, I guess."

<Pose Tracker> GaoGaiGo Team has posed.

Mamoru listens. Very carefully, smiling at quips, and going neutral at the sad parts. But it's Guy's last bit that gets his response. "That's the thing. It always hurt in-between. People we cared about died, we didn't make the perfect endings...but we won. You know why?"

It's cheesy, but Mamoru raises a fist in the air. "Because we had hope. They may be enemies, but they're also sick. We can't give up on them. If we think, for even a second, we won't get our happy ending?"

Mamoru's smile softens to neutral. "We won't. Which is why we got to shoot for the top and hope we achieve it anyways. We might not. We might suffer. But we have to fight with high spirits. Because if we don't, and we save the others?"

Mamoru finally grabs his cookie, and cracks it into halves. "They'll never forgive us for being so lame!"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

It's obvious, of course - really, Guy already knows it. But, it feels different hearing it from someone else, from the young boy who became a man while Guy's back was turned.

He smiles. "You're right, of course." He does have a few things to talk to Sayla about. She always had the tighter head for politics. Koji, maybe? Yang, in a pinch. But...

He finds himself settling back in his seat, holding up his own cookie to Mamoru in a mimicry of a toast. "We'll never give up. Even if it's hard, even if it gets complicated later. They're our friends, and it's our responsibility to help them while they can't think straight."