2023-01-06: Incomprehensible

• Log: 2023-01-06- Incomprehensible
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Kamille Bidan
• Where: Tsutsujidai - Alleyway
• OOC - IC Date:0097-01-06
• Summary: A doctor comes looking for stragglers as Tsutsujidai stabilizes. There's one straggler, however, who refuses to come.

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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane Shinjo has done her best to hide from the world, but as the repairs to her rainy city continue, it gets a little harder. Even if things are still in a crisis situation, with the heavy rains not letting up and the comm network still failing, it's less so -- and that means shuffling along the bus routes barefoot has a certain risk of seeing people. She can try to make herself scarce, and huddle up in the darkness of an alleyway, but...

... well, it only works so well, for so long.

Right now, she is, indeed, doing that thing; nestled in between an HVAC unit and a dumpster in the still-ruined part of her town, Akane curls her tiny form impossibly small, looking up at the head of a kaiju still tangled in wires.

What will it take for this to end...?

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

Kamille has been devoting most of his time to the makeshift hospital, appearing to the locals to just be another physician. Occasionally he gets the odd question, and brushes it off. Eventually GGG has to find a way to break out of this stasis, right? There has to be a plan. Someone who is not Kamille has to have a plan.

And in the meantime, he works, and sometimes picks up on the sparks of emerging Awareness among the people of this city. And sometimes...

Sometimes he just feels misery, and he has to run to it. Someone might be caught somewhere still. Someone might be lost underneath that broken kaiju in those ruins.

And so it is that a man in a doctor's coat wanders into the alley, rain pelting against his umbrella and soaking his shoes, and he finds a huddled figure.

"Hey. Hey, you okay there?" He kneels. "You'll get sick out here. I can tell you where there's shelter." This isn't the first time he's had this conversation since the collapse.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The pink-haired girl looks up at Kamille. She recognizees him -- that voice. He'd reached out to her, in France, if only briefly. ... but then, her presentation there, all bluster and supervillainy, was a far cry from the pathetic girl in a parka hoodie huddled up here, now.

"No I won't," she starts, reaching up to part her bangs just enough to make herself more visible. "I don't... need anything. I'm not like you anymore," she murmurs, quietly.

May as well rip off the bandaid. "I guess you missed your chance to lecture me in France because you were busy with the kaiju I think if you wanna say anything you should probably get it all out now," she word-vomits, all at once.

The human misery, on contact with another person, starts to get swallowed up by something darker, more primal, more monstrous -- and less comprehensible.

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

Recognition sets in after a moment. The particular sense of something wrong, something otherwordly haunting Akane...Akane.

This is Akane.

He stares with wide eyes, and then just puts his umbrella over her anyway. "If you didn't need anything anymore you could turn the rain off," he says, though he wonders to himself how much sense that makes.

"I hate lectures. You are...Yuta called you the 'God of this world.' Is that still true? What are you doing down here, in a place like this?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane doesn't have that fine of control over the world, but she doesn't know how to articulate that; what she settles for is, "The maintenance kaiju are dead so I can't do anything about this." It's a gross oversimplification but a useful one, and does more to spare her heart than admitting total powerlessness.

"There's nothing I can do about any of this," she mumbles, going back to looking down at her knees. "Don't need anything from home. My city is dying. May as well just stay here." She lets out a breath, saying a little louder, "Anywhere's the same as anywhere else."

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

Well, it's more than Kamille understands about the way of the world. "I guess I can't argue with that," he admits with a sigh. Though it sounds strange, coming from a so-called god.

"Stay here and what? Stay wet and miserable? Anyway, it's not all the same out there. They gathered for a Christmas concert a couple of weeks ago, you know. The hospital's busy all the time, I should know." Hence the labcoat.

"It's struggling, but the people here are still alive. Do you really just want to hide from them? Are you afraid of us?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Yes," Akane answers, at the idea of staying wet and miserable -- and maybe all the questions, really. It is, after all, the price she levied for failure from Anti; how can she treat herself any differently? Not that she can fully articulate that notion to someone who's only seen small pieces of her sad story, though; all she has to offer is that single-word answer, at first.

The people of her city are... alive. On some level she'd known that -- she's always been sensitive to the pressure of other hearts, and it's been loud. Nevertheless... "... they won't stay that way. The Federation is here with those mobile weapons. BioNet is here. This is going to end like Junius Seven or 30 Bunch or..."

... she doesn't want to admit that there are other, more Earthly places in her line of thought, here, but she's thinking it.

The rain continues to soak through her hoodie. Despite it, as she moves her head slightly, caked-on blood remains on her face -- as if she won't let it wash away.

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

Kamille's eyes go wide. 30 Bunch, with its collection of mummies left to float adrift. Junius Seven, a collection of scattered ruins and frozen water. The fallen colony on the moon. The scars of war that humanity just left, not even to remind themselves of what they'd done, but to warn others of what could happen to them.

He glances away, digging his free hand in his pocket.

"It doesn't have to. We-I won't let it. I don't care if it's arrogant to declare that to a god. There are those here who would fight to protect it to the end. I can vouch for them."

He looks past her at the kaiju head above them, all wires and soaked mesh.

"You don't want it to end up that way either, right? If you made it, it must be precious to you, even when it's breaking down."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Do whatever you want. You're kind of stuck with it," Akane answers Kamille -- evidently, she doesn't see herself as 'stuck with it.' Then again, given her bleak assessment of where things are going... maybe the reason for that has less to do with the power of a god and more to do with the helplessness of a teenager.

"I'm not fighting anymore I don't really want to. This is going to end soon no matter what I do I don't think I can actually change the way it ends either." She's so far past the idea of hiding this part, at least. There are some things she'd rather keep to herself, but... those are getting fewer and fewer.

"... I wanted things to be different, but we're past that point."

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Kamille mumbles, in regards to being 'stuck with it.'

Of course, the 'god' is just a kid. A kid whose creation is falling apart, and who has apparently lost all ability to steer it in the right direction. Of course she'd be pretty miserable.

"You don't have to fight, you know."

For once, for once he can say that and have it be true, at least.

"But you might feel better if you had some hot tea and changed your clothes. It isn't much, but sometimes when I feel like I want to set the world on fire it sort of stops when I eat something, or sleep a few hours. But if not that..."

He holds out the umbrella, in offering.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Kamille sounds like a sulky kid himself for an instant, and Akane can't help but chortle in response -- just a single, strangled sound. You can only hide so many reactions. Still...

... how does she even explain this to someone? She doesn't want to sound pathetic, but at the same time, this is the kind of thing that can only be pathetic. She settles for the version that makes her look impervious, though, even now -- rather than the honest one.

Akane flinches from the umbrella; she can't retreat all the way out of it, but being that close seems agonizing for her. "... Don't need to," comes her ultimate answer. "What I eat, how much I sleep. Nothing I do to this body has mattered since I became a god." 'This body' -- like it's not even hers.

Her feelings remain in that miserable, monstrous place -- swallowed up by darkness and so impossibly small. "... Sayla made the same kind of offer. I don't think it's gonna go any better here."

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

Kamille seems to notice the chuckle, and it causes him to brighten just slightly. There's still a teenager under there, still...well, there's someone to reach.

"I mean, do you want to, though? Regardless of if you need to." He doesn't force the umbrella in her hand or anything, but keeps holding it out.

"Sayla's one of the people who will help fight for Tsutsujidai. Her, Guy, Yuta, Kaworu...if nothing else, I hope you can let yourself take comfort in that. There's a miasma around you, a feeling of misery and hopelessness." He gives her a gentle, heartbroken look.

"Please don't let it eat you."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Why...? How? The real cruelty of this world is that these people have come to Akane so late. If she'd met someone like Kamille or Sayla before Alexis, maybe...

... no, it's pointless to think about that. (Besides... so many of the people Tsutsujidai created are so much more deserving than she is. At that point -- isn't her misery best for the world, even?)

Akane tries to figure out how to say what she needs to say. "I'm going to stay here," is what she ultimately settles for. "There are people who need help from you guys. Good luck with that, Doctor."

And if the emphasis in her sentence comes out a little garbled, emphasizes that it's 'people' who need the help and not her -- well, surely it's just that miserable, flattened affect making her words come out a bit messy.

<Pose Tracker> Kamille Bidan has posed.

Kamille lingers there for a moment, facing Akane. Are there others who could reach for her, the way some found him? He doesn't know her well, but already the sense of despair, of feeling the world crumble around oneself...

It's too familiar.

"I understand," he answers softly. "I'll see you again."

A strange promise to make, especially given the previous conversation and how far Akane has sunk, but he gives it anyway. And as he leaves, he sets the umbrella next to her.

There if she needs it.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"... you can believe that," is all Akane manages in response to that. It feels... less and less true, over time. She looks at the umbrella he sets down, taking a deep breath... and letting her eyes shut.

"... stupid," she mumbles, quietly. It's unclear who she thinks it applies to.

When her feet begin to carry her away yet again... she doesn't take it.