2022-07-15: Scheme (Resolve)
- Log: 2022-07-15: Scheme (Resolve)
- Cast: Anti, Alexis Kerib
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Alleyway
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-07-15
- Summary: Continues directly from 2022-07-15: Scheme.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
The alleyways of Tsutsujidai are no different, now that they've redistricted.
The talk leading up to it is -- the ambient banter -- as if they'd always been hanging here, in space, far from all the Tokyos of Earth. People come and go, from this corner of space to any other. People have the impression they have just arrived back here, from Quintilis or Maius or November. True, this PLANT doesn't have the kind of national identity its neighbours share -- but the people on the street call themselves eclectic. When they look up at the sky, standing in the bottom of the bell jar, it's blue as it ever was.
There are docks, now. There have always been docks, now.
But Anti has never stopped to appreciate what humans say, hollow and superficial and shallow.
In the early hours of the morning, a fog settles over the backstreets -- as the ambient heat of the PLANT lowers in mimicry, the water which keeps things feeling comfortable hits the dew point, and hangs thick and low in the air. Anti doesn't know about why this happens in space, of course; he just supposes it's hit the point at night where fog rises, because Tsutsujidai is damp as well as hot, and sometimes more one than the other. The time fits, so he doesn't question it.
He's busy. He scrounges through a trash can, head all but buried into the can; one metallic hand grasps the edge, while the other roots about in the refuse. Anti is hungry; he's looking for something to eat.
He has food stored in the tree where he sleeps, but...
... Anti doesn't think it's safe to return to a place he normally sleeps, right now.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
'A place where he normally sleeps...'
Anti's impulse is sound -- but his definition of 'normal' is, perhaps...
... excessively narrow.
The simple fact of the matter is: Someone capable of communicating with Akane in a way she doesn't discard is so singularly dangerous to what Alexis is trying to do that he would have felt an obligation to intervene no matter what Akane had said to him. The fact that she blandly agreed to his discipline, however, makes the situation so much easier!
It is now no longer Alexis's fault.
While Alexis enjoys the pretense of traveling through Tsutsujidai -- by foot, by car -- he strictly speaking has no need of such things. When Alexis appears at the *end* of the alleyway Anti has dragged himself into in these early morning hours, shrouded in the morning fog: that's a statement.
He translates through the alley.
"Anti," he starts. If you were only listening casually, you'd hear the same obliging, conciliatory tone Alexis always has -- but there's a subtle urgency to it, now, as he continues, "A moment of your time?" that rarely enters in. He doesn't stand tall, either; his body leans forward, one shoulder of that 7'8"-ish form leading slightly as he moves.
And he does.
Move, that is.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Excessively narrow, or strikingly human.
One or the other.
Anti hears no footsteps but a voice. His intent expression at once shifts, with a sharp inward breath -- eyes widening, expression tensing, all low horror, understated. He turns, by fractions --
And then ALL AT ONCE, dropping the garbage can he grasped to face the man looming over him. He is low to the ground, just the same; he is forced to straighten.
His expression tightens like a screw or like his infected fists, teeth grit in an expression of terrified, harried, unbridled HATRED -- but is that really news? The stronger the hatred, the strong the kaiju, and Diriver was strong enough to help Anti cause cataclysmic damage.
Oh, Anti hates Gridman, this much is true -- but Anti hates Alexis Kerib much, much more, more vicious, more familiar, more tangled at the roots.
He was created to hate Gridman.
He LEARNED to hate Alexis.
And he recognises the movement as it happens, sees the echo of Akane's own gesture, hand from her sleeve.
He is the autointelligence kaiju -- he learns and adapts.
He does not wait for Alexis Kerib to move. Wasting no moment of time his hand wrenches back, and his circular saw translates to his grasp; he thrusts it upwards, straight for the middle of that visor, the midpoint of his face, the seat of his intellect.
His desperation is written as plain as his rage. He doesn't bother talking to the devil, who would only twist his words. The only sound out of him, as he strikes, is a wordless, loathing grunt.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
"You did so well out there, today," Alexis says, while Anti's expression tightens; there's tension in his voice. Alexis has... reduced, the extent to which his violence is obscured.
"I have a reward for you," he finishes, when Anti readies his circular saw.
Alexis Kerib has never been a problem you solve with violence; in the past, you could at least delay him with it, scatter the bones and force him to wait. Alexis Kerib as he is now has no need of waiting, however, and so when Anti draws his circular saw the only reason he bothers to hurry is because he is a being that others experience in a temporal world.
Something comes up. It's difficult to even tell whether it's a blade, a spear, or simply Alexis's right hand; it could be any. It could be none of them! The circular saw makes an impact with something, though, and in an instant that something is gone again and the circular saw careens into the air.
Alexis seizes it. Violence comes effortlessly. He does not so much as step forward; Anti is so small and Alexis so large that any attack Anti could make places Anti firmly inside Alexis's range.
Alexis raises the circular saw, then.
Just how close Anti's face is to the saw isn't really Alexis's concern. (Why put such effort into trying to snip the thread this early, after all, in this dark, sad place?)
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Guah--" The clang is metallic. That's not what accentuates the terror of Anti's face, as he bends backwards from the blur of the blow. His pupils are pinpricks, against the vast white mistake of his eyes. That his expression is still neighbour to anger, even panicked as he is, is testament to his creation.
He's learning. Constantly, he is learning. Oh, he thought -- with all the subtle power Alexis displayed -- Anti thought that if he struck at him with all his might, he'd surely have a chance. He was always too afraid, before, too bound, but now he's gone against Alexis, now he doesn't have a choice...
... now, and not a moment prior, Anti realises just how small he is compared to Alexis Kerib.
His guardian's arm raises up, past him, through him.
He screams, raw, agonised, tearing.
What comes out of Anti is red. Not quite red as Yuta's blood -- it's brighter, faker, more striking in the gloom. Not quite red as a human heart... but blood, all the same.
Akane's kaiju don't bleed. There's nothing under their suits, the models made large. They are things of clay and wire and plastic straws, violence all expressed in sparks and strikes.
What, then, does that make Anti?
He falls without catching himself; he clutches his face, instead. To transcribe his screaming sobs, they might sound something like, "rrooouuuhhhh!", or perhaps, "gaaaauuuhhhh!" -- but a moment later it stifles to "ghh--uhhhh," as he forces himself stumbling up, as he hits a rusty air conditioning unit throwing himself to the side. His metallic fingers brush the concrete as he very almost falls a second time, a ragged, gasping breath from him as he manages to correct his balance, as he scrambles, panic-stricken, from the alleyway.
What is left on the concrete where he fell is almost neon bright against the gloom of the fog.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
As Anti lies on the ground of the alleyway, Alexis could well simply strike at and kill him. He does not, however; he has made his Statement plain, shown that he will now engage Anti with exactly the same noncommittal violence he's favored up to this point for certain types of interlopers.
(Alexis drives the spear for Kaworu's chest without a lick of hesitation.)
(He doesn't hesitate; he lashes out at the spot he believes (no, the spot he *knows* -- he's had plenty of chances to observe Ultraman Geed, even in this universe!) Geed's Riser to be, on his belt.)
(Alexis raises the circular saw, then.)
Alexis does not pursue, either. His eyes -- the faint gold covered over in the red of his visor -- track down, slightly, to the blood. An adaptation that makes a statement.
Tonight holds so many interesting developments.
Alexis remains static... but, of course, for the laughter. It, too, is a low-movement sort of thing -- an amused breath out, shading into a chuckle full of borrowed warmth in this hot, misty alley.