2023-11-12: The Script You Write
- Cutscene: The Script You Write
- Cast: Leina Ashta, Numerous.
- Where: Goragon
- Date: During the Events of Mazinger Infinity's Finale UC 0097
- Summary: To reflect upon the nature of life, existence - the nature of Goragon illuminates much needed perspective with the light of possibility. What does it truly mean to be a God or Devil?
A swirl of darkness. A glimpse of nothingness and non-existence. And then, light floods her eyes.
P O S S I B I L I T Y T I L I B I S S O P
possibility
POSSIBILITY
poSSIbiLITy
It streamed everywhere, rising up like lanterns during Obon. She didn't understand why her senses were telling her this. A strange sensation, featherlight like fingers, yet infinitely large. The familiarity was simply unmistakable.
She forced herself to be calm against the endless sea of possibility, asking aloud, "Hello? Is anyone there?" A tentative step forward, she could feel them out there. She could also feel everyone out there. A sensory overload in the myriad infinites of the individual. Shapes flew by her head, she stopped, then ducked sideways, moving forward.
"Alright. You're in an unfamiliar place. You don't understand how this works." Another shape, as she hurriedly veered off to the side, "Go towards that feeling - don't touch anything." A beat, "Don't be a Mondo, don't be a Mondo, don't be a-"
A sudden ascending shape made contact smack dab with her face so quickly that she didn't even receive warning. Her mind could barely comprehend the Kanji for 'Beginning' before it burst into light, white, all encompassing.
"-other news, a terrorist attack on Green Noa 2 alleged to be conducted by the Anti-Earth Union Group was thwarted today by the heroic efforts of the Titans stationed on the Colony. The Federation Assembly has been called into an emergency session to address the recent attacks by the radicals of-"
"... Come on, turn that off, already. He's too young to be exposed to that garbage, it'll poison his mind." Came a familiar voice, as Leina rubbed the spots out of her eyes, "Mom?" Even as another less familiar voice, masculine voice countered, "Still worth tuning in every now and then, shows how bad it's getting up there." Still he moved to comply, anyway, as a separate light source in the room, the indistinct shapes of news anchors blipped out against the light of dusk, pouring in through the windows.
It was a hospital room, she could tell almost instantly, just the shape of the bed against the glare of the sun was enough to know. Squinting her eyes against it, she turned away suddenly and looked down at a pre-school boy with a mop of brown hair and a familiar shade of green eyes munching away on some MacDaniel's fries. Leina blinked in dumbfounded recognition. The boy looked her direction and waved, Leina waving back with an almost surreal haze, even as he excitedly pointed out to the man whose lap she was sitting on. "Leina!"
"Ha. Our little guy, still so excited to be a big brother." The man stated, even as Sayla replied, "Well... bring him over here then." As the man lifted him up, Leina watched as if in a trance as the shape of a man holding the boy moving to the bed. His head blocking the sun.
Sayla, holding a newborn in a pink swaddle, nursing at her breast.
Previously anchored, there was an ephemeral feeling of floating, being unmoored. Images came faster and faster, the light a swirl of possibility in contrast to the dark whorl that drew them in.
A visit from the Kobayashi's. Harsh words from a young boy. A building disquiet, dissatisfaction. Arguments, all words at first but eventually the sound of broken dishes. One final invocation of 'Lalah'. The man leaving out the front door, even as the servants spoke into hidden earpieces.
Gryps raged. Raising a toddler and an elementary schooler throughout the first Neo-Zeon war. The boy never took well to school. Her plan to move back to Spain delayed by the challenges of a child not doing so well in Britannian school learning a new language. Eventually she did anyway, ignoring the news that her ex was dating another, younger woman.
A six year old slept in her mother's lap the night that Axis fell. In the wake of it, distance, the servants took care of the children for a time, before she threw herself back into a life of charity work. Leina never having connected with a father she never knew excelled in school... Judau...
... a teenager, leaving out the front door, as the ten year old called down from the Villa balcony, "Isn't that Daddy's jacket? Where are you going?" As he leapt on the salvaged motorcycle their mother would never let him have if she were only around to forbid it, "Don't worry about that. Just finish your homework, Leina."
News came that he'd gone to space. A feeling, an impression that someone had returned. Word from Torrington Base that her mother and brother had both been killed in action by a Conqueror King.
Loneliness, depression, despair - the darkness of an empty room, an eventual all consuming light.
Leina jerked away, as if she'd been bitten, panting as she felt the light of possibility drift away. Hurriedly removing her helmet, she retched and stumbled backwards, dry heaving, "God! ... Oh God... what has he done...?"
The power was here, for anyone to be a God, or a Devil - they only had to embrace infinite possibility. Wide eyed, she watched as another shape listed by. Her eyes looking upon it with less apprehension by the moment. This was different from what Rita once showed her, how she sees the world. It was not seeing a future that might be, but an impossibility made possible by the miracle of this place.
Tentatively, she reaches out to touch one of them only to see herself...
... in a bridal gown walking down the aisle to greet ... Shiro
... Banagher
... a Neo-Zeon officer she did not recognize
... Audrey
... another man she did recognize
... Renalle
... Akane
... Murata Azrael
... Emilia
... Alouette
... Tessa
... Hathaway Noa
... Riddhe Marcenas
... Mondo Agake
... a Federation soldier she did not recognize
... in a birthing bed, greeting newborn after newborn as they entered the world... each different, many adored, some with an air of anxiety, uncertainty, depression...
... as an elderly woman, mourning children, family, spouses and friends that she outlived...
... as an infant in the arms of ... Sayla Mass
... Haman Karn
... Glemy Toto
... a woman she did not recognize
... her biological mother
... a Britannian woman
... Yuliana Dian
... as a child playing ... in Shangri-la
... on Mars
... in Zum City
... on Axis
... in Indonesia
... in Sri Lanka
... on the streets of Cheyenne
... on the Villa grounds in Spain
... as just a girl that had never left Shangri-la, who lived, and died there...
... as a pilot fighting for ... Neo-Zeon
... the Federation
... Cathedra
... Celestial Being
... G-Hound
... the REA
... as a philanthropist fighting the good fight, in galas and charities, in third world countries...
... as a kitchen hand in Roux's family restaurant...
... as an actress ... unable to get even community theater roles
... winning best supporting actress
... enjoying a middling career
... dying ... in battles against things she recognized and many she didn't
... to Haman Karn's bullet
... to domestic violence
... to an experiment still enthralled as Puru-1
... to a complete accident in ... a car crash
... a train derailing
... a shuttle
... a mobile suit exploding against a hut
... an activist ... for Coordinators
... for Cyber Newtypes
... against growing authoritarianism
... for Zeon's independence
... graduating different universities, with different degrees, greeted by different friends and family each time...
... being used as just puppet ... by Federation politicians
... by Newtype scientists
... by BioNET crimelords
... by Cardeas Vist
... by Dr. Murasame
... by Monaghan Bakharov
... by Leonard Testarossa
... by Audrey Burne
... by Martha Vist Carbine
... by Alberto Vist
... by Banagher Links-Vist
... rising to the top ... as the Ruler of All Known Space
... the Supreme Leader of Neo-Zeon
... the President of the Benerit Group
... the Chair of the Jupiter Energy Fleet
... as the Colony Corporation's representative for Shangri-La
... as the Defense Minister for Side 3
... as the Empress of the Moon and CEO of Anaheim Electronics
... as a Commander of the Shuffle Alliance
... as an Admiral in the Three Ships Alliance
... as the leader of Magallanica
... as the director of the Photon Power Labs
One after another, she touched them as she walked on, tapping into the glimpse of the miracle, and gradually - while the fear was still present - it had eased off substantially. Here, it was a freeing experience to see these things, rather than a binding one.
To know, to understand that even if one wished for things to have gone differently in their life, that possibility was not so simple. That a few different choices, a few different circumstances of birth altered, a few different people in one's life, a few different twists and turns did not make for a better world for yourself or anyone else involved. A life that is better than every way, can still know profound loss, and grief. A life that is profoundly worse can still enjoy better outcomes as possibility branches more and more.
To be the God or Devil when it comes to one's place in the world, and to know that the truest way to do so was not power such as this, but the script one wrote with every person they met. And everyone they met in turn.
Everyone can be a God or Devil, to the people in their life. That is the truth this place reinforced, and despite the wet in her eyes...
... Leina Ashta smiles, as she touches another glimpse of possibility floating by.