2022-01-22: Coffee Time ~HEARTBREAK~

• Log: Coffee Time ~HEARTBREAK~
• Cast: Guy Shishioh, Tetsuya Tsurugi
• Where: GGG Orbit Base
• Date: January 22, 2022
• Summary: Tetsuya and Guy catch up, while Guy explains the terror of the Oath Over Omega.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Orbit Base, the home of two generations now of the Gutsy Guard, looms above the Earth, as a safe haven for the Braves of the Gutsy Global Guard to look down upon the vulnerable blue marble.

They weren't, quite, expecting the grand return to work out this way. Guy Shishioh is home, and he brought dire news with him. Sueo Ushiyama has adopted his stoniest face, but he has always been a tender young man, and his heartbreak is plain as he goes about his duties. The Mobile Division - with three Super-AI Braves Guy doesn't know, and one who was part of /Chasseur/ when he left - has changed radically. And he's no longer technically actually in it.

Sitting at an isolated table in the Orbit Base cafeteria, dressed in the green turtleneck bodysuit that forms the base of the Gutsy Global Guard uniform and just a normal civilian vest over it, he turns a small pin over in his hands, bearing the green three-G logo of the Gutsy Galaxy Guard. A badge of office.

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

Orbit Base. In some ways, it hasn't changed at all. In others, it couldn't possibly be more different. After all, five years ago, this place belonged to the Gutsy Galaxy Guard. Now... Now it belongs to a totally different (but really quite similar, in many respects) Gutsy Global Guard...!

But, as of now, at least some semblance of the old days has returned to this bastion of science floating high above the Earth. Guy Shishioh, the King of Braves, has come back...!

But the mood is-- not as jovial as it aught to be, for such an occasion.

Guy Shishioh might be an evoluder, but his senses may be far too preoccupied dealing with the weighty thoughts rolling through his head to notice a certain someone's approach. A mug full of Ethiopian coffee slides over the table and into the Evoluder's field of view. Someone sits down across from him, a set of bandages wrapped around his neck and shoulders from certain recent events. "Well, and here I thought they would be throwing you a party," Tetsuya Tsurugi says as he settles in, "Not only do you come back from what seemed like certain death, you /also/ got yourself a promotion. I thought there would be cake."

Great Mazinger's pilot leans back and sips slowly from his own cup. "...How are you holding up? I'm sure this is all quite a shock."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy looks up as the coffee slides into view. Maybe he could've sensed the man normally, but he is indeed preoccupied now. "Count on you to bring the best," Guy chuckles, gliding the cup closer. "Party's not until Mamoru comes back, apparently. Doing some work on GaoGaiGo." He sets the pin down. "Can you believe that? Mamoru's a pilot now. He was always courageous but hearing he has his own unit through me for a loop more than anything else, I think."

Hah. "Heard about that already, did you?" he says, flicking the pin back into his hand. "They're still getting the coat ready." He says it with a chuckle. "Acting Chief-slash-Mobile Division Captain-slash-Only Member. There's one for the resume."

But that joy leaves his eyes. "It's been days, for me," he says. "You and Koji moved on with your lives...Amuro's...gone. Never even had much time to think about Musashi, for that matter. The kids I've been protecting since all this started, the ones who aren't Orbit Room Operators are halfway through college now. He straightens and glances out the window. "And the Earth seems like it's barely hanging on. We've got a lot of work to do."

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

"He's done some good work, he and Ikumi," Tetsuya answers with a shrug. "They've had some big shoes to fill, but they've definitely grown up, haven't they? I can still remember when you had him flying around in that oversized space suit in Stealth Gao II. But that's what kids do-- they grow up." And it isn't like children becoming the aces of the new generation is anything /too/ surreal. Amuro, Kamille, both of them were teenagers. Kouji, too. And... "If it helps at all, Shiro's got himself a custom Ichinana, too."

"It's the talk of the station," he goes on to explain. "Things might seem hush-hush, but with you back, people just can't seem to stop talking. At least you can say that you've got leadership experience under your belt-- I'm told job interviews look for that kind of thing." Not that Tetsuya 'career soldier' Tsurugi would ever know. He plans to stay in this business for as long as his iron body holds up. With how often he beats himself up though, who knows how long that'll be?

But then-- Serious talk. Very serious talk. "...Mm. Axis. You know, for a little while after that whole thing, I really thought we'd put this whole spacenoid conflict behind us. But old warriors are wont to cling to old hatreds, and they make it the problem of the young. As for Koji..." Tetsuya's lips turn up into a smug smirk, just a /little/ one though. "Well, I wouldn't say he's /moved on./ He still hasn't had the guts to make anything official with Sayaka. As for me..."

His smile softens, then. "In a few months, I'll be a dad. It's not all doom and gloom, Shishioh. This world... We need to leave it in a better place than we found it for the ones who'll come after us. All this change-- it hasn't all been for the worse. I'm just glad you came back when you did, and not when I was old enough to turn grey. You can live in the same time as all of the rest of us, help me see these kids grow into good, solid people. Maybe save the world once or twice in the process."

"...But first, we've got some other people to save, don't we, Guy?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"Might make it worse," Guy says, lightly. "Little Shiro, gosh. Everyone grew up." He hums, and takes in a deep breath, and smiles that smile of his, confidence and courage boiling from that infinite reservoir within him. "They had a chance to, because we kept fighting. Even if it's into a troubled present...the chance to keep fighting for a better day is something we won for them. And I don't intend to stop fighting for more."

The G-Stone emblem on his hand glimmers with that distinct trill it has in response to it all. "You're right. And I couldn't have asked for better help to save the world again."

...maybe not /no/ better help, though. "Yeah. I debriefed Shigeru, Supervisor Yang and Advisor Prickle, but we should get the information out as far as possible. Triple Zero won't be limiting itself to just chasing me across space."

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

Triple Zero. There's the sticking point, isn't it? The twelve-pack of orange crush someone dumped in the wine keg. Tetsuya's expression sours at the topic-- but it's one that needs to be dealt with regardless. That's what people like Guy and Tetsuya do, after all. They fight threats like Triple Zero-- it's literally their job, right below protecting people.

"What /is/ it, Guy? That... power. I'd only heard rumors about The Power, but I never thought it capable of... whatever the hell it did to Renais and the Black Great. And it's not just her, is it...?"

The thought of dealing with Taiga, but one bent on destroying all life in the universe is downright chilling. Let alone... The entire Brave Robot Army. "What are we up against? How do we take them back?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"Oh, that's child's play," Guy says. "It's...complicated, but I guess it'll never get less complicated. So...I guess I'll start where we did. The Power was a supernatural super-energy we encountered at Jupiter during the Primeval Wars. 'Super-energy' is really all we could call it. When the Primevals tried to attack Jupiter with a meteor, The Power reacted by throwing it and Choryujin back in time millions of years, just for a start. And...it seems that somehow it's captured my mother and father's spirits, too. They're still in there, somehow." He smiles, wistful, for just a moment, before his face firms up. "So, it can really do just about anything."

Those clear blue eyes of his harden. "But that's barely prologue. You read Mamoru and Kaidoh's reports on what happened in the Trinary Solar System, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

"The power of miracles, huh...?" Tetsuya grunts thoughtfully into his mug of brew. "But what does that have to do with... How Renais was acting, back there? I know she could be a bit testy at times, but the way she was acting-- if she's only been 'gone' for as long as you have, that's quite a change, isn't it?"

At least 'a miraculous power' isn't something that can't be overcome. Earth has several similar powers of its own, after all. But that aura of dawn could overcome even Great Mazinger's photonic reactor... Such a thing cannot be underestimated.

"About the fight with the so-called 'Planetary Masters of Sol' and... It's hard to believe that you somehow entered a dying universe before our own. But I guess time travel is already on the table," Tetsuya admits, as if that explains everything. "What about it? I heard that you deployed the Goldion Crusher and wiped them out, and were stranded there afterwards."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy nods to Tetsuya's questions. "Right. It was..." He cups the coffee mug, covering discomfort. "Very sudden."

"After we returned Kaidoh and Mamoru with our last two ES Missiles, we started working on how to get home. It turned out Genesic GaoGaiGar, which we'd found in the Trinary Solar System, had a number of onboard tools. One was a Galeorea Road that could open the same kind of spacetime portal as the Galeorea Comet had been. But, we didn't really have everything in order for using. It's a little more complicated than this, but we basically pointed it at 'the future' and had to hope."

Guy looks up at Tetsuya. "We didn't get 'here and now', obviously. I guess by some theories we ended up nowhere-and-never...you're familiar with the Big Bang theory, right? That at one point all the matter and energy in the entire universe was packed into a single point?"

He smiles, like 'yeah, this is going where you think,' and then goes for his coffee.

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

Tetsuya sips his coffee with the incredulous squint of someone who knows exactly where this is going and simultaneously finds it impossible to believe that it's going where this is going.

"Shishioh, are you telling me that you created the universe?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"HAH!" Guy busts out, a much-needed laugh roaring out of him. "Not quite that far! I can't handle that kind of responsibility. But we did end up between. In the space between Big Crunch and Big Bang, where the whole energy of a universe's entire life was compressed to pure energy. Uncle Liger called it Orange Site, and Taiga went with it. We were going to just...leave, but..."

This is a bit more than Tetsuya needs to know and Guy knows it, but, maybe he needs to get some of this out. Spoken to someone else.

"My mom and dad - remember, I mentioned they were sort of, suspended in The Power as spirits - came to us. Which is how this all comes together. That energy, the energy of The Power, is that colossal energy from Orange Site leaking out of a dimensional tear. Just a trickle of that enormous, impossibly huge sum of power. And if that tear got bigger, and more power came in, and then bigger..."

He closes his eyes. "The universe would run from end to end like a rip in a jacket. Come apart in seconds. We had to close it. And we couldn't risk making it big enough for our fleet to come through, either."

Open. Focused. Incredible clarity. This was barely days ago for him. He's reliving the emotions vividly. "We had to close it, from inside. We'd lose our way home, but we had to. Everyone agreed."

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

"Good, because if I had to explain to my kid that their uncle was God, I'm pretty sure it would just go to their head." Nobody in this or any world needs Miniature Tetsuya Tsurugi, Self-Proclaimed G-Pope.

But the conversation turns dire again. A whole host of words are strung together in such a way that would almost certainly have Kouji throwing a fit in a burst dam of nerdy high energy science exposition, but Tetsuya is a soldier. He pays attention to the grim details. "...You were going to sacrifice everything to save the universe again. /Again./ Damnit Guy, doing it twice is just showing off."

But Tetsuya senses the... rawness in the other man's voice. He stops to sip his coffee, "...I can't imagine. Maybe the man I was would have been able to make that choice, but now... I don't know. But I assume that this... is where things went wrong?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"Going home is always the goal," Guy says. "But if I have to pick..."

"It wasn't easy, but when the stakes are that high, the Braves step up. I guess I was lucky. Mikoto was there with us. But...yes. We got everything ready, we started the operation. And that's when they turned on me."

Sigh. "Comms went dead, the Strongest Brave Robo Corps. tackled Genesic...and in the end, Galeon forced a Fusion Out. Before he could lose control. Mother and father were able to protect me, somehow - and J resisted long enough to buy me some time to escape - but, everyone else turned. It was only after that that Dad was able to explain, using some kind of spiritual The Power ability, I guess."

"The energy in Orange Site, the cosmic wreckage and egg, is called the Oath Over Omega. The principle that surpasses the ending. Triple Zero. If you get too much of it into you, it changes you. Doesn't change who you are, as near as we can deduce, just...changes your priorities. Forces you to consider Oath Over Omega's Cosmic Law as an absolute principle."

He shifts his cup a few degrees, then looks to Tetsuya with renewed focus. "That Cosmic Law being, that the universe must continue to live and die and live again; that overcoming physical laws like entropy is an abomination against that principle; and that therefore, intelligent life, with its multitude of miraculous powers, is itself an abomination."

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

"That..." Tetsuya goes silent, for once struck dumb by the implication. The very fundamental stuff of the universe... rejects life itself? How is that possible? The universe gave /rise/ to life, so how so did it come to decide to end it all?

This... is all too big for Tetsuya Tsurugi's brain. He is a soldier, first and foremost. Now he knows the face of the enemy, or at least its name and its intentions.

He knows... that the enemy is the very primordial stuff of creation. But Mazinger was born to stand against the heavens themselves. So...

Maybe. Maybe there's a chance. There has to be.

"Alright," he decides, at last, his gaze sharp as glass. "So we're up against a primordial Gaogaigar, the entire Brave Robo Corps, King J-Der, Gutsy Galaxy Guard, and whatever else they brought with them, all powered by something even bigger than The Power."

"So," he decides, "If this is all because they're... infected by that energy, then how do we get it out of them and take them back?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy, being a ludicrous person, has a bit better time with it, but hits the same paradox. The internal logic almost holds, but...the universe gives rise to life. If it were *mechanically* opposed to it, it should just *not happen*. But it's more like an interpretation of mechanics. Is that the will of the universe? The cosmic thumbprint of some grand divinity? That seems wrong, too.

But there has to be a chance. He doesn't believe otherwise. He can't. If he believes that...if he believes that.....

Tetsuya probably does not require psychic powers to divine that Guy is looking for Mikoto's face in his cup, and not finding it.

"That's the size of it, yes," he says. Then he pulls himself up and shrugs, looking Tetsuya in the eyes. "We're still working on theory. I know from Dad that if an object is broken down into small enough parts, the Triple Zero won't have anything to hold on to and will disperse. That's...an option." Grimace. "But not exactly gentle. And we can't do that to the humans, obviously. Hinoki put forth that a full-scale blood transplant might do it, but that's got its own problems." Understatement of the year. "For now...we just plan to fight whatever they come up with. And hopefully we can find a way to get to them before they do something they'll regret."

<Pose Tracker> Tetsuya Tsurugi has posed.

"Mmn," Tetsuya does not mention the fact that it's probably too late for that, at least for Renais. But for the others... There's still a chance, isn't there? A chance to spare them from guilt. "We'll need to explain this to the higher ups. I can't imagine someone can be held accountable for the things they do while under the thrall of this... stuff. But there'll definitely be people who won't care, and the worse things get, the more clout they'll have."

In other words, they need to deal with this fast. Before someone can throw Kotaro Taiga in megajail for orange warcrimes.

"...If this... /stuff/ has a source, then, limitless though it might be, it must still be finite when placed in a vessel. So... What if we use another power to drive it out? Like how you all used Dangan-X to overwhelm Pasdar...?" Of course, the soldier is looking for a strategy to overcome the obstacle. But Tetsuya knows, also, the look of a man suffering from critical heartache. He pauses and turns meaningfully to stare at the earth, so close by and yet so far away. "We'll get them back, Guy. We /will./ It might feel lonely, being the only current acting member of Gutsy Galaxy Guard-- but you are not alone, Guy Shishioh. If this Triple Zero is so afraid of the miracles life can create, then that's just what we'll have to do to beat it."