2022-03-07: Perfection in My Pride
- Log: 2022-03-07- Perfection in My Pride
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Shota Hebikura
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Akane's House (But Not Her Room, For Once)
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-03-07
- Summary: The Illusion Demon, Jugglus Juggler, gets a lot of information by standing relatively still.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It's the first school day after exams. Fortunately it is, in fact, *after* exams, which means Akane Shinjo feels precisely zero obligation to go. The last week has been punctuated with more than a few horrible things. Fortunately, Akane isn't thinking about those anymore; she's thinking about the next kaiju. Her last conversation with Alexis has her a bit spun around, and she's told him to give her some private time to work.
Her kaiju is about 60% done. It's ambitious, to say the least; it takes up an entire self-healing cutting mat, and extends a good foot or two *up* as well. She has a small placard next to it noting 'don't forget: 1/1000 scale!'
Right now she's cutting up science supply bottles to get proper aperture width for... *something*, she's doing on top. "Mmrngh... I actually have to kill one of them this time," she mumbles to herself. The desperation has begun to climb, a bit -- the more entangled she gets with the real world and its problems leaking through, the harder it is to rationalize shutting them back out... as much as she'd like to.
She nudges a micro-fridge under her desk open with her foot. There's leftover iced coffee in there from earlier in the day; the ice has just barely not finished melting yet. Her hand doesn't go down to grab it quite yet.
"Stupid Renais... why's she gotta ask so many questions," she mumbles.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Contemplating the void's call was something that those attuned to darkness sometimes did, and it meant different things to each of them, as something always relates to nothing by itself. The act could be meditation, or a ritual, or even just seething about a lack.
Shota Hebikura did paperwork. The most interesting thing about Humans, he had found, was how bright and wonderful the world was, and how inherently dark the things within were. It was here that he travelled, after Kanon. Here, to Earth, where the tree that he had cut stood anew.
And the people of this beautiful ball of plenty had immediately set about trying to destroy the tree. Incredible. A people who were born to mass and plenty and paradise, and they smeared tar and melted glass over it.
Wisdom lay within the chaos. The light and dark both.
And so the officiating of people via great tools of mechanical writing and pigments, very fine -- and the continuing desecration of the living image of wisdom to take formal notes for military records.
Exquisite.
It was the little things that had to bring joy, since one did them regularly and daily. And once the day's preparations were complete, there was a bit of time left to pursue a loose thread.
AKANE's ROOM
A knock comes at the 'inside' door, with an indicatory 'uhuhu'. "It would be difficult to find you at your school if you skip it, mm?" comes the Illusion Demon's giggling door riddle. He already knows the answer, though. "Are you entertaining inside, or would you rather speak outside? You were clear last time, so..."
The trail-off into silence that follows does not produce clarification.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
A knock at Akane's door -- and for once, she's feeling like she ought to answer. "Ahaha... sorry, couldn't do it this week. Exams were pretty bad," Akane says, through the door at first. "Hrrm..."
She opens the door a crack. "... Okay, fair. How about waiting downstairs, though? We can talk, but my room's..." Don't tell him it's a mess don't tell him it's a mess he took your trash out -- "... I knocked over some giri-choco I forgot to deliver last month, and it's kinda gross." Technically true, but a lot less embarrassing and thoughtless-feeling than the full truth.
Akane wants to demo this with Juggler; he's the one with the experience with at least one category of Vessels of Light, so... Akane heads back to her desk and picks up the cutting mat, then makes her way back to the door. "Okay -- I've got it. Let's go downstairs."
She slips out, leaving the door open just a crack. Yep, there it is -- the garbage, again. She has the world she thinks she deserves.
Downstairs is spotless, of course. It's pretty sparse -- and at spots, a bit dusty! But it's got, you know. TV. Coffee table. Sectional couch. It's a better place to sit and talk about the half-built monster Akane's carrying.
At this stage, though, it really looks more like several hobby-project volcanoes, all networked together, and standing on feet. The wire is still pretty visible -- and thick, because it needs to support a lot.
"Alexis said you gave him some good ideas, and I'm *pretty* sure he told me at least most of them," Akane explains, tone casual. "Did you come to see if I was gonna use 'em, or what?"
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Jugglus Juggler, a large spikey moonman with a glowing crescent scar, does not especially turn his head to look inside. The state is self-evident to him, but, at the same time:
It is unobserved. It can be anything. It can be clean.
Juggler's head drops, and his left green slit-eye looks down at the apologetic Akane with a loll of the spikey side of his cheek. He doesn't have to peek. She 'spilled' on it, so it's Seen even if he didn't look.
Ah. Hmm.
Juggler can't snort, but does roll at the shoulder back down the stairs, plopping down on the couch in Cursed Armor Manspread - 'gauntleted' hands atop thighs. If she had studied armor, she could know it's just a natural sitting position to distribute weight. If she imagined about it, it could be any sort of dark lord stance.
If she paid any attention she'd notice how heavy Juggler sits on her couch. With all the weight one would expect.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
As Akane gets her props situated, there's a few things that are familiar and a few things that might be new. They're certainly new since Juggler claimed Akane's garbage for his own, though whether they're new to him otherwise is an open question.
Sitting beneath the half-complete monster is something that looks... not quite like a cell phone and not quite like a deck holder for a card game, cast in the shades of red, black, and a tiny amount of teal that Alexis now so favors. Next to it, the card Juggler left with Akane not so long ago.
Silence, and the confident stance of a dark lord. Akane can appreciate that. It's a space she's being invited to fill, to present into -- and it's a form of stimulation she kind of wants right now. "So Anti was a total bust and between Anti and Renais, they're just gonna trip over each other and screw things up until the end of time," Akane says, before realizing: "Oh right. Anti is my last kaiju and Renais is someone from outside who offered to help. Anyway, neither of them is important right now anyway!"
She grins. "Some school friends of mine were thinking of a trip to the mountains for spring break, and Alexis suggested using the space itself to trap a Vessel of Light... sooooo I'm making a kaiju that'd be great for the mountains! It's gonna hide there, and then I'm gonna' bait Gridman into showing up... and then crush him. Of course, to hide in the mountains... it's gotta be *big* like a mountain."
A beat.
"So I'm thinking like four hundred meters. Pretty great, right? *And* I'm gonna put the card on it. Alexis is gonna' show me how. The card thing there is for that."
... it's mostly a prop. It could certainly *scan* a card, but probably not do anything else with it. Alexis probably plans to just incorporate it during Instance, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Juggler's natural weight-seated stance is one that he rarely takes because he so rarely has to sit on a godforsaken human couch in this form 'seriously'.
Unfortunately for the Illusion Demon, Akane Shinjo's incredible psyche had absolutely no time to imagine anything but the most cardboard standie of a couch, because she only required the cardboard standie. Cardboard people sat on cardboard couches and a weightless god floated just out of contact with the texture of her world.
And that made his armored form bend the couch into a thick v-divot.
The stability-sit is the only way. A sprawl would kill the couch, and perhaps deal critical damage to him... in one way or another.
This still affords him some emotive motion, fitting of a dark lord's span. Leaning forward with a gentle 'hooohh?', the green slits examine the toy and the dream beneath.
"A Divizer." Juggler decides. "Though, I doubt you would let me take either apart to see the craft. Interesting. . ."
Juggler nods. "Very interesting." No laughter comes, no knowing spurts of emotion. Instead, he takes the presentation in situ, being pitched to and granting directed attention, consideration, contemplation.
The premise is valid, accepted into consideration. Save for: ". . . The ones that cause you problems are still useful. If they remain loyal, familiar foes will draw off familiar tactics. Use them to seed confusion and threats that must be answered, then modulate their threat. Think of them as vectors for blades, and hold the true placement of the sword in a ready state farther still. If they will fight Vessels..."
Leaning back, Juggler's chin cants up in a knowing, statement-swell. "... then let them fight."
A pause. "And then? Your goal. . .?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane can hear that creak. (She can hear a lot of things in this space. It's so still it drives her crazy, sometimes.) She looks at the couch. ... not her problem, she thinks. The Venora will get to it if it breaks. They always do.
Juggler offers to take apart the Devizer -- and, what might be a surprise: "... Oh, you do that stuff?" She says that cautiously -- it's noncommittal, at first. But there's curiosity there. "As long as you tell me exactly how it works, you know what? Go for it. Take it as thanks for the card." The idea that she owed Juggler for the power he gave freely has sat uneasy in her mind for a little while. This provides her an offramp -- a chance to make it straightforward, transactional, and a transaction *fulfilled* at that. They've exchanged things, at slight risk.
"That's what I was trying! It isn't working right now," Akane concedes, drilling into the topic that's still gnawing at her. She can't quite hide her feelings... and she's already gotten into the habit of telling them to people who present the way Juggler does. "I'm actually trying to get Renais to lose. She used to work with -- Chasseur, and NERV. Something's stuck in her brain and I don't want it there, and they can do something about it and I probably can't." She pinches the bridge of her nose, pushing those tinted glasses up just a bit in the process. "A fight with her would be a big waste of time, so I'm trying to get Ultraman or NERV or... *something* to clean it up for me."
She shakes her head, moving back to the less embarrassing question. The 'and then.' "Alexis says that if we can crush a few Vessels of Light, this place can close up again. Gridman showed up right before it started being so... open, so it makes sense, right? He opened it, and now your 'Ultraman' is showing up. I met a guy who said the ones that have shown up here so far are Ultraman Z and Ultraman Geed... sounds like your 'Orb' isn't here yet, at least."
Walking through it out loud highlights the cracks in the narrative, but Akane's not quite ready to engage with them. "Anyway, after that I can just ditch that world entirely! It's pretty simple. ... Dunno what I'm gonna do about my people who keep going back and forth, but I'll play it by ear."
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Seated, Jugglus Juggler considers once again. A thigh-rested hand lifts to tap his his right moon-cheek.
"I have one of the local phones already. It won't work with that card. Small dolls, though... Uhuhu... Have you ever heard of Spark Dolls? Perhaps ask Alexis-Kerib about those. They are..."
The Dark Lord leans in. "Like gachapon kaiju. There's a connection between kaiju and coins. A five hundred yen coin's face can reflect any kaiju you can imagine..."
The tapping hand curls and then tosses a coin underhand at Akane - a smudged, weighty, and body-warm 500y piece - and then the hand returns to his thigh. "Around all the smudges and imperfections."
Avoiding, entirely, the topic of the devizer further, Juggler sits back. "The Vessels of Light chase the loud sound of distress. What will you do with peace? Nothing? You don't need kaiju for nothing."
"You don't need anything to stand around doing nothing, but..." His chin lifts. "It won't get you anywhere, or so I've heard."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Spark Dolls... "Huh, no. Alexis has never mentioned something like that," Akane says, blinking. "Like gachapon kaiju..." Akane catches the coin. That's something that she enjoys, at least -- just look at the shelves upon shelves of them in her room.
Kaiju and coins... that's an interesting topic -- but one Akane doesn't quite have the words for. Any kaiju you can imagine, around the smudges and imperfections... She glances out the numerous patio doors, expression thoughtful. "No offense, but you're kind of a weirdo," Akane offers first, bringing a hand to her mouth and giggling a bit.
All of the topics kind of drive at a single point -- so Akane engages them as a single point. What would she do, in her perfect world, sealed off, peaceful, alone...
"I'd still be making kaiju, I guess. They're not actually just for killing Gridman. They're *supposed* to be for removing stuff from the city that sucks. Pointless places. Thoughtless people." A beat. "My people aren't supposed to be that way. So I get rid of them!"
She smiles, pleasantly. "People who get all the help they need, and who love me!" She makes it sound so easy. "I'd just maintain that!" She nods once, as if it makes perfect sense.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Juggler makes a gentle, tone without breath giggle. "Only kind of? Perhaps we're more similar than I expected."
The armored figure falls silent. The green droop as his chin falls, and Akane's sensitive space finds him vacant - or at least very distant.
This lingers.
It lingers still.
Then, the Demon's voice, softly. "And Alexis says that once a vessel of Light or two is killed, the world will close? I understand."
"And that thing Alexis made for you, you think it will help you with that. Have you tried it?"
It continues.
"Your board swept, you would make kaiju... of what? For what? Make..."
Juggler stands. "Thank you, Akane. I think I've put together all the necessary pieces."
At a loom, Juggler cants his head down, not to Akane, but the model. "Can you do it on your own? Manifest? Realize? Fusion? Awaken?"
Juggler then, and only then, turns to apply the Standing Adult Downward Look with all that meaning to Akane. Being eyes-on with her monster means looking-down at her.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
'More similar than he expected.' Akane likes that. There's something about Juggler -- his stance, his bearing, and... well, obviously the fact that he's somewhere on the seijin-to-kaijin-to-kaiju spectrum -- that Akane finds compelling. Something she'd like to ... share in? Have for herself?
Well, it's something, at any rate.
The question of what kaiju she'd make, for what, with the board swept and the world closed... "I was making 'em before Gridman showed up. I'd just go back to that. Whenever people suck, it's easy to make a kaiju and fix it!" That gets a giggle out of Akane -- not quite Juggler's eerie ufufu, more of a 'mweheheh.'
As to the other questions... "Haven't tried this thing yet," Akane says, with a shake of her head. "No point yet. This is the only kaiju I've been working on! And it's waiting for spring break, right now. Timing thing. You know how it is. Gotta get the mountains up and running, gotta get people *in* the mountains..."
Wait, Akane thinks. If Vessels of Light only show up when people cry out for help, then her people are crying out for --
-- wait, what?
Questions to shove down.
Akane looks up at Juggler. "Nope. I create the kaiju, but they need something only Alexis can do to get big," Akane answers. It's hard to get cagey about this kind of thing from that posture. Those sunset-red eyes stare up -- like Kaworu's, like Anti's, like Rei's. If you know where you're looking, it's trivial to see what Akane could do.
"Why, what's up?" she asks, taking a half-step back to get a more comfortable distance. "If you were hoping I could turn into a scary monster like you or something, sorry! What you see is all you're getting." Not 'what you get,' apparently.
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
The final, expected answer. Juggler had expected to need to offer something - a piece of 'candy' to sweeten the deal. He had held back offering simply because. . . Why bother? If his relationship was good enough - if he just stood still long enough, this was the result.
"And that's why you're still in the egg. Well. You're not supposed to stay in your shell, Akane. Even if your monster can only live for one run-in with Ultraman, it will be remembered forever if it has the right character. Kaiju express things."
Juggler nods, stepping forward then to pick up the Devizer from its display, and turn it over. With an inspecting swat to the top, Juggler finds no special pop out. Drawing a card, he powers on the device and slots the card into the device, which helpfully belts out a
<<Loading: Gomora>>
A tinny 'kreeuh,kreeuh' plays, which sounds vaguely like 'gao gao' somehow.
Juggler turns to show off the holo-slick Gomora card to Akane slotted intothe face before the Devizer chimes. Thumbing the card out, he hands the phone to Akane. "I've loaded the normal program that comes on these ones in. It must have not been properly installed."
Stepping back, Juggler considers the large kaiju now from close-up.
"Four hundred meters, hmm...? That -will- be rather large. I wonder what will happen if Orochi's power is added?"
His mirthful giggles continue for some time.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Kaiju express things... how's *that* work, if they don't really have feelings that matter? How can something empty express? That's something that leaves Akane with questions -- or more accurately, the larval form of a question: doubt.
"... Hey, sometimes seeds need time to sprout. You can't rush a good monster too much!" She leaves the full question of leaving the shell for later -- it's something she's not emotionally ready for, especially after the events of the last few days. She'd need to be a smart monster to leave her shell -- conversely, inside it she's absolutely permitted to be a very stupid god.
Juggler does -- something, at least, to the Devizer. Akane watches. "Huuuuhhh... do different cards have different programs or something?" she asks, curious as she takes it back. She gives it a once, twice, three times over -- it's kind of fascinating that Juggler just... recognizes all this stuff.
"Well, we'll find out by the time school starts up again!" Akane finally offers, with a pleasant little giggle. "Hmmm, though... I wasn't expecting you to be good with technology. Do you want my phone number this time?" She blinks, considers... "You... *do* have a normal phone, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Shota Hebikura has posed.
Akane suggests that sometimes eggs need time to hatch.
"Oh, of course they do. But question. Questioning important. Allow many answers."
Juggler knows the eyes. But he has questions, and some deserve direct answers. Others... Others deserve what they get.
"What I know is that that card has that effect. Important things. Sympathies and empathies. Cause, effect."
A weighing gesture follows. "Try it out, if you want to see. Do you want to be told?"
'You do have a normal phone, right?'
Juggler laughs outright. "Oh... Maybe. Would you like help putting this back in your room?"
Juggler uses the confused moments of Akane smokebombing and starting to clean up to escape.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
'Do you want to be told.' ... Interesting. It's the same stance Kaworu took, about the 'administrator.' And just as before...
"... I think I'd like a crack at figuring these things out myself, first. Maybe if I'm still not going anywhere the next time we end up talking." Then Juggler asks if she'd like help moving Go'yavec back to her room, and --
"... Didn't I already tell you no?" Akane counters, blinking a few times as she turns to pick up Go'yavec herself. When she looks back up --
"Oh, come *on*," she groans, as Juggler escapes the awkward question. "Come ooooonnnnn."