2022-06-05: ES Window ~SEARCHING~
- Log: 2022-06-05- ES Window ~SEARCHING~
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Soldato J-002
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Starbows
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-06-05
- Summary: Soldato J-002 seeks out the architect(?) of Renais's rescue (?) to ask her where Renais is. It goes about where you expect.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It's an easy day in sleepy Tsutsujidai, all told. It's a day off, and Akane's decided to actually brave the uncomfortable-even-for-her summer heat (which honestly feels even more uncomfortable than usual, for Akane, lately) and go do something... positively normal.
She never did pick up the Tarabaman X4 game she was looking for, last time she went out; she got caught up in talking to people, then retreating from talking from people. Today, she's finally remembering to make good on that; she wants to get the IF route ending, finally, after all these years. (She's watched a playthrough, of course; this is more about... putting a personal ghost to rest. Eight year old Akane deserved the chance to see that before shuffling halfway across the country and becoming too miserable to play; sixteen year old Akane will have to fill in the gaps.)
Her prize acquired, Akane settles in outside a Starbows with an absolutely disgusting sugar-sludge drink.
(Light roast, cherry syrup, ice, double sugar. Coffee that drinks like a meal -- or at least, puts away the calories like a meal. And such a lovely red color, like most of Akane's favorites.)
She taps away at her phone. ... This isn't the worst, she thinks -- it's hot, but even that's pretty manageable...
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
The world rips.
From a single thin line a void opens itself into Tsutsujidai. There's nothing on the other side but an emptiness, a chaotic white-and-nothing that swirls together in incomprehensible nonsense outside of normal space. For a moment that's all there is.
The white emerges, or congeals, or coalesces, into a shape. Unnaturally tall, a long beak of a nose, a grey helmet, plumage of multicolored hair. Armor bits. A black bodysuit. A green scarf.
It happens so fast it probably wouldn't even be process-able to someone who isn't literally running this subroutine of reality. For anyone else it would be the space between the eyelid descending and the eyelid reaching the bottom of the blink - less than a fourth of a blink of an eye. For Akane, it's a full blink, and that's probably too much, because ES Windows are unpleasant to contemplate.
The Window closes behind the tall...man?...as he looks around. There's this sense of a predatory bird taking in its surroundings - like an alert falcon flicking its head back and forth to scan everything in its presence, in case of prey, in case of predators, in case of problems. It doesn't take the tall man long to confirm that, no, there's not much here that could threaten him (if anything), and no, there's not much here that counts as what he's looking for. A few beats more and the birdman zeroes in on Akane at last. He doesn't really *walk* so much as *stride* - every step is full of pride and self-confidence in a way that most humans can't even grasp, let alone achieve, a sense of strength earned and superiority tested time and again rather than assumed.
He stops on the opposite side of her table. He looks down at the coffee. He looks up at Akane. He looks down at the coffee. He looks up at Akane.
"Where is Renais?"
It's very matter-of-fact. No threat. No anger. No tense teeth-bared like this is a standoff of a hostage situation. Just...'where is she?'
God, that's weird. You'd think a guy trying to end all sentient life would be a little less...blase...about things.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane's left eye screws shut, a bit, as she sees that movement-that-isn't-movement, that coalescing-from-nothing. She finds herself wishing she'd brought her blue blockers -- but the moment passes before that settles in as actual regret.
As the birdman approaches, Akane does a mental census of the pieces on the board. There's not a lot of people who can do that -- certainly not that would specifically be interested in this place. It could be one of Alexis's friends, or it could be --
'Where is Renais?'
Akane takes a single deep breath, and does her best to settle into a God's posture rather than a human's. One stocking-clad leg crosses over the other; she takes her time answering, in part because she's still trying to figure out who this could be.
"Not here, as far as I know," Akane starts. She thinks about it. Who'd be interested in Renais, who could move like --
'As for locking down the space, we're planning to have GaoGaiGo deploy simultaneously with the Gatling Driver to shore up the dimensional wall. It should prevent anyone from coming in or out for a while, even with J's ES Windows.'
Ah. Of course. "So *you're* J! We were pretty worried about you busting in on Renais's little duel for my honor," Akane eventually answers. "We had someone running interference just for you! It was a whole thing."
Akane reaches for her drink. Slurps. Don't show fear, don't show weakness -- this birdman is *strong*, and he needs to see your strength too. The people who went to the previous universe with 3G are 'heroes' still -- you have to maintain that stance as a monster, simply acting in the face of a hero.
"So what's your play, anyway?" she asks, trying to remain casual. "Drag her back to your... orange, assertion, cave?" She still hitches on that word 'assertion,' in this context -- it's not the word she'd choose for this particular threat. "Kill her?" Her expression turns smug as she asks, "Or are you just here to say hi to both of us?"
... It's a bit of an alien play, but:
"Want some coffee? My treat."
... Yeah, she's really going for it, huh.
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
'Not here, as far as I know.'
J lowers his head in a nod of understanding. He turns to leave. He doesn't answer her questions - until-
'Want some coffee? My treat.'
He pauses.
He stands there for a moment, utterly stoic, staring off at nothing - or maybe just deciding what to do. His arms cross over his chest. Finally, he says, "No."
"I made a promise not to try any until she found the right one for me."
"But thank you for the offer." The tone of the words is much like the audial equivalent of someone stumbling trying to put on pants they've never worn in a hurry and narrowly avoiding banging their forehead on the door.
Swan told him to say that if people offered him food.
He's been practicing.
He doesn't look over his shoulders. He's still not facing her. His silence is uncomfortable, alien. He's very still, too. Again, like a bird ready to fly, he's that odd mix of prepared to move in an instant and utterly immobile. Finally,
"Retrieve her."
"However I must."
The subtext is...well, his tone isn't threatening. And that's weird, considering he just sort of said 'even if I have to kill her.' But there's nothing threatening about his tone - no desire to cause harm, no urge to hurt anyone, no need for viciousness or brutality. Just...again, just a statement of fact.
"Why does that concern you?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
A promise with Renais, huh. And he still values it, even in a situation like this... that tells Akane a lot about the type of person J is. She taps her chin, looking at him, trying to size him up in those uncomfortable silences.
"Hm. Suit yourself," Akane says, with a little dismissive wave of her hand. "I think you should at least try a protein box or something. I mean, it's all kinda nothing, but, you know."
She gets the answer she was looking for -- and then a follow-up question. "Well, mostly it concerns me because I kinda busted my butt to get her to stop sucking and dying in your orange, assertion, cave, thing," comes the straightforward answer.
The longer she looks at him, though...
Hm. Hero or monster, hero or monster... and so still, besides.
"You wanna at least sit down while we talk? It's kinda awkward to do this with you standing around like that. Offer's open if you decide you want something."
She finally loops back to the actual question, though. "I was trying to be alone here... this place was a pretty low priority target for you guys, apparently, so she kept coming around. If you do that *again*, she's probably gonna go right back to sniffing around. Not my scene."
... then again -- Renais had *already* gone right back to sniffing around... so why *does* Akane care, actually...? Why *does* it concern her what happens to Renais, past this point?
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
"Hm."
"So you're responsible for that?"
J's voice has no edge to it. "I see. I understand why you would think that the best course of action. You don't want to die. Removing Renais from our forces and adding her to those standing against the Cosmic Law is sensible. Exploiting her personal weaknesses to lure her into a trap is fine strategy. It's not a warrior's way, but that's not something I can criticize. Earth doesn't have many warriors."
He looks up at the sky, still not turning to face her. As she speaks, he listens - he's an uncannily good listener, even if he's not looking at her. There's the sense that, yes, he is absorbing *everything* - stoic, silent, and *attentive*.
Finally,
"Tsutsujidai was delayed because she asked us to."
Is he facing away from her so she can't see his expressions? So she can't read anything on his face?
"She said this place was important to her. I accepted that. 3G accepted that. So there was no reason to strike it. There still isn't."
He taps his finger on his arm thoughtfully, the first real *motion* he's made the whole time. "You're her friend, aren't you?"
The word feels weird in his mouth, and sounds weird from it. It's, again, someone trying to understand something they just *don't*, an alien attempting to comprehend an alien concept and winding up fumbling with it on the emotional level even if they understand the definition. "You're the reason she asked us to delay, I think."
"And you don't want her here? Why?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
'You don't want to die.'
Akane doesn't touch that one. She can't -- if she lets herself think about it at all, she'll sink into it.
Instead, she says: "Yep! I was the one who pitched the whole thing to Renais and got her to accept. Oh, sure, everyone else did the grunt work and Alexis handled the clean-up, but I figured her out. Without me, the whole thing doesn't work."
The strategic assessment, though... "I don't really care what happens outside, though. If you guys's fight hadn't spilled over here, I wouldn't have bothered. Just, you know, the whole 'having someone in my house who keeps showing up' thing was kind of a bother."
... That last revelation, though. Akane knows that makes more sense with what Renais has told her, but it's another thing to think of it coming out of the mouth of a third party.
The answers this line of inquiry forces out of her are frustrating -- but while she can *obscure*, she's a pretty bad *liar*.
"I honestly don't know what we are," Akane answers, about whether she's Renais's friend. "I just know that..."
Her teeth worry at her lower lip a little; she glances off to the skyline -- to the kaiju. They're a reminder of just why she did all this, in the first place.
"... Renais doesn't have any business here, one way or another," comes out of her mouth, eventually. "I don't get it. She's a big hero, surrounded by big heroes, right? You guys went and saved the world, or whatever."
She gestures off in the distance, toward one of the maintenance kaiju. "... This isn't a place for that kinda person. I wanted her to get that through her head, and that meant getting all the other crap out of it too."
Maybe Akane's understanding of 'friend' isn't any better than J's.
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
"Then you did well. Utilizing that advantage to its utmost was wise. While it won't make a difference in the end, it's still worth acknowledging - Renais would be the easiest of us to lure away with minimal damage to your own forces." After all, it's not like luring J out of the J-Ark is a good plan for anyone involved since he can't really be pinned down meaningfully, and the rest of their fighting team is largely giant robots, so luring them out is pretty much a non-starter. Even if Renais *is* a powerful combat cyborg in her own right, she lacks the mobility J has, and, well, she's...not a giant robot.
Kind of important.
"And this place minimizes damage due to its circumstances. Another well-utilized advantage." Is he praising her? Or just...thinking out loud? It's really hard to tell. "Without it interference from other forces may have caused chaos during the operation and given her an opportunity to call for an ES Window."
His head tilts towards the kaiju.
"She is your friend," J says with an odd finality, "Because she said she is your friend. Since she said it to me, it's true."
That's not from someone who doesn't grasp that people can lie. It's from someone who has absolute, complete faith in the person he's speaking of. Utter faith. A certainty that goes beyond duty.
Not that he can understand that at all. That's the great irony. He's in love, and he knows he's in love, but he doesn't understand where love and duty are split, because his certainty in his duty is almost as ironclad, and his devotion to Renais is the same as his devotion to his ideals.
"This place is important to her. You're important to her. Therefore, you're important to me." He tilts his head backwards to look at her through his helmet's...visor? Eye....windows? Hard to tell. "As long as she's your friend, you're my friend. That's how it's supposed to work, I think." The 'I think' sounds awful damn shaky.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
If it's praise, Akane doesn't mind it. "Walking your way through the whole thing, huh? Yep, that's definitely part of it. She's kinda soft, you know -- a place like this that doesn't care how much you hurt it is just right to get her to go all-out like that."
The last point, though... "Yeah, we kinda double-bagged that one. This place is *supposed* to be closed off in the first place -- but just for good measure, 3G got it eeeextra tight! Even if you guys might normally respect her pride as a warrior, or, whatever, can't know! Assertion in your brain!"
... the other half of this situation comes. Renais said Akane was her friend -- and it's for that reason that J is now...
... what? "Ooooh no, I can't do this *again*," Akane groans. "Look, if some sad part of your dumb little bird brain is chirping for a rescue and you think I've got another miracle up my sleeve, don't even bother," comes a clipped reply. "That's not my kinda thing. 3G can handle that junk."
With a little pinch of the bridge of her nose, Akane ultimately says, "I'm not a power-of-friendship kinda person. You can hang out here or whatever -- I can't really stop you. But we're *not* friends, and Renais... doesn't get that yet."
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
"I have no interest in deserting my duty."
Now that's a firm statement. In fact, it's a firm enough statement that his head came down just enough for her to see through that window - to see those shockingly beautiful eyes and the absolute core of impenetrable determination inside them. Not courage - no, determination. Unyielding, unmovable determination. This is a man...bird...thing...whose core is something so...steady. So immobile. If the whole world came down on him...
No, a universe *has* come down on him, hasn't it?
And he still stood his ground.
This isn't stubborn. This is 'a principle.' This is 'an ideal.' He might be the walking incarnation of the ideal of determination, if not for that strange side-effect where it keeps leading him into self-sacrificing situations that wind up killing him for real this time except not.
"Do I strike you as someone who understands that sort of thing?" Ah, there's a bit of smug bird. It's the first facial expression he's made and it's *absolutely* a smirk. "Friendship isn't something I've ever needed to fight."
Then his expression returns to that proud-but-unstated blankness. "Then explain it to me. Why aren't you friends?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane looks into those eyes -- that's... definitely the eyes of a hero. It's upsetting to see -- the fact that these powers can turn so easily toward destroying things, toward ending things --
Akane knows she's no match for J, not any more than she'd have been a match for his rival. Yet... She wants to strangle *him* now, too. That stability preserving itself through the changing of the world makes her want to *scream*.
"We aren't friends, because she told me a *bunch* of stuff she never would have dumped on some random teenager. I was just the only outlet she had while her brain was screwed up. That's not friendship, that's just an intrusion --"
Akane stops like she's flown directly into a pane of glass. (If you're a bird... I'll be a bird, too!)
"... Let me try that again," Akane says, the wind out of her sails a bit. "Heroes make friends with heroes. All this is just --" She gestures widely with the hand that isn't holding her coffee cup. She takes a long drink, mid-gesture; she doesn't remove her lips from it.
"... set dresshing fhr shomeone to be unfair in," she finishes, straw getting in the way of her words. "Love, friendship -- they're not *real* if they're not *fair.*"
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
"Her brain was never changed."
J taps his finger against his arm again, turning his head away once more. "She was as aware and unchanged as I am now. The Cosmic Law has no bearing on such things. It's merely an enlightenment. But I have neither interest nor intention of proseletyzing."
"The facts are the facts. She wanted you to be her friend. She believes you're friends. You don't wish to be her friend because she's a hero?" J turns his gaze back to the wall.
"If you don't believe you deserve to be her friend even though she desires it, then you have two options." He holds up one finger over his shoulder. "Earn it through determination and courage, and become a hero yourself. According to them, even a zero percent chance can still become one hundred percent with courage. If you have a zero percent chance of becoming her friend, be brave."
He holds up the other finger and smirks over his shoulder. "Or reject her and don't because you can't."
"Either way, as far as Renais is concerned, you're friends, so as far as I'm concerned, we are apparently also friends. I don't care whether you feel the same way or not."
It's weird hearing that from somebody like this, because unlike most people who say that kind of thing, the tone is not 'I'll make you be my friend' - it's legitimately 'I don't give a shit one way or the other what you think.' J doesn't have the shonen hero energy necessary to befriend people with violence - violence is just violence, and force is the only language he truly understands.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
J presses and presses on things Akane knows to be false -- and the fact that he literally can't understand it in the state he's in now finally takes a backseat to the fact that this makes Akane want to scream, so:
Scream it is!
"You are so *stupid*!" It's practically a screech. "This isn't a zero percent chance! You can't turn nothing into something with your feelings --"
Akane stumbles over *that* one, realizing where she's sitting (well, standing, now; outbursts have a tendency to draw people to their feet, after all) as she says this.
Fortunately, the introspection doesn't get very far and she's back to it.
"I have *been* doing the second thing! I keep telling her to stop coming!! And I'm not hearing this from someone who can see *a big pile of orange energy* go into and out of someone and their opinion on miracles change and go 'Oh, nothing changed'!"
Akane, conveniently, also understands force first and most other things at a significant distance. "The two of you are probably only as close as you are because you're so dumb you have one brain cell *between* you and somehow *neither of you* manages to carry it with you when you come in here!!"
Because Akane, when upset, only rarely misses an opportunity to tear into herself, she stumbles her way into adding, "And *I'm* stupid for talking to a brick wall from behind another, orange-er brick wall in the first place!!" She *does* hit a steady state, finally, though she's clearly still agitated, as she says, "I'm not gonna go straight to dropping a kaiju on you, 'cuz I'm pretty sure by the time I finish it up you'll be right back out of here, but your options are leave now or fight a kaiju and wreck a place Renais likes for some reason.."
<Pose Tracker> Soldato J-002 has posed.
"I meant stop talking to her entirely," J replies distantly at her outburst, "Ignore her completely. Don't say 'go away' or 'we aren't friends.' That doesn't work against people like the Cyborg and Renais. But if you stopped speaking to her at all it might accomplish your goal."
"Or not. I don't know. I don't know anything about this sort of thing."
She continues to get mad. J continues to stand there silently, listening to her, because, again, he's a good listener. So he listens as she vents, he listens as she gets mad, he listens as she yells and yells and yells, he listens as the outburst grows and grows and grows, and then, finally, when she makes her declaration, J tilts his head back level and walks forward. Space tears in front of him again, that unpleasant ES Window roiling uncomfortably before her eyes, and then he's gone and the Window seals itself up behind him as if he was never there at all.