2022-02-23: Bioethics
- Log: Bioethics
- Cast: Anti, Akane Shinjo, Alexis Kerib
- Where: Tsutsujidai
- Date: 2022-02-23
- Summary: Akane commands Anti to kill Asuka. Anti refuses. Alexis enquires why he was waiting for her in the first place. Anti shares. (Content warning: abusive family dynamics.)
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Experience in management.
Killed in a lab.
A 14-year-old girl.
Its affiliates and creations.
Suffering the worst things people can do.
The greater network is aware of...
It was BioNet! You got a problem with that?!
It's raining, in Tsutsujidai.
It's a bad day, so it's raining.
The rain slips down from the gutters to the grass, a thousand little razors which offer not succour nor sympathy from the heat trapped in Tokyo summer nights. The rain slips down from the hair to the face, a thousand little intrusions which slick clothing and lashes to skin. The rain slips down, just like people do, running home on a night like this.
There's mud, on Anti's knees. By inches and degrees, it sloughs from his light dress-pants, down his legs, to the ground. It will be some time until he is clean, standing here, in front of Akane's den. That terrestrial movement suggests he has already stood for some time.
There was dirt on his hands. That's clean now, too.
He stands. He seeks no shelter. He waits.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
You should tell me more about giants of light.
There's been a lot of people coming here from another world where the Federation's doing all this horrible stuff.
It's -- you know, light. Like this.
Wow, if you are from another world, it sounds like that one's totally out of ideas.
It's a school day. Akane has had a couple of very weird school days this week, and a couple of decidedly significant disappointments. She managed to pull out of the spiral for a little while by fussing over what Hibiki was going to eat, but that only lasted until she got home.
Alexis took the opportunity to remind her that there are now at least three Vessels of Light in her space -- he wouldn't directly say that, as such, but he's good at asking the right questions to remind her. The new ones seem so nice, too... and really, Hibiki doesn't... she didn't even bother giving him...
Ugh. All she wants is to be alone and there's such a human cost in it.
... She'll have to figure out how to thread the needle on this. Maybe she'll need to --
She's within about five feet of Anti by the time she notices him. (Her gaze is pointed straight down.) She thinks about Anti's outing not so long ago; his battle with the Vessels of Light. With Gridman.
He's in the middle of her path to solitude, which means she'll need to address him.
"What do you want?" she asks, tone flat, irritated. "I expected you to be embarrassed at least a little longer. You know freaking out at Renais was a bad idea, right? She was trying to help you." I was trying to help her, Akane thinks, too. "The Vessels of Light and the outsiders were supposed to beat her. I had it all planned out."
Akane is under the mistaken impression that having the idea to cause a problem constitutes a plan.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Akane isn't home. Anti doesn't know that. He doesn't know about school, or about friends. (Enemies treated as friends.) But Akane must be here, so Anti waits.
He sees her, first. Hears her, really, rain all a-patter off her shield. His head turns. He shifts a half-step, to meet her new direction.
He watches her, unmoved, as she makes her demands. There is an intensity to him, but there always is. The constant, building pressure looming over him, driving him to --
His eyes widen, fractionally, as Akane says she wanted... Gridman to win, against Renais. He grunts, head jerking upwards just enough to make one of those rain-sodden bangs shift on his face.
Then... does that mean she's trying to kill her, again..?
... does she know?
Anti's fingers curl, loosely, at his side; his chin lowers back down.
"Tried to help me..." Anti copies her phrasing, as he struggles to find words for the mysterious tangle inside of him. He steels his shoulders, turning fully to her. His request, given with such low intensity, sounds very much like a demand. "Listen. The help I'm getting --"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane shifts her umbrella just slightly. She remains at a full, tall stance; she looks down at Anti. She allows him to speak, for a few moments. The fact that Anti fundamentally doesn't get what he's been asked to do -- or how things work -- is so irritating...
... that honestly, Akane's brain starts to reject thinking about it. If the problem is that he has to abide by the rules she set for him to transform, then it's her fault, and boy, does she not like that. So she decides to take issue with Anti instead.
"Isn't enough?" Akane asks, coldly. "I made you so you'd be able to handle any problem. You can change to deal with it." Whatever Anti had wanted to say about the help he was getting gets bulled over. Akane has a better idea, anyway.
"So... hm. If Gridman's out of your league now..." Akane pulls out her phone, and swipes a few times. "How about this?" She holds up a picture that Anti might find familiar -- a girl with red-brown hair, about Anti's apparent age. Taller than Akane, though. "This girl's been sniffing around Tsutsujidai High School, and she knows about Gridman."
... this is an escalation, Akane thinks. But at the same time -- can she really trust a Federation agent? NERV seems suspicious... and the Federation keeps doing all those horrible things, anyway.
"... and she knows about you, too. Showed me pictures of you and the robot you found and was talking about your kaiju form, too." She shifts the umbrella back just a little bit. Rain starts to hit her leading arm and one of her shoulders.
"Clean up your mess and kill her, okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Akane finishes his sentence, but it wasn't the sentence Anti meant to say. Still, he has to question himself in the face of her cold certainty -- long enough that she reprimands him.
That's why she made him...
His eyes widen and narrow, in short order, as Akane proceeds to insult the very reason he exists. He's angry, but he leans forward to inspect the picture, anyway. The portrait isn't mistakable. The girl who taught him about...
'Tch. What are you stupid? It's having enough pride in yourself and your abilities that you don't let someone walk all over you. Is this really what you wanna be doing right now?'
He looks back up, to Akane, as she tells him more of the redhead's crimes. The robot he found...
He looks back down, to the phone. The rain beads down, where the phone is closer to Anti's space than hers. A girl who helped him... Akane wants her dead. But Anti doesn't feel badly towards her, despite how she was acting. He wonders, then: IS Akane treating him like garbage?
He straightens up, eyes closing against the shift of his damp bangs, before he opens them regardless. Sunset eyes for a sunset girl.
"I refuse." The words are flat in their obstinance, but there is a subtle, unmistakable backbone of pride to them. "I was born to defeat Gridman."
Did you know? Anti learned that people can even express care on the battlefield. He doesn't have to destroy everyone he comes across. He has the choice to decide who he will kill.
"Unless it's Gridman, I won't kill --"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
So much for that.
Akane subtly rolls the umbrella to one side just a little further, as if she's trying to shift her stance to something a little more comforta --
-- The phone answers Anti, in what is rapidly becoming the most frequent reversal of subject and object. It bounces off his face, and hits the ground. Akane does not retrieve it immediately; it has nothing more to offer the conversation, so what's the point?
Oh, she thinks, a little distantly. Threw the phone again.
"Well, you're doing a pretty crappy job of any of it," she says, dully. "I'll have to handle these things myself."
Akane trudges back into her house without sparing Anti another thought. If he won't do what she says, he's a failure as a creation. He'll just have to take care of himself.
Then again, Akane's never managed to create herself out of a mess. Why start now?
She leaves the phone.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Akane hasn't been in the house a minute when another figure approaches.
Akane goes a different way; Alexis, too, goes a different way. "Hooh, Anti-kun," he offers, sounding... honestly fairly jovial? Though the voices vary so much, there's something not unlike Akane's usual delivery in him today. "Akane left you out here, didn't she... may I ask why you were waiting for her? I could bring it up to her for you."
Not 'will.' Just 'could.'
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
He never quite manages to expect it.
His eyes widen, as he sees it coming for him. He sees it coming, and he doesn't move away. It impacts. It falls.
So that's what self-respect gets him, he thinks, a little distantly. Even so, he cares.
He has no answer for her, as she remarks on his failures; no reassurance. She's right that he hasn't yet killed Gridman, even though he's had more than one chance to do it. So she's handling it herself...
So she leaves him in the rain.
So he looks down, at her phone, wedged slightly in the mud. The rain rattles, against it. Something she uses to reach him...
He crouches down. His hands reach out. His fingers curl.
He hears a voice.
Anti looks up, sharply, wide eyes and lips which part to expose teeth. He grasps the phone and darts back, a good three steps, like a cat who's just nosed a hot fire. Splish-splosh, he lands all in a puddle. It's no more damp than the rest of him.
"You knew Akane's in danger," Anti says, all guarded, all wary, "from what BioNet does."
Akane said he found Death Knight. A particular construction.
"You haven't told her."
He's learned how to make accusations, too.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
The accusations come rapidfire -- one, two, three. Two and a half, really. Alexis is unworried and unhurried about the whole of it.
His gaze turns toward Anti, toward the phone, and then toward Anti again. Or at least, that's what the incline of his head says he's doing. He is not yet worried enough that his iris can be tracked through his mask.
"Oh... is that what this is about?" he asks, head canting to one side. "I think you're a little turned around, Anti-kun. The battle lines have redrawn a bit."
He translates a little to Anti's right, then back to center. Judges his wariness for a moment. Once he's finished, he speaks again. "Akane-kun's never told you why she came to this world, has she...?" Taking just a moment to plan the narrative a little ahead of himself, he prepares to make an offer.
"... She'd be upset if I told you, but I think it'll make it easier for you to do what she wants if you let me tell you. It might even help you track Gridman, if you know more about the world of the Gods. He's made so many allies outside, hasn't he?" Back to full, neutral stance, now. We wouldn't want to demonstrate our true feelings, would we?
"It'll have to be our secret. What do you say...?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Anti is so, SO wary. Alexis gives him Akane's honourifics, and he's entirely uncomfortable with the way he brings Anti into Akane's space. Anti can't quite express why that is, why it feels so unnerving for Alexis to give him that same regard, but...
Well, he's a kaiju.
That's why Anti's gaze tracks him, motion to motion, as he exists to his right and back again. His empty hand curls, ready to fight; he holds that phone to himself, as if it's worth protecting. Anti looks back up, from his cloak -- from where his hands are hidden -- to his face. Anti grunts, and shakes his head.
Alexis hasn't ANSWERED his QUESTION, Anti thinks, with all the brief furious stabs of emotion those capitals imply. But... he restrains himself. Alexis enjoys talking around the point, Anti reasons. He might just be answering him very slowly.
Either way, if Anti lets Alexis...
Anti still wants to make her happy, even now it seems she'd rather hurt him than look at him. But it does seem that way, and since it does, Anti thinks she can't really get more upset at him than this. (This is as upset as Anti has ever experienced. He is scarcely a month old.)
Anti bristles, only to step back, out of his ready stance. He never quite stops looking at Alexis.
"Fine."
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
The simple act of observing Alexis curtails his options so much. It's a wise decision.
"Ah, great," Alexis replies, quick and easy. "The Federation of the outside world has a tendency to attack things that try to feed their people. It's the reason she came here, actually, or at least the reason she finally asked me for help. She saw them destroy one of their -- space colonies? The tubes full of people. Because they were too desperate to feed themselves, instead of allowing the Federation to hold it over them like a sword."
He allows Anti several seconds to take that in -- but the instant it looks like Anti even might ask a clarifying question, he continues. "Naturally, asking for help from people like that is out of the question. She'd get really mad, wouldn't she?" Not 'violent,' not 'tremendously angry' -- just 'really mad.' "So naturally... I had to turn elsewhere to find something."
He floats backward, affording Anti a hair more personal space. "For however horribly they'll treat other humans, there are few organizations more accepting of something... less pleasingly shaped than BioNet. I was afforded little choice in where to find a weapon suited to you."
Alexis begins to lean forward, to lower himself just a hair, to be seen as a little bit of a creature with a shape in his own right. The flame at the back of his mask flicks. "It's very kind of you to think such things -- that she'd be in danger! She very much would be." He resists the urge to clap.
"But those like us can't find good help anywhere else, in the world of the gods. You know how violent and impulsive she can be... if she knew she was receiving help from such dangerous people, she would put herself even more in danger. But we can bear this much danger for her in silence, can't we...?"
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
Alexis tells Anti a great many things about the Federation. Anti believes little of it, trusts little of him -- but listens and notes the information away, regardless. It is his nature.
Those second pass in silence, and eventually he is, indeed, about to ask if AKANE comes from space. It's in the part of his lips, his inward breath. It comes to nothing.
Akane would be mad...
His fingers tighten, a little, around her phone.
BioNet is the only place which would accept them. So, Alexis is trying to tell him --
Anti's head jerks back, a little, when he confirms she would be in danger. Notably, he does look away, briefly, when Alexis raises his point about them. Not down -- up. (The Venora are harder to see, at night, but they're there for those who know where to look.) He grunts, as he returns his gaze to Alexis. He never manages to look away for long.
He's staring-silent, as he works through the implications. Alexis wants him to be silent, and Anti is immediately suspicious of that. But Alexis isn't lying completely, right now. (There's a mark on Anti's head which proves just how violent and impulsive Akane is. It hurts. He gives no indication.)
In the end, maybe it doesn't matter if Alexis is lying. It's true enough that if Akane found out Anti was getting help from BioNet, she'd put herself in danger. Anti doesn't want that.
The corners of his lips press in, as he grimaces. He looks to Alexis, and asks, complete with rising tone: "But Akane's safe here?"
No word of concern for himself.
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
"This world exists for the sake of her safety," Alexis answers, as easily as he -- hm. Does a skeleton in a mask breathe?
We'll pretend it does. It's for the metaphor, you see.
"Insofar as her safety is imperfect," he continues, "that's something we have to attend to ourselves. I'm sure she has her own designs too, of course -- and what lovely designs they are! But there's much that it's better she doesn't know."
He slides away from Anti a little bit -- to afford him the space he needs, surely. "She'll need you to protect her from the Vessels of Light," he says -- in full spite, of course, of what Akane herself said not so long ago...
... but he thinks Anti will be a creature with much more purpose if he's relied upon.
Alexis continues to backpedal. "Do try to have a pleasant evening," Alexis commands, as the rain pitter-patters off his impassive mask.
<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.
"Ourselves..." Anti reflects, in the wake of his absence, calls attention to the association. Alexis, he thinks, is associating himself with Anti, not Akane. Why?
Ever his brain is thinking 'why.' It makes the question very, very important.
For instance: if Akane needs Anti to protect her from the Vessels of Light, why is she being so cruel? But the answer to that question is one Anti can find while he's taking action. He will protect her.
At least Alexis recognises something like that.
"Mm," he grunts, as he turns, looks away from the retreating alien. As he turns, looks towards a closed door.
He looks down, at the phone getting wet in his hands.
He steps forward, and places it down on the stoop, where it won't be knocked aside by an opening door, where it will be protected from the rain by the awning. His thumb leaves a print in the mud on its edge.
Anti turns, and leaves.
And wonders how much of this danger he brought to her, as a kaiju who can't get along with humanity.