2022-06-27: Two House Specials And A Devil
- Log: Two House Specials and a Devil
- Cast: Koji Kabuto, Guy Shishioh
- Where: Boss Ramen, Fujinomiya City
- Date: June 29, 2022
- Summary: Koji and Guy get together at Boss Ramen to catch up about a change in Kaiju behavior, and the devil they think is behind it.
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+--------------------------< Fujinomiya City [OCU] >---------------------------+
| The city at the foot of Mt. Fuji has reaped the greatest bounty of
| Photon Power. Its infrastructure has been transformed into a pristine
| vision of science, its layout optimised by some of the sharpest city
| planners and architects known to the OCU, with a train network to rival
| Nouvelle Tokyo and an openness to its streets despite the numerous
| skyscrapers spread across it.
| At the heart of the city is the New Photon Power Lab, surrounded by
| parks and artificial lakes, with the Mazin Museum not far from the central
| structure. The Old Lab, a relic of the fraught history that brought the
| city this far, languishes behind demolition fencing, though a lack of
| industrial vehicles nearby suggests that the day when this old memory is
| toppled is still some ways away.
| Looking towards Fuji proper one can see a third facility, built
| into the side of the mountain, with a NERV-controlled military checkpoint
| in front of it that is frankly uncharacteristic for the otherwise bright
| and peaceful city.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Boss Ramen" is a quaint little structure of wood and sliding doors next to the hyper-modern aesthetic of the rest of the Shin Fuji Science City, but even from the outside it radiates a sense of authentic homeliness that the rest of the city cannot hope to imitate - if Fujinomiya as a whole is testament to the bright future of an Earth Sphere fully embraced by Photon Power, then Boss Ramen is the comfort offered by the imperfections of the past.
Indoors, the venue is coming to the end of its peak hours, most of the regulars filing out. Boss has set Nuke and Mucha to the strenuous task of washing up the dishes for the next wave of customers while he takes charge of those still present in the building to see if they need anything else. "Oi, Koji, you sure your guest is coming?"
Among this number is one Koji Kabuto, dressed down in casual clothes. With people leaving the building, he's more comfortable taking off the hat that helps cushion his instantly-recognisable hairdo and setting it down next to his plate of appetisers. "He'll be here, Boss. Guy's Guy, after all."
"Still hard to believe they're back," Boss admits, rubbing the back of his neck. "I figured they'd be gone for good, but then BAM! GaoFightar - Uh, GaoFight... You know the one. In the middle of Nouvelle Tokyo! It was like they'd never left."
Koji smiles a little sadly, which Boss immediately catches. "What's that look mean, Koji?" "Well... It's a little more complicated than 'they're back like nothing changed', Boss."
Boss grunts, not quite comprehending, but understanding enough. "I'll make two of the House Special. He does still eat, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"I'm only technically made of stone, Boss," comes a wry answer from the door.
Guy Shishioh stands there, a grin splitting his handsome features, that bright auburn hair of his sweeping low down his back. As always, Guy dresses a bit like a superhero even in casual, with his green 3G jumpsuit under the gold vest he wears while he's off duty. "Good to see you guys, too. Hard to believe you've got a cozy place like this going!"
He steps on in, setting down opposite Koji and making himself comfortable. "So what's the occasion?" he prompts.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Guuuuuy!" Boss steps out from behind the counter to clap the Evoluder on the back. "Good to see ya again, buddy! Lemme know next time you want to take Borot out for a spin for some real slobber-knocker robot action, alright? Just make sure you don't cook the reactor off too hard, I need that for backup power here." He has, after all, ever been a fan of jury-rigging solutions, even if it's solutions for penny-pinching on the electrical bill.
Koji grins a little but then sighs. "There's some stuff I want to get up to speed on about the anomalous ward in Nouvelle Tokyo, Guy, but I didn't want it to get too heavy. A discussion like that's always easier over good food, right?" Boss peels away back into the restaurant's kitchen, yelling at Nuke and Mucha for "Two House Specials, and they better be REAL special!"
First off, though, Koji asks: "How is Renais doing?"
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Hah! I knew you couldn't tear the old boy the whole way apart," Guy laughs. He's basically Superman so he takes that clap in stride, a huge smile splashed on his face. "No promises, but GaoFighGar's still pretty messed up after that Kaiju attack on Tokyo 3 the other day..." He makes a somewhat crooked face at that point for just a moment, before grinning, "So it's good to know Plan B's open."
"Ah, Tsutsujidai again, huh?" Guy says, settling into his seat. "I admit, after we got Renais out, I've been letting the on-sight team keep an eye on it for now..."
"She's good," he says. "Been out of the hospital for a while. So good she's gone off on her own for a while, actually..." He scratches his cheek, unhappily. "I think she's got some stuff to work out. Can't...say I blame her."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"I didn't doubt you'd be able to get her out," Koji says with a firm nod. "... I don't suppose that makes the rest of the Triple Zero problem any easier, though, right? Still. One step in front of the other." He frowns thoughtfully. "You were hoping she'd sign right back up so you didn't have to be all of 3G Green by yourself, weren't you?"
He sighs. "The Tokyo-3 attack is why I wanted to talk about this, actually. Somebody sent a kaiju after Shiro, only a few days beforehand. Made a massive fog cloud on a clear day and attacked out of it like an ambush predator. Luckily the worst it did was trash his Ichinana, but something about it... It was like there was a will behind it, and it wanted to make some kind of point. Plus it had the energy-manipulation properties of the kaiju that attacked Ptolemaios Base on Luna." He slides a tablet with the image of the betentacled G(ener)onglee, crackling with electricity, over to Guy. "Fortunately, Tetsuya and I and a bunch of Ichinana pilots were on the scene to burn it back where it came from, but even though we tore chunks out of, inside it wasn't like anything I'd seen before. No inner flesh, not even kikaiju mechanical innards, it was just... hollow, with something like a wire endoskeleton inside it."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Uh, maybe...?" Guy laughs, a bit embarrassed. "I guess it just seemed obvious. But then, she was never formally a part of 3G. I guess she doesn't think of it as home the same way I do."
Then, Koji gets to the situation with Shiro. "An attack directly on Shiro? Why? He is a Captain now, I guess." Guy needs a moment to remind himself Shiro is like twenty.
He chews on his lip in thought for a moment, tapping the table with his finger. "An abnormal fusion of traits...That's a lot like what we saw in Tokyo-3, alright, yeah. Supervisor Yang doesn't think it's possible this is BioNet. They don't tend to just mash stuff together in quite this way."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"That's the thing - we're not sure exactly why. The best we can come up with is he's one of the few people with experience in anti-kaiju warfare that isn't directly under the 3G or NERV infrastructure so someone thought he'd be an easier mark, but..." He shakes his head. "All we really have to go on is that even with Z and Great on the field it made a point of beating more into his Ichinana than in attacking me. Like it wanted me to watch it kill him." It still makes him angry to think about even now - but the fight is over and Shiro is no worse than bruised and a little shaken up, so it's easy enough to let out a deep breath and refocus. "The only people who'd have that kind of motivation I know of are BioNet, but at the same time you're right - this is like nothing that's come out of their kaiju forges before."
Koji Kabuto says, "I learned a few things about Tsutsujidai, actually, but it feels like I'm missing a few pieces of the puzzle. Do you know Sayla's niece, Nidaime? Short girl, dark skin, black hair, wears a hoodie. Kinda reeks.""
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy hems. "That just doesn't quite sound right, yeah..."
That metallic face and the gleeful cerulean LED teeth come to mind. Is this you, too, Alexis Kerib? Why?
"Nidaime? Not off the top of my head, sorry." Guy scratches the side of his head. "I admit, Sayla and I kinda lost track of each other for a good long while there...Uh, plus the whole being in another universe for five years, of course."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"I promised I'd keep some of her secrets, but she's native to... not Tsutsujidai exactly, but what it was before it was Tsutsujidai. She calls herself a 'Kaiju of the Heart'. Good kid, even though she says she isn't really a kid, just looks like one.
"After the fight with this thing, I got to thinking - what does a term like that mean? And if she's native to a space like Tsutsujidai, what does that make it? Sayla's arranged a meeting with people who might have answers, which means it's probably in there, so I wanted to collect as much information as possible and develop some hypotheses before I met them."
At this point, Boss brings over two large, steaming bowls of 'The Boss Ramen Special' - noodles and pork, chicken and beef, with even half an egg floating in it. The smell is appetising and nostalgic all at once. Koji nods. "Thanks, Boss." To Guy, he says "Get anything else you fancy, my treat."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
THAT one gets Guy to frown a bit, eyes furrowing. "What it was before? It's not just a floating anomaly? We didn't really have anything to go on beyond that it was too dangerous to apply the Pliers since the space has inhabitants."
Guy leans back, huffing a thoughtful sigh. "'fraid I don't have much more than that for you. This is getting way outside regular spatiotemporal mechanics. Uncle Liger could probably come up with something in a heartbeat, but..."
He motions, vaguely, out the window.
Then his eyes narrow. "Kaworu...knew something. Something he thought I needed to know badly enough to stop me from chasing his attacker. But I'm still turning what to do with that over in my head."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"The NERV administrator who was attacked... right before the kaiju?" Is that a connection? Maybe.
"And, no, it... sounds like Tsutsujidai is part of a larger separate dimension that has begun to bleed into ours. More like the theorised higher dimensions of quantum mechanics than an alternate timeline, so I guess A dimension of... 'the heart'?" It's starting to sound kind of fuzzy though so Koji puts it aside to pick up his chopsticks and start on his ramen. The salts will help him think.
Between mouthfuls, he asks, "What did Kaworu tell you?"
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"I guess that tracks. Dimensions of different kinds of matter, except it's more like energy. That would fit with the Zonders' ability to manipulate dimensional folds, even."
Guy sighs, at some length. "Startin' to feel like a clear head isn't how you approach something like this," he laughs. "Boss, got any beer back there?"
While he waits for that, he also gets to his ramen. He eats like a human! Amazing.
He doesn't quite lie in answer to Koji's followup question, but he doesn't give the whole truth - it is, after all, a secret that isn't his to give. "How to get in touch with Gridman," he says. "And that we should, to deal with Alexis Kerib. I have to tell him about his brother, anyway..."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Gridman is clearly a name Koji hasn't heard yet judging by the total lack of recognition. "That sounds... crucial. Who's this 'Kerib'?"
Boss brings back a jug of beer and some glasses, filling Guy's first. Once his own is filled, Koji sips thoughtfully. "I suppose one might say, if it's a realm of the heart, then it's a realm of... well, metaphor. Because I assume it doesn't look red and fleshy there."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Looks like a city," Guy says, and signals a thanks to Boss. "It's....strange. I guess I can't tell you what it looked like before, I've only seen what it is now. But it's just a city, like any other ward of Nouvelle Tokyo. But it's quiet. Not enough network traffic...barely any official communications. Nothing military unless a fight outsiders are involved in is going on. And the history is a little different, too. The people there have had total peace since the One Year War."
He crooks his lips. "But it can't have existed that long. If it had, 3G would have known about it the whole time."
He slugs back a mouthful of beer, ruminating a bit. "Kerib...Alexis Kerib. He's a...being? Person? That seems to be deeply intertwined in the Tsutsujidai situation. He might even be directly responsible. But, he also helped us save Renais." By stabbing her with a magic spear, but brutal as it was, Guy won't hide from the truth: The plan would have failed without Alexis' intervention.
Though he does add: "If in the most needlessly unhelpful way possible."
Guy is too much of a 90's superhero to know the word 'dickish.'
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"... Hm. So he was involved in the battle? I don't suppose I'd be able to get vid logs of that?"
He listens to the description of Tsutsujidai. "You're right - it would have been noticed if it had existed for that long. Maybe the problem is that it's not supposed to be noticed at all? If it is a higher dimensional layer, it should nominally be unobservable, and Nidaime seems to believe that it shouldn't be accessible at all. As it is... it sounds like a bubble. A little pocket of a world that never saw any of our traumas."
He stares off into space for a moment. "A world with no Doctor Hell. With no Mycenaeans."
Then he frowns. "But then I wouldn't ever have met Sayaka. Never would have bothered with the family work, probably." He sighs. "It was so long ago I don't even remember what it would have been like to have mom around."
"Nope." He has a longer swig of his beer. "Too existential. Not worth bothering with."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"'Involved'," Guy says, and sips his beer like the word on its own were a joke.
Returning to his ramen, he says, "That's what I mean. I can get you video from GaoFighGar, Porcauto probably has some dashcam footage too, but I doubt it'll help you much. He knew something we didn't and didn't intervene until the last moment. Once we had Renais on the ropes, she tried to use Hell and Heaven - but the only G-Stone in that machine would've been the one in her arm. It would've broken and killed her."
Guy glances over gives Koji a serious look. "He made me ask him to, before he intervened. And when he did, it was by growing to the size of a giant in a heartbeat - not by growing, more like...re-scaling. And then he stabbed her with his own spear."
His eyes cast down briefly, before looking back up. "And only then did he explain that purifying Triple Zero requires at least two Purifiers, and apparently that spear of his is one. If he hadn't intervened, Renais would be dead." He picks up his chopsticks and waves them indicatively. "But you see what I mean by it being needlessly unhelpful."
Mikoto would normally help Guy out at this point by suggesting Alexis is a 'huge weiner,' but is not available for comment at this time.
"It's nice, isn't it?" Guy says, changing subject a bit. "It sounds like a dream, to erase all that sorrow, but...it ignores all the little victories. All the ways we're all striving, day by day. It's...it's not something 'nature' could come up with, don't you think? A person had to come up with this form Tsutsujidai has taken."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Guy might not be able to speak the truth about Alexis Kerib, but Koji and Boss, heroes of a wholly different kind of soul, share a glance and agree "What an asshole," then, despite the topic, grin at each other.
"Yeah. A native of that space doesn't have the... context to create that ideal."
He pauses. Then snaps his fingers. "Ideals. It's a space of ideas."
He pulls the tablet back and opens a new window, collapsing the image of Generonglee to a thumbnail and drawing two circles. In one of them he places an image of Mecha Trembulor from the Ptolemaios reports, and in another he scribbles 'Kaiju A', since he doesn't have an image of the original kaiju from the attack he heard about.
Then he draws an arrow from one circle to the other, then enlarges the Generonglee image and places it on the diagram. "Kaiju made out of ideas. Ideas being transplanted together. And then... The ability to project these ideas into our layer of reality."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Yeah," Guy says, to both. He settles in to really dig in to his ramen. He knows this little episode Koji's going through! His father had to do these sorts of things from time to time, assemble all his amazing thoughts in a place that wasn't his own skull. Guy's no slouch, mind you, but, well, he's not the one drawing connections right now.
Noodles. Mmmmm. He's gonna have to tell Mamoru about this! Actually, Mamoru totally knows, doesn't he. DOES he still hang out with Shiro?
Guy is spiraling down the abyss of things he no longer knows about the young man he thinks of as a kid brother when Koji begins vocalizing his point and Guy has to snap himself back to reality. He slurps the last of his current mouthful down and then leans over to look. "It's not a bad start, but I should point out NERV organizations have a few reports between them of kaiju fusion occurring separate from the Tsutsujidai instances. We don't know what that means yet."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Hmm, good point. This could just be one... ruleset, I guess, but it dovetails nicely with how I've heard Tsutsujidai referred to as a 'Cognitive Layer'. It may well be the case that Ideas have power there - and this Kerib character understands how to manipulate those ideas."
He grins as Guy slurps the ramen. "It's real good, isn't it? I always make time to stop by here when I'm frustrated or in a slump."
"Also, these concepts would have to come from somewhere, I think. You can't just put an idea into the world fully formed, it needs to be properly tested and iterated. I dug up some old blueprints of grandpa's prototype pre-Mazin and let's just say, compared to Z before we started upgrading it? Trying to pilot that thing would have been a disaster. But you need to start putting ideas out and putting them to the test so you can figure out what works and what doesn't."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"It definitely proves it's possible and not just with whatever Tsutsujidai Kaiju have going on," Guy nods.
"It's great! I was just thinking I should tell Mamoru." He laughs. "But I bet he already knows! He's the one who's been around for five years, now."
As for the concepts themselves: "We'd ruled out the normal Bionet Kaiju-production mechanisms...and nature wouldn't really produce kaiju like this on its own. Right, prototyping the individual technologies, testing, getting it to a production level...we'd at least have noticed. The one in Tokyo-3 was hundreds of meters! *Somebody* would have noticed Bionet attempting to produce an evil teleporting laser mountain."
He scratches his head, then shakes it. "Which means something we don't understand is going on, I guess is the takeaway. Tsutsujidai and Alexis Kerib are our best lead."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
The scientist/pilot chuckles. "Of course he does. Shiro's pretty busy with the OCU military but he keeps in touch with Mamoru and Ikumi. We Mazin brothers don't give up on our friends, after all. Speaking of - if you get another opportunity to pull someone else out like with Renais, make sure to loop me in and Z and I will do what we can to help, retirement be damned."
Koji nods. "I keep thinking about the interior of the kaiju that attacked Shiro. That... assemblage of wires in an empty space. That feels important. I wish anything got left behind when it or the Ptolemaios kaiju were destroyed, it would be something to analyze."
He sighs, putting the tablet away. "Well, there's not much we can do without getting on the ground and investigating further. Like I said, I've got a meeting arranged with people in the city... Hopefully what they know provides some new leads. And I think I'd like to investigate this place where the One Year War is all that ever happened for myself anyway. For now, though: The ramen's getting cold."