2022-09-08: Ungrateful
- Log: 2022-09-08- Ungrateful
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Sayla Mass
- Where: Tsutsujidai - Outside Akane's House
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-09-07
- Summary: After technically leaving her house briefly, Akane greets a visitor.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Out of Tsutsujidai... and back in. And then back out of her room again, because -- in spite of the fact that it's hot and she's not doing great -- Akane kind of wants some tomato juice, and doesn't have any in her room. Fortunately, it's a very common menu item in Tsutsujidai. Akane doesn't have to travel dreadfully far to get any.
What she does have to deal with is a line. Tsutsujidai is only set up to cope with what is, cosmically, a very small number of people, and the Deculture Festival has put the number of people at Literally Any Number That Isn't That, so Akane's 'ten minute trip' turns into three hours. (The first place she went was out of tomato juice; the second had it, but the air conditioning was off so by the time she got it she was melting and had to hit a different store entirely; then Ako called her and, well, if she's gonna be out...)
At long last, though, she gets to approach 'home,' with an almost-empty cup of tomato juice.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
There is good news and bad news waiting for Akane when she gets home. The good news is a cold bag, holding a few boxes of tomato juice.
The bad news is the blonde woman holding it, wearing loose fitting, light clothes. (She hasn't been waiting for three hours- Akane's not hard to find. She just had to wait close by.)
Sayla Mass looks up at Tsutsujidai's god, as non-chalant as can she can. She seems to be doing well in the sweltering heat but she's spent most of her life in Spain. She's used to it. When she speaks it's quiet, but as always. firm. She doesn't give Akane a chance to run away.
"Akane. It's time that we talked again."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
When Akane sees Sayla in the path between herself and home, she's not sure how to play it; she settles for letting the tension out of her shoulders, placing a hand on her hip, and tilting her head just slightly back and to one side. Her lips turn down into a small frown.
"Step off," she demands, the heat in her voice a match for the forever-summer swelter of Tsutsujidai. There's a distinct feeling, though, that this isn't the kind of thing she gets to tell to just go away.
"If you really insist, though, I guess we're going to end up talking. Is this intervention number two, or something else?" The evening sun dyes Akane's glasses, obscuring her eyes briefly.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
As Akane approachges, she gets a better sense of it. She feels different. The roar in her heart is so much louder. Everything else quieter, harder to read. Guess she'll just have to do this the old fashioned way. Sayla shakes her head. "No." No softening statements, a steadfast firm refusal with no anger in it.
"Some of it, probably. But I'm not committing in advance." She looks to Akane. "Are we going to do this here, or are we going to at least sit down?" Akane accepted that it would happen pretty quickly. Is it resistance wearing down? Or is she listening still?
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane's carried out a fair number of conversations standing right outside her house. Most of them have been horrible.
This, then, is absolutely no reason to stop. "I think here's just fine," she says. "I'm not letting you buy my time like you did last time." ... That was how it went, right? "We can stand right here and you can say whatever you want to say," comes her ultimate agreement, as she finishes her tomato juice and shoves the empty cup into a coat pocket.
Slowly but surely, she returns to that defiant delinquent's posture, hand on her hip. She doesn't say anything else, for now. If Sayla wants the floor so bad... well, she can have it.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Hm. She caught on. Good on her. "Well, that's fair." She unzips the cold bag, and reaches in pulling out the carton of juice. "I have another if you want it, though." She slips it back in, pulling out bottled water for herself.
"From what I hear, you tried for a while there. And it was noticed and noticed as working." She goes back to leaning against the wall. "Right up until Alexis decided to get you some allies. And, notably, some enemies. And then things started in a downspiral. Does that track?" She already knows, and she's playing this card early- but where Akane is right now, playing hard might be the method.
Sayla takes a sip of water- but Sayla has just dropped this out in the open. She's counting on how hard Akane tries to be perceived. If she's right, Akane can't let this go unanswered.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Oogh. Akane really does want more tomato juice. The amount she got proportional to the time she spent wasn't nearly enough, especially since she wasn't particularly ready for another social outing -- especially one where she had to be 'on' -- today, let alone two. It's tempting.
... No. She can't give Sayla any leverage.
Sayla... comes with good intelligence, though -- nervewrackingly so. Still... "I get the feeling you don't have the full picture." Hmmm... she was just as eager to push people from the real world away after Sayla talked to her as ever... but the pressure was off in the rest of her life for a while.
Someone from school...? She doubts it's Yuta... maybe it's Rikka. Either way. "I mean," Akane continues, now fairly certain she has more data than Sayla, "I did try to choke Anti for raising his voice when he came to visit me at school." ... if that's the only time she did any violence to him since then, well -- that suggests something about where Anti got his wounds, at least.
"So! Now that you know better than to try and understand me, can you please get out of the way and let me get into my house?" Her voice frays at its edges in annoyance.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
What she suspected. Akane trying to push her away. "And when did that happen, exactly? Given you aren't denying that Alexis tried to make you some enemies." Still... Trying to give Akane the freedom to be blameless doesn't help her.
"I realize it feeds your internal narrative to focus on the harm you've done him, or anyone else. And you will have to deal with the consequences. But don't try and feed me this supervillain bullshit when you don't even realize that BioNet haven't operated in Kabukicho for years and you can't even get some Shogun Mifune grade idiot to cover your ass."
Sayla delivers this in a perfectly normal, and measured tone, as if it were a normal conversational topic. "You're not the liar you think you are, Akane. You've been putting up a face since we met and I thought it would be better to play things hands off. That was my mistake. I screwed up. So I'm going to straight up ask you: What has to happen for this to stop? I want to hear it from your mouth."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"... less than a week before this turned into a PLANT," Akane answers honestly. She realizes that's giving away a lot of the game, but again -- it's not like she needs to lie. There are plenty of true reasons for Sayla to back off.
Sayla explains the Kabukicho incident from her own angle, and Akane's eyes widen a little -- then blink, then blink again. "Wait, really? I guess that's why I didn't get the kinda backup I was expecting. It was close, though. Between that and GaoFighGar's current situation, I'd say you're going to have a real problem on your hands soon!"
Sayla slides one in through the ribs. "I have to kill Gridman," she says, matter-of-factly. "That's the only way this place is going to go back where it belongs. Another Vessel of Light or two might work, too, but there's definitely something special about him... after all, he's the first one who broke in. Then it's over." With a confident smirk, she asks: "Are we done? You may not think I'm a supervillain, but I'm not sure how much you know about that kinda thing! You're a hero who's been surrounded by heroes her whole life."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla nods, adding it to her list. Anti's not exactly talkative. "Just before he forced open the sky." Sayla shakes her head. "You wouldn't have gotten any backup from BioNet anyway. Drawing attention to one of their HQs is the sort of thing you only do if you're making a powerplay, and given Alexis didn't warn you, I guess his contacts in the organization aren't that good." She takes a sip from her water. "After all, if he's supporting you, that's the only explanation, right?" Sayla is being loudly disingenous here. That's the whole point. Refuge in audacity.
Sayla's brow furrows. "Okay, so Tsutsujidai goes where it belongs, if you kill a Vessel of Light, what makes someone a Vessel of Light?" She also risks a dangerous card, but it doesn't help her cause to tell Akane any more about Gridman. No she'll hold that one.
And then... Akane does hit her hard in her metaphorical injured ribs. Sayla's face visibly darkens. For a second, Akane might have got what she wanted. "You really drank the Federation propaganda about White Base, didn't you?" She looks Akane dead in the eyes. "A hero is something people call you when they want to use you, or when they want to try and make everyone else feel good when you die because someone high ranked screwed up and they want to save face." She takes a breath. "Seems you don't know as much about me as you thought."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"A power play, huh?" Akane considers that. There's definitely something to that thought -- if she could clear the board a little bit... well, a lot of people benefit from that. Maybe one of them is her. "I'd write that one down -- if I could go into my house." That Alexis isn't doing anything useful for her gets noted -- but what can she even say to that?
She folds her hands behind her back, weighing her options on the next question. "Something that isn't human, that cares about human pain, and moves to address it." Akane's had to recite this more than once now; she doesn't mind saying it again. "If you're going to point out that this is screwed up, sorry. God stuff. I know what I'm doing." ... She has to know what she's doing.
The pain is real -- but it's real in a complicated way. Akane doesn't know how to twist the knife now that she's got it in. She looks a little bewildered -- she's got nothing but contempt for the Federation. The idea that she fell for Federation propaganda, rather than just seeing the world as it is...
She's still for a long time, as she gropes for something smart to say. Eventually, she shoots back, "Nah, I'd say between that and the being ready to kill Renais thing I've got your number. Maybe I didn't a minute ago, but I sure do now!"
Taking a step in toward Sayla, she asks, lowering her voice, "If you're not a hero, then you could probably find a faster way to stop this."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"I'm pretty sure you can remember it." Sayla's tone is a little dark, since that button can be pushed. But Sayla pauses for a moment. Akane's description of a vessel of light... She really doesn't know what she's doing.
"Then what am I, Akane? If you've got my number? A villain like you pretend you want to be? Or something else?" She wants to hear this, but her own anger is fueling her now. She needs to see how narrow her worldview is.
Akane makes her declaration, and Sayla responds surprisingly.
"So could you."
She looks Akane in the eye. "After all, you're not human by your own admission. You care about human pain- and you're moving to address it in this conversation. You're trying to make it easier for us to feel good about killing you. There's no reason to do that if you don't care." And then venom, aged and vicious and powerful, seeps into Sayla's words. "If you'd didn't care, you'd make nice and then try to kill everyone with a fucking asteroid."
She looks Akane dead in the eyes. "So let me make something very clear to you, Akane Shinjo. You will be alive when all this is over. And you are going to deal with the consequences of that. And so will Alexis Kerib. I promise you that."
And she isn't her brother. She keeps her promises.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
When Sayla calls out Akane's maneuver here as some perverse form of care, Akane's thoughts drift for a moment to the conversation she had with Sheryl. It's -- there's something infuriating about shallow understanding, something that brings bile to Akane's throat.
(Or maybe that's the tomato juice. All that salt and acid has to be doing something to her digestive tract.)
Akane struggles to find the words. It takes her a long time to try to articulate what she's feeling; she's utterly motionless as she does so. There's... literally nothing she can say about herself in this situation.
But she notices the comparison -- and a stab of feeling that breaks through even her usual emotional defenses. "... you really had that personal a stake in the Axis Shock?" Akane asks, instead; she can tell there's something unresolved there -- something raw and real.
"I don't know what you're trying to get by working this hard, but if you have a harder time killing me than Renais, who didn't even choose to be doing what she was doing, you're kind of a crappy person. Then again, I guess saving a crappy person would be a great way of telling yourself you deserve to be saved too."
She can't quite bring herself to address the question of her humanity. ... after all, only a human can make kaiju of any worth...
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla could respond, could answer her curiousity. She doesn't. "You really want to know? Give up on this whole business. You deserve better than a Brave Police issued obituary." She places the cold bag on the ground, she walks forward- and past Akane, unless she's being stopped.
She doesn't respond to Akane's last dig. Instead, as she leaves, she speaks without looking back.
"Enjoy your juice, Akane."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
<poem> Well! Akane's perfectly content being a shitty, ungrateful person, which means she picks up the cold bag as Sayla retreats. She considers saying something.
She settles for, "Bye," reaching into the cold bag and fishing out a juice box.
Shake, shake. Straw off the side. Stab.
Tsutsujidai's streets empty in short order.