2023-09-12: Upon Untime
- Cast: C.C., Akane Shinjo
- Where: England
- Date: U.C. 0097 09 12
- Summary: The girl whose smile is a miracle is pulled into the false forest of the lying witch - and her dastardly plan gone horribly right to have someone to talk to.
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
The hustle and chaos of London's Waterloo station stands eternal. At its heart, the noisy gathering spot of the shopping center concourses, all hawking overpriced things nobody really needs for a train voyage.
An innocuous enough little blip, from an account that only occasionally has ever contacted Akane.
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: :rollingcat:
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: :cat_19:
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: tbh i'm really surprised.
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: maybe jealous?
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: :lychee_pout3:
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: like when i met you thought this whole problem would stick around for 7 or 8 years
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: :lychee_giggling:
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: too bad. the big guy was fun to tease.
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: feel like talking? the staff only door off to the right's unlocked.
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: leads up to all the girders up top. pretty slick huh
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: oh wait right it's me btw
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: (Attached picture. Tap to open.)
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: yeah im still cute don't be shocked
[VERTEX] wheninshirome: :lycheesmug:
...If one can get past the silliness to the point of 'a strange lady who seems to know where Akane Shinjo is, and alludes to having met Alexis', which isn't hyper suspicious at all - the little maintenance door and stairwell leads to the only source of solace and peace in this whole place. The tree of gantries and rafters that overhang the shopping center, a canopy of somewhat perilous perches - though the door itself naturally leads to an actual set of safe and rail-lined walkways bridging them.
"Shirome" is not one one of those! Of course not. She's laying on her back a good few meters from the walkways on one of the thin little girders, opting for the sort of carefree rebellious look she seems to favor around Akane. Puffy twintails, laden with hairclips, cropped short sleeved leather top over a bright pink t-shirt - which features a little cute depiction of Bonta-Kun flipping the bird. There's a still-steamy cup of noodles a foot away from her head - one leg's draped over the edge.
"I guess as good a question as any is if you even like places like this. High above everyone, where you're not 'supposed' to be," the green haired witch asks, without even looking to confirm who might have drawn near.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The sudden message from a classmate -- an interesting classmate with golden eyes -- gets Akane more than a little bit off guard. She's out of the house today for a lunch meetup anyway, so she's decided to follow that up with a day trip. The message...
[VERTEX] a_shinjo: huh?
[VERTEX] a_shinjo: i don't think it's too bad he didn't stick around.
[VERTEX] a_shinjo: ... sure, shirome. let's talk.
Now feeling more than a little paranoid, Akane slips into the maintenance door, heads up the stairwell... and takes the safe path, this time. She's living as a human, now; the heights are scary in a way they weren't for a god.
Her gaze tracks over to Shirome. She plops down on the walkways, as close as she can get to her without making a perilous trek. "They can be nice," she agrees, a little anxiously. "Right now you probably couldn't pay me enough to come over there, though." She stretches out a bit, making herself comfortable.
"So what's your deal? I'm guessing you were never from my city in the first place. Are you another Hyper Agent, or something else?" She doubts it -- a Hyper Being would have eventually come into much more direct conflict with her... probably.
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Hearing that sentiment, Shirome does finally give Akane a little look, eyes lidding just a little, then sighing out - "Ah, right. ...Given how rough things were there last time I saw it, a little insensitive a spot. Mm. I'm used to talking with more...reckless people."
Tapping two chopsticks to her lips, the witch considers that curious little appraisal. "Hmmmmm. A Hyper Agent. You know, all things considered, I probably ought to be, but I guess I'm a little too indecisive to hash it out. Nor am I a Ruin Apostle, or a Crest Holder, or a Whispered, or - mm. You get my point. Despite everything, I've never been anything but an especially nosy "human". What a pain."
Twisting over onto her side, head craned upwards to gaze at Akane more directly. "...I think I like sticking my head into situations like yours, because they're such strong essences of a story to be told. There's something to harvest from each of them. A shell born of 'antipathy' or 'revenge' or 'listlessness' or 'oaths' or 'companionship'. I've gotten greedy about them over the years, and watched them fade away like seafoam."
"...yours. ...it had something I wanted more than anything."
"'Transformation'."
"...The safest and fastest way to dispel these bubbles is usually just to harshly deny that want, break hearts in a way that can only be real. It's the obvious solution to a world that operates on dangling that want juuuuust out of reach forever. Juuuust obtainable, but just barely not. ...Tsutsujidai, though..."
That gaze-piercing stare Shirome always has, never lifting from another's eyes until she's finished holding onto them - flits away briefly, towards the distant rail platform - hissing with its departure to lands far away.
"...well, that aspect of what you wanted is a little too beautiful. It's something I've never been capable of, so I couldn't have really helped you or hurt you as much as one might've liked. Sorry for that."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Some of these nouns Akane knows; some of them are utterly wild to her. She does make note of them, though. "It's okay," Akane says, with a brief shake of her head. "I do kinda like looking down from places like this." Less so lately, admittedly; the morbid fascination has gone away. Like a lot of things, she has to engage it like a human, now.
Akane finds herself unusually fascinated by the idea that C.C. -- this strange person -- identifies simply as 'human.' In a way, that's not so far off from her own experiences. (... Or Alexis's, for that matter.) When she oozes along, though -- to the next step, of a story -- Akane finds herself a little bit on guard.
"Huh. You say you're human, but that sounds a lot like the kinda stuff Alexis was up to... and I guess he was kinda working toward that." She glances off to the side when Shirome does; she doesn't return her gaze with any great haste, either.
'You're transforming, too.'
"It kinda ended up the opposite in the end, huh," Akane fires back. "By the end of it I felt like I was never gonna stop transforming." God, kaiju, kaijin, human -- what are any of these things, anyway?
"So what kinda transformation are you looking for?" comes her next question -- one of legitimate curiosity.
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
A moment of truth arrives. Can C.C. retrieve that noodle cup while continuing to have Cat Behavior, without risking drenching a passerby below in delicious cheap nourishment? It's a slightly blind reach, but her touch is careful, practiced. Even without looking, she can brush her thumb along it to affirm its location, and hook it around the attachment point of the rafter. Mission success. Reward - one chopstickful of noodles. Aumf.
"...I guess the one I'm looking for, you could say...is the one that prevents me from being too much like Alexis."
She did neglect to say "she's not a Hyper Devil", after all. It's hard to say. What are the origins of beings like those? Were they created that way, or did they become it, in a twisted form of metamorphic 'stagnation'? Of course between the two of them, that's who C.C. found herself the most similar to. Empathized the most with.
"After all, he had absolutely no fashion sense, and gave everyone around him the creeps. It's one thing for someone to run in horror from you after a long tenure of learning just what kind of person you are - it's another thing to smell it from a mile away and back off before even getting close."
...that very idea gives C.C. pause. A second slurp of noodles inbound." ...Heh. Though from that perspective, maybe that Hyper Devil is a much more merciful person than me. I guess when I said I thought you'd be in there for years and years, it's because that's probably how I'd have trapped you. I'd be selfish enough to work too hard making it real. Selfish enough to see you get just that much closer to really fulfilling your desires. Enjoy them, try to make them my own. But then one day I'd probably just get bored and leave."
The witch removes one hairclip - a penguin mascot shaped pin - and lazily tosses it Akane's way in a high arc. "I bet it was painful. But I also think it sounds wonderful. Blissful, even. That's probably part of why Kaworu wanted to make sure I didn't get too apathetic to meet you. Honestly, he's even hard for me to deal with...is he the same way with you as with me? That sense that you're more important to him than you, personally, could ever conceive of yourself being?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
'The one that prevents me from being too much like Alexis'... Akane frowns a little at that -- but what else can she say? She just doesn't know Shirome -- C.C. -- enough to untangle that at all. She settles in on the catwalks a little more, though; she's a little less on guard, at this point.
The comment about Alexis's bad fashion sense gets a giggle. "I dunno -- there's something to that long, flowy kinda look. A lot of aliens in shows are like that... it's good to stick with the classics sometimes, right?"
What C.C. says next requires some mental chewing -- such that she almost misses the penguin pin. She doesn't quite catch it perfectly, but she does manage it. Eventually, she starts with, "I mean, that's basically what he tried, too. I dunno if you would've done that much better doing the same thing... Rikka and Gridman kind of forced the issue." Both of them, in their own ways -- very different ways, but ways nonetheless. "And that was his plan in the end. Get bored and leave."
The question about Kaworu, though -- that's way easier to deal with. "Haha, yeah. That's Kaworu for you. ... At the same time, he's kinda passive... How do you know him, anyway?"
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
"Oooooh, that's actually kind of a relief, Akane-chan," C.C. laughs - hers being a sort of harsh, sudden 'hah' that nonetheless transitions into a more engaged disposition.. "So I got the problem totally backwards? I'm a little kinder, and a lot less fashionable? Unreal..." That flat-affected face she tends to have gets a lot more wry and smirky, rolling over onto her front and kicking her legs idly, like she's laying on top of a bed and chatting like she would anywhere else.
She almost evokes forgetting that she's somewhere perilous, until she flicks her now-empty noodle cup down into the crowd, seemingly carelessly - but it does, after an impact with the rim, land in a waste bin. (She has practiced this more times than she cares to admit. Boredom breeds strange talents.)
"And here, to think I wanted to take you clothes shopping some time. Maybe once the pain of a story thumping closed on you has worn off a little more, your latent talent for metamorphosis can flourish like I believe it can. I wouldn't want to see someone who's done all the good and difficult work of the physical, and neglect that the superficial glamour is just as potent a weapon."
"...that's what I'd love to be able to say, and yet, I'm the one sitting here envying your malleability. Tsk. I'll just chalk it up to how the weapon needs a wielder, and leave the metaphor at that~"
How does C.C. know Kaworu...in a way that can be explained to someone normal? There's yet more metaphor to be had, but it almost feels obnoxious. And when the nuances are a pain in the butt, there's only one solution to make it clear. So, with a gleam in those catty yellow eyes, C.C. plainly states, "Oh, that's simple. I'm his mother."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane-chan -- that's a little over-familiar from Shirome, but the follow-up is easy to laugh at. "Yeah, basically," Akane agrees, and that nonchalance makes it easier to get into a comfortable back-and-forth. She does briefly stare as C.C. seemingly tosses her cup at the ground below -- and then when it lands in a wastebin...
"... You're the kinda person who's secretly a tryhard but can't admit it, huh," she offers, stabbing in the dark but definitely driving at something. "Don't worry. I have kinda the same problem. It's hard not to be that way, right?" At the pitch of clothes shopping, though... "... well, maybe? I'm not gonna say no outright, even if we only casually know each other." Still... it is a little nervewrackingly intimate. (On the other hand: that's what living as a person means, too.) ... a little more unease creeps in at the metaphor, though. She'll need to remain cautious.
Then, of course, C.C. drops something that Akane can't wrap her head around. "You're what." She knew that something was up with Kaworu, but this woman -- seemingly, like, 20 years old tops -- being his mother... she adds it to the list of weirdnesses about Kaworu. "Well, uh. That just makes sense? I guess?" No it does not. "That makes the thing you said earlier kinda weird..."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Armor-lancing words. There's a sudden coldness, but an obvious one. Prickliness. Difficulty at - what's obviously true. C.C. sits bolt upright from her languid position, almost like she's angry at being called a tryhard by Akane, but - - -
the attempt to get a scary look in her eyes is also kinda tryhard! Like a cat rearing up and contracting, tail upright. Her scowl probably only emphasizes the lip gloss more than looking like she's annoyed! Holding that tension, gripping one of the crossbraces dividing her from Akane's position of safety, C.C. finally...releases a little sigh of resignation, with a click of her tongue and a scowl off to the side. One leg defensively pulls up, gentle clanging as her boots hit each lip of the I-beam, resting her heel upon the edge.
How the hell does one play that cool...it seems even the unflappable witch is failing there, and the longer she spends pulling herself closer to the crossbrace, now with both hands, in that weird silence, the longer it becomes even more of a signal to Akane. A vicious cycle of embarrassment begetting itself. Especially when she has to confront the bad 'joke' she made regarding Kaworu...
Longer sigh. Face pressing against the painted-over rust of the scaffolding. (Not very squishy. A 2.1 on the Rikka scale at best.) "...Alright alright. He's someone whose existence I am responsible for, and I am the first face he had to latch onto. I suppose the first person to treat him like a person too, probably, though it's not that I'd remember it."
"...It's the way he explained the way he felt about me. Thankfully, he's hardly a child, and thank goodness. Imagine if someone like me had actually 'raised' him."
...a strange, horrible little thought suddenly strikes C.C.
"...oh hell. ...'I' probably did..."
That's a double dose of feeling totally unsustainably embarrassed, and the witch stands bolt upright on her beam, her balance impeccable no matter what slightly tipped posture she has - this one's bending forward in an almost scolding manner at Akane. "...You've really done it. ...And the only way you can have done it is if we...is if you actually had the thing I was looking for all along. ...Maybe for the first time, since I was patient enough to let you write yourself to your desired goal..."
"...I'll be the first to admit that maybe I'd have accomplished twice as much if I'd remembered to text you more often. I'll be doing just that from now on."
[Entertainment] Zan> I think... I want to get this and get people to play it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6by0d8o3fY
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<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
C.C. getting mad at a rare moment of candor from Akane -- gets Akane to back off a bit, even if the effect is more funny than serious; she can tell she struck a nerve a little more than she intended. ... there's relief there when she lets it go, though.
The silence stretches between them. The gulf becomes wider and wider, and Akane has no idea how to approach breaking it -- so there's a second moment of relief when C.C. at last does so herself. "Oh, it's like that," Akane says, when 'Shirome' lays it out so plainly. This actually makes things make a lot more sense; she already knows Kaworu self-regards as a kaiju of some stripe or another, which makes it make a lot more sense how C.C. would be his 'mother,' actually. She doesn't think of her own relationship with Knight quite that way, but the question of creation is a little diffuse in her case anyway.
"I dunno. Things might have been bad for a bit, sure, but I think you can turn out okay even if the person who raises you doesn't know what they're doing," Akane says, though her shaky tone makes it hard to tell who she's trying to convince. As embarrassment overtakes C.C. and she tells Akane she's 'really done it,' though, Akane scoots back a bit on the walkway.
"... Sure, but I think you're gonna need to find someone else if you're looking for 'something that won't make you like Alexis,'" Akane clarifies. Still... she is a little curious about where things are going with C.C., now...
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
...The 'once upon a time' happened well before the witch turned her page. Find the wrong person on the ideal, familiar path, or realize that she wasn't as alone as she thought, and defy the same twelve step journey she endlessly repeated. That was was the very essence of choice. Unchosen, unessential,
unfamiliar?
The longing for something she had not yet known she could encounter quelled the determination to seize her true desire - for what reason did she think she could 'change' if she never let go of the one thing that never changed? And so-
"Shirome" pulls off a star-shaped hairpin, and throws it aside carelessly. Uncaring where, exactly, it might land. Someone else might be hit in the head with it, and make the mistake of revolving their own life around an unobtainable thing dropped in their lap.
The bell tolls on the train station's clock. Whichever hour it is, C.C. cannot truly know.
"...hey. Akane. This is an unusual ask, but can you make me a promise?"
"Are you able to accept that I...don't have anything I can really offer you, any journey I'm really capable of taking you on, and let me come along with you anyway?"
"I mean, you can refuse."
"...It's just that suddenly, talking with you makes me wonder if I've been thinking so hard about running away from how I certainly did not turn out 'okay', that I've been a little wastefully ambitious."
"...honestly, what am I even doing, saying something like all that?"
"...It's a little refreshing feeling. It's strange. Seeing something I admire not because I want it myself, but because I want to just understand, for their own sake of deserving that much."
With every word, C.C.'s backing off amidst her forest of overhanging support. Physically gaining distance - but her words don't get any quieter, nor is it any harder for her to hear Akane in turn.
...But she does, eventually, vanish amongst the sea of varnished iron hanging from the sky, shortly after.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
A shooting star can do a lot to change the course of your life. Akane had the good fortune of seeing five, in her time; she lets the hairpin go, and wonders for a moment where its trajectory will take it.
So this is the mystery woman -- and not 'Shirome'. This is whoever keeps sliding in and out of lives like hers and Kaworu's, searching for something.
A promise, huh. "Sure," Akane says. Maybe being human means making -- and keeping -- those. She listens, and...
"... Sure," again. "I don't really know where I'm going. But it sounds like you don't either."
A final nod. "Then that'll be a promise, as long as you don't, like, creep on me about it." She lets C.C. back away, though -- that much, she thinks, is fine.
When she disappears...
"... I guess I'll see you around?" she offers, to the empty air.