[Again, Ryuji could get by with skinned knees and a bruised arm, but he wouldn't live with himself if he came crashing down with Erika on his back- so he's still careful not to take this too far, even though he really, really wants to go faster and throw caution to the wind. It's still experimental for him, too, since he hadn't really touched his skateboard at all, in years, until it decided to show up one day on the station as a grim reminder of what he was missing back home.
Just a little bit further, and the sight of the hangar's entrance is within view. Admittedly, it is kind of fun, and he thinks for a second about doing a loop around the entire deck just for the hell of it. But Erika has stuff she wants to accomplish, and carefully, he starts letting his board slow down naturally without kicking off more velocity to keep the wheels going.
And it's not that much of a riddle for Ryuji, but the quickness at which he gets it is definitely telling, in a way, since he's slow about a lot of stuff, but shadows? He knows shadows. How to kill them, how to steal their hearts, how ambush them. Not so much what makes them tick- cognitive psience wasn't entirely refined back home yet, but he answers pretty simply:]
You got your shadow holdin' onto it?
[Which is a new piece of knowledge for shadows in general, since he's always known the ones of the personal variety doesn't really cooperate that well with their real versions.
Which means, if Erika is on good terms with it... then it means one of two things. She's persona enabled, or a self-actualized person. He has to ask about the former first.]
Hey... you didn't go in there and find a mask on your face, right? One that was stuck on tight and shit? Can't pull it off without ripping yourself to shreds? I know it's an "out there" kinda question, but... Yeah.
[But it's in a relatively new category of "out there", newly invented for station life. It's a midway point between normal, predictable questions and spontaneous, nonsensical ones: things that make no damn sense at first blink but should be assumed to be meaningful, because life is just that weird now.]
But, no. Venus and I fell in accidentally...I met the Shadow. Then we left. Nothing weirder than that happened.
[She looks up and across the hangar when they reach it, and turns her attention back to the ground for dismounting. Careful, careful. She lands gingerly on her toes and moves her weight to her right leg.]
[Crazy is the new normal, that's for sure. Ryuji wanted to make absolutely sure that she wasn't going in there and having to learn all about personas on her own if that were the case; if she was summoning at will and didn't understand things like resistances, things could go south really quick. Not to mention just having one suddenly makes you weak or strong to things you didn't know you were before. Like... being able to absorb electric currents and hear them, or getting knocked on your ass with a really strong gust of wind.]
Oh, cool. Just... sayin' though. You should always bring someone with you when you go in there. It can get kinda dangerous if you don't know what you're lookin' for.
[Anyway!!! Enough talk about what he knows, he wants to see the hangar. He actually... steered clear of it, since he didn't want to accidentally fuck anything up in here. Like launching something out into space that the station desperately needed. Erika gets down off his back and he presses his foot to the backside of his #blessed board, allowing the front end to kick up so that he could carry it.
Now or never, huh?
Leaning forward, he presses the button to open the place up.]
[And yet she used it as a hangout for a while there...
Life is not a coward's game.
The hangar is directly out of Hollywood sci-fi, with ominous bay doors and high-tech clutter. Erika walks to the rail - favoring that foot - and leans against it, peering out.
Man. Check this shit out.]
...We're looking for any kind of documentation, and if not that, then just...some sense of what it takes to keep things safe in vacuum. I don't really know anything about space, besides what people have been talking about around here.
[And the sight of everything here is loud, vibrant, almost alive in a way that Ryuji can't ever recall the station being. He steps forward, looking around at everything that's in here. Those are... ships, right? Immediately it starts to perk his interest up.
And Erika might be content to be up there by the railing, but Ryuji's already got a few steps down the stairs before he remembers, priorities, and turns to her---]
Man, I wanna go check this shit out, but I don't wanna leave ya here. Need a hand down or... you good? [He comes back up the stairs, and leaves his skateboard safely at the top.]
And... yeah, maybe we can find something in here. Looks like there's a ton of stuff to sift through.
[She shakes her head and eases herself down the stairs by the handrail, carefully but without too much visible difficulty.] You can go ahead. Just stay in earshot.
[Like they're not going to the same place anyways? The logical thing to do would be to examine the unmanned crafts. The cool thing to do is to go check out that sweet spaceship. The right choice is obvious.
Hup hup hup.]
...I wonder how much training it takes to fly one of these.
[With Erika settled on being able to do things on her own terms- namely, descending the stairs as well as she can, he nods. He won't stay out of earshot, though, almost like a puppy who went to the park and was trusted without the leash to not run off and sniff all the cool shit out there in the world.
Ryuji's a pretty tactile person, and as he moves forward, his fingers trail along the nearby various forms of spacecraft. There's a pulse in this room, he can almost feel it through his digits, and it's making him really, really fucking excited.]
Seriously...
[Logic is good and all, but, yeah- that's where his mind is at too.]
I don't think I've ever wanted to do something as much in my life as I wanna drive one of these bad boys.
[This is a bad idea.
Probably?
Either way, it's like a small awakening of something he actually wants to do on this station.]
[She hadn't wanted to touch things in here willy-nilly...but Ryuji's doing it, so, might as well.]
This whole time, I've really missed virtual reality. It's like having an extra body for things you couldn't normally do. [She touches a hull seam experimentally. Then draws back, eyes landing on one of the docking mechanisms with interest. That's not what they came here for, though...so she starts moving towards the rows of surface probes instead, walking slowly.] Piloting seems like it could be like that, when I think about it. You're controlling something a lot bigger and stronger than you are.
[He turns to her after his hands have successfully felt the surface of cool steel. Ryuji's pretty immature about a lot of things in life, so it's probably no surprise that he says what he says next.]
I've always kinda wondered what it'd be like to be a mech pilot or a fighter pilot. Yeah, look, I know it's pretty effin' lame to think that way, and it's just manga or anime or some bullshit like that. But.
[This definitely isn't what they came here for.]
Maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's just havin' the power to see things move past you at this point? We've been stuck in this station for months... how nice would it be to just be able to glide out across the stars. Feel movement.
[He's getting too hopeful for his own good here, but maybe it's something she can relate to?]
Like cruisin' on by on a skateboard. You know what I mean?
I'm actually not great with vehicles. Moving that fast in something - I was in a car accident a few years ago, it makes me nervous. Being at the wheel might be different, though. And just seeing something new for once.
[And nothing changes. And that's not much of a sign for the rest of it, but that's - that was something? Erika sneaks a glance back, trying to catch and read his expression.
Hmm.]
I really want that. [While the slightly-inappropriate admissions train is still rolling. Saying it out loud gives her a guilt pang and the irrational, nagging feeling that she shouldn't tell Ryuji this because he might tell someone else and that would be bad.] Going somewhere no one's ever been before, and learning all about it. Wouldn't that be the perfect happy ending, after all this?
[And, you know what - with things like these probes, that might be feasible? Maybe? But there's so much involved in building a settlement, shelter and food and water and everything, all the geography and weather they'd have to map out, everything she's never even had to blink at growing up in freaking Tokyo.
I don't... uh. I dunno, happy endings are kinda hard to believe in. Most times things just end up okay, and okay is a pretty good thing to shoot for. Probably. Does that make sense?
[Because there have been so many times on this station where things looked like they were getting better, only to have something slam into them and try to break their hopes. He'd had a few conversations with people where the concept of being okay with not being okay isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.
That virus was a pretty harrowing experience, and... yeah, he wants to live with the feeling that everything that happens should be done with two feet forward. Who knows what the last minute will really be like. All Ryuji knows is that he doesn't want it to be curled up against the observation deck window, alone and filled with the regrets of all the things he never got to do.
Like piloting a spaceship.
And then the concept of being somewhere where they could figure out a new life? Not exactly ideal under normal circumstances, but he can guess there are a few great fucking people on board that could figure it out.]
Hm... You think we could pull off the hunter gatherer lifestyle down there?
Not, like, snorts, or titters, or smiles silently. It starts with a giggle and crests quickly into a proper burst of laughter, and it doesn't last long, but for the few seconds it does it's kind of dry and kind of sad and kind of happy-relieved.
Erika doesn't cry. There's a sudden heavy feeling right behind her eyeballs, though, and she takes a moment without talking to wander towards the second ship and center and settle so that that doesn't go any further.
The feeling recedes. It relocates. A bearable weight under her sternum.
Ryuji Sakamoto is a pretty great guy.]
Maybe. I can't imagine, exactly, you know I'm from Tokyo too. [And uh city life in the 2010s is. Y'know. You get used to certain things.
Erika sits on the hangar dock, dangling her feet in the well between the walkway and the ship.]
...Sakamoto, can I tell you a story? You'd have to promise not to get...I don't want to hear any "I'm sorry" or anything.
[Listen, if there's an opportunity to walk around in a loincloth picking berries as an option to this other extreme end of civilization (emphasis on the "end" here), then Ryuji's pretty chill with taking that. Oooga booga.
But he figures that whatever is down there planet side, that there's a lot more to see and do than squandering away days to figure out how to trick the replicators into making takoyaki taste like actual octopus balls and not just... halfway there, stuck at the balls part.
The sound of laughter filling the hangar, though, is definitely a welcome reprieve from its otherwise cold interior.]
Yeah, yeah. I'll keep my please's and thank you's toned down too.
Erika swings her feet and swings her feet and puts her elbows on her legs and thinks, quietly, strange pause stretching out after she'd been the one to bring up the topic.
...Maybe she should just jump right to the end?]
Before we came here - things aren't like this anymore. But before, back home, I was - I'd been dying for a while.
[Putting it in those terms is something she's thought to herself on and off but never said, and it feels...wrong. Like someone should scold her.]
[Leaning up against the metal behind him, he crosses his arms. No conversation that's ever light begins with a warning to not apologize, and Ryuji's been told a lot of personal stuff in his life before to know that whatever is going to come next is probably teetering heavily in that direction.
And it hits, and his heart sinks down into his stomach. It might be a little obvious that he's looking at her, more intently now, almost like he's reaffirming to himself that she's not dead. Just needed some WD-40 for the joints, and hopefully she'd be back on her feet and hopping along like everyone else.
But he would never scold her for that. He just couldn't. And honestly? No one else should ever, either.]
Oh... Well, uh. For someone who was dying, you look pretty alive to me right now.
[It would be obvious, except that Erika's forcing herself not to watch him. She wants to. She wants to be sure of whatever she can be, have something to wave off the clench of worry when she hears him start to talk, before it even happens. But would that be what happened? Or would she just take it as an excuse to stop the story short of what she wants him to understand?
Sometimes you sacrifice the little wants for the big wants.]
It was that car accident. A brain injury. I don't know if you... [...know, how things like that work; even she doesn't, completely. The brain is a complicated organ.] ...Imagine a machine. If you bump some gears loose, that tiny misalignment gets worse and worse over time until the whole thing breaks down. Except it's brain cells instead of gears...sort of.
[She rubs her sleeve between her fingers; back and forth, back and forth.]
I got these - they were sort of like seizures. They'd put me in the hospital, and every time it got a little worse.
[A brain injury, huh? Her guess is right on the money, it's a realm of things he knows nothing about. Even how he fractured his own leg wasn't something he became intimately familiar with. When life throws bad shit at you, he's not the type to go through and dissect. He wants to move on. But how do you move on from head trauma like that?
The analogy to the gear parts is definitely something easy to grasp, though, and he approaches a little bit more. The urge to sit with her and bump shoulders is pretty goddamn high right now.]
You haven't... since coming here, right? I mean, the seizures.
Mm-mm. I could tell right away. I think...it has to be like what keeps happening when people die here. The station rebuilt my body, somehow. Otherwise - I'd feel like I used to, but I also never would have been able to keep it a secret. It was right up at the end of things.
[...yeah. Yeah. Still lying by omission. That'll need undoing at some point.
And that's kind of - wow, how long has it been, months? Four months? Almost half a year. Wow. And here's Ryuji, first person to know, and only because she chose to tell him. It's kind of scary. It kind of underlines what she was thinking about when it occurred to her, the whole process of moving on, becoming someone new. The things that don't survive the passage of time.]
[The station rebuilt her body. It's not impossible, this place has a ton of power residing in it do great and horrible things. Like throwing sord.... into a toilet.
Well, maybe not that, but on a more serious note, he finally comes back up to the catwalk and sits down next to her. It takes a moment, so it's probably filled with a little bit of an awkward silence as he does so. He doesn't really have anything to say other than just sitting with her, listening.
The end of things... there's really only so much that could mean.
But, it's a new opportunity. She has so much light in her, he can't imagine a world where she doesn't have the ability to be her own solar system, a sun that other things orbit around. It doesn't make sense, and yet, it makes him angry. Shit's not fair.
Is it... okay to sit there at all? He doesn't really know.]
Huh. Man... life's just full of a bunch of shit, huh.
[...Is he sitting down next to her? She finally chances a glance.Her heart skips unpleasantly - he's going to be sorry, he's going to be hurt, and, then, he is. But less than he could be. But still, still.
There's a lump in her chest.]
There's more to the story. Hold on. [That's supposed to be a joke and it comes out hideously flat. She has embraced the wretchedness of looking to Ryuji Sakamoto for something resembling absolution for what she and fate did to Ryuji Mishima. It feels bad as hell, man. A good, addictive, awful kind of bad, like popping a pimple, without even the inexplicable thrill that comes from telling Venus these kinds of things. With Ryuji it's like wiping your muddy hands on a dog. Maybe he doesn't care - but you used him, you monster.]
My parents were in that car, too. My brother was - he's the one who taught me how to code and hack. I passed him when it comes to some things, but, he's good. He could've - he would've gotten a job anywhere he wanted. With the company that runs the VR world. Anything.
And, then, it was just us.
[And she doesn't quite know how to put words around what happened. How to explain this thing she fears, and this thing she wants out of her third whack at life, without incriminating her brother, laying his flaws out in the open like fish for stray cats. That's not an option.]
[The thing about pain is that you think it has a multiplicative power when it's being shared, but in actuality, it divides the more you go through the motions of getting it off your chest. Ryuji doesn't feel like he's being used or that Erika is a monster. These sorts of conversations were ones that he's had before. He couldn't be who he is today without knowing.
Without knowing how Akira's parents abandoned him for doing the right thing. How Ann's entire life was rife with people treating her differently and assuming horrible things about the way she really was. Yusuke's mother being brutally used and neglected when she needed medical help so that a corrupt artist could capitalize on his talent. The way that everyone put such ridiculously high expectations on Makoto so that she could never cope with her own losses. Futaba's cognition of her own mother hating her enough to commit a suicide that never happened. Or Haru's father selling her off life property to the highest bidder. Or his own problems that he shared with all of them- how he had to go to school and hide bruises that his father had left with him to take like a lunch pail or his dreams being crushed when his teacher broke his leg.
She must miss her brother a lot. Ryuji watches his own legs dangling from the ledge.]
I can't imagine how much that must've hurt you. The only thing I know is that.... yeah, it does kinda feel like you against the world when you got only one or two things to hold onto and everything else is just gone to shit.
[Third whack, or whatever she's going through though.]
It ain't anywhere near the same, and I'd be a total dick to say that it were. But if you're thinking that "just us" is now "just me," I wanna tell you that you're not alone. 'Cause you're not. I'd fight on your team in a heartbeat.
[Which comes with the whole... use me if you need to thing. He's a tank. He's good at taking blows.]
Now there's the other kind of good bad hurt, the achy sad joy that's physically exhausting. Erika sighs, and nods, and shakes her head.]
That's what I was afraid of. [Shakes her head again, fondly, to head off any kind of, like - panic. It's okay. She hears you, she's taking it in, taking it at face value. It's just...heavy.] It's not like it's a bad thing. It's the best thing in the world.
[She sits up a little straighter and crosses her arms, thinking.] My...treatment wasn't routine. My brother gave up everything to make sure it went through. His time. His future. All but one of his friends. [...] His morals. And he kept it all secret. I never - when I found out, I wanted payback, and I wanted to save him. And neither one...got all the way to the end.
It was all just luck. I didn't choose to hurt him by dying. But I still didn't want to, and it's still...
[The spaceship. The probes. Erika swallows.]
It's still...even the best thing in the world hurts people. And happy endings don't last. And I want to - save someone. I want to save someone without hurting them first. I want to be able to beat this stupid station, and protect all of you. And win for once.
[Tears are rapping at the gate, but they're...a lot politer than they usually are. Or so they seem. They're still unwelcome. Erika denies them exit anyways.]
[He could focus on the part where she just told him that she died, but... what's the point? It was enough to go through it, he didn't want to harp on that, any of that. The details that surround it feel painful, just listening to the way that she talks about it.
He wants to tell her that you can't choose who you hurt in this world, because everybody hurts everyone at some point. Ryuji knows that all too goddamn well. The best you can do is mitigate it and be a good person, strive to be free and true to yourself. There's a sideways glance in her direction, and he takes all of that in. Keeps it close to his heart.
And then, in the end, he leans back to what he's good at. Using sheer will to make things happen.]
Then... do it.
[It's probably a gross oversimplification, but the core of its message is optimistic and somewhat deeper than he implies. There's words there, too, about impossibilities and struggle, of commitment and all the things it takes to beat a station that wants to beat them.
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Just a little bit further, and the sight of the hangar's entrance is within view. Admittedly, it is kind of fun, and he thinks for a second about doing a loop around the entire deck just for the hell of it. But Erika has stuff she wants to accomplish, and carefully, he starts letting his board slow down naturally without kicking off more velocity to keep the wheels going.
And it's not that much of a riddle for Ryuji, but the quickness at which he gets it is definitely telling, in a way, since he's slow about a lot of stuff, but shadows? He knows shadows. How to kill them, how to steal their hearts, how ambush them. Not so much what makes them tick- cognitive psience wasn't entirely refined back home yet, but he answers pretty simply:]
You got your shadow holdin' onto it?
[Which is a new piece of knowledge for shadows in general, since he's always known the ones of the personal variety doesn't really cooperate that well with their real versions.
Which means, if Erika is on good terms with it... then it means one of two things. She's persona enabled, or a self-actualized person. He has to ask about the former first.]
Hey... you didn't go in there and find a mask on your face, right? One that was stuck on tight and shit? Can't pull it off without ripping yourself to shreds? I know it's an "out there" kinda question, but... Yeah.
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[But it's in a relatively new category of "out there", newly invented for station life. It's a midway point between normal, predictable questions and spontaneous, nonsensical ones: things that make no damn sense at first blink but should be assumed to be meaningful, because life is just that weird now.]
But, no. Venus and I fell in accidentally...I met the Shadow. Then we left. Nothing weirder than that happened.
[She looks up and across the hangar when they reach it, and turns her attention back to the ground for dismounting. Careful, careful. She lands gingerly on her toes and moves her weight to her right leg.]
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Oh, cool. Just... sayin' though. You should always bring someone with you when you go in there. It can get kinda dangerous if you don't know what you're lookin' for.
[Anyway!!! Enough talk about what he knows, he wants to see the hangar. He actually... steered clear of it, since he didn't want to accidentally fuck anything up in here. Like launching something out into space that the station desperately needed. Erika gets down off his back and he presses his foot to the backside of his #blessed board, allowing the front end to kick up so that he could carry it.
Now or never, huh?
Leaning forward, he presses the button to open the place up.]
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[And yet she used it as a hangout for a while there...
Life is not a coward's game.
The hangar is directly out of Hollywood sci-fi, with ominous bay doors and high-tech clutter. Erika walks to the rail - favoring that foot - and leans against it, peering out.
Man. Check this shit out.]
...We're looking for any kind of documentation, and if not that, then just...some sense of what it takes to keep things safe in vacuum. I don't really know anything about space, besides what people have been talking about around here.
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And Erika might be content to be up there by the railing, but Ryuji's already got a few steps down the stairs before he remembers, priorities, and turns to her---]
Man, I wanna go check this shit out, but I don't wanna leave ya here. Need a hand down or... you good? [He comes back up the stairs, and leaves his skateboard safely at the top.]
And... yeah, maybe we can find something in here. Looks like there's a ton of stuff to sift through.
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[Like they're not going to the same place anyways? The logical thing to do would be to examine the unmanned crafts. The cool thing to do is to go check out that sweet spaceship. The right choice is obvious.
Hup hup hup.]
...I wonder how much training it takes to fly one of these.
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Ryuji's a pretty tactile person, and as he moves forward, his fingers trail along the nearby various forms of spacecraft. There's a pulse in this room, he can almost feel it through his digits, and it's making him really, really fucking excited.]
Seriously...
[Logic is good and all, but, yeah- that's where his mind is at too.]
I don't think I've ever wanted to do something as much in my life as I wanna drive one of these bad boys.
[This is a bad idea.
Probably?
Either way, it's like a small awakening of something he actually wants to do on this station.]
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[She hadn't wanted to touch things in here willy-nilly...but Ryuji's doing it, so, might as well.]
This whole time, I've really missed virtual reality. It's like having an extra body for things you couldn't normally do. [She touches a hull seam experimentally. Then draws back, eyes landing on one of the docking mechanisms with interest. That's not what they came here for, though...so she starts moving towards the rows of surface probes instead, walking slowly.] Piloting seems like it could be like that, when I think about it. You're controlling something a lot bigger and stronger than you are.
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I've always kinda wondered what it'd be like to be a mech pilot or a fighter pilot. Yeah, look, I know it's pretty effin' lame to think that way, and it's just manga or anime or some bullshit like that. But.
[This definitely isn't what they came here for.]
Maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's just havin' the power to see things move past you at this point? We've been stuck in this station for months... how nice would it be to just be able to glide out across the stars. Feel movement.
[He's getting too hopeful for his own good here, but maybe it's something she can relate to?]
Like cruisin' on by on a skateboard. You know what I mean?
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She gives it some consideration. Imagination.]
I'm actually not great with vehicles. Moving that fast in something - I was in a car accident a few years ago, it makes me nervous. Being at the wheel might be different, though. And just seeing something new for once.
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[He scratches the back of his head. He doesn't really know what to say here, and maybe he doesn't have to.]
Yeah, maybe actually directin' where the thing is supposed to go might be better. Sucks that we can't, like... test that out in a game or something.
[Keep going with this line of thought, Ryuji.]
But there's an entire world down below to discover. We could be, like, adventurers, explorers, map makers. Anything we wanted to be.
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Hmm.]
I really want that. [While the slightly-inappropriate admissions train is still rolling. Saying it out loud gives her a guilt pang and the irrational, nagging feeling that she shouldn't tell Ryuji this because he might tell someone else and that would be bad.] Going somewhere no one's ever been before, and learning all about it. Wouldn't that be the perfect happy ending, after all this?
[And, you know what - with things like these probes, that might be feasible? Maybe? But there's so much involved in building a settlement, shelter and food and water and everything, all the geography and weather they'd have to map out, everything she's never even had to blink at growing up in freaking Tokyo.
She raps softly on one of the probe hulls.]
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[Because there have been so many times on this station where things looked like they were getting better, only to have something slam into them and try to break their hopes. He'd had a few conversations with people where the concept of being okay with not being okay isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.
That virus was a pretty harrowing experience, and... yeah, he wants to live with the feeling that everything that happens should be done with two feet forward. Who knows what the last minute will really be like. All Ryuji knows is that he doesn't want it to be curled up against the observation deck window, alone and filled with the regrets of all the things he never got to do.
Like piloting a spaceship.
And then the concept of being somewhere where they could figure out a new life? Not exactly ideal under normal circumstances, but he can guess there are a few great fucking people on board that could figure it out.]
Hm... You think we could pull off the hunter gatherer lifestyle down there?
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Not, like, snorts, or titters, or smiles silently. It starts with a giggle and crests quickly into a proper burst of laughter, and it doesn't last long, but for the few seconds it does it's kind of dry and kind of sad and kind of happy-relieved.
Erika doesn't cry. There's a sudden heavy feeling right behind her eyeballs, though, and she takes a moment without talking to wander towards the second ship and center and settle so that that doesn't go any further.
The feeling recedes. It relocates. A bearable weight under her sternum.
Ryuji Sakamoto is a pretty great guy.]
Maybe. I can't imagine, exactly, you know I'm from Tokyo too. [And uh city life in the 2010s is. Y'know. You get used to certain things.
Erika sits on the hangar dock, dangling her feet in the well between the walkway and the ship.]
...Sakamoto, can I tell you a story? You'd have to promise not to get...I don't want to hear any "I'm sorry" or anything.
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But he figures that whatever is down there planet side, that there's a lot more to see and do than squandering away days to figure out how to trick the replicators into making takoyaki taste like actual octopus balls and not just... halfway there, stuck at the balls part.
The sound of laughter filling the hangar, though, is definitely a welcome reprieve from its otherwise cold interior.]
Yeah, yeah. I'll keep my please's and thank you's toned down too.
[He's a polite boy.]
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Erika swings her feet and swings her feet and puts her elbows on her legs and thinks, quietly, strange pause stretching out after she'd been the one to bring up the topic.
...Maybe she should just jump right to the end?]
Before we came here - things aren't like this anymore. But before, back home, I was - I'd been dying for a while.
[Putting it in those terms is something she's thought to herself on and off but never said, and it feels...wrong. Like someone should scold her.]
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And it hits, and his heart sinks down into his stomach. It might be a little obvious that he's looking at her, more intently now, almost like he's reaffirming to himself that she's not dead. Just needed some WD-40 for the joints, and hopefully she'd be back on her feet and hopping along like everyone else.
But he would never scold her for that. He just couldn't. And honestly? No one else should ever, either.]
Oh... Well, uh. For someone who was dying, you look pretty alive to me right now.
[He'd probably fight to keep it that way, too.]
But how?
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Sometimes you sacrifice the little wants for the big wants.]
It was that car accident. A brain injury. I don't know if you... [...know, how things like that work; even she doesn't, completely. The brain is a complicated organ.] ...Imagine a machine. If you bump some gears loose, that tiny misalignment gets worse and worse over time until the whole thing breaks down. Except it's brain cells instead of gears...sort of.
[She rubs her sleeve between her fingers; back and forth, back and forth.]
I got these - they were sort of like seizures. They'd put me in the hospital, and every time it got a little worse.
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The analogy to the gear parts is definitely something easy to grasp, though, and he approaches a little bit more. The urge to sit with her and bump shoulders is pretty goddamn high right now.]
You haven't... since coming here, right? I mean, the seizures.
[Man, this is so fucked up.
He'd never get in a car again either.]
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Mm-mm. I could tell right away. I think...it has to be like what keeps happening when people die here. The station rebuilt my body, somehow. Otherwise - I'd feel like I used to, but I also never would have been able to keep it a secret. It was right up at the end of things.
[...yeah. Yeah. Still lying by omission. That'll need undoing at some point.
And that's kind of - wow, how long has it been, months? Four months? Almost half a year. Wow. And here's Ryuji, first person to know, and only because she chose to tell him. It's kind of scary. It kind of underlines what she was thinking about when it occurred to her, the whole process of moving on, becoming someone new. The things that don't survive the passage of time.]
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Well, maybe not that, but on a more serious note, he finally comes back up to the catwalk and sits down next to her. It takes a moment, so it's probably filled with a little bit of an awkward silence as he does so. He doesn't really have anything to say other than just sitting with her, listening.
The end of things... there's really only so much that could mean.
But, it's a new opportunity. She has so much light in her, he can't imagine a world where she doesn't have the ability to be her own solar system, a sun that other things orbit around. It doesn't make sense, and yet, it makes him angry. Shit's not fair.
Is it... okay to sit there at all? He doesn't really know.]
Huh. Man... life's just full of a bunch of shit, huh.
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There's a lump in her chest.]
There's more to the story. Hold on. [That's supposed to be a joke and it comes out hideously flat. She has embraced the wretchedness of looking to Ryuji Sakamoto for something resembling absolution for what she and fate did to Ryuji Mishima. It feels bad as hell, man. A good, addictive, awful kind of bad, like popping a pimple, without even the inexplicable thrill that comes from telling Venus these kinds of things. With Ryuji it's like wiping your muddy hands on a dog. Maybe he doesn't care - but you used him, you monster.]
My parents were in that car, too. My brother was - he's the one who taught me how to code and hack. I passed him when it comes to some things, but, he's good. He could've - he would've gotten a job anywhere he wanted. With the company that runs the VR world. Anything.
And, then, it was just us.
[And she doesn't quite know how to put words around what happened. How to explain this thing she fears, and this thing she wants out of her third whack at life, without incriminating her brother, laying his flaws out in the open like fish for stray cats. That's not an option.]
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Without knowing how Akira's parents abandoned him for doing the right thing. How Ann's entire life was rife with people treating her differently and assuming horrible things about the way she really was. Yusuke's mother being brutally used and neglected when she needed medical help so that a corrupt artist could capitalize on his talent. The way that everyone put such ridiculously high expectations on Makoto so that she could never cope with her own losses. Futaba's cognition of her own mother hating her enough to commit a suicide that never happened. Or Haru's father selling her off life property to the highest bidder. Or his own problems that he shared with all of them- how he had to go to school and hide bruises that his father had left with him to take like a lunch pail or his dreams being crushed when his teacher broke his leg.
She must miss her brother a lot. Ryuji watches his own legs dangling from the ledge.]
I can't imagine how much that must've hurt you. The only thing I know is that.... yeah, it does kinda feel like you against the world when you got only one or two things to hold onto and everything else is just gone to shit.
[Third whack, or whatever she's going through though.]
It ain't anywhere near the same, and I'd be a total dick to say that it were. But if you're thinking that "just us" is now "just me," I wanna tell you that you're not alone. 'Cause you're not. I'd fight on your team in a heartbeat.
[Which comes with the whole... use me if you need to thing. He's a tank. He's good at taking blows.]
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Now there's the other kind of good bad hurt, the achy sad joy that's physically exhausting. Erika sighs, and nods, and shakes her head.]
That's what I was afraid of. [Shakes her head again, fondly, to head off any kind of, like - panic. It's okay. She hears you, she's taking it in, taking it at face value. It's just...heavy.] It's not like it's a bad thing. It's the best thing in the world.
[She sits up a little straighter and crosses her arms, thinking.] My...treatment wasn't routine. My brother gave up everything to make sure it went through. His time. His future. All but one of his friends. [...] His morals. And he kept it all secret. I never - when I found out, I wanted payback, and I wanted to save him. And neither one...got all the way to the end.
It was all just luck. I didn't choose to hurt him by dying. But I still didn't want to, and it's still...
[The spaceship. The probes. Erika swallows.]
It's still...even the best thing in the world hurts people. And happy endings don't last. And I want to - save someone. I want to save someone without hurting them first. I want to be able to beat this stupid station, and protect all of you. And win for once.
[Tears are rapping at the gate, but they're...a lot politer than they usually are. Or so they seem. They're still unwelcome. Erika denies them exit anyways.]
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He wants to tell her that you can't choose who you hurt in this world, because everybody hurts everyone at some point. Ryuji knows that all too goddamn well. The best you can do is mitigate it and be a good person, strive to be free and true to yourself. There's a sideways glance in her direction, and he takes all of that in. Keeps it close to his heart.
And then, in the end, he leans back to what he's good at. Using sheer will to make things happen.]
Then... do it.
[It's probably a gross oversimplification, but the core of its message is optimistic and somewhat deeper than he implies. There's words there, too, about impossibilities and struggle, of commitment and all the things it takes to beat a station that wants to beat them.
But.
Just do it.
He knows that you have it in you.]