This. I hate scenes like this. I need another set of eyes.
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Quote:Daryl Haur finished pouring herself a mug of tea, before setting the empty pot on the table. All five of them had gathered in Kotono’s apartment to figure out what to do next.________________________________
“I told you so,”
There was no satisfaction in Kotono’s voice. Still in her nightwear she settled back into her own couch.
“Now what?” Daryl asked, before taking a sip from a cup of something green, steaming and sweet-smelling.
Jet’s armour scratched off itself as she crossed her legs. “Marsden, Rei and Yayoi Fujisawa are on their way. And I just heard that Ben and Gina are on their way too, and Starbug with Nene. It’s been decided that we need help with this,”
The bitter note to her tone.
“You didn’t ask?” Daryl asked.
“I was going to wait and see how he woke up before asking Yayoi to come.”
“This is exactly what we were trying to avoid with all this you know,” said Ford.
“What? People finding out that we really have no idea what we’re doing with him and need help beyond a little advice and some good wishes?”
Silence answered Kotono. Jet, Ford and Daryl shared quick glances, causing her to wonder if she hadn’t been closer to the mark than she truly expected.
Jet downed a mouthful of broadleaf tea before speaking. “Nené’s due at 1am, Rei, Marsden and Yayoi about an hour after. Ben and Gina will be here shortly after that.”
“We have to figure out what we did wrong,” said Ford.
“He isn’t a machine,” Anika reminded her, her tone flatly annoyed.
“It still applies. We didn’t understand the problem right and made things worse.”
“So what was the problem then?” Daryl asked.
“We assumed that he’d have trouble accepting himself, but he spent the entire series learning to accept that he was Shinji Ikari.... so much that when faced with the idea that he really wasn’t the person he thought he was, he rejected our reality and tried to substitute his own,” Kotono explained.
Daryl snorted through her nose, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed at that,” she held up her hands.
A quick glance around informed Kotono that Ford wasn’t the only one who’d found that funnier than she’d intended. There were smirks and titters all round.
Anika sighed. “Last night,” she began, her voice soft “Before he snapped, he told me that he needed to see himself before he could return. ‘Anyone can return to human form, so long as they’re able to imagine themselves within their own heart, that’s what it was in the film’,”
“And we were trying to ease him into realising he wasn’t the Shinji Ikari he thought he was,” Jet finished. “Damn,” she breathed.
Ford glanced at her. “For those of us who haven’t seen the film?”
“At the end of the movie, Shinji wanted to go back to the real world, and to do that he needed to form the image of who he was in his mind. Because we were trying to get him to realise he was an android, he probably assumed the false reality he’d been in was fighting back,” the cyber explained.
“Gotcha...” She didn’t. “So what do we do about it?”
“We’ve still got most of today before anyone arrives,” said Jet. Her eyes scanned around the room, waiting for someone else to speak up,”Wait until he wakes up,”
Anika was sitting in her operators uniform, with her legs crossed under her, resting her elbows on her knees while supporting her head on steepled hands. One of her fingers timed out a beat as she pondered.
“Maybe we’re going about this wrong?”
“Obviously,” Darly snorted.
Anika glared at her. “That’s not what I mean! “She yelled. “ Anyway...” her voice switched back to normal. “We’ve been treating him like he’s the real Shinji Ikari because that’s who he thinks he is....” she looked right at Daryl, it’d been her idea after all, “Maybe we should treat him like who he his now?”
Jet’s attention visibly shifted to something else for a second.
“You know how I feel about that.” Daryl reminded her. “Okay so it’s a bit different but the militia do it that way because if you come in too strong, instead of easing into the new self-identity they fight against it.”
“But we came in gently and it didn’t work,” Jet pointed out.
“Well yeah, so we have to find the right middle-ground then,”
As if it was that easy.
Kotono took a few moments to think. “The thing is. When you think about it, this is pretty much the exact opposite to a biomod.”
“Oh,” Daryl’s eyebrow rose.
“I can’t speak from experience,” she offered an uncomfortable smile, “But I’ve seen people go through it on Kandor all the time. it’s probably easier to adjust a biomod to a new self-identity, because it’s in your face the whole time, while the universe stays the same.”
Jet nodded, “That’s pretty much it. The Kunst is the same. The universe remains the same, but you have to acknowledge your changed place in it,”
“Yeah, well, Shinji’s universe has changed, but we kinda assumed he’d notice he’d changed too eventually but he didn’t.” a beat. Daryl pondered a moment. “Or he did and immediately thought that was the universe screwing with him too,”
“Pinnochio glitch,” Jet sighed, closing her eyes for a second. “Alita had it for years. She found out when James Cameron first contacted her,”
“How did she solve it?” Anika asked. There was a hopeful gleam in her eyes.
Jet shrugged, “She didn’t really. She took one look at her manga counterpart, declared that she wasn’t her, pouted her lips and carried on regardless. It was a complete anti-climax,”
“Well,” Kotono continued, swallowing a deep breath, “As far as Shinji’s concerned, he’s still the same person he’s always been, but his world’s completely different.”
“How do we convince him that this is real?” asked Daryl
Jet sat there, her attention obviously split with something else. Ford eased back into her chair, covering her mouth with her metal hand as she thought. Daryl, dressed in her usual militia outfit, recrossed her legs, getting comfortable while Kotono leaned forward, waiting for somebody to speak.
“Anika might be right,” Jet eventually said. “A.C told me something similar in a message yesterday, but for different reasons.”
“So show him the damn animé already then,” Ford threw in. “There you are on the screen,” She clapped both her hands together, “Bang, we’re done.”
Anika pursed her lips, “I wouldn’t show half of that to a sane person, let alone Shinji,”
“So what, what’s in between?”
Anika inhaled, inflating her body just a little bit. “We do it they way I wanted to from the start. I go in there and tell him where I came from, where he came from, and tell him the truth straight out.”
The edges of her lips curled up ever so slightly.
“The truth hurts, but sometimes in the long run, it’s less painful,” Kotono added in support.
“Rei!” A voice rang out through the closed door.
All five women went dead quiet, throwing glances at each other, then at the door. The colour drained out of Anika’s face as she was suddenly faced with the possibility of actually going forward with her plan.
Daryl swung her legs off the table she’d been resting them on, kicking over a tin teapot. It clattered to the floor, empty except for a few tealeaves. It rolled over, coming to a stop resting on it’d handle.
“Dammit!” she spat.
Nobody moved.
“Oh, nice one,” Anika stated, rolling her eyes.
Jet sat back. “Well Anika, it’s your idea... and I've to go pick up a mail drone”
“Oh well,” the android sighed, pushing herself up out of the couch. They were all staring at her as she walked to the door.
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