audio.

[warandpeace]

audio.

My name is Kazuhira Miller. I've been around for a while, and mostly I've been focusing on building my own small business. But I have noticed that there are a good number of us that, while there are some general assignments the Savrii provide for extra wages, still don't have a good use for our talents, so I'm gauging interest for a project. [There's a splash of water and a clank of glasses. Ignore him, he's multi-tasking.]

What I'm proposing, and what I will bring before the Savrii if there's adequate interest, is a Rescue and Recovery program. With Ingress activity having the potential to go awry or with natural disasters in Ingress accessible worlds, or allying worlds that might need to call on us for help, some people with appropriate skills could go on rescue missions. Especially when there are children or endangered animals at risk. It wouldn't matter if it was a complete disaster or a low grade backyard rescue. We have a lot of people and a lot of resources for it.

It would require investors, donations, part-time or volunteer work. People willing to offer medical facilities for recovery, since it wouldn't really be fair of us to rescue someone and then charge them for the retrieval.

[If you run that kind of business then you ask for the money up front.]

Also people actually going into these situations would be deserving of hazard pay. Even for a less than strenuous mission.

And... I was thinking- [here's the catch] -the best way to draw attention to the need for money in this sort of venture would be some sort of regular broadcast. I'm not sure how shows [television? hologram? How do semi-future planet media] work here exactly but that's something I would need more information on and another reason this project would require more than one handler. [And there goes the clank of some plates.]

I've not received any approval for the project but I thought I would gauge interest. [And a metallic clatter and crash in the background.] Shi- [Cut off silence. After a beat?] Let me take care of this and then I'll be back.

Does anyone here know how to fix the lid to a futuristic industrial dishwasher? That I can pay for myself.

Comments

[warandpeace]

I mostly had to fend for myself as a kid. The blond hair and blue eyes didn't go over too well with the other kids [post-war ainoko being what they were], and my mother was sick so I just took care of her store and worked on educating myself. [School was for losers and also people that had fathers and could get on the registry, and he had to learn enough English then to talk to soldiers that came in.]

But that sort of story sounds familiar. [The twins, the two boys manufactured by Cipher to serve their purposes. His empathy grew in later years, seeing them for what they were. Originally, when he still bought into the idea of a better world, this "make the world one" nonsense, he didn't mind the idea. What a fool he'd been, and look how badly they fucked up those two young men. This poor kid probably didn't have it much easier.]

Sorry to hear that. That you had to start so early, anyway. [Somehow "killing people" doesn't seem to bother him. But the lack of choice? That does. He tried so hard to give child soldiers choice.] The world is filled with assholes that think they can change it and just keep doing more of the same. [Like he's much different, himself. Outside of those whimsical bouts of wanting to change the world through food or music. Those are... honestly a little embarrassing if he gets called out on them by other military men.]

That is what I'm making. I figured it was the richest one. Do you like corn or nori?

[nishizono]

Nori. I don't have floss on me, and corn gets stuck.

[ Miller might not realize it, but he'd put Tetora on alert — where he's from, his story is on a need-to-know, relegated to science fiction by the general population because who would believe clones and genetic experiments were real? Hollywood and manga were just entertainment, sentai and henshin and kaiju just genres of shows you get to watch on TV during the weekends.

A genetic program targeting specific DNA sequences was just for those fanboys who had nothing to live for.

Quietly, one could say politely, he screws the door back in place. Swings it a couple times to test it too. ]

Well, it's not grinding anymore.

[ He levels a serious look at Miller, his elbows perched on top of his knees. ]

Most people would be trying to get me out of here by now. Why are you different?

[warandpeace]

Does the latch on it feel secure? [He finishes up, puts in the noodles and the broth, the sprouts and the onions and the meat. Slices the egg in two and drops that in, before bringing it over to Tetora.]

I've heard worse even before I was on the Moira. And among the people who show up here, you're not really alone in having this sort of life.

I guess it's good to not be alone. [But it says a lot about the state of many worlds. He gives the guy some chopsticks too, the sort that are cheap bamboo and have the wrapper that can be folded into a holder.]

Happens a lot for you, huh?

[nishizono]

[ Tetora makes a show of locking the dishwashing machine, at the first question - check it out, look at this smooth locking action, hear that beautiful clean click of a machinated maid's front-loading door locking into place. He didn't hijack Ooe's education just to fuck up. ]

My sister was in a coma, [ he says. Apropos to nothing, and also maybe everything. ] She's not really my sister, but she's... she's XX. I'm XY. You get what I'm saying?

[ The gametes dictating chromosomal sexes. A science project neatly halved between male and female, pitted against each other to see which pairs will ultimately survive. Miwa hadn't wanted to. Hasn't. He doesn't know because he can still feel her in his head even if he'd been the one to pull the trigger and free her from the reality of what they've been made for.

She'd made him promise that he would. ]

We were never allowed to be in the same place at the same time. She didn't like me either.

[warandpeace]

[Comas too, huh? When did comas and clones and supersoldiers become a subject of casual conversation? What sort of life must someone lead so that actually becomes happenstance between people.]

[This is a hellish sort of place in its own way. Life's burdens becoming woefully casual, a normalcy that shouldn't really exist.] Yeah. I get what you're saying. [He won't bring up "Liquid Snake" and "Solid Snake", since their brotherhood is between them.]

I've run into that, too. Even the coma. Knew a guy that was in one for nine years, so... I don't know how that sorta thing will turn out.

[He makes sure that he has his food, but leaves the washer alone because he knows he'll just have to start it again when he's done.] You want some gyoza or edamame to go with that?

[nishizono]

Can I have both?

[ He doesn't have a preference, but he does have bad habits picked up from a short lifetime spent on the run; given the choice to hoard, he would. Especially for the little things. One never knows when food might come by again, or when a hot meal might cross one's path. ]

[ Tetora plugs the machine on, fiddles with the settings and gets it running empty, save for a cycle on water. The sloshing is almost calming, he thinks, as he sits on the floor with his fingers tingling from working small corners. He itches - not the kind you could scratch, but something deeper. Uglier.

It's been a while since he'd choked someone out. ]

Usually? Just vegetable. You only hear about the exemptions to the stats, which gets people's hopes up, but... [ Tetora shrugs. ] It sounds cruel to say it but most comatose people should just be let go.

Miwa would've been, if they'd let her.

Hey, can I tell you something? But you have to promise not to tell anyone.

[warandpeace]

Yeah, sure. I'll start up both.

[It's something to do with his hands, one real, one artificial. He's a little worried he's going to get used to it.]

Maybe he should have. [He doesn't look at Tetora when he says it, but he can't keep the disappointment out of his voice. The miserable sadness that was losing John, and then having him replaced while Kaz waited for him. What would the world have turned out like if John had just slipped away?]

[He doesn't want to think too much about it. At least V came to.]

I'm glad he stuck it out, though. [Of all the hell they went through together, he wouldn't take back meeting him. Just... maybe the circumstances that facilitated it.] But sure, consider me your bartender for the evening. Just with food instead of alcohol. [He's got an ear. He can listen. And offer something warm to eat.]

[nishizono]

[ Tetora gets off the floor and takes a seat at the countertop, minding his manners for once and thanking Miller for the food. The quietly spoken itadakimasu feels oily in his mouth; Amamiya would have said it with sincerity, Shinji with a snideness he can't seem to properly scrub off his voice, Miwa with a characteristic boredom prevalent among people their age.

But he's not them. They're not him - but who is he, really?

He stuffs his mouth with food in the meantime, picking through his vocabulary for a way to say things without sounding like he's trying to sabotage himself. (It's a hard habit to break.) ]

I don't know what to do, [ he murmurs, crunching edamame with his back teeth, ] after...

After I've fought everyone. [ After I've killed them, he doesn't say, leaving the implications hanging in the air. ] I don't know anything else.

[warandpeace]

It's never too late to learn something. You're still pretty young.

[Younger than most of the people he knows that are trapped in the lifestyle of being old warhorses. Kaz returns to what he's doing at the counter.]

I'm a firm believer that some people belong on the battlefield. Some people are born ready to take a weapon in their hands. But I also feel like every soldier has to know something about being human. How to fight and how to think creatively, have a few simple goals.

It's better than turning out like some people I know.

[He finally finishes cleaning up and pours himself a glass of water. Just something to tide him over.]

Do you like being away from all that or are you eager to get back to it?

[nishizono]

I don't know.

[ He honestly doesn't. He's never known any other way to be, even before the proverbial curtains have been pulled back and the truths behind Gakuso were revealed to him. Everyone else had gotten their chance at a life except for him; even Miwa got to go to school, for what little that's worth. ]

That's a little like asking blind people about colors, isn't it? Or putting on a badly fitted shirt.

I'm thinking, if this is over... maybe I'll follow Miwa. Jump into an incinerator so no one fucking finds me again. I don't know. [ He's realizing he'll miss Inuhiko. And Sasayama, too. Feeling for other people feels like a stomach bug, apparently. ] Living is weird.

[warandpeace]

[He grunts at that comment. Might as well share another story there.]

Pretty obvious that my father wasn't Japanese. He left my mother before I was born. She was sort of a guilty pleasure he'd enjoyed when he was in the military. When he left, he didn't need her anymore. But he did leave her some money, and he left her me.

I looked for him for years. I finally found him, and he decided to take me in, teach me good English, send me to the best schools. But my mother was still sick and I was a good son, so I returned to her to take care of her.

He shot himself in the head. They didn't even tell me. He was buried by the time I found out.

[He's found a million other things to pick at and move around the kitchen at this point. To keep himself busy as he talks.]

Not much of an opinion to it. I just don't figure I'm impatient enough to kill myself. I'd rather just keep waiting it out, see what happens. There's always been something that's come up that I can affect.

[nishizono]

[ He's quiet for too long than he's been at this point. It's a blanketing kind of silence, weighed down by inarticulate thoughts that, in another lifetime, would've been easy to name or put to words. But Tetora came into the world quite literally in the middle of an explosion; the birth of his consciousness as he knows it came awake through gunfire and warm blood spattered across his face.

They woke him up as a stopgap, too early by all standards that have been at play before then.

Maybe that was why Toguchi had opened fire, in the first place. Maybe the peek behind the curtain had been too much, because he had a life. Kobayashi had a life too, as did the others who kept failing the hurdle of keeping their minds steady. Wryly, and not for the first time, Tetora assumes the key to his and Miwa's mutual survival had been the lack of a veil on what they are.

It's a bloody irony, all things considered. They survived because they've long accepted that they're meant to die. (They just have a lot of trouble in letting it happen.)

Tetora lays his hands flat on the counter, fingers dead-still against the scrubbed top. ]

I've never had that. I'm staying alive out of spite.

I think— If I had friends, or parents, or if I woke up differently — But this body is too fucking weak and I can't get it under control half the time, and one day I won't be good enough to keep everybody away from me. Either they all die, or I die first so they can't have me ever again.

...Did it hurt when she died?

[ He doesn't think nor realize how offensive his question is. He's never lost anyone who didn't deserve to die in the first place, or in Miwa's and Kitou's case didn't want to go on their own terms. Death happens; it's a fact of life. It's a fact that happens so often that Tetora doesn't fully understand how much it changes the people who get left behind. ]

[warandpeace]

Yeah, it did. [He isn't offended, because the fact is the more that Tetora talks, the more that Kazuhira becomes painfully aware that the young man is still working through having emotions at all. And... well...]

[He can't lie about losing family hurting him.]

Stubborness works well enough for me. Either way, the last thing you should do is give people that you hate what they might want. And as for weakness... Before I came here, I didn't even have prosthetics. There are a lot of ways to be strong. Sometimes you have to pick up a lot of tricks on outsmarting an enemy. Using your environment. In my experience backing down never stopped people from going after what they wanted, even when it's a bullet to the head.

[Miller, perhaps, isn't actually giving him the most polite advice, and he's very war-minded. But at least he's being genuine. But, onto the work he just did.] You did a good job. [He says of the washer.] Quick, too.