2010-04-24 - But It Is My Nothing

THE MINERVA

SPACE

NOW

Some time ago -- this being yesterday -- Rei Ayanami sent a brief communique to someone whose address actually took some digging to find. 'I require your assistance. If you would help me, please contact me. I need to speak to you in person, one on one. It is important.' Then, Rei Ayanami signed her name, and sent it off into the digital ether. Then Rei opened her brightly colored children's book on the basics of origami and began to fold a crane. Perhaps a dozen line her desk now, sitting in odd, colorful clusters.

But now, it's today. Rei doesn't own casual clothes -- she's wearing most of an A-LAWs uniform. Teal tank top tucked into belted BDU pants. Black boots. Teal beret on her head. Her jacket hangs on the back of a chair, waiting for her. She regards herself in the mirror dispassionately. Her face is lumpy and purple. Both eyes have been blackened. There's a purple splotch like a sensitive little hillock near one temple, unseen thanks to her bangs but certainly felt. Her lip is still fat. Even her neck is bruised. Rei looks like she's on the mend from being punched in the face.

A lot.

And now, in her quarters, she waits, checking her e-mail every so often, or looking in the mirror, or surveying her collection of cranes, which now numbers some twenty, crowding her desk like a tiny rainbow flock.

Given the lack of fixed assignment for the One Man Army, most of the time people need to get in contact with him, they just send him messages. He should probably get an attache to actually keep track of those messages or something, though; as it is, he only gets to like half of them in a timely fashion. Luckily (?!) for Rei, hers was one of them. Quite likely, the bridge crew of the Minerva were quite surprised when the Masurao turned up looking for landing clearance, and quite likely most of them are going to privately blame Arba Lindt for this nonsense; Mister Bushido, however, is quite immune to criticism, and beyond instructing the former ZAFT battleship's shockingly young-skewing engineering crew not to touch his ride, the masked ace of A-LAWS otherwise ignored pretty much everybody. After all, he's here for the sake of Rei Ayanami, a child, and the children are the future, so on and so forth. There's a decent chance that Bushido's willingness to provide this mysterious 'help' has to do with Rei's connection to his associate, Leo Stenbuck. So. There is a knock on the door to Rei's quarters; opening the door would reveal one Mister Bushido, live and in person, having only taken the time to switch to his own modified A-LAWS uniform before heading towards his destination. As he waits, he stands with his arms folded, his head slightly bowed and eyes closed, because of course he does.

Rei's quarters are at the end of a long corridor somewhere in the ship's guts. It's well off the beaten path -- around her, for the most part, are supply closets and that sort of thing. The only sound is the buzz and moan of the ship going about its business -- it permeates the area, like being soaked in sound.

The door opens, and there stands Rei Ayanami. She's barely five feet. If that. She looks up at Bushido with her battered face, unfazed by the mask, by the posture, by the fact that his eyes are closed. There is a long moment of silence.

Rei Ayanami then breaks it, which is perhaps uncharacteristic for her. "" Rei says, in Japanese. "" The girl turns and moves out of the doorway, back and to the left, to allow Bushido passage.

It's sort of an odd place to put anyone's quarters, but then Bushido has never had much time to worry about those sorts of things. Nowadays, he seldom has any quarters for very long, and they tend to be spartan affairs; he does maintain an apartment still, back on Earth, the same one he had back in the days of the MSWAD and the OverFlags squadron, but he rarely visits. His quest is far more important than putting down roots anywhere, and one empty room is as good as any other. When Rei opens the door, Bushido towers over her. Even were it not for the increased size his uniform seems to lend him, at nearly six feet he overtops the girl by about a foot, and there is of course the 'mask' factor. The blond man is in no hurry to break the silence, though as the door opens so do his eyes, green staring out from the dark mask down at the diminutive Child. And then she speaks to him. In Japanese. There is a longer silence, now, this one stretching into the distinctly uncomfortable; Bushido's shoulders shift, his mouth compresses into even more of a frown than usual. Is there something wrong? Has she offended somehow? Missed some key interpersonal cue that even Mister Bushido still takes for granted? "...I do not speak Japanese," he says, finally. Sounding a bit... Embarassed?

Rei stares up at the One Man Army as if he had just confessed to her that he had just revealed that he was actually a shark with breasts and offered her intercourse in exchange for a ride on her spaceship. "O-Oh," the tiny girl stammers, stunned for a moment. It's rare that Rei's stunned; it's yet more rare that anyone can really tell the difference.

"I apologize," Rei says, instinctively bowing -- several times. She's not trying to rub it in; it's just that she was raised in Tokyo-03, by fairly strict, humorless Japanese folk. "I... assumed. I'm sorry." Rei looks up at Bushido again. Even if she didn't look like she was a punching bag, she'd seem sad.

But it's the sort of sad that's implied rather than explicitly stated. Rei's expression stays adamantly neutral. "Thank you for coming. As I said in my message... I need your help." Rei's quarters are spartan. Aside from the origami cranes and a couple of books on her desk, and the uniform duster on her chair, there is nothing out of place, and no decorations -- no personal touches. Rei might as well stay in a hotel. "I understand that you have... assisted young personnel when they have required guidance."

It's funny, you'd think that particular assumption would've come up more often. But no, Mister Bushido's limited grasp of the Japanese language - beyond some essential samurai terms, anyway - has actually never been discovered or commented on. Even the staff and servants at the sprawling Katagiri estate, where Bushido spends some of his free time, speak enough English that the issue has never before surfaced. On the upside, Rei's not likely to spread it around, or so he would guess from his limited experience with the girl. "Do not worry about it," the blond man says gravely as he waves off Rei's apology, making his way into the girl's quarters. He's not taken aback by the lack of decoration or anything like that, in fact it feels familiar, to him. Material things are just dross, after all; spending time on personal touches gets in the way of what's really important. Or, that's what he tells himself, anyway. His green eyes do note the origami cranes - that particular old wives' tale is one he /is/ familiar with - before they turn back to Rei and her broke-ass face. "That is true," Bushido says, nodding once. He's not really sure /why/ people turn to him for guidance, especially these days, but that's beside the point. "Are you having trouble with bullying?" the masked man wonders, jumping to conclusions like he was the lost Mario brother.

"No," Rei replies to Bushido's question. It's not a sharp response, but there's nonetheless a sense of cold finality in the way she says it. Maybe it's a 'you should see the other guy' sort of thing. Maybe she just doesn't want to talk about it. Rei offers no real clues, because she immediately skips the discussion along, leaving the topic in her dust.

Rei continues to stand. "Make yourself comfortable if you wish," she says, purely as a formality, something that shines through in her disaffected tone. Rei sounds dead inside. Or like she's trying to be dead inside.

"I seek... for lack of a better word... spiritual counsel." Rei lets that hang in the air for a moment, then presses onward. "I have read as much as was available regarding you. I feel that there are things that your experience can teach me, if you are willing. Things that I need to learn." Rei stares up at the taller man, head tilted up so she can look him dead in the eyes.

She hasn't blinked once.

Yes, it's clear that whatever it is, Rei is more content not discussing it... And it's not in Mister Bushido's nature to pry. Instead, he just lets the matter drop, while of course privately wondering just what might've happened. Actually, he's got a few ideas, none of them are any good; he might keep himself too aloof to respond or spread rumours, but that doesn't mean that the One Man Army doesn't hear scuttlebutt around the various bases and other assignments he finds himself at. "Hum," the masked man says, instead. Just as Rei does, Bushido remains standing, orienting himself in generally the middle of the sparsely occupied quarters, standing with his arms folded and fixing an intent look on Rei. He's not just being polite, he's genuinely curious as to what could incite the Littlest A-LAW to call him out here. When he gets his answer, Bushido is... Surprised. If he were forced to provide a list of things he'd expected her to say, that would not be on it. His surprise is difficult to see, though, because: Mask. "I see," Bushido says, green eyes meeting red. It's an unusual request, to be sure. "Such as what?" It can't hurt to ask, right?

Rei doesn't seem to care one way or another how Bushido takes the news of her answer; he could have done a spit-take and she probably would keep staring up at him like he was some sort of Magic Eye poster. He probably could have done a spit-take /onto her/, no less. It certainly wouldn't make her face look any /worse/ than it does right now.

"You are driven by revenge," Rei says, as astute an observation as a sixteen-year-old ever made. "You have sacrificed many things to this end. You have become what they call the One Man Army." Rei pauses. "You are a living weapon."

Rei doesn't say it with disdain. Nor does she say it with admiration. She is presenting Mister Bushido with facts. She says them like he must be well aware of them by now, and moreover, comfortable with them.

"I have let my emotions overtake me," Rei continues. Her voice seems a little tighter. There's so little to judge the color and timbre of her speech through, that every little bit stands out, every molehill a mountain. "I wish to rid myself of them. I wish to leave behind the burden of humanity."

Rei still hasn't blinked. "I wish to become like you."

"Teach me."

It's difficult to tell exactly what Mister Bushido thinks about all of this, as Rei Ayanami repeats the facts of his current existence back to him. It's not like this is the first time he's had something /like/ this happen, but usually it's characterised by... Disdain, by attempts to humiliate him with the details. In some way, the stark matter of fact manner, and the strange way the girl seems to be mirroring him at the moment makes it worse. Perhaps too his recent conversation with Lamia Loveless has rendered him more... Vulnerable to this sort of thing. Feelings, exactly that which Rei is trying to elude. As such, Mister Bushido is silent for a long time, again. He does blink, because he's not a biological freak, but otherwise his stillness is all but complete. "Do you?" the masked man says, eventually, his tone a bit quiet. "If you have a goal you wish to accomplish, Ayanami, it is laudable that you are willing to sacrifice everything, including yourself, to achieve it. This is, in fact, the only way to truly grasp at what you seek, however..." His head shakes a bit, and he half turns away from the unsettling girl. "You are not wholly correct. Emotions can be a source of strength, Ayanami. It is simply a matter of only holding on to those which can be of use to you. Anger. Hatred. From these, one can draw power. Passion is the source of true greatness, Ayanami. You need that fire in your belly, or all your struggles will be for naught."

Rei, too, is silent for a long time. This is typical of her, but in conjunction with Mister Bushido, the conversation is more gap than speech. If Rei is affected by Bushido's words, it's hidden from view completely. Rei's face is a mask. A misshapen, damaged mask.

"I do not seek greatness, Mister Bushido," Rei says, quietly but firmly. Her tone is purged of everything but an ominous sense of... doom, perhaps. Fatalism. Like Rei were standing and speaking to the spectre of death himself. Which... maybe she is.

"I know anger. And I know hatred. And they will only distract me." Rei is resolute in this -- as resolute as a creepy teenager can really be. Which is actually a surprising amount, considering. "To achieve what I wish to do... I will lose everything I have regardless. But all I have is myself."

Rei stares Bushido down. She's not scared or intimidated by his rhetoric. And she's awfully insistent. "So I must discard that which will keep me from my goal. I must lose everything but my purpose. But I do not know how."

Standing there, arms folded and looking slightly away so that Rei is facing his profile, Mister Bushido continues to hardly react. The conversation is indeed more gap than speech, the body language of the two practically nonexistent; were someone else to walk in, privy to this situation, they probably would barely be able to tell the two were reacting at all, and they would probably be rather put off by the lack of any normal human contextualisation. But then, between the man who cast aside his humanity and the clone 'doll' made to fight Angels, do either of them fit into that category anyway? "Very well," Bushido says, reluctantly. He doesn't agree with the idea that Rei is proposing, not entirely, but he admires her resolve. And if she needs assistance to accomplish such a goal... Slowly, he turns to face Rei again. "The first thing you must do then, Ayanami, is to sever ties. Remove anything that provokes a feeling in your heart... Anything that might draw your attention away from your goal." There are many people Bushido stopped communicating with, when he stopped being Graham Aker. Not all of them, to be sure, because they were useful, or they were reminders of what he sought. "The very next thing you must do, Ayanami, is give up your identity. Such things are transitory anyway. Names and pride only hold you back, you need neither. And your face..." She looks messed up, but if he took off his mask, he'd probably be judged worse by most; her bruises will fade, after all. "Conceal it. I know that you are not one to wear your emotions openly to begin with, but to remove yourself from others... You need that barrier."

Rei Ayanami stands stone still. She never stops facing Mister Bushido -- never stops watching him, as keenly as a hawk watching a field mouse that happens to be a foot taller than it. But as he speaks -- as he gives her practical advice on how to bury one's own humanity -- she indicates no emotional response. Most people would get angry. Or sad. Or disbelieving. Or even just intense.

Instead, Rei is like a sponge. She soaks his words up. But how she takes them, how she processes them... she gives no indication. These ideas clearly enter Rei's mind, but there's no telling how they might come back out.

"Where does your path end, Mister Bushido?" asks the tiny NERV liaison. "You speak of removing ties... of assuming false identities... of covering yourself. Do you do this to distance yourself from the world? Or do you do it so that on the day when your mask comes off... you can be forgiven?"

Rei pauses. Another pause. "Because my path is not one that is to be returned from."

"No," Mister Bushido says, shaking his head. "No false identities. I am who I am," the masked man says, unfolding his arms at last and spreading his hands. "I gave up my name and took none to replace it. What others choose to call me is of no concern to me." It's something that's come up before: Isamu Alva Dyson's accusations that he was trying to hide his identity, for example. But 'Mister Bushido' is a name he's been given, in the spirit of mockery and derision. He straightens, slightly, and tilts his head. "I neither seek nor require forgiveness for the path I've taken. I will avenge my fallen comrades, I will expunge the madness of Celestial Being and their allies from the Earth Sphere. What about this begs forgiveness? No, I cast these things aside because they would hold me back. I abandon that which would weaken me because I seek strength. The strength to overcome my enemies." See, he might be a complete lunatic, but at least he has his own internal logic that he... Basically hews to. "But the end of my path? The zenith of victory, or a warrior's death, Ayanami. Either I will destroy all those who stand in my path, especially the boy in the two drive Gundam... Or I will fall in battle." There's a heat in Bushido's voice now, anger and anticipation and all sorts of other things, but either possibility seems to appeal as much as the other, to him. "For that, I have gotten rid of everything else. Everything."

Rei Ayanami breathes in. It is, perhaps, the closest thing to a human response that Bushido has incited from the sixteen-year-old. The breath that she draws is long, slow, and deep -- when she exhales, there's a noise that's only audible because of the profound silence that the two keep submerging themselves in.

"I understand," Rei says, in her gnomic, understated monotone. She might as well be a robot parroting phrases at him. Which is, all things considered, probably not the best place for Graham Aker to go.

Rei stands there for a long, long moment after. Typically, this is where, with Bushido having shown her his, she shows him hers. But Rei Ayanami is not a typical girl. So all she does is say, with the sort of serious gravity that can only come from respect: "Thank you."

Another person might be inclined to inquire as to just what it is that Rei is after that will almost certainly result in her death; Mister Bushido does not. Perhaps he respects her preference to keep it to herself. Perhaps he's willing to wait for her to reveal it in her own time. Perhaps he simply doesn't care. Hell, maybe it's a combination of all of the above. "I suppose you do, at that," the blond man says, when Rei claims to understand. He doesn't doubt her, or openly challenge her on it, like most sensible adults would do to a teenager while discussing such a serious topic. But, he's hardly a sensible adult, and Rei is no normal teenager, even he can tell this. Obviously she has experience and perhaps wisdom well beyond her years. He'd be surprised just how beyond, though. When Rei /thanks/ him, the One Man Army raises both brows, though between the mask and the way his hair falls, it's impossible to tell. "Hmn... You are welcome, Ayanami. Of course, I will provide such assistance as I am able."

"You have shown me much already," Rei says. And when she says it, she seems to mean it. But then, Rei seems to mean anything she says. If she's lying or joking, then her deadpan is completely perfect. She stands there, arms drooped at her side, shoulders barely asserting themselves. She claims to have learned, but she looks no different at all.

"I ask one further thing of you, though," Rei says, letting her voice drop slightly, into an even quieter place -- if the room were not so empty and still, she would probably risk being lost. She pauses. Maybe it's for dramatic effect. Maybe she's ordering her thoughts.

"Do not let Leo become like us."

Still, the most important lessons Mister Bushido can teach another are on the inside. The mask might be important, serving as a physical reminder... But the real mask is within, not without. See? He's deeper than he seems. When Rei brings up her final request, Mister Bushido lifts his head slightly, chin rising as he looks down at the diminutive Evangelion pilot. With the emptiness of the room and its acoustics, he doesn't have to strain hard to hear her words, but he's definitely paying attention. The actual meat of the request, when he thinks about it, isn't too surprising. Rather than answer immediately, Bushido turns and takes a pair of steps towards the door. "I understandm," he says, echoing Rei's earlier words. "Leo Stenbuck deserves better than that. His soul was never meant to be stained with blood... I had never intended to allow him to walk down the path of destruction." Of course, can he really stop Leo?

Rei's head turns to follow Bushido as he moves toward the door; her feet stay put, giving her the effect of looking even more thoroughly creepy than she usually does. "He chose that path," Rei says, still hushed. It might be easy to pick up some vague, ephemeral feeling in the back of her throat, tainting her words as she speaks.

But it could also just be imagined.

"But it is not too late for him to turn back." Rei breathes, again. Perhaps the implication is that it's too late for the two of them. Or perhaps the implication is just that it's too late for Rei. "Walk your path carefully, Mister Bushido. I hope that you find what you seek."

Stopping in the doorway, perhaps just for the sake of the maximum drama of standing highlighted by the doorframe, Mister Bushido doesn't look back over his shoulder again at Rei as she speaks. He gets the impression that there's something there behind Rei's words about Leo, some vestige of the humanity that she's trying to deny. Perhaps, if he's able to steer Leo off of the road they're taking, she'll have one less concern to free herself from. But, in truth, the blond man doesn't want the younger pilot to walk that road either. In his mind, Leo Stenbuck really /isn't/ meant to be on that path. He could do so many other things with himself. "And you, Ayanami," is the only thing that the One Man Army says, before stepping back out of Rei's room, and letting the door slide shut behind him.