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soushimemenashiro · 6 years

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SeinNicht Week Day 1: Pain

post-Exodus. In which the core of Mk Sein is affected still by the circumstances of its rebirth, and proceeds to seek conversation.

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It’s not a phenomenon anybody expected, but—

But after four years of being entombed with Mk Nicht, Mk Sein showed signs of activity. It was almost the opposite of what happened that time years ago, when Mk Nicht attempted Crossing with Siegfried System despite having no pilot and its systems deactivated. But even then, this recent signal had been brief. The administrator only had timestamps to show—this was no Urd’s Well, and the island did not apparently understand what that entire thing was about. Mk Sein was still in the place they locked him in.

Well, at least that was what Fumihiko understood. He didn’t really understand this, however.

“Father,” Kazuki greeted him as Fumihiko took off his shoes, eyes still on the... sight in the living room. Kazuki continued to cook as if it wasn’t anything strange he should’ve explained over the phone, when he asked him to come home at a reasonable hour tonight. “Welcome back.”

Soushi looked up from his seat on the floor, hugging a child-sized Mk Sein in his lap, beaming. “Welcome home, Commander Dad!”

Fumihiko stared down at the child, the mech, then his own son. The first had already gone back to pressing his cheek against Mk Sein, watching the TV—the second was largely unhelpful to begin with, though its head was tilted towards Fumihiko, the blue lights dimming slightly in fluttering falters and then something akin to a stare. Kazuki checked on the steamer.

Fumihiko sat down. Clearly he wasn’t going to get any clarification. It was times like these that made him wish Minashiro Soushi was here—not for anything, but because he would’ve already alerted him and the others and be ready with a report and several hypotheses, if not an actual explanation of what was happening, thanks to his ability to communicate with festums now. His son and his son’s son?

Those two, they were the sort to be content to leave him without any explanation why Mk Sein was on the table with them during dinner, looking to the world like a sad child.

Kazuki learned at least one thing after receiving his blessing and earning the ability to communicate with the festums: there was probably a reason this happened, because these kinds of strange things required some sort of Mir to pull off, which meant that there was some thought process that led to this decision. Kazuki would not dare to claim he knew who did it, much less why, but that was the conclusion he had learned to reach. It'll become clear someday, basically. That seemed to be what Soushi did those years ago, in trusting his sister—niece?—despite everything. And if there was something he trusted, it was that Soushi—both the previous and this one—would lead him to the right place, the right answer.

Until then?

“Kazuki, Kazuki!” Soushi scrambled to his feet as Kazuki took a step into the house, his expression so determined and full of ideas. Mk Sein was beside him, standing with ease, and seemed to look at Soushi in worry, arms already stretched out. It had only been a week, but Mk Sein was starting to become an ever-present protector of Soushi, and Soushi insisted he played with the mech, even though he had to leave it behind when he went to school. “Kazuki, can we go to the beach?”

Kazuki blinked. Well, he had just come back from work—Alvis cafeteria, today (they needed to do extra work to make up for the difference between the system here and the system back in Tatsumiyajima, and so most people were working there)—but well, there was still time until he had to start dinner.

It had been some time since he was able to take Soushi to the beach, after all. Kouyo was always kind enough to pick Soushi up, both to school and back, but that wasn't nearly enough. That couldn't constitute family time. “All right, then.”

He got a beam and a cheer in return. “Let's go then, Sein!”

Mk Sein flew in and straightened Soushi back up when he almost stumbled off the steps. Mk Sein also gave Soushi a flying shoulder ride as they went down to the beach, much to the jealousy—and amusement—of others down the road. Kazuki couldn't help but smile as he brushed back Soushi’s bangs, the boy's head on par with his chest with Mk Sein levitating five centimeters off the ground. Soushi turned to him.

“Sein said he lives under water with his friend. Can we swim down there?”

Kazuki stopped dead in his tracks and Mk Sein followed suit.

It… took several moments to connect the dots. Right. Mk Sein wasn't above ground anymore, especially now that its restrictions were removed. But they weren’t keeping them under the beach, no—furthermore, no amount of swimming could ever get them there.

“It—it’s not there, Soushi,” Kazuki said, ruffling his hair. “Mk Sein is underwater, but not here. It’s in a different place.”

Even when expected, the way his expression fell was a bit… it made Kazuki felt rather terrible. Apparently it affected Mk Sein, too, because the fafner then turned its head, glowing a bit. In a strange, wordless way, Kazuki understood the sentences—it was somewhat different to the usual communication with festums, felt a lot more mathematical and impossibly large, but he got the gist. It’s okay. Just alone there.

“I’m sorry,” Soushi said, petting Mk Sein’s face gently. His smile was soft, like his expression whenever he found a kitten in the street in the rain and wanted to hold his umbrella over it. It was a kind smile, the sort that made Kazuki proud. “You don’t have to be. You’re here!”

Mk Sein brightened for a moment, the machine that Kazuki used to think of as a terrifying, ravenous giant now so… innocent, in a way. He never thought about it that way. He never thought about the fafners being sentient, not really.

Soushi hummed at times, the rest of the trip to the beach. The little, three or four noted tunes were almost like replies; what they truly mean, though, Kazuki reckoned those were for Mk Sein alone. Mk Sein ‘played’ in the sea: sat in the shallow waters, looked up at the sky, moved its arms around to follow the flapping motions Soushi demonstrated on land. They found some more crabs, which Soushi followed for ten minutes, endlessly fascinated. Kouyo was fishing and only smiled as Soushi hugged Chocolat, now aging and less sprightly but ever so vigilant, and he smiled, too, at Mk Sein.

“Mk Sein became what it is because it was born knowing pain,” Kouyo murmured to him as they watched Mk Sein carry Soushi up and out of Chocolat’s reach, the dog barking as the child laughed as he went higher and higher. The sun was starting to lower in the sky, turning them slowly into grey silhouettes against the deep blue waters. “You understand, don’t you?”

Kazuki was the one who carried Soushi back home, the boy dozing lightly against his shoulder as he and Mk Sein walked back. In the back of his mind, a thought was born. One day, once grown, it would become an understanding.

“So you’re telling me that Mk Sein has manifested into something with a friendlier size because he got lonely in the hangar?”

The sentence coming out of his own mouth was so bizarre, Fumihiko wasn’t sure exactly how he was supposed to react. He remembered how less than ten years ago, he’d thought that tears were a sign that something was beyond festum—human. Then, the core of the island showed not just tears, but fears as well. Showed a willingness to sacrifice herself for the island. Then a mech showed a refusal to be destroyed—a fear of death. And now? A fafner feeling loneliness?

“Only Soushi knows exactly, but I think so,” Kazuki said. “Soushi mentioned that Mk Nicht is currently where life originates, and will come back someday.”

“Well, Mk Nicht has been off ever since… things happened,” Kondou said. “Nobody tested it out, of course, but wasn’t there a report from years ago about how the core wasn’t actually there anymore?”

The thing about cores was that with all these business of ‘rebirth’ and the cycle of life, things were getting… complicated. Fumihiko fully admitted his personal inability to see fafner cores as a “sentient” festum—unlike the island core or Kasugai, these things didn’t even seem to have thoughts. They didn’t show the ability to act.

But then again, Mk Nicht had actively fought against being disposed of. It had the ability to force on the pain sensation to deter Soushi from deactivating it. Lines were being blurred in these past ten years alone. Perhaps to move forward he would have to accept these new realities, as much as he reflexively questioned them.

“What is this about ‘where life originates’, though?” Fumihiko asked, looking at his son.

For one long moment, Kazuki’s eyebrows furrowed, as though he was debating whether something was worth bring up or not. Kondou took the opportunity to finish his lunch, which reminded Fumihiko that he probably ought to do the same. The cafeteria was empty by this point, everyone having gone back to work. Kondou wasn’t here as a battle commander either, actually—he probably had some other work, but Fumihiko decided against asking. Kondou was an adult who could decide whether getting a talking to from Dr. Toomi was worth it or not, and he did have valuable insight to Mk Nicht as a Siegfried System operator.

“I… I think I sort of understand, but I don’t know how exactly it applies to Mk Nicht,” Kazuki said at last. He looked away, but then faced Fumihiko again, expression resolute. “Back when I first boarded Mk Sein, something happened. It was hard to explain what actually happened, because I didn’t really understand either, but Mk Sein was eaten up by the festum, I think.”

It… it was a story Fumihiko thought was somewhat familiar, though retold differently by somebody else. Mizoguchi had told him about how the machine seemed to be swallowed up by the lava, the monster, something. Then it reemerged in a rock dome after the… creature ate itself. The story was absolutely bizarre and not entirely believable, but he trusted the people who told him about it.

“It was something Tsubaki Minashiro said to me that sounded strange back then, but I think might be… relevant? But she told me that ‘it’ had been born. I didn’t really understand what she meant, back then, but I think she might’ve been referring to the core of Mk Sein. I don't know why it was reborn, though.”

“So you’re telling me that there’s a possibility that Mk Nicht’s core is, in fact, being born again?” Fumihiko wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about this, but his lunch had taken the back seat at the moment. This was a bit too strange to process in a short amount of time. “But why?”

Without the island core, Minashiro Soushi, or connection to Siegfried System at the moment of the latter’s death, it was impossible to determine what actually happened. It was impossible too, then, to predict what would come after this—when would the core return? Would it experience change? Where did it actually go? What was rebirth, and what did it do?

The two people with answers were not here to answer. Fumihiko shook his head.

“We’ll see if Soushi ends up getting any answers to that question by talking to Mk Sein. For now, though, we’ll just wait for any new development.”

At night, with the dulled sounds of Kazuki and Fumihiko Dad still in the living room watching the television and talking, Sein sat on the corner of the bedroom. Shadows played around, though, dark brothers of passing clouds chasing each other—Soushi was sleepy, but he was awake anyway. He could feel the emotions emanating from the core of Sein. The core wanted to talk, but it didn’t know the words yet. Soushi was kind of waiting for it to speak up, if he didn’t fall asleep before then.

The previously dimmed lights of Sein’s head lit up, almost like a night light.

When I was born, I remembered the wishes that made me who I am.

There was an image, then, of something a garish, dark orange—Soushi sank into it like a bathtub, immersing himself in the projected memory. There was a hot-red sort of warmth permeating the outer skin of this strange, incomprehensible space, but Soushi left the thoughts pondering the strangeness of it all to the mathematical plane, focusing instead on the thoughts of Sein.

Oh?

He was hurt… I think I understand pain. But he wanted to talk to somebody, then. It was something that made him feel better—if only he could do it for one last time, he’d be happy. Soushi.

Soushi blinked at the name, though he said nothing.

I wanted to know if talking to the core of nothingness would change anything.

“It will, I think,” Soushi said. There was a wealth of evidence emerging from the sea of his consciousness that proved it, though when Soushi himself attempted to grasp at the individual proof, the memory dispersed like tiny fish and a paper net. “I think Kazuki was happier, too, when he got to talk.”

Was Kazuki happier because he got to talk to that person? Soushi didn’t know Kazuki before he was old enough to remember his existence, but he knew that, somehow. There was a lot of sadness, too, but Soushi felt like he was, at least, happier in some ways. There was a wound in his heart that healed, then, even though the world would tear open new ones. But at least the healing of that would let him live, and for that reason alone, talking was immeasurably valuable.

Will talking make me happier?

The windchimes twinkled outside, the sound distant thanks to the rustling of the nearby leaves. Soushi flopped to his side, hand readily readjusting his blanket so that they don’t fall off his shoulder, and closed his eyes. “Uh huh. And you will get to, I promise.”

#seinnichtweek2018 #Fafner in the Azure #soukyuu no fafner #shoutout to that video of really adorable talking sein and nicht on nnd #m'writin

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