video / text; @sugarcane

[seafloor]

[ The video opens with a view of some undecorated Everlight dorm room. Panning around reveals little of interest: a made bed, a few cans of vending machine non-alcoholic sake—

And suddenly, the sound of a waterfall surging fills the feed with peaking audio. Bright blue blurs the edges of the feed until the space suddenly becomes a dingy city alleyway. A scarred hand lifts as if being inspected before it rapidly takes on a liquid appearance and the noise returns and the scene shifts again.

Now it's at Tokyo Bay. There's a brief pan of the seascape before the feed cuts. ]

---

Oh, shit. My bad.
I didn't realize that got uploaded.
This tech is still weird as hell to me.
I miss flip phones.

Comments

[saudadist]

survival means doing things you don't want to do sometimes
but as long as the deaths weren't in vain, it's just another part of the cycle isn't it?

[seafloor]

I don't disagree.
I still have no intentions of taking another person's life, but I understand the necessity.
Every kill has to count.

[saudadist]

just out of curiosity

what defines "a person" to you?

[seafloor]

Tough to say.
Defining it too loosely or strictly has gotten me into lots of trouble before.

As a baseline, a person is someone with sentience and sapience.
So that includes a lot of what folks would call 'demi-hunans' or 'monsters'.

[saudadist]

makes sense

the meaning can be vast even when describing humans themselves

[seafloor]

...Yeah, that's true too.
Not all humans deserve to be called people.

Either way, I try to avoid ending a life unless it's to hunt for food.
Or, in the kaijus' case, there's absolutely no way to avoid harm otherwise.

[saudadist]

if they'd have made it to land, they would've killed untold civilians

good enough?

[seafloor]

That's what I meant with what I said earlier.
Letting them go would have been catastrophic.

Okay, topic shift.
Have you been to the greenhouse often?

[saudadist]

sometimes
it's a nice place to just sit and relax

[seafloor]

It is.
It's probably my favorite place to be while on base.

Got any spots that you like outside headquarters?

[saudadist]

a few
mostly parks and other quiet places

[seafloor]

Quiet is good.
I've found a few abandoned buildings outside of the city that I like.

There's the bay, too.
Sometimes I wonder if I could swim out far enough to find a kaiju.

[saudadist]

probably not a good idea

I heard the water is poisoned in places

[seafloor]

Seriously?
Damn.
Maybe I'll fly over it instead...

Are there any other countries you'd be interested in visiting?
Neo Korea? China?
If I'm going to be here for the long run, I'd like to see how the world's changed.

[saudadist]

[ The rest of the world? Other countries? China and Korea are just across the sea. Other countries are even further beyond them, and that's not even counting the ones to the south or further east across the ocean.

Conceptually, she knows they exist. The world is big and vast, after all, but they were always untouchable. Mere suggestions if places instead of something physical. ]

never really thought about it

the wider world has only ever been something I've seen on TV
and even then, sparingly

[seafloor]

You should think about it.

[ It's not even a question for someone like Kaito—a free spirit can never be bound to one place for too long. But there are so many others who have never stepped outside familiarity's walls. ]

I think it would be worth the experience.
Even if you end up hating it, it's better to have at least tried seeing other places while you have the freedom to do so.





Well, relative freedom.
We could talk for hours over whether the Outsiders are mercenaries or indentured servants.
But my point stands.

[saudadist]

[ He's not wrong, but she still bristles over being told what she should or shouldn't do. It's instinctual, but she has enough hold over herself to not verbalize that displeasure. ]

maybe
I guess it won't hurt to give it a spare thought

[seafloor]

[ Hm. Kaito isn't really feeling a satisfied vibe from those words.

But it's text. He can't read her feelings over text. ]

That's good enough for me.
Can't force you.

How do you feel about spicy food?
This is related.

[saudadist]

it depends on the spice level
I haven't built up that much of an immunity

why ask?

[seafloor]

Korea and China are huge on spicy dishes.
I don't know how it is now, though.
But it's something to think about.

I also don't have that much of a tolerance for it.
So I figured I should start building it up again.

[saudadist]

[ Oh that's...a good point actually. ]

I guess I'll buy a lineup of hot sauces and put them on everything until they stop hurting

[seafloor]

...I guess that's more convenient than cooking everything, yeah.

[ He was absolutely thinking about cooking a bunch of spicy dishes on his own. ]

Hot sauces tend to be made from pepper extracts anyway.
That makes them way hotter than some of the peppers themselves.
I suppose it wouldn't be bad training.

[saudadist]

I like kimchi pretty decently too
isn't that like a staple in Korea? pickled vegetables seems pretty universal