savetheearth | I want to break free, but will they break me?

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I want to break free, but will they break me?

Who: Jin + Yoko Aznable; Beet J. Stag.
When: April 12th, Evening
Where: The Aznable Home
What: Jin's finally echoed back his 14 years of imprisonment in hyperspace, and the reason why his body is still so young. It explains a lot, but it's not a pleasant explanation.

It took him the better part of a day to even comprehend what the echo really meant. Darkly, in the deep well of his heart, he understood immediately. But his brain was full of denial, as always. The denial heaped upon the denial that his past self had, and he managed to function for a few days after the echo without any real trouble. He just ignored it.

But for the first time since the alien trio's broadcast, he's not busy. His higher-ups had told him to stop staying late for work to deal with their charitable work in the aftermath of the Wise Snake battle. So he went home, and he'd just been... sitting there.

"Jin," murmurs his phone. He switched the J app to auto after he found out J had numbers all of a sudden, and was complaining to the network about how lonely he was. "Jin, you have not moved for several minutes. Are you ill, Jin?"

"Go away, J," he says. "I just... I'm fine."

"No you are not."

He groans. "I gotta tell Yoko."

"I can tell her, tell me what to say."

"NO. No. This is the kind of thing I've got to tell her, I mean. Look, I'm just going to... sit here and think until she gets home, all right? Don't... don't get too weirded out. I'm thinking." He sighs and leans wearily forward onto the kitchen table.

J chitters quietly in thought. "Very well," he says, and then lapses into silence.

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She makes a soft sound of surprise as he drags her around, and her grip tightens. She lays her forehead against his shoulder. "You, and me, and we've got Juicy. He'll take care of it, if we can't handle it," she says, lightly.

She swallows. Cain is still a shadow over things. He's what makes this whole thing seem dicey. Her father had been ready to destroy himself to stop Enter, to keep him from using a backup... and he would be again, if it happened now. Yoko's not sure how they can even keep that from happening. Not tell him anything about what they knew, maybe. Lying feels bad, but she doesn't want to fight Cain.

"I don't want to think he's all bad," she says, "but if he starts turning evil... we have to stop him. There's enough people trying to take over the world. We're the Go-busters. We take care of evil avatars, right?" She frowns, thoughtfully. "Do you think Enter was a guy, at the EMC?" She's realizing how little she understands of Enter. Not for the first time, she wishes forcing an Echo was as easy as asking for it.

She's still so small, even though she's practically grown-up now. He was pretty sure, before all this stuff started, that he'd never get to hold her like this again. She was a grown up woman, practically. So he's a little selfishly happy, even if it's for a terrible reason.

"Yeah. We got J." He taps the phone. "Don't we?"

J is silent for a moment, and then he pipes up. "You left me. To face the winter alone."

He picks up the phone and looks at it. "Aw, J." He doesn't know what to say, or how to comfort J, who doesn't have a body to hug, or any real comprehension of how to deal with emotions.

J's voice is fuzzy, still, and the pitch is off. "Do not do it again, Jin. You can not lie to me."

"Yeah, I got it, buddy," he murmurs, poking at the screen.

He thinks briefly about Yoko's question, and feels the hollow sensation of an echo come over him... Maybe more than one. He glances around, eyes tracking the memories as they flood over him.

"...Enter... wasn't. Uh. But... Parts of him, maybe. Like, there was a guy who spoke a lot of French. Maybe they took data from more than one person." His memories aren't of Enter, they're of his coworkers. Men and women he worked with, people whose lunches he stole and who he treated to lunch. People who put up with his idiot kid crap when he was just starting. And now... they're dead. Well, even if they lived, they'd still be dead. But the only bit of them that survived in any way was in Enter.

"Cain's dangerous, 'cause even if he's not like that now... The way Enter was at the end... That could overwhelm anybody." He knows, because he's feeling overwhelmed now by these emotions from his past life. He suddenly misses them, the other half of the team he barely remembers. Ryuuji, his protege, and the big-mouthed kid Hiromu.

"I bet he knows, but I'm probably still gonna tell him what we're willing to do if he goes nuts. Maybe he'll even be cool with it, you never know." He grits his teeth. He doesn't know if he would call Cain his friend or anything, but... he's still not excited about the whole idea. "But yeah. We'll take him down if it comes to that. We're in charge of that whole business."

Yoko shifts, to maybe not be leaning so heavily on her father (she's too old for this - ) but J's talk of lonely winters sets off a memory, and she closes her eyes, breath hiccuping just momentarily. Then, again, as Jin continues to talk. She sits up, hastily, her arm looping around Jin's shoulders but her other hand rubbing not gently at her face.

"If any monsters absorb dad's card, you're not allowed to protect it by yourself, J," she says, first, reaching out to tap at the screen. "Egotist or not, you're stuck with my help." Even if her father won't help himself. (She remembers New Years' Eve again, Cain could already make Metaroids, it was just a question of Enetron...)

Finally, she continues, her fingertips still tapping the screen softly. "He and Escape - the dog statues, the goggles..." she says, as she works through the memory. "We only found out when we went to hyperspace." She's glad to know they made it there, eventually.

Jin strokes her head as she talks. He hums deep in his throat as he listens, to try to calm her down like he did when she was a baby and liked to feel his chest rumble with his voice. He's so overwhelmingly happy that he got to raise her, this time.

J responds, his voice still ragged. "Yes. If I encounter, I will report. We will save him this time." It's stronger than his usual passive robotic voice. "Jin is part of me so must be protected. Yoko too. We will watch back for each other." He's still processing all of this information. Well, the information was easy enough to process, but the emotions around and behind it... He's not yet had to think about matters of life and death, even with his previous echoes. The processing power on the server, as much as it is given how much Jin has upgraded it, is a little lacking when it comes to working through complex emotions. He may just have to put them aside for now.

"Right, I remember..." Jin murmurs, thinking about the other members of the EMC, and the bits and pieces he's seen come out in Cain and his flashbacks of Enter. "I don't think Messiah got people at all, so that was the only way he could... make something that could operate in the real world." He feels a little nausea, thinking of how those people logically became parts of Enter and Escape.

"Hah. I mean, you had to come visit me sometime, right?" He says, with a half-hearted smirk. It's hard not to fall victim to his urge to try to lighten the mood at a time like this. His death, his lies... and the possibility of all of that coming back and hitting him again. It's just so frustrating to be so powerless.

She's glad to have him here, clearly and physically present and her father. Not the person she sees in her memories, who feels like a comrade, not a parent.

"We're a team, Juicy. Go-Busters." Even if they aren't all together. She hasn't felt the loss associated with the hole in the team terribly keenly, not since she remembered what it was like training with the man she now knows is Ryuuji, but it echoes right now. She wonders, absently, if she'll ever see them. "And we've got a mission to keep each other safe." She pets the screen, and peels back, resting her knuckles absently against Jin's chest.

"If they didn't have people's personalities, they wouldn't be any good at - planning," she agrees, soft. "That way, he still got all the power, even if he was locked in hyperspace." This begs the obvious question: how was Enter involved? What were the backup cards? How had he obtained them, and why? She doesn't ask them. There's too much in the air already. She's getting very tired of these mental assaults. (And they're absolutely assaults. She's exhausted.)

"Daaaad," she whines, but it's a relief to see him back to normal in that little way - unhealthy coping methods or not. It's familiar, not at all like the honest and, frankly, fragile man who'd dropped heavy secrets on her. He's never seemed as human as he has lately. It's sobering. "I don't think she ever visited you for anything good." Then she reaches for the cracker bag and retrieves another one to chomp on.

"We are a team." J agrees, though his voice definitely fucks up somewhere in there. He sets a reminder to process as many of these emotions as he possibly can overnight. It can't be that hard if humans do it all the time, right?

"I will protect you," he says, determined. His voice is better, clearer.

Jin nods, agreeing. "It's good that Messiah wasn't reincarnated, at least. I can't imagine a human version..." He shivers a little. "We should eat dinner. You're gonna pass out if we don't." It sounds jokey, but it is quite literal, by this point.

He kisses her forehead. "Better than no visitors at all."

"I'll protect you, too," she says, sweet, before pulling a face.

"Ugh, don't even suggest that," she says, "what if he shows up!" She shivers, then slides pointedly back into her chair. "I don't pass out every five seconds," she comments, somewhat sullen, and grabs another cracker. "But I made that pasta salad, and we're eating it!"

She pats his arm when he smooches her forehead. "Yeah," she says, soft, before forcing her mood back up, pushing back from the table and standing to go get into the fridge. "There's chicken in here, too, I think," she says, leaning into the fridge to sort through containers.

He's kind of sad she's left. She probably won't crawl back into his lap again. He hops up anyway and leans over her. "Say, bun, now that I've stopped avoiding talking to you to try to hide significant past-life events, what's up with colleges, huh? I've seen the letters you're getting..."

He turns aside to pretend like he doesn't really care that much and gets some plates down, but he is intensely listening.

She's in the middle of shifting containers when he asks about colleges, and freezes up for a second. It is, however, a relief, to know why he was avoiding it. He was always so hard to handle, when he didn't want to talk about something, and it always worried her. "I haven't decided," she says, as she straightens up to pop a Tupperware on the container. "I got in everywhere I wanted besides Yale, so..." she kind of shrugs, trying to seem casual herself.

"I'm thinking of LCU, probably," she says, "I don't really want to... leave the city, and their medical programs are good." She doesn't want to be hours away if he gets hurt again, or if aliens attack, and the thought of being without her Echoes makes her feel possessive and selfish.

"Those elitist pricks didn't let you in?! Omg. OH. Em. Gee," he trills, not quite able to keep a half smirk off his face. "You want me to egg the dean of admission's house?"

He's relieved to hear her talk about LCU, his shoulders stop bunching up. "So, you're just gonna stay here, right? In this house? With me? Your favorite dad?" He hovers, irritatingly.

"More like my Calc class grades kept me out," she grumbles, "what good's your fancy reputation doing me, huh?" She rolls her eyes. "You're too old for house-egging."

He's so transparent, and that's before he starts to talk. "Ooooh no," she says, "don't you start with the guilt trip, mister. I am moving into the dorms like a normal college student so you're not in all of my business." She stares him down, chin raised high.

"What? Me? In your business? I never." He screws his lips up. "I mean, wouldn't you rather not have to pay for dorms?" He considers, very briefly, telling her he doesn't want to pay for the dorms, because it's his money, but he's not that mean.

"Oh, whatever," she rebuts, poking at his chest. "Look, dad..." She sighs. She's going to have to do something she doesn't like doing - bringing up her mother. "Mom thinks I should try the dorms for at least a year. I only get to be a college student once, no matter what's happening. And if things get worse from here, then I'd like to think I can live by myself a little! I'm not a kid any more."

He sighs very heavily. His ex-wife is right, even if he doesn't want her to be. It's gonna be awfully lonely in this house without his daughter. But at least as opposed to the times when she's off for the summer with the ex, she'll be within driving distance.

"Okay, but... Okay." He draws himself up, shoulders hunched over, pressing his fingers to his lips as he thinks. "All right, so. You have to come back for dinner once a week."

She's clattering around the kitchen as he thinks out loud, setting plates on the counter and rummaging for silverware. She sighs. "If there's time," she agrees, tentative. "I haven't even started, dad, I don't know what it's going to be like."

She'd thought about taking a year off. Putting real-life things after saving the world. But if she can still go, she thinks she'd better.

"But I'll payyyyy!!!" he whines. "Don't pretend like you won't miss me even a little. We're a team!!!"

J pipes up from the kitchen table. "I will watch Yoko, take care of. Better teammate."

"Shut up, J!" he snaps back. "You don't even have a body yet."

"Where is my car body, I want. You bought bug net, yes?"

"Yes, I bought the bug net, sheesh." He groans, "I'm not excited about having to follow you around putting your bugs in cages for you, though."

"Get excited," J admonishes, in the voice of Han Solo from Star Trek.

Jin just rolls his eyes. "Whatever. But come on, if you can't make it some week or I can't make it some week, that's fine. It's not like we're gonna hold grudges. We're family."

"I didn't say that, oh my gooood," she whines back, pulling a face. "But I've lived with you for almost eighteen years! There are other people to meet, dad."

She laughs, light, and turns, hand leaning on the island, to peek at J. "Juicy's always got my back," she agrees, and lets them argue about bug cages.

"You know I can give him a hand, right," she says. Then, a beat. "You? Not holding grudges? I'd never hear the end of it!" (Hypocrisy in action, but hey.)

"No, no, not almost 18 years. You stopped living with me full time when you were three. And your mom and I shared... well, let's call it half time for ease of calculation, for the next nine years. And then nine months out of the year for the next almost five... So..."

He taps his finger exactly three times, and then points it at her, "You've only lived with me for eleven-and-a-quarter years. So there." It's a Pyrrhic victory, really. He makes a face. "Ugh, that's not nearly enough time." He leans weakly on the counter. "I haven't... imparted enough wisdom..."

He unreels and steps closer to her. "Are you sure you don't want to live with me still? Can you at least bring anyone you're dating over so I can threaten them with physical pain or my intelligence...? It's my one true joy in life."

By the time he gets done calculating, she's in the midst of spooning food on her plate. "If eleven-and-a-quarter years isn't enough for you, how many more are you gonna need?!" She demands, gesturing at him with the spoon in her hand.

She looks up at him, unimpressed. "I'm not living here full-time in college," she says, with finality. "And on the off chance I date anyone, I'm definitely not telling you! You'd just be mean to them. Find something new to do!"

"All of them. All the years." He stares at her, dead serious. "But I guess you can have a break from me."

"Anyway, I guess if they're halfway decent, they'll have to meet me eventually." He shrugs. "Actually... Come to think-"

He has one more thing to tell her... And now's as good a time as any, he supposes. "Uh, do you remember a guy named Kurorin- Actually, his name was Kuroki. I just called him Kurorin. He was the head of the Go-Busters."

She rolls her eyes. If he had her way they'd get old (again, and for the first time) together in this house. Not happening.

"Kuro--" she pauses, information coming together as she speaks. "The Commander. Yeah, I remember." Remembers their easy arguments, remembers with familiarity that he was the man who'd guided the Go-Busters. "...why." She has a suspicion, from context, but oh god does she not want to think about that.

He makes a moue, pretty sure she's gonna be grossed out. Then again, he does so love grossing her out. He smirks. "Weeelll, it looks like me and him had a little thing going on before I left on my trip and after I came back, at least a little. So I guess that makes me bisexual! Or whatever it is you're calling it nowadays."

He raises his eyebrows, grinning aggressively. "And now you know all my secrets."

"Aughhhhhh," she groans, and collapses forward onto the counter. "Daaaaad, whyyyyyy! I don't want to know who you were - ughhhh!" It's not, honestly, that surprising. Not really. The Kuroki in her memories has been too fond and too close to the Jin in them.

Her dramatics ending, she straightens up enough to stare, baleful, at him. "Keep the gross secrets, please, I don't have to know everything," she says.

He chuckles at her overreaction. "Well, wouldn't want you to be too surprised if he shows up." The subtle tone in his voice indicates he considers that to be too good to be true. "I miss him, though. And I can't build him, can I J?"

J pipes up from the table. "I do not think he would be as successful as me at being the best robot."

He nods. "Sorry for tellin' you all my deepest darkest secrets. But you know. You said you wanted to hear the truth."

"The Commander'd keep you on a leash, that's for---awww, now you've ruined that," Yoko says, starting at a tease and resolving into a whine. "Thanks, Dad!"

She leans back against the counter behind her, crossing her arms over her chest. "J, you're biased," she says, throwing her voice toward the table, and then... "Some secrets are too deep for your daughter to know. But... thanks."

She looks down, thinking. "Is there anything you want from me?" she asks, wondering.

He laughs. "I think he's tired enough of that during the day, he wouldn't want to do it at night too." He waggles his eyebrows. His relationship with Kurorin, as far as he recalls, was more restful than anything... A quiet respite for him during days when nothing was certain. And yet Kurorin always had that question in his eyes. He never shared anything with him. Not even the things he ought to have known. He sighs, quietly. He hopes that the same problem doesn't ever come up again...

He bites his lip. "Well, yeah, but I didn't want you to be surprised if I found another dude to pal around with sometime." He shrugs. "It could happen!"

He looks at her for a moment, quiet. Then he bends down just slightly to meet her eyes. He holds her shoulders, eyes serious and maybe just a touch desperate. "I just want you to try to stay safe. I can't stop you from running out there when there's a fight, obviously. I just want you to take me along, if you can. And stay alive, if you can't. Both of us are gonna live through this, this time."

"Stop! Stop that eyebrow... thing! Stop!" She breaks into giggles, hands to her mouth.

"They'd have to pass Juicy's screening before you'd let them near me, anyway," she says, flapping her hands. "The only thing that surprises me about you is that I've never walked in on you kissing a computer." Somehow, she's not terribly worried about him suddenly bringing home any guys. He hasn't brought any girls over, after all, and it's been years.

She looks up when he settles his hands on her shoulders. Her hands drop, and she nods, once. "We're not dying," she answers, "you're not allowed to die on me again." Her hands find his ribs, and she steps in to hug him properly, her cheek against his shoulder and her arms tight around his upper body.

He grins, happy to see her laughing again, even after all this serious talk.

"Huhhh. No, it's strictly platonic between J and me," he says with a smirk.

"Humans have gross bodies. I am a child of light and too good for humankind." Jin throws a raspberry J's way, regretting letting him have free run of the internet. J responds gravely. "You can do that, proves my point."

But then things get serious and he puts his arms around her as she hugs him. "Of course not! I've got way too much to live for this time around." He kisses her on the top of her head. "Love you, bun."

"Want hug from Yoko!" J sings.

"Gonna have to wait for a body, champ." Jin calls behind his back. "It's great, thoughhh!"

J plays a sobbing noise.

"Not J, he's like, your kid, I mean like... a Jin robot," she protests, and snorts. "Come back with that after you grow up some more, Juicy."

"You had plenty to live for last time too," she says, her voice half-muffled. "You just didn't have the chance to get to it." Her hug tightens, and she's silent for a long moment. Eventually, she pulls back, and tugs her phone out of her back pocket. She settles it on her palm to navigate the menus, and then tucks it between her arm and her chest.

"There's your hug, J," she says, "Dad, you really should build him something I can hug! Phones are too tough."

"Wait, you think I'm so self-centered and narcissistic that I'd want to date a robot of myself?!" He looks genuinely surprised and kind of hurt, really. "I'd at least make a robot of someone hotter than me. Even I get tired of me sometimes."

He listens to her murmuring with a frustrated frown. He knows she's right. But he also knows that the past version of him wasn't just cut off from his family by the walls that separate universes. He was also separated by his feelings of inadequacy. That's not something that she really needs to know, though. He sighs into her hair as she pulls away.

J can, of course, not feel the hug. He breathes a sigh through his speakers. "Thank you, Yoko. I will give a better one back when I have a body."

Jin puts his fingers to his lips. "Ehhh, I don't really know what I could build that would be huggable. But I can brainstorm."

"No, no," she says, rolling her eyes. "But I totally think you'd make a robot you to make out with sometimes."

J's sighing gets him picked up and poked at. "I'm holding you to that!" What she remembers of J makes her think hugging him might not be totally comfortable, but they'd make do.

"Put him in a pillow," she says, "oh! Oh, like a pillow pet." She imagines a stag beetle pillow pet with a speaker, idly.

He considers. "Yeah, just the head, just for makeouts. Sounds good. Maybe if I have time someday."

J lets out a cicada's cry. "I promise!!"

Jin chuckles. "I don't know if I have the sewing skills for that, but we'll see what I can come up with given some time." Maybe he would commission the plush from someone else. He would like it if J was... able to get his body back soon. Other than building all these robots being kind of inconvenient, he kind of needs J to transform.

"Please just find a date instead!" she says, "I'll sign you up for OKCupid if you build a robot head, you watch."

"He's probably going to look up and be a robot one day just as soon as you come up with something," she muses. "From the frying pan into the fire."

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I want to break free, but will they break me?

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oh my god i said han solo from star trek. I MEANT WARS

your shame is displayed. forever.

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my face is in my hands