𝗴𝗼𝗱 𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗱

okay— he was clearly disorientated. maybe even concussed, even though the suit had taken most of the damage after the blast and the landing. or, well— was it more accurate to say that the concrete had taken the brunt of the landing? it had cracked and shattered more than any of his bones, so gen would lean more towards that he broke the building rather than the building broke him.

whatever. semantics didn't matter right now. not when there was a pissed off toddler on his left making demands that he could barely understand.

❛ who did this? uh, the kaiju? ❜ was that not a given? what else could slap him against a building as if he were a little fly? he didn't know where it went / couldn't really find it within him to focus on anything for a second or two before common sense finally pushed itself past the general fog in his brain. body struggles only a little bit with the act of standing up ( gs-3305 wasn't nearby for him to use as support, discarded a few steps away from his landing site ) before he starts moving towards his weapon and target. and then promptly stops, remembering the little fury at his feet.

it’s horrific, the violence that possesses the muscles of his right arm. there is no denying the twitch of each individual finger / as if desperate to reach for the gun that’s no longer resting against his hip, as if yearning for a blade to pierce through pretended flesh. the reaction is a fool’s desperate clinging towards a lie that is unraveling with every piercing headache, every flash of pink noticed in a reflective surface, every visit to this grave of pristine walls and electrical engineering. the little creature looks as much human as gen does — which means to say, hardly at all.

another person - kaiju. if he wasn’t already chained towards death on the battlefield, he would have given the officers standing guard a reason to open fire in such close proximity to their beloved scientific discoveries.

instead, he looks down as if she was nothing more than gum under the sole of his boot. ❛ i should throw you back into your little cage myself for that show of disrespect. ❜ there was a sadistic sense of enjoyment at no longer standing on the receiving end of the sentence, though it soured rather quickly upon the recognition that it was thrown at the face of a child. a kaiju, the mind reminds. nothing more than a monster. ❛ i'm fighting to protect innocent people from your kind. you're nothing more than a science experiment. don't think that we could ever be compared. ❜ but the words tasted wrong long after they left his mouth / an aftertaste so rancid, a wave of nausea began to form. he couldn't stand the sight of her / couldn't stand what he saw reflected back in those eyes——

And then. She shrieks.

he’s going to kill narumi. there’s an immediate surge of rage, embarrassment, and something like—— like fondness? —— but kikoru squashes all of that down. it's not something that concerns phym, young and relatively innocent. it's not her fault narumi is imparting bad manners upon her, after all. nor is it her fault that kaiju rampage the world.

at the very least, she's cuter than kafka.

❝ narumi's just rude, ❞ kikoru explains. ❝ he doesn't have any respect for anyone—— don't follow everything he does, alright? ❞ does it makes sense? is he talking down to her? how the hell does he talk to phym? he wonders if it'd be rude to crouch down to meet phym's eyes properly, or if it'd simply be too patronizing.

( unbidden, her mind reminds her of—— sagan. how her sister had treated her, in the scant few years they had together: like a real person, not like the child she was. sagan knew when to hold her hand and when she shouldn't; she knew that kikoru, with all the expectations of a shinomiya, would grow into the mantle just fine. and didn't she love sagan for it?

hell, doesn't she appreciate narumi for that now? he calls her a brat and shoves her around but never once has he truly patronized her. never once has he doubted her where it truly matters, hidden things from her in fear that she couldn't handle it. doesn't she ... )

it's annoying. 

ever since the initial discovery, it's been a constant annoyance gen couldn't shake off; her clinginess was exactly what one would expect from a child, but the genetic makeup revealed the monster that hides within sheep's clothing. his threats upon extracting her from the kaiju attack hadn't been empty, but with headquarters practically demanding he take the intelligent little kaiju back for further studying, it's not like gen could actually do anything.

and she seemed docile enough. for now.  ( he remains on guard, despite this. )

if gen were to be completely honest, he hadn't expected her to leave the laboratories. but a handful of hours later, the little kid was cleared— with executive permissions to engage within the perimeter of the headquarters, no less! and the cherry on top? he's been assigned as her designated babysitter. it's only natural that the strongest officer be the one in charge of the kaiju threats, that bald old man had told him. 

maybe what annoys gen the most is that the smooth talking had absolutely worked. and because he let a few nicely structured sentences get to his head, here gen was: storming to the lunch hall, with a little kaiju baby on his heels. 

he immediately turns on his heel to properly face his little shadow. she was smaller than most of the kids in the orphanage. he doesn't let the thought ruminate.