#always fell flat when it came to stuff like that in the narrative vs the dialogue

[hellhathfrozethoverthinking]

fic #2

A/N: >2.5k words of....somethin. not actually sure what to call this..."Visiting Saturn Overtakes Terra With A Terrible Feeling Of Discomfort Brought About By His Own Mistakes And Control Freak Tendencies" doesn't really have a ring to it. more notes after the end :UUU

--

SRN-006's wing of Starship Sol was very minimalist.

The crown moulding and intricately carved patterns in each nook and cranny of SRN-007's broad and colourful corridors stood in stark contrast to these…neatly grid tile walls and artificial marble floors polished to reflection. A monochromatic, mostly black scheme, with splashes of white for accent.

It was one circular, narrow hall surrounding the repair lab in which he worked, with only purely necessary latitude. Just wide enough to accommodate their largest enlistee and no further.

SRN-006's wing of Starship Sol was too minimalist.

The dim pin lights resting parallel on the bottom of the perimeter were bulbless, caged, and cold. Cameras and sensors abounds sat in little pockets mechanically blocked out of the tile, and they too were black, with tiny red ringed eyes staring, unmoved, at whoever passed.

And then that would draw the attention to the preference of verticality in construction, as those burning lens would still be present the further back you tipped your head. In fact, should you regard them, they would return the favour, ensuring you felt small and out of place.

The ceiling stretched temple-high, and if you chose to follow it to its end, nothing special awaited you at the top. It was the same throughout, if not darker for the lack of mounted lighting.

SRN-006's wing of Starship Sol was beyond minimalist.

In every aspect, he'd wasted his opportunity for expression on barren, and featureless design. Nothing existed for comfort. There were no intentional benches, no decoration, nothing to suggest that anyone with a personality occupied the room in between.

How he managed to use so little of the space allotted to him when drafting, and turn what could have been a gravity-controlled exhibition lobby (per his home planet's aesthetics), into claustrophobic lifelessness was…disappointing.

Moreover, it was uncomfortable.

The experience of passing through this glorified pod bus tunnel was among the many things that made Terra's skin crawl.

He would never admit it to anyone, but it struck a particular chord of dread in him whenever the louvred metal doors slid away before him and he was forced to traverse the droning, beeping, clicking, groaning machinery trapped behind the architectural emptiness.

Pluto had once explained to him the concept of a "liminal space" while organising his daily field research.

-

"Liminality is, how do you say, a state commonly observed by man."

His glittering ruby irises flit back and forth across the tops of several holographed tabs.

"It is, so to speak, existing in a state of limbo."

He dismisses each window to the right or left with confident, swift swipes of his fingertips.

"When one is outside of points A and B. When one's regularity is upset and change is coming, but hasn't yet."

In the corner of Terra's visual feed blinks a purple light, alerting him to the three files just received under the subject "inv_rp21".

"A liminal space is similarly transitional. It is being beneath the bridge that connects your docked train to the station. It is being in the foyer of an familiar's unfamiliar home. The point of unease typically achieved by this will vary for the individual, but its basis is the same."

The sway of his tail and a dark chuckle follow him sauntering out of the office.

"Simply a little walk through to the gallows will unsettle these poor, ugly animals, even if they aren't in the noose. The paranoia is quite pathetic, don't you think?"

"…Quite. Thank you, 08."

-

The idea that he should be so human as to feel the effects of a "liminal space"…quite frankly, it irritated him.

What was the point of becoming an android if not to escape the trappings of the illogical?

If he had a choice, he'd simply warp straight to the laboratory and skip the gallows' walk altogether. The atmosphere of the planet Earth, the planet they'd been stuck on for centuries, he had to keep reminding himself it was far too dense to do any such thing and then attempt recompiling his molecular structure. If he were to try, travelling light speeds here would rip him asunder on an atomic level and he'd die a dangerous, obliterating death.

The thought alone was harrowing and persistent enough to keep him on the ground. He wished he'd never gotten a taste of it during the war against Mega Man, because it was tempting. But he couldn't. If he forgot, and did, wouldn't that be horrific? Every one of his men screaming for cover they'd never get, his carelessness costing them their lives, leaving their legacy a crater on a nowhere planet?

…

'Stop it.'

The necks of the cameras craned to fix their gazes on him.

A picture, of 40 different eyes turned to him in unison with his face reflected in each glassy surface, burned into the front of his mind.

And wouldn't leave.

Terra's legs stiffened. He shut his eyes.

Hampered by his body and the Earth's device, he had one defense against the odd, humiliating stress of being scrutinised from all angles: talking. It was a habit he'd developed long before his reconstruction at Albert Wily's hands.

In order to distract himself from the baleful thoughts that would constantly, ceaselessly encroach upon his mind, he would quietly, but vocally, talk to himself. He would talk until either the offending issue was gone, or until he'd calmed his anxiety enough to face it without shutting down, or doing something impulsive.

Instrumental to the success of this repression was that he not stop. That he tune out anything else telling him to divert his attention, do what he set out to do, and not stop.

"…♁, you're already pushing the envelope on time," he scolded, in a sing-song tone.

"If you arrive for your hygiene check late, he's going to complain, and then waste even more of your valuable time arguing why he should be 'cut a break, if you're not going to abide by your own set rules and arrive precisely when you mentioned you would, you neat freak."

The predicted conversation annoyed him perfectly. It drove his low heels clacking across the floor, to confront his slacking, good-for-nothing inferior before he had a chance to say exactly that.

"You can see his face now, right, sad and long like it deserves sympathy, probably because he'd been 'waiting oh so patiently, your highness'__I'll bet you feel your temper flare when he says that,"

which it did, taking his annoyance to anger and hurrying him into a power-stride, past a door with a slate sign labelled "MAINTENANCE".

"And of course, opportunist he is, he'd probably have thought he could take a quick nap-- actually, scratch that, there is no such thing as a 'quick nap' for him, once he's down, he's out, and he knows that, yet he never considered that when filing for employ in this embassy, he's got no professional pride, one of these days, he's going to get you all killed."

"Your invisible friend does a terrible job of backbiting, you know."

Terra's greenest shoots curled very suddenly, tightening his posture and releasing a gas into the hall that was the closest thing to a scent he'd detected since departing the byway.

He swivelled on his heel and stomped once to steady his posture, something he'd had to make a habit of doing since losing his hind legs, and usual gait. His company shook a finger at him.

"I do wish he'd be a little quieter."

Saturn was behind him by at least three metres.

Behind him by…what?

Behind him?

Sun strike him dead, the door was enormous. He was right there. How couldn't he have heard it shifting, at least? Was he really so caught up in distracting himself that he'd prioritised his pacing over the destination? Who knows how many times he might have gone in circles around it in that case?

Worse yet, why did that smug, sleepy face have to be the foremost indicator of his mistake? Taunting him with the notion of having seen all that faffing about?

Terra inhaled, and closed the distance between them, to two metres minimum. He even checked his feet to ensure that was correct.

"Move."

The seemingly indestructible smile on Saturn's mannequin-esque visage only grew with the demand.

"Now Terra," he started, pulling his ring off his shoulder. "There's an etiquette to asking things of people. A magic word: you may have heard of it?"

Electrostatic discharged between Terra's roots as he clenched the fist of his left hand, building up energy for the Spark Chaser. He didn't have to turn around to understand the hall cameras had settled on him, in sync with Saturn's hollow, impossibly red optic display.

"Move."

Motionlessly, Saturn's line of sight trailed from his hand to his eyes. Locked on to them. In mustering up the courage to hold him there, and not back down, Terra was able to look through him to the…limitless nothing. Into the abyssal, and unfeeling vacuum behind that warmly coloured shell.

…For just a few seconds, before the marionette made a show of throwing up his hands in mock defeat.

Terra questioned whether or not someone's photoreceptors counted as a "liminal space". His, at least. Certainly, they teetered on the cusp of real and unreal. It didn't help that his every action was such a practised, methodical thing.

It made nothing but sense that he'd devise sanitised, utilitarian floor plans like these, when he thought about it critically.

Saturn spun his ring out of the doorway, toeing it two metres until he could stop behind it and bow, gesturing his hand to the open lab. Always overdoing it with the inane, performative gestures, he should deck him just for that.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't realise you were in that kind of mood!" The plastic grin did not waver. "Go on in! Gosh, what a throwback! I remember when you dropped in just like this, oh, couldn't have been any less than two Earth days ago! Time flies, hm?"

Terra shot him a look as he stepped over the threshold into the very white, and somehow even more ascetic rotunda. Then shot him another to make sure he wouldn't shove him on while his back was turned.

"You certainly are a diligent one, inspector," Saturn continued, unprompted. "I hope this visit yields tangible results. Aethers forbid you find nothing, driving you madder when the data doesn't reflect the nonsense you're convinced of in your own head! …Oh, wait."

Hilarious.

A wry laugh escaped the other as he considered stitching his inferior's mouth closed and beating him into submission.

But, not really. Although, somewhat.

He missed the years where he didn't have the wherewithal to emulate this biting sarcasm he seemed so reliant on to mask his social ineptitude nowadays.

It'd grown tiresome.

On his tiptoes now, Terra was careful not to trip any wires hooked up to heavy duty equipment or touch any of the hand tools littered on the floor with his feet. He avoided crushing a single mircochip, or shattering any stray sheet glass. He squinted at the fluorescent white fixture in the dome ceiling and swore something fell into his eyes. Let alone his grasses.

Sun above, for how tidy and untouched it appeared, it was filthy in here. How could it have gotten this bad in two days time?

"Terra? What's wrong?"

Saturn's voice came in far too loudly behind him. He rushed to occupy himself with plucking and pulling on two gloves from the dispenser near a chemical wash sink.

"Yellow patches notwithstanding," he jested, jested, absorbing every Sun-forsaken microbe from the doorframe as he reclined against it like it was a seat, it wasn't, why did he insist. "You look exhausted! This neverending cycle of fretting and compulsive cleaning to look busy and responsible must be wearing on you!"

A disingenuous look of pity crossed his expression. "Is there anything I can do for you, Your Highness?"

His composure nearly dissolved, right there on the spot. Terra grit his teeth and angled his head just enough to keep Saturn in his peripheral vision.

"You can disappear, how about that? You'd like to help me? Get out."

And, not giving him room to refute, "I'll signal you once I'm done in here, if you haven't managed to trip, get comfortable, and fall asleep on your way to the common room."

"Actually, I never said I was-" "Get out, 06! OUT!"

The 6th planet's greatest shame pretended to flinch, and hit a red button fixed into the doorframe, backing steadily out of his base of operations. "Well, all right! No need to shout, you'll wear your poor old voice hoarse!" The door slowly, very slowly, began to close, and would lock once it did. Terra crossed his fingers it wouldn't give him trouble when it came time to leave for the deep-wash chambers.

Grabbing a clump of steel wool and a bottle of bleach from an open storage closet, he glared at Saturn's waning form through the shuttering egress.

So many installations, so little time…he decided he'd start scrubbing at the surgical table, which by no means should ever see so much residue and metal shavings, but how much could he really expect out of such a lazy slob? This wasn't even his job, but he'd forced his hand into doing it anyway.

He flipped back the belt restraints, out of his way.

If he could hack the idiot open and reprogram him with a sense of accountability, he would, without hesitation.

"And while you're out there," he snidely commented, unable to hold back. "Try rethinking your interior design aesthetics."

From out in the corridor came a satisfyingly vexed huff.

"When we begin reconstructing the Sol, I don't want to see any lobbies plotted by an AI whose net is three cheap home renovation magazines max, 06."

"MINIMALIST! IT'S MINIMALIST, TERRA!" Despite his best efforts to remain in earshot, his voice faded behind the nearly-closed door. "I've seen the future, and it's LESS-IS-MORE, alright?! I'm a futurist! I'm ahead of the curve! I promise you, in another 20 years you'll be…"

Click. Hiss.

The commander's eyes drifted to the console at which Saturn monitored all his various security feeds, and watched him move between them. He watched him haul himself all the way to the lift, feeling much less tense behind the spotlight than under it.

"Slovenly bastard."

He was probably tracking untold amounts of grime and dust behind him. That this blind tryhard had the audacity to call himself "ahead of the curve"…

Terra sighed hard as he scrubbed, in repetitious circles, trying to decompress, and found he couldn't. Just talking to Saturn had sucked all the will to live from his body, like matter through a black hole.

The truth was clear. At some point, he'd have to go browsing the market for a new engineer.

If things continued like this, he was seriously going to hurt him.

More than he already had.

...But, not actually. Not really, he hadn't.

At the end of the day, he was a void imitating life, feigning innocence and pain, priding the future while clinging to the past. He couldn't be asked to take the blame of despair for someone opting to live a lie.

…

The steel wool broke the glove on his right hand. Hastily, he tossed it and the other in a mesh wastebasket, washed his hands, and popped on a replacement pair.

--END

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didnt have a name for this goin in or anything i just sat down yesterday and typed up some crap cus Terra. idk i'm Interested in him theres so many different interpretations of him you can go with and Im leaning heavy on "a well intentioned but morally questionable Bitch". with OCD. his OCD isn't part and parcel of his Bitchness but it does contribute to a lot of his thought patterns, decision-making, and fixation on germ avoidance.

and then, arbitrarily, things can be too clean and clinical and then we arrive at an uncanny valley stage, which is his mood in this fic.

i wanna believe he an Saturn are like. at odds. working together yea but still at odds bc Long Arduous History. theyre barely tolerating each other and it Will come to a head at some pt. should write abt that too someday.

u h here i guess. //dumps this out in your hand and runs away

[shazzeaslightnovels]

December 2020

(Series: Akuyaku Reijou (Tokorotenshiki) | Artist: Saneda)

No. of Reviews: 19

I also published my Light Novel Recommendations list for 2020 which you can check out here.

Danmachi 3: I definitely prefer the anime over the light novel when it comes to volume 11 just because of how damn good the action scenes were done. To be honest, I find the the amount of tension in this arc made it a bit hard to enjoy at times (it was the same with the light novels) but I managed excited during the action scenes. I still hate Dix and I wish we had seen the Ais vs Ryu fight but it was a very good adaptation of the arc. I really hope we get a season 4 announcement because I want to see that volume 13 fight animated.

Digimon Adventure: Man, I remember when I used to like and be invested in Taichi and now I am just so sick of seeing his face. I guess it’s not too bad given that I still felt a twinge of excitement when they unveiled new forms for MetalGreymon and WereGarurumon but it’s gotten quite bad. I am very close to dropping it but I want to see Tailmon and how they are going to introduce them so I’m sticking around for now.

Higurashi Gou: I almost dropped this several times while I was watching because I was just so bored and I was annoyed they hadn’t cut the pervy stuff that did not age well at all but, alas, loyalty to Shion and an interest in what they may change kept me going and I did enjoy seeing the small changes to the story. Whenever Yukari Tamura changed her voice as Rika to be deeper, I got chills and that was great. I doubt I’ll stick around for the second cour and I’ll probably just binge the rest of the episodes after the show finishes.

Love Live Nijisaki: I feel like I struggled to connect with any of the characters due to how the first 9 episodes felt like an “Idol of the Week” kind of thing where I would get a little bit interested in one of the characters for their focus episode, but because they would not have much to do in the following episodes, I was unable to get really invested in them. It doesn’t help that those episodes tended to tie things up in neat little bows and didn’t really give the characters any flaws. The last few episodes were a bit better, but because I just did not care about Ayumu or Yuu, they still fell flat to me. I didn’t really like any of the songs either but at least the show was always nice to look at. I think idol fans will probably like this show a lot more than I did.

Sleepy Princess: Anime of the Year. I laughed consistently and frequently each week and I loved so many of the gags and the characters. I started to read the manga and I’m enjoying it almost as much as the anime (the anime has a slight advantage due to Inori Minase). As a comedy anime, it’s absolutely perfect, but even outside of that the plot becomes quite interesting in the last third. Highly recommended.

Wandering Witch: I really enjoyed the first few episodes of this but then they just kept on adapting the least interesting and memorable stories. I had no memories of at least half of the stories they adapted and I was baffled as to why those stories were chosen. I also noticed that they didn’t adapt any of the canon yuri stories. They adapted Saya’s crush on Elaina and a couple of other minor things but they didn’t adapt any stories with a sweet f/f couple which is incredibly disappointing. At least I enjoyed some of the episodes and the show was pretty enough that I was somewhat satisfied with how the adaptation turned out. I just wish different decisions with regards to what to adapt and when were made.

Yashahime: I really like Moroha but I am just not invested in Towa or Setsuna at this stage. Setsuna still feels like a very blank character and Towa ends up being rather annoying because of how the narrative often tries to say that she’s the strongest without backing it up. Like that one episode where we are told that Towa is the most reliable of the group but nothing in the episode that we are shown leads to that conclusion. I’m still kind of interested in the main plot and I like Moroha enough that I will be watching the second cour but the series isn’t looking good so far.

Next season, I will definitely be watching the new seasons of Log Horizon, Laid-back Camp and Re:ZERO. The rest is going to depend on where they end up getting streamed in Australia. I’m very tempted to watch the Urasekai Picnic anime, but knowing me, I’ll probably only watch the first 4 episodes at most, and then put it on hold out of fear of being spoiled so I’m not sure that I’ll be watching it until I’ve read more of the light novel.

List of Reviews:

Tosho Meikyuu

Soukai Genyuuden 1

Binbou Reijou no Kanchigai Seijouden 1

Akuyaku Reijou (Tokorotenshiki) 1

Soukai Genyuuden 2

Soukai Genyuuden 3

Danmachi 13

Sword Oratoria 10

Sword Art Online 25: Unital Ring 4

Soukai Genyuuden 4

Soukai Genyuuden 5

Madougushi Dahlia wa Utsumukanai 1

Yuusha no Segare 1

Toradora! 1

Vamp! 1

Shimekirimae ni wa Yuri ga Hakadoru

Majo no Tabitabi 6

Watanare 1

Urasekai Picnic 1

New volume of Tensei Oujo to Tensai Reijou next month that I’ll probably be reading. The second volume of Binbou Reijou no Kanchigai Seijouden came out late this month so I’ll be getting that too. There’s a new series coming out named Maou 2099 that seems a bit interesting (the plot is basically “the demon lord gets revived in the year 2099″) so I’ll be keeping an eye on reviews for it.

Otherwise, my plans for next month are currently Watanare 2 > Hataraku Maou-sama 0 > Toradora 2 > Danmachi 14.

Here’s to another good year in light novels!