Chapter 4: Reconciliation
"Hey, Ayase," said Tsugumi, waving to her friend. Ayase waited in the shade of a large tree as other students walked past her on their way home. "I saw the crazy pilot again last night."
"You did? Where?"
It had been a few weeks since they had seen him near the airport.
"At the convenience store," said Tsugumi. "The one two blocks from our apartment building. It was while I was picking up the discount pastries."
As Tsugumi talked, Ayase turned her wheelchair and started rolling herself down the main thoroughfare to the school gate. Tsugumi gamely walked alongside.
"I was surprised," she said. "But I think I'm starting to see why you called him sad."
Ayase looked up at Tsugumi, a wry smile on her face. "You didn't reduce him to tears did you?"
"Don't worry, I didn't make a scene. There was no yelling, though I did call him a freak." Tsugumi stretched her arms and folded them behind her head. "But I wouldn't have pictured him as someone who would stuff a bunch of chicken buns in his basket just because he felt homesick. If he misses his family so much, why doesn't he go home?"
"Maybe he can't."
"I don't see why not. A lot of the GHQ have. I assume the UN is paying for it."
Ayase shrugged. "So how was he? Besides sad. If the two of you weren't yelling at each other I guess he didn't do anything crazy."
"I don't know. He said he was working late. But he doesn't look much older than me. Why isn't he in school?"
"Some people never go to high school," said Ayase. "You don't need to join a group like Funeral Parlor to skip it."
"But we had a good reason to. Do you think he skipped because he worked for the GHQ?"
They continued down the street in silence. Then Tsugumi said, "Hey, Aya, we fought with that weakling enough times we knew whenever he showed up. You could tell it was him from how his Endlave moved, and I could tell from the way he was always screaming at us. But did we ever know his name? Did we know he was our age?"
Tsugumi could understand why she and Ayase were allowed to fight in Funeral Parlor despite being teenagers. Gai had only been seventeen himself. Age did not matter in a resistance movement so long as everyone was able to contribute. But the GHQ was set up by the UN with an international team of soldiers comprising the Anti Bodies unit. This boy was an anomaly. He shouldn't have become a pilot worth sending abroad at such a young age. That was the stuff of TV shows.
"It's easier to integrate yourself with the neural interface the younger you start," said Ayase. "Shibungi told me that when I first joined Funeral Parlor. I didn't know his age, but with the way he handled his Endlave, he was either talented, young, or both."
"Ayase..."
Tsugumi had a question on her lips, but let it die. She relaxed her arms, bringing them down to her sides as she thought. Ayase had been fifteen when she started with Funeral Parlor's stolen Endlave, giving her two years' experience by the time she first met that crazy pilot, and he had so thoroughly beaten her that Tsugumi had had to bail her out to avoid any possibility of brain damage from having the head of her Endlave destroyed.
Granted, he had been piloting a top of the line Steiner model at the time, which placed Ayase at a severe disadvantage, but it was a disadvantage that meant nothing when the tables were turned and it was Ayase in the Steiner and he in the standard commission. He had nearly crushed her throat before Oogumo managed to free her.
There was no question he was very good, at least when he was in control of himself. Despite controlling the superior Endlave, he had been downright erratic in their last encounter. The two of them had only beaten him because they had been two operating as one, with Ayase distracting him from the front to give Tsugumi the opening she needed to wreck his Endlave from the back.
Whoever had been his monitor must have been fast to bail him out before he suffered any permanent brain damage, or maybe he had, and that had blasted the crazy out of him. It wasn't a logical conclusion, but it was a pleasant one.
"Were you going to ask me something?" said Ayase.
"How come you're not mad at him? He tried to kill us."
Ayase frowned. "If he was still trying to, I would be, but he walked away when you confronted him, right? It's not like he's going to be able to hop in an Endlave and come after us again. I'd rather he just disappear than waste time thinking about him." She paused. "Wait. He hasn't done anything to you, has he? Now that I think about it, he did seem to have an odd fixation on you during that last battle, calling you out when he heard your voice through my Endlave. It's like he knew you were the one monitoring me."
"It's because I met him before. That's how I knew it was him in the park."
Tsugumi thought back to the sullen boy at the school festival, remembering how she had leaned over the stack of boxes he had carried for her. He had complained she overloaded him, and then tried to refuse the candied apple she gave him specifically with the intent of changing that glower of his into something friendly. He had seemed such an ordinary if disagreeable boy.
"I guess he was spying on us," said Tsugumi. "He said he's from America, so he probably was never a student at Tennozu. The GHQ must have sent him since he was the right age to blend in. I met him while we were setting up the festival."
"You know, if you're still curious about him, Shibungi could probably pull up some data. He was the pilot of the Steiner, right? I remember Gai had made his Void part of the operation where we stole it, so we probably have something on him."
Tsugumi flushed. "I don't need to know that bad. Besides, if he was picking up dinner at the convenience store he probably lives close by. There's a good chance we'll see him again."
Probably in the evening, after the pastries were discounted for the day.
But even so, it was another two weeks before she saw him.
-GC-
This time she spotted him first. His bleached hair made him easy to find, and she found herself a little glad that he had changed it back. He wasn't in front of the refrigerated buns like she expected though. He was looking over the prepared meals; sets of rice, fish, and pickled vegetables. Maybe he was feeling better.
She sidled next to him and said, "Did you like the croissant?"
To her surprise he merely looked up instead of jumping back. "I saw you coming this time. And it was okay."
Only okay? Tsugumi stopped herself short of an eye roll. She hadn't come over to fight.
"I want to apologize for giving you a hard time."
"I thought you already did that when you gave me the croissant."
"That for was that day. Now I mean for everything," she said. "Let bygones be bygones. After all, if you're still here that means the UN must have decided you're not a criminal, and if the GHQ is no longer around then that means you're no longer the enemy. You were only fighting us because it was your job, right?"
He hesitated, then said, "Right."
"I'm Tsugumi Sendou, second year student at Ryuuzaki High School." She held out her hand.
An odd spasm appeared to cross his face, and instead of shaking her hand he bowed, a more Japanese greeting than she would have expected. She thought he would have shook hands like Americans were supposed to.
"Daryl Yan, pilot at Meiji Construction and Recovery."
She let her hand drop to her side and he turned back to the packaged trays. He picked up one with cuts of mackerel and placed it in his basket.
"Daryl?"
"What do you want, runt?" He sounded exasperated, weary.
She fumed. "Why do you have to be so difficult? Can't you accept that someone might be trying to have a normal conversation with you?"
"I already accepted your apology, twice, and I gave you my name. What more is there?"
"You're not acting crazy."
"What?"
He pulled away into the center of the aisle, clearly ready to leave. Tsugumi could see the sullen boy from the festival, but not the Endlave pilot, especially not the crazy one that had tried to kill her. He was so... resigned.
"I'm ready to go too," she said, lifting her basket.
And to what she was sure was his consternation, she got into line to pay after him.
He probably could have ditched her if he ran as soon as he got out of the door, but to her delight she found him waiting a few steps from the entrance. Daryl Yan, huh. Maybe he was a puzzle worth solving after all.
"What else did you want to ask me?" he said.
"Which way are you going?" she asked.
He pointed and she said, "Great. Then we can walk together."
Daryl frowned. "Do you like forcing yourself on people?"
Tsugumi grinned and decided to ignore that question, but he started walking with her. She fished for something to ask him, since inquiring about his mental state did not seem such a good idea. But beyond their meeting at the school festival, they didn't have much in common except the battles between Funeral Parlor and the GHQ.
"So what was that barrier around your Endlave the last time we fought you?"
"Classified technology," he said, and that was it.
Clearly asking about GHQ tech was going to be a non-starter, though she dearly would have liked to know.
"So why did you come to Japan and join the GHQ?"
"Do you remember who General Yan was?"
She nodded. "He was the head of the GHQ before Keido."
"He was my father."
"Oh! I'm sorry."
So Daryl Yan was the son of General Yan. Tsugumi remembered him buying the buns the other day, how he said they reminded him of being with his family. She hadn't been close to the fighting when Funeral Parlor had tried capturing the general, but she knew that they hadn't been the ones to kill him. The official word she heard after the Loop 7 lockdown was that the general had died of a heart attack after being placed under arrest by the Anti Bodies.
She wanted to ask Daryl about his mother, but feared another misstep she would have to apologize for. She wasn't doing a good job getting him to talk.
"Daryl?"
"Hm?"
"Tell me about your job, your current one."
Tsugumi figured that should be safe. He said he worked for a construction company. Surely there could be no bloodshed and hard feelings in that.
"It pays the bills."
"But do you like it? You said you're a pilot right?"
"You make it sound like just being a pilot should be glamorous." He sighed. "I wish it was. It's not very fulfilling, but it's not like I have a lot of options."
"Can't you use your connections in the military to get something better if you don't like it? Go back home and be a soldier there?"
He suddenly stopped, and at first she thought it was because she had annoyed him by talking about his time in the GHQ again, but they were at an intersection and he pointed off to the left.
"I'm going that way," he said.
And her road continued straight on. He turned to leave without even saying good-bye.
"Hey!" she said.
He looked over his shoulder. She could see the aloof expression he gave her, as if she was just another irritation. He really did not know how to take a nice thing when he got it.
"This Sunday, when I don't have school, let's go somewhere for lunch. I know a good curry place and you might want to eat something besides all that prepackaged food one of these days."
He looked away and then said, "Fine."
"Then give me your phone number."
Daryl turned around and dug out his phone. He held it up to hers and the LEDs flashed at the exchange. Daryl Yan. She could see his name on the display now. Tsugumi smiled.
"Is that it?" He pocketed his phone and looked at her as though waiting to be dismissed.
"At noon on Sunday," she said.
"Sure."
For purposes of this story, I'm assuming there was a cover-up regarding General Yan's death. The anime never addressed it, probably because the characters involved had other things to worry about, but I'm pretty sure the death of the head of the GHQ should have been big news, and news that couldn't go public because his death was part of a coup. While Keido and the Anti Bodies wouldn't be able to hide his death, they likely would have covered up the real reason behind it to avoid public panic and alerting the UN.
