#too nice

[panncakesposts]

[asknillamilkfam]

Follow up to this

[l0rd-kromer]

[natequarter]

hate when characters are good people. come back when she's tried to murder a kid and i might hear you out

[lealu]

omg I got excited and forgot to add!!!! Carcar wasn't the only ship for which I followed you!!! It was definitely influenced by how you wrote galex as well, especially the soulmate food au (I genuinely think of that fic at least once a month. I'm so so so obsessed with that fic, it's like a star classic to me), the professor galex drabble (another formative lealu writing for me- I think I even showed that to non f1 friends because of how well you wrote) and the plastic tiara drabble. And!!! I know you don't write for them as often but Proof of Contact was a huge contributor to my adoration for your writing. I've read and consumed a LOT of maxcar and you got their dynamic so perfect. They're like the same shaped block in tetris, you have to be strategic about where you place them and if you are- they work like magic. Which is exactly what you did. But yes, all in all, I knew I'd found a gem when I came across your writing and I'm so glad to be so right

why did you follow me? ask game

i just sent an answer to your ask and you blessed me with surprising me with another ask! you just reminded me of so many things i wrote that don't get much attention in my own little lealu-fic-sphere so that makes me so emotional! i wrote Flavors of Fate (Galex) so long ago that i can't bear to look at it again. it was one of my first long fics and for a fest AND for another incredible author, so i really was thrown into the deep end and i feel like i could re-write that story so much better now! but thank you! and can i tell you a secret? my galex drabbles were always one of my favourites to write even though most people come for carcar on this blog. the professor one! aah, just knowing non-f1 people read my writing...i might have to lay down. did they like it?! i feel like blushing now!

i don't think i would've ever written maxcar if i hadn't been prompted, because they are already so hard individually as character but writing them together? it definitely was a challenge that i especially had to take on by writing them for another person for a fest! Proof of Contact (Maxcar) was so, so much fun to do (that one truly was full of tension, a fever dream and freak-behaviour) and I feel like it's also one of my "smaller" fic that i did, so thank you for appreciating it! "same shaped block in tetris" made me laugh because of the accuracy! yes!

thank you endlessly again <3

[technicallyburningfury]

Kaiju No. 8: Benediction

Chapter Seven — The Cage Made of Kindness

Previous

THE THIRD DAY.

She should have known.

She had walked the earth for centuries. She had seen humans in every state—desperate, grateful, cruel, kind. She had watched them build cities and burn them down. She had healed their wounds and watched them inflict new ones on each other. She knew what humans were capable of.

But she had been tired. And the slippers were warm. And the porridge was good. And Kafka Hibino had hugged her like she was something precious, something worth protecting.

She had wanted to believe it.

That was her mistake.

The invitation came politely. Of course it did. Everything the Defense Force did was polite.

"Director General Shinomiya requests your presence at Headquarters for a routine evaluation." A young officer with a nervous smile. "Just a check-up. Standard procedure for all special guests."

Special guests.

She should have heard the weight of that word. The careful way it avoided saying prisoner.

She went willingly. She wore the Third Division jacket. The white slippers. Her hair was brushed—one of the administrative officers had done it for her that morning, gentle hands working through tangles that had been there for decades. She had sat still and let it happen because the sensation was nice. Because no one had brushed her hair before.

Kafka waved at her as she left. "Come back soon! Iharu wants to show you his new technique later!"

"I will," she said.

She should have known.

The "evaluation room" was not a room.

It was a cell.

Reinforced walls. Observation windows on every side. No windows to the outside. No sunlight. No sky. Just fluorescent lights and the soft hum of machinery and the smell of antiseptic and something metallic underneath. Blood, maybe. Old fear. The residue of every kaiju that had been studied here before her.

The door sealed behind her with a sound like a closing throat.

She stood in the center of the room. Her slippers were white against the gray floor. Her borrowed jacket suddenly felt too heavy, too foreign, a costume she should never have accepted.

Through the observation glass, faces watched her.

Director General Isao Shinomiya. His expression was the same as it had been when he'd bowed to her—controlled, impenetrable—but underneath it now was something else. Something colder. The gratitude was still there. But gratitude, she understood now, did not mean safety. Gratitude meant he owed her. And some men hated owing.

Captain Mina Ashiro stood beside him. Her arms were crossed. Her jaw was tight. She wouldn't meet the woman's eyes.

Vice-Captain Soshina Hoshino was leaning against the back wall, his lazy smile completely absent. His face was pale. His hands were clenched at his sides.

Captain Gen Narumi had refused to come. That was what they said. He'd refused. He'd screamed at the Director General for an hour and then locked himself in his quarters. It didn't matter. His absence didn't save her.

And Kikoru—Kikoru wasn't there. They hadn't told her. They knew she would fight.

"Benediction," the Director General's voice came through the intercom. Calm. Measured. The voice of a man who had done terrible things in the name of protection. "You are not being punished. You are not being imprisoned. We simply need to understand what you are."

She looked up at the observation window. Her pale eyes found his.

"You said I was a guest," she said. Her voice was quieter than usual. Softer. Not angry. Not yet. Just... confused. The way a child might be confused when a promised gift turned out to be empty. "You said I was under your protection."

"You are. But protection requires understanding. And we do not understand you."

"You could have asked."

"Would you have answered?"

She didn't respond. She didn't know the answer. No one had ever asked her questions before. No one had ever been curious enough to trap her.

A panel in the wall slid open. A drone emerged. Small. Clinical. It hovered toward her with a needle extended.

"We need tissue samples," Shinomiya's voice said. "Blood. Cellular structure. We need to understand how your healing works. What your limitations are. Why you exist."

The needle pressed against her arm.

She didn't flinch. She didn't fight. She had never fought. Fighting was not what she was made for.

But something inside her chest—something that had been warm and blooming since Kafka hugged her—began to close.

OBSERVATION DECK

Mina Ashiro was going to be sick.

She watched the drone take blood from the woman's arm. Watched the pale liquid flow into a vial. Not red. Not quite. Something pearlescent. Bioluminescent. Beautiful even in its extraction.

"Is this necessary?" she asked, her voice tight.

"Necessary is a flexible term," Shinomiya said. "She is a kaiju that can heal fatal wounds in seconds. She purified a daikaiju with a touch. She has been walking the earth for possibly centuries, and we have no record of her existence. Yes, Captain. This is necessary."

"She saved our officers. She saved your wife. She sat on our base and ate porridge and wore our jacket and didn't hurt anyone—"

"And that is precisely what makes her dangerous." Shinomiya turned to face her, his eyes hard. "Do you understand what it means that a kaiju can be gentle? That she can walk into our base, heal our soldiers, charm our officers, and make us all forget that she is not human? She is the most dangerous creature we have ever encountered. Not because she can destroy us. Because she can make us love her."

Mina's hands were shaking. "Director—"

"I am not going to harm her, Captain. I am going to study her. And when we understand her, when we know what she is and what she can do, we will decide what comes next."

A soft sound from behind them.

Soshiro Hoshino laughed. It was not a kind laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had spent nine years searching for an angel and was now watching her be dissected.

"Decide what comes next," he repeated. "You sound like you're talking about a weapon."

"I'm talking about an asset."

"She's not an asset. She's a person."

"She's a kaiju."

"She healed me!" The words tore from Hoshina’s throat, the sudden, raw edge of it slicing through the sterile air of the holding bay. His composure—always so perfectly, effortlessly maintained—shattered like glass.

He didn't just look angry; he looked unhinged. The signature, easygoing squint of his eyes was entirely gone, leaving his gaze wide, dark, and dangerously focused on the scientist who kept increasing the unnecessary test.

"I was seventeen," Soshiro breathed, his voice dropping to a sharp, trembling whisper that vibrated with nine years of buried obsession. "Dying like a dog in some forgotten alley. She was there. She touched me, she healed me, and then she just... vanished. I woke up, and everyone told me I was crazy. Told me I hallucinated a ghost." He looked at mina, his captain. "Nine years, Captain. I’ve spent nine years looking for a ghost."

He took a step forward, his hand twitching instinctively toward the hilt of his blade that is absent as apparently your not allowed to have weapons here, his eyes darting to the heavy containment cell behind them. "And now you've got her locked in a cage? You're draining her blood and taking samples like she's some..." He choked on the word, his jaw tightening until it clicked. The realization of what she actually was clawed at his throat, fighting against a decade of Defense Force brainwashing.

"...like she’s just another damn monster. I know what the readings say. I know she’s a Kaiju. But she gave me my life, and you're treating her like scrap metal."

"Soshiro." Mina placed a firm, grounding hand on his trembling forearm. "Stand down."

"Captain—" His voice cracked, the word catching like glass in his throat.

"That's an order, Vice-Captain."

Soshiro's jaw clamped shut so hard his teeth clicked. His chest heaved as he forced down the instinct to tear the cage open himself. His eyes were bright with a terrifying, uncharacteristic fury—and beneath it, a raw, bleeding grief that Mina had never seen in him before. He didn't break eye contact, but he didn't move.

Through the observation window, the woman in white raised her head and looked directly at him.

She knew he was there.

She knew he was watching.

And her expression—that calm, ancient, gentle expression—didn't change.

That was the worst part.

The tests continued.

Blood work. Tissue samples. Cellular analysis. They asked her questions through the intercom and she answered them in that quiet, rusty voice. How old was she? She didn't know. Where did she come from? She didn't remember. Could she heal any wound? Not any. Some were beyond her. Death was a door, she said. She could hold it open but she could not lock it.

They asked if she could be killed.

She said yes.

The scientists wrote that down very carefully.

They discovered things, too. Incredible things. Complicated things. Her cells were not like normal kaiju cells. They didn't regenerate—they reversed. They didn't create new tissue. They told the old tissue to forget it had ever been damaged. It was time manipulation on a cellular level. It was impossible. It was beautiful. It was the kind of discovery that made careers and won wars.

They also discovered that her core—the source of her power—was unlike any kaiju core on record. It didn't pulse with destructive energy. It sang. A frequency. A resonance. Something that, when isolated and amplified, could theoretically...

"We could weaponize this," one of the scientists murmured.

The room went very quiet.

Through the intercom, still live, the woman in white heard him.

She closed her eyes.

Moments later in the third division base, Kafka knew something was wrong the moment he woke up.

She wasn't back.

She'd left for Headquarters hours ago—just a routine evaluation, they'd said—and she wasn't back. The base felt different without her. Colder. The wildflowers in her room had started to wilt.

He found Reno in the hallway, looking at his phone with a strange expression.

"Reno. Where is she?"

Reno didn't look up. "I don't know."

"Reno."

"Senpai, I really don't know. She went to Headquarters and she never came back and no one is answering my questions and Captain Ashiro isn't here and Vice-Captain Hoshino isn't here and Captain Narumi locked himself in the guest quarters and—"

"Captain Narumi did what?"

"He locked himself in. He was screaming about something. I couldn't hear what."

Kafka's chest tightened. His core throbbed. The kaiju inside him was stirring, restless, angry.

"Something's wrong," he said.

"I know."

"We have to do something."

"Senpai." Reno grabbed his arm. His grip was tight. His eyes were serious. "What can we do? We're officers. We follow orders. If the Director General decided something—"

"She's not an order!" Kafka pulled his arm free. "She's a person! She healed you! She sat with us and wore our slippers and she said she'd never been hugged before! You can't just— you can't just put someone like that in a cage!"

Reno's expression flickered. Pain. Guilt. The same things Kafka was feeling.

"I know," he said quietly. "I know."

Iharu appeared at the end of the hallway, running. His pink hair was a mess. His eyes were wild.

"Did you hear?! They're not letting her come back! They're running tests on her! TESTS! Like she's some kind of— some kind of lab rat!"

"Calm down," Reno started.

"I WILL NOT CALM DOWN! She healed my arm! She patted my head! I brought her ginger porridge and she said thank you and she meant it and now they're—" His voice broke. "This isn't right. This isn't fair."

Kafka looked at both of them. His squadmates. His friends. The people who had believed in him when he was just a failed applicant with a dream.

"Then let's do something about it," he said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know yet. But I'm not letting them keep her there."

HEADQUARTERS — CONTAINMENT WING

She sat in the corner of her cell, her back against the cold wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. The Third Division jacket was still around her shoulders. The slippers were still on her feet. Small mercies. They hadn't taken those from her.

The lights never turned off.

She hadn't slept. She'd tried, but the fluorescent hum was wrong, and the air was wrong, and there were no windows, no stars, no grass beneath her feet. She hadn't realized how much she'd come to need those things until they were gone.

This is what you get, she thought. This is what you get for stopping. For staying. For letting them see you.

She had been walking for centuries. She should have kept walking.

The door opened.

She didn't look up. She didn't need to. She could feel his energy. Controlled. Complicated. The man who had bowed to her. The man whose wife she had touched.

Director General Isao Shinomiya stepped into the cell. Alone. No guards. No scientists.

"You shouldn't be in here," she said. "I could harm you."

"You won't."

She looked up at him. Her pale eyes were tired. Ancient. Disappointed.

"Your wife," she said. "I touched her. I held the door open. Is this how you repay me?"

Shinomiya's expression didn't change. But something in his posture faltered. Just slightly. Just for a moment.

"My wife," he said, "was the love of my life. And you gave me four more months with her. I meant every word of my gratitude. I still do." He paused. "But I am also the Director General of the Defense Force. I am responsible for the survival of millions. And you... you are something we don't understand."

"So you cage me."

"So we study you. Until we understand. Then we decide."

"Decide what? Whether to kill me? Whether to use me?"

Shinomiya didn't answer.

She looked at him for a long moment. Her gaze was not angry. It was not even sad. It was something worse. It was knowing. Like she had seen this coming from the moment he'd bowed to her. Like she'd hoped she was wrong and been proven right anyway.

"You called me an angel," she said. "Your wife called me an angel. But angels are only angels when they are useful. When they are mystery. When you can cage them and study them and take them apart to see how they work—" She tilted her head. "—then they are just another monster."

"You're not a monster."

"Then let me go."

"I can't."

She closed her eyes. The conversation was over. He could feel it.

Shinomiya stood there for a long moment, looking at the creature he had been obsessively hunting for ten years. The creature who had given him four more months with Hikari. The creature who wore borrowed slippers and had never been hugged before Kafka Hibino.

Then he turned and walked out of the cell.

The door sealed behind him.

OBSERVATION DECK — LATER

The scientists had gone home. The observation deck was dark.

But one figure remained, leaning against the glass, staring down at the cell where the woman in white sat motionless in the corner.

Soshiro Hoshina hadn't left.

He should have. His shift was over. His duties were waiting. Captain Ashiro had returned to the Third Division to manage the chaos of officers who were demanding answers. He should have gone with her.

But he couldn't move.

She was right there. Right there, through the glass. The woman who had shushed him when he was a dying seventeen-year-old. The woman who had touched his face in the garden and told him he was never going to die alone. The woman he had been drawing in the margins of his paperwork for nine years.

They had trapped her. Caged her. Studied her like an animal.

And he had let it happen.

He pressed his palm against the glass. She didn't look up. She couldn't see him in the dark.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know they were going to— I would have stopped it. I would have—"

But he hadn't stopped it. He'd stood there and watched. He'd let Director Shinomiya talk about assets and weapons and understanding. He'd let them take her blood and her tissue and her dignity.

What kind of man let that happen to the person he'd been searching for?

What kind of monster?

He stared at her through the glass, and something twisted in his chest. Something that had been growing for nine years, fed by obsession and longing and the memory of a gentle hand on his face.

They said it was against their morals to love a kaiju.

They said she was a threat, an unknown, an asset to be studied and understood and potentially weaponized.

But Soshiro Hoshina looked at the woman in the cage, and he knew—with a certainty that terrified him—that he didn't care about any of that.

He didn't care that she was a kaiju.

He didn't care that it was wrong.

He wanted her out. He wanted her safe. He wanted her back in the garden, barefoot in the grass, looking at the stars with that distant, ancient calm.

He wanted her to look at him again.

Just him.

Only him.

His reflection stared back at him in the glass. His own face, twisted into something he barely recognized.

This is what obsession looks like, he thought. This is what it becomes.

He didn't look away.

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN.

[lone-owl-s-nest]

my lovely Universe part of my soul