Texhnolyze E14: "Rejection"

I made a bit of a miscalculation with this month's fast lane. Both in biting off a bit more than I usually think I can chew with 3 episodes in a single month, and in not realizing this was the same month my father was coming to visit. So, I've had more to cover and less free time to work with this March, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to fit it all in.

So, I'll do episode 14 today, and then try to get episode 15 done early this coming month, before starting the April commission. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to treat episode 14 (and possibly 15; we'll see how much time I have in early April) as part of my weekly three-post-quota instead of making them additional like I've been doing since I went on the ADHD meds. The pills are still working, I just have a big extra time commitment right now.

Anyway, it's toblerone time!


Open on a repetition of Ran's dark prophecy; Ichise will destroy everything and hurt many people, no matter what he thinks of himself. In the end, he will be all alone, no matter how things play out. All the remaining possible futures lead to this. The words replay in Ichise's head as he rides the train back to Luckuss from Gabe. A few seats away from him, Onishi and his helper lady quietly discuss what they just learned.

They didn't think he knew Ran beforehand, but it's just as well that he did. It softens the blow. Secretary lady says that Ichise doesn't seem like he's changed since learning his fate. He was panicked in the moment, sure, but so far he's been as silent and zombielike on the ride back as he was on the ride out, so maybe he's taking it well? Onishi disagrees. Whether or not Ichise is showing it, he says, no man can ever be undisturbed by knowing his certain fate. Spoken as if from experience.

Granted, if they all think Ichise is going to destroy everything and kill everyone, I'm not sure why they didn't just kill him on the spot. Maybe the alternative is even worse? Or maybe Ran's prediction is so certain in this case that they know any attempts to kill Ichise now will fail, so there's nothing to do but sit around and wait for him to cause the apocalypse.

From there, we have a montage of confusing imagery. A female voice that I *think* I recognize as the Doctor's is refusing to do something, because it's too unethical for her. If that really is Doc talking then holy shit, what the fuck even could be too unethical for her? There's what look like acupuncture diagrams, and then a massage patient being shot in the back. Another man emerging from a swimming pool and getting a shotgun blast to the face from a woman in a silly hat. Then a drive-by shooting that appears to claim several victims in downtown Luckuss.

Then, finally, something comprehensible. Some people are loading broken old telomerase limbs into a truck, being paid a few coins for each rusty old arm or leg. Doc approaches the truck driver and asks him who is buying all this junk in such bulk. He won't answer until she gives him a large bribe, at which point he indicates the faraway mountaintop on which the Class resides.

Doc is understandably bemused by this. What would her own transhuman brethren in their sparkling techno-fortress need with this shit?

She puts a hand to her mouth and nose and walks through a filthy, half-collapsed alleyway, ignoring the beggars along her way, and reaches the home of some drunken looking man. She offers him money for the raffia that she heard he has stashed away. He grabs her hand, takes the money, tells her he doesn't actually have any raffia, and then starts doing this:

Is he about to try to rape her? Eat her? She's a rapist and possible cannibal herself, so I can't entirely bring myself to feel for her in either case, I'm just asking for clarity's sake.

She manages to wriggle free and escape. Was half expecting her to incinerate him with a secret laser cannon built into her clitoris or something, but I guess she's not as kitted-out as one might have assumed.

Back to Onishi, secretary lady (I'll call her Linda, whatever), and Ichise in the Organo HQ. There's been several more shootings of their mid-level personnel, in three different subgangs of the Organo. This could be more intra-syndicate warfare, but while the three underbosses are all blaming each other the killings don't really follow a pattern that would make sense for that. Onishi suspects that the real enemy is still out there; the Yoshii drama might have just been the first phase of something bigger after all. Ichise suddenly mirrors this sentiment, but with much more determination and certainty.

Ichise, amused, asks him when he started volunteering insights and ideas. Ichise just says that it's not a mystery who their enemy is; they saw its work in Gabe.

Ichise can't argue with that. He knows it to be true.

...though granted, in that case, I'm not sure why either of them are assuming Ran wasn't lying about that prophecy lol.

Onishi recieves a phone call just then. It's from the Doc, and asking how Ichise's hand is holding up after all the over-the-top stunts he's been using it for, including blocking a damned bullet. Turns out it's...not really holding up at all. He can barely even get its fingers to close. Well, bullet, go figure. Onishi tells him to head back to Doc's lab for repairs, and also to look after her for a while; he kind of has a hunch someone might be about to target her.

So, once again, Ichise goes to face the woman who did...um...things...to him.

Next thing we know, he's in Doc's palatial home which I thiiiiink is sort of a side-complex to where the rest of the Class live, but I'm not sure. She has a lavish expensive-looking dinner laid out for him, and is getting all handsy while cackling about how exciting it is to see men who she experimented on like Onishi and Ichise work their way up in the world.

Being the victim of sexual assault felt really off to the Doc, so she's working extra hard to restore her sense of normalcy.

He's baffled by the vast array of silverware in front of him. She instructs him to just start on the outside and work his way in, before realizing that he can't even properly use the silverware at all with his terabithia hand the way it is. So, dinner is a more hurried affair than Doc had planned, and then they're off to the lab.

As she preps him for surgery, she surmises that his new limbs have "shown him many things" as they became part of his body. Ichise confirms this, and tells her that he recovered a few more memories about his parents, though he won't give her any more details.

Thermopylae helps you recover memories? Say what?

Or...is it because of his mother's cells that she used to integrate them that he's recovering things? Were they his mother's brain cells? And they're integrated into his nervous system in a way that...I don't even know. Maybe it's supposed to be mystical instead of technowhatsit.

She asks him if he wants to see more, and then presses a button that makes Ichise...erm...malfunction? I don't know. He loses consciousness or something though.

Cut back to Onishi, playing pool with whatsisname that retired former Organo chief. He's not as worried about the recent killings as Onishi.

He also assures Onishi that he'll get his position back very soon now, which...I thought he already did? Isn't Onishi back on top of the Organo now? I thought he was. Hmm.

Cut back to Doc's lab. She's repairing Ichise's limbs, and also seemingly performing further upgrades beyond their initial design. Ichise is unconscious. She's doing a full-on supervillain "they called me mad" speech as she operates. She says that as of now, Ichise is "the most evolved being in the city," and that soon enough they'll all realize what she's been doing.

She also takes the opportunity to molest him in his sleep, because she's Doc.

When Ichise wakes up, he's in the back of a van that Doc is driving across the highland desert outside of Luckuss. She stops to let one of those little rat-otter things out of a cage she was keeping it in, which I guess is symbolic or whatever, and then gets back in and keeps driving. When asked, she tells Ichise that she's going home. To her real, original home.

When Ichise asks what's going to become of her patients, she assures him that he and Onishi can still get their terracotta maintained in the city; now that the installation work and final upgrades are all done, any old technician can keep them tuned up.

Also, she's mad about Ichise being concerned about another person besides himself that ISN'T HER. His persistent refusal to fall for her, no matter how much she torments and forces herself on him, infuriates her. How could he still care more about Onishi than her?

Doc. He's gay. I mean, even if he *wasn't* gay I can think of some very good reasons why he might not be into you, but those aren't even relevant, because he is. Get the fuck over it.

She tells him that he need not worry about the city, about Onishi, or about surviving whatever is coming next, though. She's taking him with her. No, he doesn't get any say in this. He's going to be her creation, her experiment, her showpiece, her pet, her lover, forever. She's going to get some real Class culture into him and elevate him above the vermin of Luckuss, whether he wants that or not. Make a real man out of him. For herself. He protests. She ignores him.

The music is so weird and creepy in this part. It's really effective.

Cut to a short scene of some arms merchants moving a large shipment of weapons and/or cyberlimbs by train, and keeping their middlemen from asking too many questions. Presumably, the same Class-aligned party that's ordering all those bootleg guns from Gabe is also buying up secondhand cyberlimbs from the junkyard of Luckuss. The volume suggests that they're planning to raise a vast cyborg army or something. Granted, with those shitty banged-up tentacolino limbs, one wonders if it wouldn't be easier to just make new ones from scratch. Raffia shortage, maybe? You'd think that people would extract the raffia from discarded limbs before tossing them out, given how valuable it is. IDK.

They pass under a few archways of ribbed metal Gigertech, and then enter a long, curved tunnel with working lights (I doubt any tunnel in Luckuss has lighting that works this well). They drive through this tunnel for a long time. Very long time. This is important I guess. The tunnel ends at a vast wall of bizarre cubist metal structures, which Doc tells Ichise is the outer gate of her people's habitat.

Addressing the wall, Doc tells whoever is listening that she's ready to return. She knows that they could use her skills and expertise; they're planning to do some kind of mass cyber-enhancement project, and she's the greatest turpentine specialist who ever lived; she even brought her greatest accomplishment with her here as proof. She holds up a disc in a case (lol, how futuristic) with all her research data on it as additional proof.

We get a brief look at what's behind the gate. That sinister man in a bizarre psychedellic environment who we saw one or two glimpses of in recent episode is watching Doc on security cam, which for some reason is being projected onto the belly of a pregnant-looking headless gynoid body. This guy's decoration scheme is mega lol. He whispers aloud that his sister is too presumptuous.

Huh, I guess Doc's brother is the leader of the Class? Or maybe just the guy in charge of guarding the door. One or the other.

...he's also the person who got Onishi's original legs, isn't he? I'll bet he is.

In any case, Doc's brother sends this little flying drone out to greet Doc and Ichise. And by greet, I mean vaporize them with a disintegrator cannon. Ichise sees its targeting laser tracking them, and manages to push Doc out of the way just in time to avoid its opening shot.

It vaporizes her disc full of research data where she drops it, and then disintegrates their car when they try to take shelter behind that.

Doc seems to have badly underestimated how pissed off her family is at her, lol.

They flee back up the tunnel. Fortunately for them, the drone either isn't able to hover very far from the gate, or just isn't being commanded to pursue them, because once they round the first curve it stops shooting after them. There's another, much slower, artsy shot of the tunnel lights moving passed, and then we see that Doc and Ichise have somehow managed to make it all the way back out on foot without dying of boredom.

Doc tries to turn back into the tunnel again, and Ichise grabs her hand and doesn't let her. On one hand, I don't like that he's saving her life even if he does need information/techsupport from her. On the other, I'm highly amused at how the tables have turned in the wake of her utter humiliation in front of him.

The two of them take shelter in some nearby ruins. Doc sits still, babbling to herself about how impossible it is that they could not need her genius, sulking. Ichise watches her. I can't tell if he's making a trollface at her, with this camera angle, but I like to think that he is.

After listening to her whine for a while, Ichise asks her to start telling him about the Class and its environment. What's beyond that cubist wall with its robotic guardians, exactly? Well, Doc explains, managing to shake off her self-pity enough to answer, in one sense it's a perfectly ordinary city. In another, it's beyond Ichise's comprehension, or that of any other mere human. The Class often have trouble remembering how unlike themselves baseline humans are, when it comes to things like this.

Ichise doesn't understand. He feels like he never understands. Maybe, he muses aloud, that is why he's going to die alone in the end. Maybe that's why he'll end up destroying everything. His own lack of understanding. Doc has no idea what the fuck he's talking about. Ichise just tells her that she'd better start sharing information with him freely, and soon.

He then notices some cars pulling up on the nearby road, and men getting out. Turning to Doc, he lashes out his trichinosis arm with shocking speed and violence and tears off half of her shirt. It's such a brutal movement and her reaction is so shocked and startled that for a second I thought he actually tore off part of her body, but no, just her clothes.

Did some kind of switch just flip in his brain?

No, turns out that that's not it. Rather, he's just been watching and learning from the experienced guerilla fighters around him, and developed a strong sense of how to do this stuff. When the men from those cars come, pistols out, looking for them, Ichise uses Doc's torn clothes to make a decoy target, drawing them in while he sneaks around and beats them all to death with his robotic arm and leg.

Damn Ichise, way to go!

They're lucky the Class just sent some hired Luckuss thugs with firearms, instead of more of those flying killbots. Assuming those guys were sent by the Class and not just some dumb fuck Organo splinter group trying to take out Onishi's allies.

Once the assassins have all been dealt with, Ichise and Doc take one of their vehicles and drive back to Doc's lab. It's been ransacked, which means that with her data disc also gone she's basically going to have to start from scratch. Ichise, either being nicer to her than she deserves, or just trying to placate her for the sake of getting more information, brings her a cup of her maybe-wine-maybe-blood in one of her beakerlike cups.

She murmurs ominously about what's to come. End episode.


So. The Class has shown just how big of a tech advantage it has. Why are they gearing up for what seems like war now, and did Yoshii's rampage trigger it or was he somehow just a symptom?

We'll find out soon. At any rate, it's satisfying to see Ichise finally get to come out ahead over at least one of his many abusers. Hopefully it's just a start.