Gone Tomorrow: Final chapter & notes
Nov. 2nd, 2019 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameChapter 6: Here Today
Summary: Ankh and the others have one last chance to save Eiji, and they're not about to let Maki or the Yummy ruin everything.
There are two fics that sorta-kinda inspired this: Elevated To The Point Of Static by Cici_Nota, for the brilliant summary of "Hino Eiji goes missing. No one notices." and the sun and the rainfall by oryx, where the premise is that Eiji dies and Ankh is in total denial. I wind up thinking about these fics a lot, and at some point, I began to think, "But wait. What if something happened to Eiji, yes, but instead of Ankh being the only one who believes he's okay, he's the only one who knows better? What if it's that nobody remembers Eiji but Ankh?" And canon shows us how Eiji takes it when Ankh dies, but if it ends up the other way around, how would Ankh handle it if Eiji was the one who died? The title is from Eyeshine's final album, "Gone Tomorrow," and all of the chapter titles are half of a common expression, purposely chosen because now it's incomplete, and missing that something changes the meaning of each expression, although "Fall Seven Times" doubles as a reference to another Eyeshine album.
This fic was originally started toward the end of Kamen Rider Build, with a plot that was more of a "for want of a nail" idea: the Yummy had killed Eiji, and its power caused him to be erased from existence, as if he'd never been born at all, although somehow or another everyone still came together. There were some differences, of course: Hina would have had to have dropped out of school to deal with Ankh full-time, while also being much more forward with him than he expected. Goto wouldn't have gone back to the Kougami Foundation because he didn't have Eiji or OOO to worry about. And nobody would have told Chiyoko that Ankh was some horribly abused foreign orphan, so she would have just gone with Hina telling her that this was her brother going through some kind of fugue state after his car accident, so that meant he just needed to be humored on occasion or just otherwise redirected to listen to whatever his "sister" said.
And then Zi-O came out and was doing basically the same premise. I didn't want to step on canon's toes too much, so I rewrote it. A few times, actually, because the muses kept rebelling. I love the OOOT3, and I kind of wanted to fit that in there, but given the plot of this story, it really worked better as just Ankh/Eiji with a strong Ankh & Hina friendship. The idea of Hina telling Chiyoko everything just kind of came up with this idea behind recreating some of the most heartbreaking moments in canon, but re-contextualized. At the time, I planned on having Ankh stare at the pictures and try to go through his memories to figure out which one was Eiji, only to come up short; Chiyoko was going to be worried about both him and Hina, and finally Hina started to break down and admit she couldn't keep lying anymore. My thoughts were that Eiji came up with the bulk of the lies, and it comes very naturally to him just to not tell the truth when he's afraid others will worry. He and Hina don't seem to coordinate well on their cover stories, and that led to realizing that Hina was definitely suffering over not being able to talk to someone about what was going on. What she forgot was that Eiji really was her only outlet, but he was a terrible one because he was the source of most of the things that were worrying her in the first place. And dear god, getting Ankh and Goto to work together was probably one of the hardest parts of writing this fic, since my Ankh muse for some reason just shuts down any prospect of including Goto in a fic and has done so for the past five years or so. But I'm really impressed with what I ended up with.
I don't exactly remember when I decided for Hina to become Proto-Birth, but it was definitely soon after I came up with the idea of modifying the Breast Cannon to save Eiji—basically, all of my muses got together and said that whatever Eiji wanted didn't matter, they were making Hina badass. Likewise, I did not expect for her to shoot Maki the second he started threatening Ankh. The death of Ankh's impostor is probably one of the only things that went the way I originally planned, since I needed to get rid of him and destroy the Medals in a way that Ankh wouldn't blame Eiji. That being said, forcing the merge between the two Ankhs in the way I did came pretty much as I wrote it, since Eiji really was the only thing deterring Lost Ankh from just waltzing right up and absorbing Ankh. And since he does have access to Ankh's memories, I decided I really wanted that unsettling moment where they remember Eiji's last stand as if they were both there; I picture Lost Ankh's voice speaking all of Ankh's lines in that moment being very confused and frightened, like "Wait, this is what my other self saw and felt? I don't want any part of this." And yes, the idea for a workable body for Ankh by creating a homunculus from Shingo's DNA is indeed a reference to Movie Wars Core, since as bad as that movie is, it actually is a good idea that would solve a lot of Ankh's problems. It's not the only easter egg in there—the discussion with Kougami about Ankh's past has a reference to my "Kings and Vagabonds" from about five years ago, and there's a blink-and-miss-it reference to the novel that I had excluded from my fic canon. Plus the whole thing with overloading the axe was a reference to the final stage show, except without traveling to a dimension with multiple Eijis and the Greeed as a Sentai team.
As far as the Yummy goes, I'd always planned on the velociraptor and at real-life height. I watch a lot of Ultraman and frequently see giant monsters and aliens stomping around and everything. It's easy to be scared of that. But the idea of something small being equally dangerous was appealing to me, especially since I am not a very tall person myself. I also really like the fact that the velociraptor had a sickle claw, since it made the Yummy feel kind of like the Grim Reaper, thereby emphasizing the theme of death. Also, science says it had feathers, so it made for a really good shadow archetype to Ankh. I'd really wanted to put in a reference to the famous fossil of "Fighting Dinosaurs," with the velociraptor and protoceratops locked in combat and thus getting themselves killed trying to kill one another—because holy shit does this feel like the kind of stupid shit Eiji would get himself into—but I never had an opening for it. Eiji's death scene is pretty intentionally stolen from Den-O, episode 45, which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it—but that's definitely where the imagery of "flames looking like flowers" came from. It felt like the best way to try and handle this without it looking like more recent things, like anything from Avengers: Endgame, which was one of my greatest fears. However, I think I did end up with this also looking somewhat like Leomon's death in Digimon Tamers, so...
And of course, that brings us to the twist. I never originally planned to have Eiji be...well, the Yummy. After all, in "The Girl Who Has Everything," I'd already done something similar. But it was one last instance of the muses rebelling and I realized it was way too good not to use, and it took care of a lot of final plot holes I was trying to fill in. All I had to do was revise some chapters and add new scenes of the Yummy, particularly drawing from Eiji's very distinctive posture as both PuToTyra and a Greeed. Although the foot sweeping was inspired by Kamen Rider Agito and Toph from Avatar, and the crescent of flames was Juggler from Ultraman Orb. Once I decided on that twist, I suddenly had a reason for the Medals to have to go—Ankh saw Eiji suffer enough, he nearly killed him himself without knowing, and that moment of Eiji almost winning out over Maki and then the shock of getting run through again (which I stole from Gara in the movie) just leading to Eiji having to one-up him by hiding a Medal from him just came out of that.
So I really hope everyone liked it, and that nobody minds this long-winded spiel of everything that inspired this fic. I admit, Eiji and Ankh act like little shits at the end rather than getting super cute and fluffy...but that's because whenever I write them, their idea of cute and fluffy is being stupid, annoying little shits. Hopefully one day, I can return to this universe and show things from Eiji's perspective (which I intentionally avoided) as he adjusts to everything changing because of his absence, and who knows, maybe actually have that sit-down with him, Shingo, and Chiyoko as they try to explain everything that happened to them. But until then, thank you for reading.
Summary: Ankh and the others have one last chance to save Eiji, and they're not about to let Maki or the Yummy ruin everything.
There are two fics that sorta-kinda inspired this: Elevated To The Point Of Static by Cici_Nota, for the brilliant summary of "Hino Eiji goes missing. No one notices." and the sun and the rainfall by oryx, where the premise is that Eiji dies and Ankh is in total denial. I wind up thinking about these fics a lot, and at some point, I began to think, "But wait. What if something happened to Eiji, yes, but instead of Ankh being the only one who believes he's okay, he's the only one who knows better? What if it's that nobody remembers Eiji but Ankh?" And canon shows us how Eiji takes it when Ankh dies, but if it ends up the other way around, how would Ankh handle it if Eiji was the one who died? The title is from Eyeshine's final album, "Gone Tomorrow," and all of the chapter titles are half of a common expression, purposely chosen because now it's incomplete, and missing that something changes the meaning of each expression, although "Fall Seven Times" doubles as a reference to another Eyeshine album.
This fic was originally started toward the end of Kamen Rider Build, with a plot that was more of a "for want of a nail" idea: the Yummy had killed Eiji, and its power caused him to be erased from existence, as if he'd never been born at all, although somehow or another everyone still came together. There were some differences, of course: Hina would have had to have dropped out of school to deal with Ankh full-time, while also being much more forward with him than he expected. Goto wouldn't have gone back to the Kougami Foundation because he didn't have Eiji or OOO to worry about. And nobody would have told Chiyoko that Ankh was some horribly abused foreign orphan, so she would have just gone with Hina telling her that this was her brother going through some kind of fugue state after his car accident, so that meant he just needed to be humored on occasion or just otherwise redirected to listen to whatever his "sister" said.
And then Zi-O came out and was doing basically the same premise. I didn't want to step on canon's toes too much, so I rewrote it. A few times, actually, because the muses kept rebelling. I love the OOOT3, and I kind of wanted to fit that in there, but given the plot of this story, it really worked better as just Ankh/Eiji with a strong Ankh & Hina friendship. The idea of Hina telling Chiyoko everything just kind of came up with this idea behind recreating some of the most heartbreaking moments in canon, but re-contextualized. At the time, I planned on having Ankh stare at the pictures and try to go through his memories to figure out which one was Eiji, only to come up short; Chiyoko was going to be worried about both him and Hina, and finally Hina started to break down and admit she couldn't keep lying anymore. My thoughts were that Eiji came up with the bulk of the lies, and it comes very naturally to him just to not tell the truth when he's afraid others will worry. He and Hina don't seem to coordinate well on their cover stories, and that led to realizing that Hina was definitely suffering over not being able to talk to someone about what was going on. What she forgot was that Eiji really was her only outlet, but he was a terrible one because he was the source of most of the things that were worrying her in the first place. And dear god, getting Ankh and Goto to work together was probably one of the hardest parts of writing this fic, since my Ankh muse for some reason just shuts down any prospect of including Goto in a fic and has done so for the past five years or so. But I'm really impressed with what I ended up with.
I don't exactly remember when I decided for Hina to become Proto-Birth, but it was definitely soon after I came up with the idea of modifying the Breast Cannon to save Eiji—basically, all of my muses got together and said that whatever Eiji wanted didn't matter, they were making Hina badass. Likewise, I did not expect for her to shoot Maki the second he started threatening Ankh. The death of Ankh's impostor is probably one of the only things that went the way I originally planned, since I needed to get rid of him and destroy the Medals in a way that Ankh wouldn't blame Eiji. That being said, forcing the merge between the two Ankhs in the way I did came pretty much as I wrote it, since Eiji really was the only thing deterring Lost Ankh from just waltzing right up and absorbing Ankh. And since he does have access to Ankh's memories, I decided I really wanted that unsettling moment where they remember Eiji's last stand as if they were both there; I picture Lost Ankh's voice speaking all of Ankh's lines in that moment being very confused and frightened, like "Wait, this is what my other self saw and felt? I don't want any part of this." And yes, the idea for a workable body for Ankh by creating a homunculus from Shingo's DNA is indeed a reference to Movie Wars Core, since as bad as that movie is, it actually is a good idea that would solve a lot of Ankh's problems. It's not the only easter egg in there—the discussion with Kougami about Ankh's past has a reference to my "Kings and Vagabonds" from about five years ago, and there's a blink-and-miss-it reference to the novel that I had excluded from my fic canon. Plus the whole thing with overloading the axe was a reference to the final stage show, except without traveling to a dimension with multiple Eijis and the Greeed as a Sentai team.
As far as the Yummy goes, I'd always planned on the velociraptor and at real-life height. I watch a lot of Ultraman and frequently see giant monsters and aliens stomping around and everything. It's easy to be scared of that. But the idea of something small being equally dangerous was appealing to me, especially since I am not a very tall person myself. I also really like the fact that the velociraptor had a sickle claw, since it made the Yummy feel kind of like the Grim Reaper, thereby emphasizing the theme of death. Also, science says it had feathers, so it made for a really good shadow archetype to Ankh. I'd really wanted to put in a reference to the famous fossil of "Fighting Dinosaurs," with the velociraptor and protoceratops locked in combat and thus getting themselves killed trying to kill one another—because holy shit does this feel like the kind of stupid shit Eiji would get himself into—but I never had an opening for it. Eiji's death scene is pretty intentionally stolen from Den-O, episode 45, which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it—but that's definitely where the imagery of "flames looking like flowers" came from. It felt like the best way to try and handle this without it looking like more recent things, like anything from Avengers: Endgame, which was one of my greatest fears. However, I think I did end up with this also looking somewhat like Leomon's death in Digimon Tamers, so...
And of course, that brings us to the twist. I never originally planned to have Eiji be...well, the Yummy. After all, in "The Girl Who Has Everything," I'd already done something similar. But it was one last instance of the muses rebelling and I realized it was way too good not to use, and it took care of a lot of final plot holes I was trying to fill in. All I had to do was revise some chapters and add new scenes of the Yummy, particularly drawing from Eiji's very distinctive posture as both PuToTyra and a Greeed. Although the foot sweeping was inspired by Kamen Rider Agito and Toph from Avatar, and the crescent of flames was Juggler from Ultraman Orb. Once I decided on that twist, I suddenly had a reason for the Medals to have to go—Ankh saw Eiji suffer enough, he nearly killed him himself without knowing, and that moment of Eiji almost winning out over Maki and then the shock of getting run through again (which I stole from Gara in the movie) just leading to Eiji having to one-up him by hiding a Medal from him just came out of that.
So I really hope everyone liked it, and that nobody minds this long-winded spiel of everything that inspired this fic. I admit, Eiji and Ankh act like little shits at the end rather than getting super cute and fluffy...but that's because whenever I write them, their idea of cute and fluffy is being stupid, annoying little shits. Hopefully one day, I can return to this universe and show things from Eiji's perspective (which I intentionally avoided) as he adjusts to everything changing because of his absence, and who knows, maybe actually have that sit-down with him, Shingo, and Chiyoko as they try to explain everything that happened to them. But until then, thank you for reading.