pheasantboy | [ic] shadow pheasant's mementos inbox

"Honestly, I couldn't give a shit if you killed my mother or not. The fact it torments you is enough." She needed to think for a moment, who could Him be?

"Maruki, or Ren?" That was his name wasn't it? "He picked you to be like this?" Okay, she could get on the anger train on his behalf, reducing someone to this was, well not great.

But there he goes; he can't hear the name. Hearing Maruki named sets him off, and following it up with Ren...

He vanishes, exploding outwards and losing his form as he impacts on the tunnel walls, like something out of a 90s anime movie. The force of his scream rocks the space around her.

But nothing—not a shockwave, not a flying piece of debris, or the Shadow himself—injures her.

Well, she got her answer. Both of them. That was a lovely discovery. He didn't hurt her though. He had enough control to not do that. She could lead him down here if he ever showed up, make him witness the distress he caused, ~~the pain.~~ He would probably attack him.

She didn't know that she'd step in to help. She sighed again. "I apologize for that, I didn't know the name would cause that. I won't mention it again."

Her tracker will show something vast around her, as if hiding in the walls themselves. Like a tube of some sort... or a worm? Nothing but a hollow maw?

The tunnels themselves seem to tremble in pain. Every part of him hurts, far too much to hold any sort of form. He never wants to hear that name again, and he also wants to hear it over and over, to make it every part of himself.

She glanced at her tracker, strange, her being surrounded by something, but also, not in fear. He took her anger surprisingly well.

Was he hurting? Was emotional pain physical for shadows? Could shadows cry? He was not a a test subject, she could find someone else for that. She just needed to... fuck she didn't know how to help. For someone who mimics who she's around, having nothing there was hard to read.

"What do you want? Truely?"

"Why are you asking?" Again, that voice in her ear, from everywhere and nowhere, sounding so old and tired when his ego's still not nineteen years old.

"What I want doesn't matter. That much was made clear."

This time the voice didn't scare her, but she felt a little ping of pain from hearing him like that.

"What you want does matter." She sighed. "I do what I want, but end of the day it's Goro's-" She cut herself off, needing to readjust her thoughts. "Your wants should matter to those who are at least somewhat decent human beings." She wouldn't say those who cared, because that would only end badly.

"You say that as if such things exist. You certainly don't qualify, what with flaying a man alive. You were glad if I was suffering. You think I deserve it."

He starts to laugh, humourless and eerie. "And you're right, you know. I should be dead. That's all I want. Him dead, because I hate him! And then me too. Like it should have been. Finally."

"So you don't want freedom, you want death, yet you seem ready to fight anyone on that." She huffed.

"I'm not a good person, you are right. I killed people just because I wanted to. I want to do it again. I want to see exactly what makes people tick, taking them apart inch by inch."

"Don't you get it? Killing me won't do anything! You have to kill him! Otherwise it's just... exactly what I deserve. I never said I wasn't a fucking hypocrite."

There's a soft suggestion of something in the tunnel, and the vast reading on her tracker collapses into a single point, a figure in the dark with luminous eyes. "You sound like a fucking monster, Futaba-Akechi-known-as-Glitch. But then, how can I judge you? That's what I am as well. Something deep in my blood that made me an idiot, and then a killer. Just like you."

She laughed. "I've killed shadows before. You know that. You have too. Are you just scared of the pain that comes with it? You want him to die so you don't have to deal with that pain."

Yeah, okay maybe she was a monster, but her thoughts and what she did were too different actions. She sighed, "I don't think you are a monster. Trust me I should, but I don't."

There's a long, long silence as he stares at her. "Don't pity me."

"I wasn't thank you very much." she laid back on the floor, in a strange amount of trust she had in him. "There's no pity here."

"Listen to you damn yourself. Do you even realise it? Even I felt pity, from time to time." Like he'd felt it for her—or no, for Oracle. You really said you'd remove a man's parental rights...?

"I'm not scared of pain. I don't care if you set me on fire, melt me with acid. Whatever. Not to say I have to sit still for it. But I hate him for what he is! Mindless, a fucking puppet again, worse than ever!

"Maybe it would be better if he was like that. Nothing but a drooling shell. I did it to so many others, after all, and maybe he really would die. But then, we'd never be that lucky." Astonishing to hear him say we.

She shook her head. "I'm not pitying you. Just like I don't pity any of the others." Though he truly didn't have to sit still for dying, he had enough fight that maybe he didn't want to.

She didn't know where the leap in logic was, for him to say like he should be like that. There was something ringing in her about being lucky. She laughed again, that manic, that pained laugh. "It's what we deserve isn't it. Maybe that luck will pass to me."

"I think I'd be in the same spot if I saw myself like that, but maybe I already am. I mimic what others what to see. I live up to the perfect straight a student who never misses a beat, then I'll switch and be the worst person who has to beg for help all under the preface of what they want to see. I beg for people to like me, and yet I'm a ticking time bomb."

Such a confession to hear. It pulls at one of those little puppet strings, the ones he hates so much, the ones that have kept her alive. His little laugh is barely more than grit in his throat, and harsher for it.

"Well. Stay on the path you're on, and perhaps one day you can be a Shadow trapped in Mementos, hm? Just like me."

"Maybe I will be," she laughed sadly. "Certainly would be nicer than what I'm sure is waiting for me."

"I'm fully expecting death, I think it's what I deserve. Funny how I went from crying about shooting the guy off the roof, to this. Someone who flayed a man, someone who shot someone on stage, someone who's a copy of those around her, someone who's finding themselves with you."

Her laughter turned sour again, "I don't even know who I am."

He shimmers a little, and when he reforms he's standing above her, considering her where she lies on the floor. "So much self-pity. But there again, I'm in no position to judge you on that."

Edited 2024-01-27 05:53 (UTC)

She smiles up at him. "I guess, though you have to have somewhat of an idea of yourself to have that."

Should she be laying on the floor with a shadow above her? maybe not. but she wasn't scared either. When was she scared with shadows? It's hard to have fear when you don't care.

His face wrinkles up, very much in a way she might recognise. "Of course I do. I'm a Shadow."

He shimmers again, and when he reforms, he's sitting against the tunnel wall, beside her. He doesn't feel very much; doesn't feel anything much of anything good. He's still looking down at her as if he's not sure whether to talk to her or eat her.

"You said you were my sister?"

Interesting topic change. "Yeah, I am?" Where was he going with this? He at least seems a bit more at ease.

"You sound like you could be my sister. Murderous, pathetic. Desperate for some self-worth. Cherishing a sick little sadistic streak." He says none of these as if they are bad things, or as if they might not be entirely true.

"But Oracle was nothing like you. It would be fallacious to say that proves anything. Perhaps my counterpart just ruined you with his presence."

Ouch, even if somewhat true. "Oracle might have been. I wouldn't put it past the guy who could," she gestured to the all of him.

She sighed, "Fuck him."

"Who are we fucking? Anyone in particular?"

He sounds absolutely exhausted, and drops his head back against the tunnel wall. His eyes flash momentarily, and an Eigaon impacts on the tunnel wall in a flash of red fire.

"Everyone I guess, people suck." she sighed. Yeah, go ham buddy. She wouldn't say the guy who did this, though he probably would get drug down here. The shadow deserves his revenge.

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