[ic] and it flew into the dark

[pheasantboy]

Shibuya Station is probably the part of Tokyo Akechi knows the best. He goes through there several times a day. It's the main hub between Kichijoji and anywhere else he might want to go, after all—the studio in Akasaka, the shopping districts in Ginza and Shibuya itself, his high school in Nagata-cho, the Public Prosecutor's Office in Kasumigaseki. And Shido's office, which, of course, is also in Nagata-cho.

But he never used to visit for the sake of it. He's fairly sure of that.

It's as if something draws him down there. Something he can't look at too closely. Something that leads him to the steps, to stare down as if into an open maw. And then to take a step down. And another.

A keen observer—say, one with long familiarity with the dead—might be able to tell that this rather dazed-looking boy was dead, at one point. Or perhaps he wasn't. It's a little unclear.

Comments

distant [you hear the calling] rapidly approaching

[paysforall]

The station entrance, up until now, was as close as he could go. Close enough to hear the roar of the trains but not to see them.

Now he can go anywhere, but there's hardly anywhere worth going. The people here aren't even as real as Noise. He'd know. He's made Noise.

(Wouldn't it be funny if we gave them a T-rex? Go for it. Someone will get a kick out of it.)

So when he sees a real person in the crowd, he naturally gravitates in that direction, the same way he does towards any Players standing with the crowd passing through them.

As it turns out, it's another him, though there... Certainly something off about him. He'd almost believe this was a Player, if not for the cognitions still clearly seeing and moving around him.

"Not lost, I hope," he says to the younger him, as he seems to melt out of the shadows of the empty crowd. "Because this seems like a difficult place to get lost in."

[pheasantboy]

But it's as if Akechi doesn't hear him, or know that he's been spoken to at all. Like the Shadows he doesn't remember seeing any more, the ones that walk blankly down to the Mementos platforms and beyond as if there are robots in their feet, he just stares down into the underground ticket hall and vanishes down the steps.

[paysforall]

... Hm! Doesn't seem ideal.

Lacking any better recourse - his usual partner is as far from here as imaginable, after all - Akechi pauses to shoot a text off before following after the other him. He sticks to the RG, just in case the other him does wake up, and after he shoves his phone into his pocket again, he palms a pin tucked into his pocket and secured there. Just in case he needs it.

[pheasantboy]

It's not as if he can hear singing, or anything like that—though he does sometimes feel as if he should hear singing, as if its absence distresses him. It's more that he's shut off, and his feet are walking without him, seeking something he can't find.

The gates in the ticket hall are open, just as ever—just like in Mementos. So he walks through, zombie-slow, lips a little parted, looking for whatever it is.

He's on a route that will take him to the escalator, and down to the JR Line platform.]

[paysforall]

The older Akechi continues tailing him, vaulting the turnstile on principle and also in case the noise attracts his other self's attention. Nope.

He'll follow down to the platform, not quite ready to interfere yet, but by now he's Scanning the area looking for stray thoughts (or lack thereof), or anything else that might explain why the other Akechi is moving like there's a weight on his mind ready to drag him down to the depths.

[pheasantboy]

His head is almost a void, bare of anything but half-seen perceptions and a vague confusion. As unlike the clicking machines most Akechis carry—whether that clicking is rapid or frenzied—as you could hope to see.

Ah, but if you look a little deeper. Then you start to see signs of tampering in the tapestry of his mind. The recent work is clearly from inside, a mesh of fine embroidery, gleaming with silk thread and pearls, with patience and care—but the rest is deeper, uglier and cruel. As if someone took a hatchet to his being, with the best will in the world but no true thought or skill, and severed everything they didn't like.

As if that hatchet should still be rooted there, somewhere, ineradicable, with its handle in another's grasp. As if, in the absence of that controlling hand, he's seeking out something else to put in its place....

At the edge of the platform, he stops, gazing down into the darkness of the tunnel. But he goes no further; he just waits. As if he can go no further. As if the way is closed to him, and he can't understand why.

[paysforall]

Yeap, he does not like this. He thinks of Rose-Haru's description of the other boy, and... Well, she didn't know how deep it went, clearly. She might be sensitive, but she doesn't have practice outside the Metaverse and its particular method of interaction with the subconscious.

This is beyond anything he's seen. The red pins were a layer of control, and Entry Fees - as far as he can tell - are a single swift yank, leaving the brain to make its own vague memories to fill in the blank. (An average of three-fifths of a second longer - )

Goro Akechi is skilled by Reaper standards, but he's not Entry-Fee-level skilled, and he knows it. Whoever did this... isn't that skilled, either, but they were Entry-Fee-level thorough.

For now, he just pushes a light test of an Imprint in, flicking it against the net of pearls and repression. Take a look around you, says the foreign thought. Hard to tell if his other self will even be able to tell that it doesn't come from within, though, when he's out of touch with so much that should be there.

[pheasantboy]

But no. Though he wasn't exactly slouching, he straightens, and smiles a vacant smile, and looks down the platform and back the other way. His face has sprung to life, too.

And as he moves, those fine gold traceries in his mind reach down to those hatchet wounds. As if he's been conditioned to take orders from the thing that was rooted there, but is no longer. Something that didn't affect him, his body, but rather—his soul? Or something very like a soul.

The order has woken him; he stretches a little, up and down, and rocks on his heels. He isn't surprised to find himself on the platform at all. He's waiting for the train home, of course.

He hasn't noticed other-Akechi at all.

[paysforall]

Mind, soul, there's not much distinction until you get down to the Noise-level. Akechi focuses on that, on the mental-note-taking angle of the situation, and shoves his disgust at the whole thing aside. He can hate this later, ideally over a cup of coffee with his back-up.

For now, he doesn't reveal himself by speaking. Instead, he flicks out another minor Imprint, just to see if the same thing happens: This shirt collar is itchy.

Nothing of any consequence. But is he going to scratch that itch?

[pheasantboy]

He does. He reaches up one hand, adjusts his collar with a small tug, and scratches unobtrusively with the tip of one fingernail. Again, those traceries around the hatchet wound light up hopefully, and fade.

But it's a little dull, waiting here for the train. Why didn't he bring a book? Maybe he can find someone to talk to? Someone who won't look at him like he's in remedial education? One of the nice cognitions, perhaps–?

And this is when he sees other-Akechi, behind him. His face falls. "Ah. Good afternoon."

Older? Weird clothes? Sorry, he's not paying attention to any of that. The sheer lack of curiosity is enough to pin him as wrong.

[paysforall]

As though he needs the signal, at this point.

"Hello." It's plaster-face smile. He needs plaster-face smile right now to not just go what ate you. "I keep running into myself around here, but I don't believe you and I specifically have met."

He'll take those few steps over and tuck both his thumbs into his belt. No point reaching for his Player Pin now. Whatever's fucking up the Akechi in front of him is purely internal, and all the protection from external influences in the world won't do anything for that.

[pheasantboy]

"No. You're, ah, clearly not one of the ones I've met. Your outfit is quite distinctive." He says it like he's talking about the weather, as if it couldn't possibly signify a deeper truth. And, in truth, there isn't much connection between his mouth and his higher reasoning; his thoughts so far seem superficial, with only the odd foray somewhere deeper.

"Have you been here long? I suppose you live in Kichijoji too? It seems quite populated with us." What a nice, mindless conversation. You can see where most of his brain went. Or perhaps that's unfair.

[paysforall]

"I work in a different industry from the rest of you that I've met, and I have a bit more leeway to choose my own clothes." This is technically true. He's going to keep to the technical truths for the moment. "It took me a few years to figure out a different style."

Speaking of years, it's been more than a few of those since he did small talk that wasn't a veneer for hidden messages of some variety. Maybe it's a good thing that his other self here doesn't seem inclined to notice.

"I live in Shibuya, actually. The northern side, up near Harajuku."

[pheasantboy]

"Oh, that's nice. I do like Harajuku. It's such a good place to be seen, and the places to eat are so interesting. I was there the other day, in fact, with one of the Akiras—we had snails...."

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Airheaded is a word you could easily use to describe his daytime TV persona, but nobody who knew him would ever have applied it to him in seriousness. It's as if he just... talks.

"What industry do you work in? I take it you aren't a detective too, with that fashion statement of yours." He seems as likely to be a successful detective as Anpanman is to feature hardcore pornography.

[paysforall]

"How to explain it... Have you heard of escape room games? It's somewhere between that and an augmented reality game, played across all of Shibuya."

He's remembering the Twisters that first week, when they didn't really believe that this was real, when they didn't yet understand the stakes. If he just talks about the Game itself, rather than the reasons why it's played, the other him will probably retain it. He doubts the meat of the reasons would be something his other self retains, and he has had enough of conversations that disappear meaninglessly when he's no longer having them with Players.

(He doesn't hate this conversation, actually. It's a fun puzzle, in some ways. If it was anyone but himself on the other end, he'd probably enjoy it.)

(But it is, unfortunately.)

[pheasantboy]

"Escape rooms? Oh, yes, I remember wanting to go when I was younger. They looked like so much fun."

They'd been huge when he was in elementary school. A challenging situation that he could test himself against, with (indeed) puzzles to solve and opponents to outwit? Of course he'd have gone wild for it. But even when he earned money for himself as he began to do quite early on, he'd had no friends to go with—not that he remembers any of that. "Augmented reality, on the other hand, has been very fashionable this year. I played Dokemon Dash in the summer—" he really did, it was extremely trendy, and he'd wanted to be able to talk about it—"but I don't think I understood it very well.

"So you're a professional gamer, is that right? I always thought that must be so difficult, with the disrespect you get from others." And while he remembers that, he doesn't remember feeling it was their own fault for not getting a real job.

[paysforall]

"More like I'm one of the game organizers. Inventing the puzzles, setting up challenges, making sure civilians don't wander off with scavenger hunt clues by accident, and so on."

There's not that many Players who disrespect the Reapers, anyway. Most of them are at least a little afraid, and the ones who aren't... Well, they've been around the block enough times to see the same problems that he was seeing, with the unwinnable, high-attrition Game.

"Occasionally I get to loom ominously and drop cryptic hints, which is always fun."

[pheasantboy]

"You know, that does sound fun. Like someone in a mystery novel. Please show me the path that you choose for humanity, things like that." The line comes to mind unaided, with the tiniest shimmer of gold, divorced from its context and its small, golden-haired speaker.

"But if you design the games that others play, aren't you still a gamer? The same activity, but a different level of involvement? Or is that not how it works?"

[paysforall]

"I believe the usual term is 'game designer.' That's what they use in the video game industry, at any rate." He shrugs lightly. "It's probably splitting hairs at that point. If that's how you want to think of it, I won't stop you."

His eyes light up, very slightly. (If the Akechi in front of him had any kind of extrasensory perception at all - if they were in the Metaverse, or the UG, or anywhere that wasn't the 'real world' - then he might also sense the invisible wings behind the older Akechi stretch, just a bit.)

"Though, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell you, since it's not like you can take it back to the general public in my world - on the downlow, the Game is also a sort of training arena for psychic powers."

Let's see what happens here.

[pheasantboy]

Absolutely nothing, is the answer. He just laughs that infuriating little laugh, as if other-Akechi had said he liked laser tag.

"You know, I want to tell you that can't be right. But then, one of the children here is a vampire, so I'm trying to row back on what I instinctively disbelieve." A train swishes through behind them; he gives it an uninterested stare.

"You're not reading my mind, I hope?"

[paysforall]

"I don't have any reason to right now. Unless you think there's something I should be looking for?"

It's the smile-for-fans now, the one that suggests a wink without actually winking, the 'we're in on a secret together' smile. He hates how easily it all comes back, sometimes.

"Most of the powers we run into are pretty minor, actually. Prompting people to remember things they've forgotten, stuff like that. Except then our latest crop included a kid who could time travel - the sort where you just send your consciousness back in time - and that was a headache to figure out that that's what he could do, let me tell you."

He rambles on like it's nothing.

[pheasantboy]

That's just fine; Akechi will ramble all day. He won't notice any superficiality, since it's almost all he has left. But his smile fades to something more aware at that mention of things forgotten; the gold that sparks through what's left of his mind remains inside the tapestry.

"You can remind people of things they've forgotten?"

[paysforall]

"Myself personally? No, that's not my trick. Mine is making people blurt whatever is on their minds at the time, regardless of whether or not it's a thing they'd normally say or the appropriateness of the situation."

Eyebrows raised; you do have his interest, now.

"Why? Is there something you've forgotten recently?"

[pheasantboy]

"I don't—" But he breaks off. How is he supposed to know? How many times can he explain that memory just works differently, where he's from; that it's normal?

"Everybody here says I have. They seem so sure. As if I should be like them, and it's a crime that I'm not."

[paysforall]

"Well, put aside the opinions of others for a moment."

It's the sort of thing that's not easy, he's aware. Some of the casualness of his posture disappears.

"If there was something there, would you want to try? To remember it?"