personavelvetroomdr | Operation: Uncage the Sparrow!

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Operation: Uncage the Sparrow!

Kasumi, now more than ever, is adamant about doing something right. She'll prove her worth. She'll go back to her roots as the Midnight Maiden, solving problems on behalf of the unfortunate!

Stocked up on Goho-M's, healing items, and other assorted odds and ends, she sends a message to Makoto to join her in Tartarus when the Dark Hour arrives. They're doing it tonight!

That'll prove she's not just some puppet.

And so she waits outside of Gekkoukan High School for the clock to strike midnight and for the Dark Hour to commence. She's got a rapier at the ready, though she doubts that she'll need it.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Whew. Okay. That's a good sign! Very, very good sign. She can work with this. Kasumi brightens at the offer, nodding. "Only if it's not too much trouble!"

Oh, he laughs. "You're never trouble. Or, I say that. My Yoshizawa-san isn't trouble. But maybe you're hiding something, hm?"

He turns to lead her into the building at this point, perhaps fortunately.

"Well, you never know. I could lead a dark and mysterious double life..." Which she does, but she's playing it off as a quip more than anything, as she follows him inside.

Like, he wonders, being brainwashed and not herself? It feels like a dark little joke, not the kind of thought he usually has.

"Goodness. I don't know what I'd do with a dark and mysterious double life. Probably spend all my time trying to find someone to tell about it." He presses the button for the elevator.

"Sorry, is the top floor all right for you? My alternate is up there, in my apartment"—and the less said about that the better—"but truth be told, he's a good neighbour. Quiet. Just a little unpleasant in the corridors sometimes."

"I'm sure you'd have at least one trusted confidant you could share all your daaark secrets with." Ooo, mysterious. Super secret dark detective Akechi.

She nods, considerably calmer now. Light conversation certainly helps. "I don't mind! Though now I'm starting to wonder if I should make him a bento as a sort of greeting..."

"Hm, that depends. Has your cooking got any better?" He's familiar with Kasumi's bentos, has even helped to eat a couple. But he laughs.

"Actually, that's not how I should speak to a trusted confidant, is it? Back home, I'd definitely have given your bentos points for effort." Wow, Akechi.

Oh, wow. That's... awfully blunt. It does get a startled look from her, but not an outright offended one. "No, that's okay. Crow-senpai can be pretty blunt, too. And even Ren-senpai thought my first few bentos were missing something."

"But only the first few?" The elevator dings, and they get out on the top floor. He indicates two doors, at very opposite ends of the corridor.

"That's my old apartment, where Magpie lives. And this one here is mine. To my knowledge, cognitions live in the others, but they won't mind if you move in. In fact, I think they leave."

"You know, I wonder if the cognitions are there to make the place feel more normal to us. But if we take a place, our perception of it changes from 'someone already lives here' to 'I live here,' and that changes it?"

She's done some reading from Wakaba's research, though admittedly some of it goes over her head at times. That work is dense! Either way, she follows along and glances from one room to the other.

There is the barest hesitation, as he stops in his tracks and his eyes unfocus—but then it passes, and he just looks puzzled.

"I, um... I'm sorry. You said... the, the apartments change from occupied to unoccupied based on our perception, is that right?" He feels very odd. But then he reaches for the unlocked door of the nearest apartment, two down from his own—they're all unlocked; he thinks Magpie had something to do with it.

"I never like doing this. It's their home." Two months in Tartarus has done little for his fellow-feeling with cognitions, it seems.

Oh. Is that what it looks like? But he retained what she said, didn't he? So... maybe it wasn't a 'blank out' and what she said just stressed him out.

Someone more blunt might say 'they're just cognitions.' Clearly this is a topic that Sparrow holds quite dear, though.

Kasumi moves closer to the door. "I think if they had a problem with it, we'd know. We all have to live somewhere, and it's a big city. The cognitions all seem really happy, too, no matter what you say or do."

All the time. Never changing. It's... creepy.

"They just seem like people to me," he says softly, stepping inside. "And everyone gets so unnerved when I say so."

There is, indeed, a cognition sitting on the couch—a blonde woman, maybe thirty, maybe sixty, it's hard to tell. She does nothing but sit there. Hello, she says, and Akechi offers her a friendly hello, sorry to disturb you, I'm with my friend. The cognition acknowledges him with a laugh, then gets up and leaves.

He watches her go, disquieted. "So hard to tell," he murmurs. "Something fundamental in the way I see things..."

Wow, she really just left. No protest. No complaint. Just... walked out. Maybe to another apartment. That'd be nice. That'd be-

Oh, okay. She's taking another door down the hall? Did Kasumi's cognition do that?

Her attention returns to Sparrow. "...Is that just how people act in your world? Always happy? Just so we're clear, I'm not trying to judge you! I'm just trying to understand."

"I'm afraid so." Yet he misses it; he still wants to be back there so badly. "None of the excitements you have here, none of the drama. None of the damage or trauma.

"You can tell me it sounds the worst thing you ever heard." He turns a few things over—a ceramic bowl in blues and reds, a magazine on the table, Velvet Food Review. Food review?

Hmm... No trauma is hardly a bad thing. A world where everyone can be happy sure isn't the worst, but... no excitement?

"No excitement at all, huh? ...And people really don't ever have even small misunderstandings or butt heads?"

She curiously eyes the magazine as well. "I don't think it's the worst. It just sounds... different. Hard to wrap my head around, I guess."

"Does it sound so unexciting to you?" He smiles at her, with the magazine in his hands. "I wish you could see it. It just... of course there are misunderstandings all the time, but they don't matter. We don't dwell on them. We don't live in our pain the way all of you do.

"Would you like a look at this?" He offers her the magazine; it has a big meringue on the front, with blueberries and cream.

"I guess it depends on what you mean by exciting, or unexciting. For some people, excitement comes in surprises. Or doing something big and exhilarating with their friends and family. A roller coaster's exciting. Sports can be exciting... Even learning something new."

But he probably means a different kind of excitement, huh? That gives her pause. "I think it's just a little trickier for me because of everything that's been going on over the last few years back home. More recently, I've gotten involved in... well, I guess you could say it's like being a superhero? I use my powers to grant people's wishes by finding people who may be hurting them and convincing them to change their ways."

She hopes the vague wording will make it easier to understand. It'd stink if she caused an actual 'episode.' Still, she nods at the magazine. She might as well take a look.

"I suppose so. All those things can be exciting. Learning is exciting—I was thinking about my school options, back home, before I came here. And of course we have rollercoasters. We have Destinyland. We aren't all monks, you know."

All the food in the magazine is blue. "It would be nice to have superpowers, of course. Like Featherman. But the truth is, I don't know what I'd do with them. And it would be selfish to choose to aggrandise myself, at the cost of hurting so many others. Wouldn't it?"

Edited 2024-01-10 17:33 (UTC)

"It's too bad there's so much you can't remember, because I bet it'd be really fun to learn about how it works in other worlds. But that has to be frustrating, too, right? When you're a detective and you can't put all the pieces together."

Maybe that'll appeal to something within him? Hopefully without sounding to pitying. It just seems so annoying to not be able to notice or interact with things that are so normal here.

She flips through the pages... blue like that Velvet Room, maybe? Hm. "But as far as heroism goes, I try to focus on the good I can bring by helping people who can't help themselves."

So that's how it is: she's prodding and poking at things inside him, trying to evoke something she knows. He sighs, looking away at the window. The view of the night is the same as from his own apartment; it cheers him to look at it.

"People like me, right?"

It's not cruel. All the cruelty that was in him is somewhere else.

Oh. That's... not a good reaction. So much so that it gets out a weak little, "Sorry. I didn't mean—"

Shoot. And things were going relatively well. How's she gonna fix this? Think, Kasumi! Think!

"...I just mean people in general. Like kids whose parents don't respect them, or whose classmates hurt and bully them. Maybe there's someone who lost their way and needs a reminder of what motivated them before. Or there's a person in power, like a teacher, who isn't using their position for anything good, and needs to realize what they're doing is wrong."

Edited 2024-01-11 19:22 (UTC)

And she is so close. He gazes back at her, depthless, wondering. But it goes nowhere.

"I suppose that would be useful. I don't spend too much time thinking about things like that. I know you're going to say I should."

He reaches out for one of the little knickknacks on the table, some coloured glass marbles in a bowl. They skate between his fingers. The cognition who left must have liked them. Even if they aren't real, as the others say, somebody created these marbles for her, and not something else.

He considers Kasumi. She saved him, when she could have left him. "It's all right, Yoshizawa-san. I know you want to help. And, remember, you brought me out of that tower, when nobody else would."

"...I'm sure somebody would've eventually. Crow-senpai, maybe? He was concerned when he found out. I think he's just a little tired." Kasumi hasn't pried too much. Being around him can be... awkward, but she could tell that people like Magpie were keeping him busy. It came up when she visited Ren. "I just don't want you to feel like I'm trying to shove you under a microscope. Or make you feel like you're less than human."

Again, he watches her, steady and solemn as she twists in the wind.

"Because you're too used to feeling that way yourself, right?"

"Only since I came here and met... that doppelganger and the other me." It was fine before then. No reason to question. It's only now that it's a problem.

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pheasantboy - 2024-01-13 00:16 (UTC) - Expand

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midnightmaiden - 2024-01-13 01:53 (UTC) - Expand

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