personavelvetroomdr | [open/intro]

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Ann knows this place.

This shade of blue, and the song...though its notes flow far more harmoniously than they had the last (and only) time she'd heard them, the melody itself is enough to make Ann's heartbeat kick up a notch. That song only plays in the Velvet Room--and the Velvet Room is not a place she wants to be. Lavenza had said it. Her gut had said it--and Elizabeth had confirmed it. The Velvet Room was in the control of Yaldabaoth, wearing the skin of Igor.

Ann had never met Igor, personally, but both Akira in the previous timeline and the Attendants she'd encountered had painted a vivid picture of him. Taking in her surroundings carefully (this Room matched neither the descriptions of a prison Akira had once given her, or the crumbling ruins Lavenza had pulled her into at the End of a World), Ann eyes the man she can only assume is Yaldabaoth. And, even if it is truly Igor...

She's never met the man, and she doesn't trust anything he has to say to her. She might not be garbed in her will of rebellion, currently, but Célestine is always with her, and steeling her spine with a little of her flame, Carmine stands tall and proud.

Ann takes in the doors. Makes a split second decision that she shouldn't just be rushing into making a decision; Lavenza, and Elizabeth, she trusts--and she's heard Elizabeth describe their siblings enough that she feels as though she can trust them too. She'll poke around in this unfamiliar Velvet Room for now, and see if she can't encounter one of them...or at least someone who can tell her what's going on.

[OOC: check out Ann's AU info and perms here!]

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The Akira confirms she's not his world's Takamaki, which is... a relief, he thinks. Yeah. He watches, amused, as her delighted and absolutely predictable acceptance of sweet food fades into concern.

"Nope. I know my world's version of you, but not you personally." He glances down at his own ice cream—more chocolatey, with some red-pink accents that suggest strawberry—then figures what the hell, and takes out one of the pieces of strawberry pocky that stick out of the cup. "My name's Ren Amamiya, by the way. Akira's my name in some other worlds, for some reason."

He bites into the pocky. Tasty.

Mid-bite, Ann pauses. That's--wild. She's met several Goro Akechis at this point, but they've all, you know, been called Goro Akechi? The fuck is a Ren Amamiya?

Well. Still, no reason to be rude. Especially when he brought her ice-cream!

It's equally weird, to hear that this Ren is apparently not friends with his Ann, even if he knows her. "Do you not go to Shujin, then? And, uh, thanks for the food!"

He wrinkles his nose. "Never even seen Shujin. Who has time for school? Like, do you actually want to go?"

He's a dropout, Ann. But he smiles again when she thanks him. "No problem. It was for my big sister, but I can get her another one."

Who has time for school??? Like, don't get her wrong, Ann agrees, but Akira had spent the past few months pouting at her as her grades and attendance slipped (running a one woman shadow killing show is a lot more tiring than being a Phantom Thief, is the thing) because he's a goody-two-shoes. From the amount of time he spends with Kawakami, Ann's teased him more than once about him being a teacher's pet.

But this...isn't Akira, after all. She'll just have to adjust and get over herself.

"Honestly? I barely have time for school myself," Ann sighs. "But if I don't go, it's a whole thing. Calls from my parents, truancy officers...it's just not worth it, you know?"

Guilt stings, but only a little bit, because the snack is really good. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to take her food. I can buy her a replacement?" She turned up here in her usual getup, so she should have some money somewhere in the deep void that is her sports bag...

Ren does not know about calls from parents or run-ins with truancy officers, and he doesn't bother to pretend like he does. He looks blankly at her—but then she starts talking about money, and he waves her off.

"Don't worry about it. Everything is free here. You can go to any restaurant you want and the creepy-ass cognitions just smile at you and seat you. It's great."

Why's she so tired, though? I barely have time for school myself. He doesn't remember his own Takamaki being that way.

Ann stares with blank shock for just a moment, before relaxing. If money isn't needed here, that's--it's good. Money isn't exactly tight on her end, but she's had less time to take up modelling jobs in her current timeline, and one person just can't bring as much trash out of Mementos as even three of them could. Add onto that the fact that she doesn't have Akira's connections and is paying for all of her first aid items out of pocket, and she's worn pretty thin, financially.

(There's the funds her parents send her every month, true, but--that's meant to be for bills and groceries. She's been using money from her jobs to pay for her non-essentials herself since she was old enough to start booking them; her parents will start asking questions if she requests they send her more.)

The creepy ass cognitions bit isn't super comforting, but hey. You win some, you lose some.

"Good to know," she muses. "It'd suck for me otherwise." She's pretty sure she's got maybe enough yen for a solid meal in the real world rattling around in her bag. She'd just come from restocking her supplies and upgrading her weapons, after all.

Ren understands this as a comment about the number of good modeling jobs in this place, and nods. "Yeah, not a lot of business here for me either."

Or maybe there is, for all he knows. He hasn't exactly checked. Maybe the cognitions in Ikebukuro are dying for a good, reliable info broker. But he'd be bored to fucking tears with cognitions like those for customers, so as far as he's concerned, his skills have no market no matter what.

Ann smile twists into something wry. "Got a lot of odd jobs, huh?" She guesses some things don't change, even if it's Ren and not Akira?

"You could say that." And no, he's not talking about the assassinations, thanks. Iwai has stuff for him sometimes, his landlord discounts his rent in exchange for work... "But mostly I'm an info broker. The real people here are all in each other's business, I'd have nothing to sell them if I wanted to. It's kinda nice, though, since everything's free. Like a vacation."

That's the biggest lie he's told in recent... well, recent days, anyway. But he's a good liar, much better than he would have been if he'd been the leader of the Phantom Thieves; he gives Takamaki another little smile as if to say, What can you do?

An info broker? Ann supposes it's not the most outlandish thing she's heard since arriving here, but generally she'd have imagined Ren to be the sort of person who was friends with an info broker (and a whole gamut of shady people) rather than becoming one himself.

Thoughtfully, she considers the context clues he's given her. "You're not a Phantom Thief either, huh?"

"Technically I am! New recruit as of November." Having finished his pocky, he digs out his ice cream spoon. "I hope when you get home, you can tell your friends to be less gullible than the Phantom Thieves I know. If they just let in whoever asks, it's going to go badly for them eventually."

He digs into his ice cream. This new tell-anyone-who-asks strategy makes him feel weird in his stomach. Sometimes he's not sure why he does it; but then he thinks about when he kept everything a secret and he remembers again.

"Ooh, a newbie, huh?" Ann teases. "Congrats." She tries not to let the jealousy she feels show. She misses her friends, dammit.

The latter half of his statement makes her bristle, even if he's correct. 'They see the good in people' isn't always enough.

"Unfortunately, they don't even know I'm a Persona user," Ann says. "And at this point...things are a bit too precarious to be telling them." She's juggling too much already. She cannot have the Phantom Thieves added to the mix any more than they already are.

He frowns at her as he swallows his choco-strawberry ice cream. One second she seems exactly like a Thief, with the teasing and the prickliness, and then she says that. Takamaki has always been a pretty shit liar, but she's shit because she doesn't know how to act natural. This one is just taking a normal tone as she says things that seem to contradict each other.

"Precarious how? If you don't mind my asking."

Ann hums around a mouthful of ice-cream. "It's a long story, but basically I'm sort of a time traveler? Part of the deal I made makes me invisible to Yaldabaoth, so I can't risk connecting with the Thieves, even without becoming a member myself, or he might realize there's someone running around the Metaverse he can't see." Ann shrugs. "It's easier to get shit done if worrying about him just isn't a factor. So not telling them is just...it's better, that way. Smarter."

A time traveler?? ...No, you know what, time-traveler Takamaki isn't even the weirdest new person he's met this month. There's a giant Akechi bird, for fuck's sake. He can roll with it.

"Sounds lonely, though."

Ann doesn't even try for a smile; she knows that any she manages to plaster across her face would be weak and obviously false. "It is," is all she says in response, feeling her sigh down to her bones. "It is lonely, but it's worth it, I think. I don't mind it, if it's for them." Even if it hurts. Especially because it hurts.

What's worth it? What's she protecting them from? Why did she go back in time? Why Takamaki in particular?

He makes a sympathetic noise around a spoonful of his own ice cream. "Must've been a serious deal."

"Well, I did make it during the literal end of the world," Ann points out. "And if I hadn't made it...I wouldn't have been me, anymore." A starring feature in her nightmares, more than even the potential of her own failure: a world where Lavenza didn't manage to reach out to her in time, and she's still just living under Yaldabaoth's thumb, completely unaware of what's become of the world. Of what Akira had done to them, by taking that deal. A fate worse than death...

...Sounds familiar. (Or So He Thinks.)

"Let me guess. Maruki."

Ann's laugh isn't simply a laugh; it's bitterness represented in audible form. "You know, I'd never even thought of Maruki much before coming here and finding out he's some sort of...benevolent megalomaniac? But, no. My Akira made a deal with Yaldabaoth, when Mementos and reality were merging. He thought we were dead, and decided that...brainwashed versions of us were better than nothing, I guess."

She spits those last words out. She's fully aware she's being uncharitable; that there was more nuance and pain and love to Akira's decision than she could easily explain to a stranger in a handful of sentences. But she's still so angry about it--

--because if he hadn't taken that deal, they'd still all be together.

"...Wow. So the Phantom Thieves' leader has to make that decision twice?"

Akechi is strong. He'll make the right choice. But Ren doesn't like that he's going to be in that position at all, much less twice. For the first time, he wishes he came from a world where he led the Thieves instead. Just to spare Akechi from some of the fucking responsibility, the whole world always on his shoulders.

Then again, Akechi would probably be working for Shido in such a world. So he's probably still better off where he is.

Getting herself back under control and gathering her thoughts, Ann suppresses her own issues to be dealt with another day; business as usual.

"I don't know the circumstances of whatever deal Maruki tries to make," Ann says, "but with Yaldabaoth--when Mementos and reality become one, cognition blurs. Public opinion and belief in the Phantom Thieves is at the lowest it's ever been, and combined with that...well. I'm sure you get it, right? Akira thought we were dead, I think. I wasn't there when he made the deal, though, so I don't know for sure."

Ren chews contemplatively on the little brownie he got with his ice cream.

"It's basically the same thing," he says with his mouth full, before swallowing. "There's an Akechi here from a world where his Ren Amamiya made the same deal your Akira did, but with Maruki. Akechi was dead in reality, but he would live on in Maruki's reality as kind of a..." How the hell do you even describe Sparrow? "...Marukified version of himself. Brainwashed is a good word."

He should text Sparrow, actually. See how he's doing.

"Ah," Ann says. "Yeah, I think I met him shortly after I first got here, he seems a little..." Is there a polite way to say creepy? "...sad, I guess. Lonely." She stares down at the final melted dregs of her ice-cream contemplatively. "I suppose if he's been mind whammied by Maruki, that sort of explains why he reads as so...hollow."

It's...scary, to think that could have been her, in a world that wasn't--but only isn't because Lavenza managed a miracle.

"That's kind of fucked up," she comments. "But I guess it's mostly sad that we all keep finding ourselves in situations like this, haha. Having to choose, or being leverage in a choice..."

(Ann considers, just briefly, finding Maruki's Shadow in Mementos when she got back home and just...taking care of it. Nipping the problem in the bud. The thought makes her sick to her stomach...but so does he.)

"On the bright side... if there is a bright side. If you worked as leverage, your Akira must have cared about you a lot."

Ren thinks about that sometimes. It makes him feel cold and shaky to think about being Sparrow, but it doesn't feel good to know there's no danger of it, either. Sparrow had been loved, like Ann had been loved.

He is being pathetic again. Ever since he got back to his real age, it's never fucking stopped. He brings the paper cup to his lips and drinks the remnants of his ice cream.

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