all your mother's weaves and your father's threads

[flightpen]

Ren hasn't seen the Velvet Room in a while.

There was at time when he was in here every week, fusing Personas to Caroline's acerbic commentary or listening to Yaldabaoth mutter ominous words of praise. It was different in January, like a lot of things, but the point is that it's gone now. He's not even sure Lavenza and Igor survived what happened.

And yet here he is, in what's recognizably the Velvet Room. But it's changed. It's not a prison anymore, even though this would be the best time for it; Ren's heart is in chains. What was it Akechi said to him? Your heart is free. Maybe back then.

Never mind that. Igor, if it is Igor, is unforthcoming. Make bonds—as if Ren can make bonds when people can't even have a meaningful conversation. He'll be returned to the moment he left—as if he wants to go there. His friends are happy, Akechi is alive, and Ren, like Maruki himself, stands outside the world. When he tries to press, Igor gets cryptic and nonsensical, and that's so fucking familiar lately that Ren doesn't bother to keep trying.

You might find him in the following situations:


1: the rockrose and the thistle will whistle as you moan

Maruki has left him alone, mostly. God's favorite. As far as Ren can figure, it's because he knows perfectly damn well that Ren finds his reality repulsive, and he wants Ren to accept it on his own. The implication there is that Maruki also knows deep down that people aren't themselves once he changes their cognition, but that's not a surprise. Maruki talks a big game, but on some level he must know what he's doing. Surely.

Anyway, like we were saying, he's left Ren mostly alone. But he loses time, comes back to himself with the coffee cold or the sun at a different angle or an awful TV show at the end of its saccharine episode. And although he never remembers feeling what preceded it, he knows. Too much despair, too much bleak hopelessness, and Maruki turns him off like a lightbulb until it's gone again. Can't accept the new world if he's too depressed. The stupid self-defeating hypocrisy of it is annoying as hell—is he meant to accept the new reality of his own accord or isn't he? But there was a time when it would've pissed him off a lot more.

He stands in front of Igor's desk, in a place he doesn't recognize, unsure where he is or what's going to happen to him, or where his friends are, or whether this is a new stage of Maruki's reality or something entirely different, and despair swallows him whole. He waits to be shut down.

And waits. And waits, saturated in misery like he hasn't in weeks. For a split second he almost finds himself grateful to Maruki for taking it away, but he flinches back from going down that road. Like this, frozen, waiting to blink and find that his legs hurt from standing too long, he's barely aware of his surroundings.


2: all the pins inside your fretted head and your muttered whens and hows

Having pulled himself together (and not lost any time, as far as he can tell?), Ren decides that the obvious first stop is the conspicuous board that stands in the strange Velvet Room. It doesn't look... Velvet Room-y. It looks like it was brought in from outside, and as he scans its bizarre contents, he realizes he's right.

The business about Akechis and Rens being fated to be together makes him feel a little sick, so he skims it quickly and moves on. Demons, vampires, okay, that's... he'll deal with that when he has to. But as he reads the list of Akechi codenames, his eyes land on one in particular. In the middle of the corvids and the predators, there's Sparrow.

The description leaves him without any doubt. His stomach sinks. Is Akechi okay? Can he even survive in a place like this? How is Ren going to find him?


3: you gently gift it to me 'cause you've no clue how to sew

In a first, helpless attempt to locate his Akechi (different enough from other Akechis, apparently, to be identified on sight... well, that's true enough), Ren decides to head into Tokyo and go looking for places Akechi still enjoys. Kichijoji is an obvious one, with the jazz bar and Inokashira Park and his apartment, the location of which he kept behind his lips the entire time Ren knew him, only to immediately invite him over in February. But instead of taking the train, Ren walks. Travel is strangely quick, and it gives him time to look at the cognitions, which the board claimed were eerie.

The board wasn't wrong. They don't even seem like the brainwashed people Ren is used to—cognitions is definitely the better term. At least the people back home have some variability in how they act, and at least they have some kind of mild reaction if you inconvenience them. Ren steps in front of them once or twice, sticks out his leg to trip one of them even, and they don't even frown at him.

Maruki's reality is still new. Maybe this is where everyone is going to end up; automatons, puppets, walking around like video game NPCs. His skin crawls. He stands to the side of a busy road in Shibuya and watches, stomach churning.


[[ooc: This is the Ren from pheasantboy's universe.]]

Comments

wildcard, ironically

[pheasantboy]

But in the end, Akechi isn't that hard to find. He's in Inokashira Park, alone, of course, sitting on a park bench with a mob of birds and a bag of breadcrumbs. He tosses a few here, or a few there, watching them jump and peck.

There are some pigeons in the mix, of course, but most of the birds are crows. His smile as he feeds them is absolutely simple and sweet. He loves them, and they need him. They also don't judge him, but then, he's not thinking about that.

[flightpen]

Ren knows that smile. He's seen it more times than he likes to think about, but this time, this time it's such a relief that all the air rushes out of his lungs at once. He doesn't quite run over, but it can't really be called a walk, either.

"Akechi."

It comes out halfway as a sigh. Here he is, feeding the birds while Ren panicked about whether he could even survive here. But that doesn't mean he's always okay.

[pheasantboy]

It should be more than clear that Akechi's not okay. His whole being shuts down at the sound of another human, weary and even—can it be?—jaded.

But then their eyes meet. The bag of breadcrumbs tumbles to the ground as he gets up. "Hello, Ren," he manages. He wants to say a thousand things at once. "You scared my birds."

He's not going to cry, okay. He feels like he'd never hear the end of it.

3

[cybermask]

Strange. That was the only thing she could think following this ren/akira. She didn't know which one. He didn't seem too fazed about the cognitions like a lot of the others were, but there was this... he's depressed. He's new and depressed.

Being a scout and her job with Goro, sneaking and trailing were almost second nature to her. Someone aught to talk to him. She pulled her hair back, swallowing as she went through what she wanted to say, Hi, nice to meet you, you new here?

She walked up to him, "So, why are you all mopey?" That was not the plan. Too late to take it back now.

[flightpen]

He's so preoccupied with his thoughts that he doesn't notice her approach, which never would have happened a few months ago. He flinches, startled.

...The board did talk about alternate versions of people. He's glad he read it, because he can't remember ever seeing his own Futaba with her hair in a ponytail, even now, and from that he can make a guess that this is someone else. "Uh," he says, eloquently. "Hi. I'm not..."

He is kind of mopey, isn't he. He gestures at a passing cognition. "Aren't they kind of depressing?"

[cybermask]

Both the Rens she had met never jumped, they were always well aware of their surroundings. Yet, he jumped when she spoke, not when he could see her, not when he could hear her steps, when he hear her talk. Either he was from a world where danger didn't exist, or he was lost in thought more than she even thought.

She looked out at them, "no more than cognitions? They aren't real. You can kill one and they just disappear like a shadow." She turned her attention back to him, tilting her head.

2

[fogbornphantom]

At first, Crow assumes that's his own Ren staring at the board, and so he moves closer with a little chuckle that dies as soon as he notices the lack of ring.

So, no, that is decidedly not his Ren. He also looks rather distressed.

Well then. Setting a hand on his hip, Crow watches with a frown. "Quite a lot to take in, isn't it?"

[flightpen]

Like he's on a string, Ren turns at the sound of the familiar voice. It's speaking in a cadence he's never heard before, not before and not after, but it's still his voice. Still the voice that Ren...

...Seeing Akechi in a Shujin uniform is so surreal that Ren feels, for a moment, like he's stepped into another world like Maruki's, a world where someone's taken reality and put it to the rack, disfiguring it forever. He stares at Akechi, wide-eyed and pale.

[fogbornphantom]

To Crow's credit, he doesn't react too strongly to Ren's reaction. There's a small frown tugging at his lips, but otherwise he remains calm. Almost neutral. He's used to these sorts of reactions, after all.

"I suppose seeing me in person is rather different from merely reading about me."

3

[rosemaudite]

"Is tripping people who aren't even real really that entertaining?"

The voice is familiar, but the Haru behind it almost certainly isn't. Gothier, for one thing, and despite the chill her coat is open enough to show a pendant hanging outside her sweater - a vine of roses climbing around a tree.

[flightpen]

He's come to feel a certain sense of dread when he hears Haru's voice—back home, she's involved in a transparent Plot with Akechi to figure out what's wrong with him, but all it actually does is put him on the spot and make things awkward when they never, ever, know what he's talking about.

But this Haru is demonstrably not the same. Goth Haru. Like Ann took her to Harajuku one day and it awoke something in her. "No," says Ren after a moment, when he's recovered from all the conflicting impressions. "I feel kinda bad about it, actually? I just wanted to see if they'd care."

[rosemaudite]

"They don't. You can blow a hole in the street and they'll keep on walking right through it because that's where their path dictates they're going." That reminds her, she should follow up with the other Ren about blowing up Okumura Foods sometime.

"It's a bit disconcerting, really."

1 (1/2) (let's rip out all these stitches, boy // you're reaping what you sowed)

[thedevilinyourdetails]

Ah, another lookalike of theirs. There've been many, of late. It makes Akira remember a time when they undoubtedly outnumbered the Akechis...but no use reminiscing. He slides up next to this new person, observes them for a moment, and silently mimics them, matching posture and breathing and expression as closely as he can.

(2/2)

[youngestdawn]

Akira-kun was walking through the Velvet Room with his new butterfly backpack when he finds A New F(Ren-Akira)d! And Card-san, who is doing...something. Ever the study-er like his parents taught him to be, Aki-chan lines up next to them and does his best impression of New F(Ren-Akira)d. He seems sad for some reason. Maybe by doing this they can figure out why he's so sad...

[flightpen]

Ren stands there for a good while, frozen in his despair for a minute or more, before he notices someone's standing next to him. He gasps and flinches sideways, away from... someone who looks just like him? "What the..."

Almost too late, he catches sight of the child also just standing there. "...heck, dude?"

His heart is still pounding. But it's a distraction, at least.

3

[fireandfaith]

Ann's picked up the habit of walking; it's a good way to clear her head and relax, when lying still can no longer accomplish that. Not for her--sitting still for too long is just a good way to let the Bad Thoughts crawl in.

Walks here aren't too bad, even. She doesn't have to worry about danger, or avoiding other people, and as long as she keeps her eyes down and her music blasting, she can pretty much ignore the eerie cognitions that fill the streets like decorative garnish.

Well. She can ignore them, most of the time.

The person she's watching...it's an Akira or a Ren, but not one she's met, she thinks. Not one she's heard about, either, because if any of them were the type to go around toying with cognitions, she'd like to think that someone would have given her a heads up. Everyone she's met has been pretty nice, thus far.

He sticks his leg out again; another cognition stumbles. It rights itself and continues on without any reaction, but Ann's hands curl into fists. Back straight, jaw set, and fire burning in her veins, she marches forward.

"Hey!" she yells. "What the fuck are you doing?"

[flightpen]

Ren doesn't react like someone who's toying with cognitions for fun. His head jerks round toward the source of the shouting and he freezes, red-faced and mortified. Seeing her doesn't help—because that's Ann, Ann like she used to be, quick to righteous anger. He hasn't seen her in months.

He isn't seeing her now, either, but the image of the girl he used to know is still so clear. His mouth opens, but for a second or two no words come out.

"It's weird," he says at last. "And sad. That they don't—care what you do, at all. I wanted to see if they even cared when you." He gestures at the ground, where the cognition stumbled a moment ago. "Sorry."

[reasonliving]

She catches him in Kichijoji, where he's going Aigis isn't sure, but he doesn't seem to be one of the cognitions that resided here to make things feel populated. He looks like Kurusu, but she doubts it's the Kurusu that she knows. She approaches him anyway.

"You look like something is bothering you," she can't help but state.

[flightpen]

This time, thankfully, he sees her coming and doesn't startle like a nervous kid. "Oh, um. It's just." I can't find my Akechi, and all these cognitions seem like a premonition, and I'm about to panic, actually. "I just got here and everything's kind of weird...?" Nice. Real convincing. "Hi, I'm Ren."

She's the first person he's met who he doesn't recognize, in one form or another.

3 Shibuya edition

[paysforall]

There's a strange bird that hangs out in Shibuya and doesn't usually wander far.

In this case, he's spotted another Akira/Ren wandering around, looking lost, but also looking intent on finding something. He's not rude enough to scan - with as slim as the picking are for company, even by Reaper standards, he prefers to try to find things out with his mouth.

So at some point when Ren pauses on the streets of Shibuya in his quest, he will be able to spot an Akechi - but pretty clearly, not one that's his. The good boy known as Sparrow would never dress like he's been trawling the goth clubs, and this one's too old besides.

He comes up to Ren with his hands in his pockets and a casual expression. "Looking for something?"

[flightpen]

Ren's mouth opens and closes a couple times as he takes in... all that, not checking Akechi out so much as trying to process what he's seeing. (Would Akechi have dressed like that in a couple years, if Ren had left everything alone...? —No. He'd have been dead. Stupid fucking question, Amamiya.) He swallows.

"Uh. Yeah. I think my Akechi is here somewhere...? Do you know an Akechi called Sparrow?"

[deerinheadlights]

She bumps past him as she returns from Mementos. His face is familiar but he seems far more timid than she's used to him being. "Ren or Akira?" She can't help but ask since that seems to be the only two versions of the name going around the Velvet Room at the moment.

[flightpen]

"Oh! Sorry." He doesn't stumble, but he has to catch himself on a nearby light post. "Uh. Ren. And you're..." Oh, god. "Ka... sumi?"

She's obviously not Kasumi, but the only version of Sumire that he's heard about at length is, apparently, under Maruki's control and feeling sensitive about it, so best to be safe. He's used to calling his own Sumire Kasumi by now; he doesn't know why this feels so awkward.

Shibuya

[herewardbound]

This was... something new. There were lots of 'rens', here, but as he crossed through Shibuya, Phoenix couldn't help but think that something was... off.

He'd never seen that face look that haggard, that miserable.

Most unfortunately, he'd been watering that starved and half-dead plant in the corner of his mind labeled 'CONSCIENCE', and it was becoming a serious problem.

So he made his approach, and engaged Friendly Social Maneuver Alpha: open conversation by offering a drink. In this case, a can of tea that had, 100%, been liberated from a vending machine through a shattered front panel.

"You look like shit, Joker."

[flightpen]

Ren turns wearily at the familiar voice—and stumbles back a step in shock when, instead of a brown-haired human, he's greeted by the sight of a giant bird creature towering over him.

"Uh." He clears his throat. His heart is still pounding. That's... that sure is... wow. Bird demon from hell. "You're. Phoenix, right? Thanks." He takes the can of tea, but only fiddles with the tab.