Where I Always End Up

[deerinheadlights]

Sumire keeps walking through Tokyo after speaking to that Ren. He's lucky she didn't wring his neck right then and there, honestly speaking. However it does leave her listless to dealing with actual people right this moment. She's barely paying attention to where it is she's headed.

That is until, by some twist of cognition most likely, she finds herself standing in front of a half constructed stadium in Odaiba. Of course! Of fucking course this is where she finds herself! It's always where she finds herself isn't it?

Between Akechi's Shadow and his stupid Ren and just being here she wants to do what she's always done and beat something so bloody it seems like the stains would never leave her hands. She want to beat Sparrow's Ren so bloody he looks like Kasumi's Shadow.

She settles right now, for kicking the fence that zoned the construction area out. One way or another she was going to kill him, that was for damn sure.

Comments

[deerinheadlights]

"You look uncomfortable." She can't help but point out. He mentions that he missed out on finding a sidekick in Mementos but it seems like she and Rose are the exceptions to the rule. "Am I bothering you?" She may as well ask.

[pancakeboy]

"Not at all," he says, convincingly. "If a few timeline variations were going to bother me by this point, I'd have gone mad long ago.

"Of course, I'm not the one who was kicking an innocent fence." Let's just bring this conversation back to her.

[deerinheadlights]

That only made her more curious as to why he seemed so bothered by what she said about her Goro, but he doesn't seem interested in lingering on that.

He wants her to keep talking about herself so she shrugs. "Better the fence than someone's face, right?" Not that she's above kicking Ren's face either.

[pancakeboy]

"Ah, well. That would depend whose face it is." It's absolutely pleasant. Is he joking? Is he not?

He probably ought to be involved with any face-kicking, but depending on the target, it may well not be his business. "Should I take it the good doctor's back in town?"

Maruki, on the other hand, would be his business for sure.

[deerinheadlights]

He brings up Maruki and she shakes her head. "Thank god no. Sparrow's Ren is here though." And she had the misfortune of speaking to him after speaking to Sparrow's Shadow. She doesn't think she could stand the sight of Maruki who wanted her to think she was her perfect sister Kasumi in most other realities.

[pancakeboy]

... and the smile's gone, as if it never was. His voice drops an octave; his face twists, quickly resetting to something less twisted.

"That Ren is here? No wonder you needed to break something." Reaching out, he seizes the fence in one black-gloved hand, giving it an ominous shake. "I suppose I should congratulate you, for restraining yourself."

He's still wondering how much she resembles That Futaba—and what form his bad influence took in this world. Sparrow's Ren, though. Akechi is tempted to estimate his lifespan in hours.

[deerinheadlights]

"He called me Kasumi and the only reason I didn't blow up at him was because of the other me." She admits. "I can't understand how he seems so...self pitying, anything that happened to Sparrow or her was his goddamn fault."

[pancakeboy]

Somehow, he manages to look more forbidding, as if at the news of Sparrow's Ren he forgot to play nice. "That's how he seems? Self-pitying?"

It's what he'd suspected, and worse news than he'd hoped. A stupid decision would be one thing; Akechi could understand that. But if that Ren just broke under pressure? That implies many things, not all of which he wants to look too closely at.

[deerinheadlights]

"Even if he just cracked under pressure does he really have the right to pity himself?" He decided to make a choice that wasn't his to make. She doesn't think he deserves to feel bad for himself.

"The least he could do is lie in the bed he made."

[pancakeboy]

"He may be doing that." He folds his arms, staring at the dent she's made in the wooden clapboards, up at the suggestions of girders and scaffolding within, before he glances back to watch her. "Doesn't make it any better, of course."

[deerinheadlights]

"I just think it's bullshit of him to be wallowing in his own misery when he is by no means a victim in his situation," whether he decided not to choose anything at all or actively disrespected Sparrow's wishes he's no better than Maruki toying with people's lives as he sees fit in her eyes.

[pancakeboy]

"Well, it's going to be more complicated than that," he says, staring at the half-made building behind the fence, unseeing, "If he made that decision, though, I'd expect Ren to have the strength to stand by it—that, or to choose better in the first place. Not to go to pieces and weep and wail."

After all, he, Goro Akechi, is the poster child for bad decisions, and do you see him rolling in the streets and tearing his clothes? No.