whisper that the past is gone eternally

[paysforall]

It's the Shibuya Crossing. The big, famous one, with all the crowds and the traffic and the 109 building overlooking it all.

And that's the thing.

The 109 building.

Paying no mind to the sea of empty cognitions around him, a Goro Akechi stands in the center of the crosswalk, staring up at the number-faced building with a frown. If you were looking for any Goro Akechi in particular, however, this one almost transparently isn't him. Twenty-one years of age and dressed like the masculine line of a Victorian goth brand was thrown over his head like a bucket of cold water, this Akechi stares at one of the most familiar landmarks of Tokyo like it's a river in a desert and he hasn't quite decided if he wants to take a drink.

He's back.

(Or, at the very least, he's no longer where he was. Her Shibuya was a 109 as well. And there was that strange room...)

"If the Shibuya Game has gone down the shitter again," he says, seemingly addressing nobody, or possibly the phone he's pulled from his pocket to glare at, "I am going to go after the Composer myself."

He lifts his phone. (It's the same phone he's always had. The only thing that hasn't changed, for anyone with a keen enough eye for detail. There's a new vinyl sticker on the back, a stylized skull in red at an angle, but it's the same phone as ever.) Snaps a picture. No change in the photo. Closes that, opens a different app, snaps again. His frown intensifies.

(It is, by now, a good thing that the cognitions are just filler that will continue to idle in whatever routine they're running, because otherwise he would surely have been hit by a car, right? But the crowd continues to wander around him, heedlessly.)

Finally, he lowers his phone, sends the photo to someone on his contacts, and apparently gives up, shoving it back into his pocket. The cognitions resume the flow of normal traffic, clearing the crossing so that cars can pass through, as he goes over to Hachiko to lean up against the side of the statue.

"I didn't miss the not having any idea what's going on," he tells the dog, firmly firmly and with a hint of melancholy. "Oh, if only a real person would show up with the answers right about now. Why, I'd even consider buying them a coffee for the trouble."

Despite nominally being addressed to the bronze canine, the way he lifts the volume of his voice makes it clear that it's addressed to you, onlooker, whoever you are.

[[OOC: I don't actually care what format you use i just always write introspective-y starters in prose. tldr twewy au post-canon post-death akechi]

Comments

[paysforall]

[...You know what. Sure. This may as well happen.

After hearing his own voice, but before entirely turning his attention to his counterpart, the older Akechi whispers a stage aside to Hachiko - ]

I hate that I can't rule out time travel.

[Then he turns to face the other Akechi. There's... Not a smile there, exactly. Certainly not the trademarked Television Person smile. But there's a relaxed sort of air, nonetheless.]

Sounds like a deal. Ramen, curry, or woefully corrupt burger joint?

[He assumes - if there's a 109 building and another version of himself - that the burger place across the street will be an Okumura rather than Sunshine or Justice Burger.

As entertaining as it would be to take himself to the latter, unfortunately.]

Or anywhere you had in mind, if you did.

[pancakeboy]

[And the Detective Prince (second) (possibly retired) thinks about this, steepling his gloved hands. Absolutely bizarre space villain vibes are what he's getting, and he thought the last month had more than cross-certified him in weird shit.

Speaking of space villains, though, he doesn't really feel like Big Bang Burger.] Ah, that depends. Some of the places I know are here, but many aren't. There was a decent sushi place opposite the 109 building, definitely a 9/10, but in this reality it's chosen to sell candyfloss in bags.

But perhaps you enjoy candyfloss? [It's almost syrupy; he's testing this weird version of him. Just a little. Just a bit.]

i actually looked at there are no sushi shops in neo RIP GORO

[paysforall]

Ugh, no. Useful for bribing coworkers on occasion.

[The obvious bullshit mode responses are getting a flat look, not quite on-angle. It's a "really? you pull this shit to me?" kind of look.]

But it has been some time since I had sushi, if you know of somewhere decent. Unfortunately there's not a shop in my Shibuya that takes digital payments, so it's a rare treat for me, these days.

a sad fate :(

[pancakeboy]

Conveyor belt only, unless you want to walk to Takazakaya. [His pet department store in Ginza. His smile brightens till it could raise the dead, and then... he drops it, in favour of something sharper and smaller.]

Money at least won't be a concern, a lot like the distances. You are new. Well, I say new. [Old, he means. Old as balls. Which... actually means he got old; his smile loses a bit of its edge.]

[paysforall]

[... Interesting. Will he be able to leave Shibuya without problem, in this state?

The effective comment about his age rolls off like water in the face of this realization.]

In that case, that sounds delightful. Let's take advantage of our good fortune.

[He's going to do a science and no one can stop him! He's going to ... At least attempt to leave Shibuya. And if he walks into a wall and can't leave the district, he'll explain then.

And then maybe they can find out if cognitions do delivery.]

[pancakeboy]

Let's go. [But what is this guy wearing?

He gets up from his bench, adjusts the effortlessly stylish (and suspiciously loose) green jacket he's wearing, and starts heading east.] The subways also work. But it doesn't take an hour to cross the whole of the city, and going all the way down to sit in a subway carriage for a matter of seconds... annoys me.

Do you usually talk to statues? [Buchiko, he means.]

[paysforall]

[What he's decided makes him happy! Also Reapers are committed to the goth, Shibuya Reapers in particular.

And if what makes him happy is the black mask outfit and Crow's in a blender... Well. No one who sees him is going to judge. (None of them are even going to know. That's a secret kept between him and this world.)]

Not as though I had anyone better to talk to, did I? And that dog's a good listener if you ever need it.

[Which is probably why it collects Noise with enough frequency to need Players to cleanse it a minimum of every two weeks. All that negativity bu8ilds up over time.

The walk through Shibuya itself is quick - but it slows down again at the border between Shibuya and Minato on the way to Chuo, presumably because the older Akechi seems to be a bit nervous about that threshold, for some reason.]

i saw nuffin

[pancakeboy]

[Interesting. What has him nervous, all of a sudden?] You're right. That dog must know more secrets than all of us combined.

[And it would make a hell of a Palace. Goro Akechi and his raging metal dog. He glances to older-him—older him, what the shit—and back as they cross onto the bridge from the cemetery, into the rather dark tunnel that joins Shibuya and Minato.]

You're not scared of ghosts, I hope. [^_^]

[paysforall]

Every sad break-up story in Shibuya, every shitty employer, and every happy reunion of friends.

[Landmarks in the real world carried over into the UG more easily than other places - Shibuya's Game runs so much more smoothly because so much of the city is well-known. He knows that better than most Reapers, after playing navigator for a bunch of Players who were the furthest thing from locals.

His younger self has probably not put too much thought into where the exact border of Shibuya. It's a partially cognitive thing, anyway. Games don't run right up to the borders because those borders are just a little bit flexible.

For example, right now, the border is the place where the sunlight turns to shadow as you duck into the tunnel.]

What reason would I have to be scared of ghosts?

[For a moment, he channels Joker - that easy confidence, the nothing-can-go-wrong that has become one of his only touchstones of his old life - and, although the properly living Akechi won't see it, spreads his wings just enough to feel the air through the gaps.]

I'm a shinigami, after all.

[And with that last comment and a more confident step - almost a swagger - he steps into the shadows, leaving Shibuya for the first time in three years.]

[pancakeboy]

[It's not that he notices a damn thing, exactly. But that was a really weird thing to say; the tone, the timbre of it were telling. And there are literal vampires walking about here. And....

Are you sure you want me to answer that question? Okumura, not his own, nor the one who knew him, but the one who told him how things would be.

He turns to look back at this new alternate of his, to cover his disquiet with a grin, hard at the edges.]

Then you can walk in front. Go on.

[He'll let older-him overtake, and then keep walking. Or if no overtaking occurs, he'll brush it off. Either works.]

[paysforall]

[He's made it over. There's just a hint of wonder, the kind of childish thing that he spent so long killing in himself, until it killed him.

But oh, he knows that barely controlled tension. And even if they aren't in the UG, hecan practically feel the negativity leeching into the air, bait to every Noise in the area.]

Are you telling me that you're scared of a little ghost?

[Sweet smile, almost genuine, a little too unbalanced for TV. A dare.]

[pancakeboy]

Haven't seen a ghost yet. [He falls into place, watching the other—the sudden energy, the light in his eyes—as they keep walking.]

I have seen a vampire, however. And I've heard there are two. What I'm not scared of—[and he adds this in a similarly almost-sweet tone of voice]—is going to Minato.

Unless the TV studio is getting up my nose, that is. [True enough.]

[paysforall]

You may want to get your eyes checked.

[It's quiet, almost amused, but there's a clear friction underneath. You've seen a vampire but you aren't willing to take him at his literal word? C'mon now.

Instead, he says, quite bluntly, as the scenery around them speeds up again - ]

I haven't left Shibuya in three years. It's a term in the contract of my continued existence.

[So, yes, with Erasure on the line, anyone would be a bit nervous.]

[pancakeboy]

[Hey, which of them would take anyone at their word? But it's a consistent enough story, now he's ironed out that one small detail.]

So your story is—you died. [The words have more impact than they ought, with what he knows.] And then what? I presume you weren't in the Shibuya I'm familiar with.

Was it like this place? A cognitive copy of some kind? [And how did he die? Does this him fit more into the pattern of universes than it first appears?]

[paysforall]

[He does and he doesn't, because he has multiple universes under his belt.]

To summarize, a demigod of a sort called out for tenacious souls who wanted a second chance at life, and I was among those who answered.

[That much, at least, should be familiar territory, even if the way the elder Akechi says it might not be, brisk and a touch wistful all at once. No version of them that he knows of would give up without a fight.]

It is an alternate Shibuya, but not in the same way as the cognitive world - although I'm typically working somewhere around that level, beyond the sight of the living. Being familiar with any Shibuya at all gave me a great advantage at the time.

[pancakeboy]

[It is familiar—that insistence on success, on coming out on top, and (possibly quite literally) hang the consequences. But it also rings another of those little bells in Akechi's mental palace.]

A demigod? [Because after Shido, it does sound a little...] You must have been short of options, to say the least.

[Not to mention that he wants to know more.]

[paysforall]

It's not as though there are any other options, after death. To disappear without even trying? Hardly a difficult decision.

[Fail, and be Erased. But those who don't play don't have the chance to win.]

But I have no regrets about it.

[pancakeboy]

[He's not sure he agrees. What place is there in the world, after all, for something like him? And, dead or alive, what conclusions can you draw about the sort of being who'd be prepared to use him?

Most interpretations of the afterlife agree oblivion is the best he can hope for. But he thinks about it—whether he'd take a chance like that, were it to be offered. Whether he'd choose to be controlled again.]

You make it sound like slavery. [He doesn't put his hands in his pockets, exactly; it doesn't fit his image. But he'd like to.]

[paysforall]

Says the one still working for Shido.

[The smile is gone. Those words are like a knife.

He's not going to defend his choices to a younger version of himself, who wasn't there and couldn't understand. Going straight on the attack instead is, ultimately, who he is.

Appeals to logic and higher emotions - those he can leave to other people. He's the one who brings chaos to the game board. That's the role he's written himself into.

(And there's no one who better knows how to get under his skin.)]

ohohoho

[pancakeboy]

[Now, control is a lifelong, worn-in thing for him—enough so that he doesn't burst out with fuck you. But his lips purse, and his eyes spark with suppressed fury as he picks up his pace.

Question one answered, for whatever it was worth. And a potential answer underscored—that he'll die, allegedly, still trapped in Shido's service. Without his payment. Without what he has wanted almost since he knew how to want.

And, because it is his nature to attack, he spits out a question of his own.]

Is that how we're playing it? Then what killed you? [Since they aren't being nice.]

[paysforall]

Shido's cognition of me as the engine that drove his ambitions - working beneath the waterline to fuel his progress towards his goals. Until it was time to be replaced.

[He doesn't make any effort to hide that part of the circumstances - he died in the Metaverse, in Shido's Palace. That Shido still had a Palace at the time is answer to the almost spoken question that he doesn't even need to look to see in his other self's mind.

He failed, and died unfulfilled.

(If he hadn't already paid that price, it would surely have been his Entry Fee.)

He doesn't mention the witnesses. That the Phantom Thieves were there, and that he took that bullet for them. That that Cognition disappeared when he did, no longer an obstacle - or at least it should have. It wouldn't have taken Shido long to figure out that he was dead, at least not once he got the Calling Card.]

[pancakeboy]

[But he knows enough from Okumura. That, in her world, he confronted the Thieves in Shido's Palace. That he "didn't make it out"—she had been careful to say she didn't see him die. And yet he walks that Palace unopposed. In his street clothes, never considered a threat. He's had jobs in there. So if he went in there after Ren and the rest—which he absolutely would, he doesn't need to think about it, or about his potential reasons for doing so—what is there about that that would make the place turn on him?....

Again, the answer he's been given weaves itself against another. Shido plans to dispose of you. A cognition appeared to confirm as much. He resists the urge to grit his teeth.]

And here I thought it was going to be some bullshit line about the power of friendship. [He wouldn't do that to me, whispers a small voice in the back of his head, a voice that flips his stomach over and threatens to drive him to his knees. He needs me. He's smarter than that. For half a pin—a fucking pinhead—Akechi would put a bullet in that voice.]

So what is this, you're looking to... change your past? Undo your mistakes? Because you must know already that the chances we're from the same world are remote. [But then, where would that gun be pointing, if he shot it? Who's the real idiot here? Oh, he knows.]

[paysforall]

You think too highly of me. Even if you're my past self, I'm just doing my job.

[Goro Akechi is not a good person. If he pretended to be so, then it would only be pretending, and it would be obvious to the both of them. So he doesn't.

You don't have to be a good person to perform a good act, though.]

Change, or face Erasure. That's the philosophy of the Shibuya I call home.

[And it is his home now, so much more than the one of the boy in front of him - face to face with himself, he can't lie about it.]

You have the chance to change your fate. Whether or not you do it is up to you.

[pancakeboy]

Oh, for fuck's sake. [Yeah, he'll just murmur that under his breath as he walks, hands folding quietly into fists inside their gloves.]

Do you know, the main reason I question the reality of all of you is that all of you are so intent on making me change my ways.

[It already haunted him—the idea that he might not be able to do what was coming. As if he's been picked up, dropped in a wrong dimension, and put face to face with his worst fears.]

i'm sorry he wouldn't shut up

[paysforall]

You don't have to change. But you know what the consequences of not changing are.

[It really is that simple when you cut it down to the bone, at least for him.

In contrast to his younger self, the older Akechi does walk with his hands at his hips - less in his pockets than with his thumbs hooked on the upper edge of his belt, but close enough.]

I'm not going to preach to you about being a 'better' person. That's not who we are. As far as I'm concerned, you could get home, go into his Palace, and shoot him in the head. Set the Thieves up to take the blame. Get off scot-free, because who would believe them when they say the real culprit for all of it is the public's beloved Goro Akechi? That'd be a change, too.

Or you could do nothing at all, and accept the consequences of that. Walk the same road with your eyes wide open.

[The scenery around them seems to pause, for a moment, at an intersection. The thing about the whole thing being a cognitive construct is that someone adept at manipulating those constructs can make use of that.

One side is the wide-open road, the main street, the road more traveled. The other is a dim alleyway, its end obscured.

For his part, the elder Akechi turns off into the alleyway. Whether or not his younger self follows, the cognitive travel speed skips into place again. The conversation and the journey will both take as long as they need to.]