Goro Akechi [TWEWY AU] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
paysforall) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
personavelvetroomdr2023-09-14 06:06 pm
paysforall) wrote in personavelvetroomdr2023-09-14 06:06 pm
Entry tags:
whisper that the past is gone eternally
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]
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]
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Considering what he's wearing now - yes, Goro Akechi pays attention to fashion. He just doesn't let on that he does, in most universes.
"Although that reaction just now did confirm it."
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(Maybe Noir would fare better. Her empathy hasn't been run through a shredder.)
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He's only partially kidding, not that she'll recognize the context of the comment.
"As it is... My seniority says bad things about my survival rate, doesn't it?"
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"We're disposable. It says what I've known for years."
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"In my case, that implies an option where I wasn't disposed of."
He shifts - he's been watching her the whole time, of course, but now he faces her fully.
"I suppose it's easiest to begin with a proper introduction." His smile is bitter, but the bitterness isn't directed at her. "My name is Goro Akechi, also known as Crow of the Phantom Thieves, and I died in Shido's Palace when I was eighteen years old. I am currently employed as a Reaper of the Shibuya Reaper's Game, where I serve as an antagonist and obstacle to help test if Players are deserving of a chance to come back to life after their deaths. It's a pleasure to meet you."
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"Apparently most everyone else has at least a few months' head start on me." So: still disposable, not yet disposed of, trying her best not to let that happen.
"My name is Haru. You can call me Rose if you need to differentiate me from the other one. My father is nearly as worthless as yours, so I'd prefer not to have his name anywhere near mine as much as possible. He threw me to the wolves for his own advancement, and I'm not planning to stand by and let my only friend throw himself away for revenge I'm not sure his half-baked plan will get him. Whenever I go home, Golden Week starts tomorrow. I can't say I've ever heard of a Reaper's Game."
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Akechi pauses, and then says, "I killed the other you's father and it upset her a great deal. So you understand why I had no desire to walk into that conversation unprepared."
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Her only complaint is that her father doesn't deserve the relative mercy of death (and certainly doesn't deserve to be remembered as a martyr to Shido's cause).
"But I suppose I can see where you'd be concerned about having to deal with that more than once, or with double the expected audience."
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It's dry and faintly fond, before he shrugs. "However, from my perspective, your feelings on the issue are the unexpected ones. I had no reason to think you'd hate the man just by looking at you."
So forget 'twice,' or 'with an extra audience.' The calculations he was running about Hard Haru Conversations were multiplicative, not additive.
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The difference is that Noir, and other less fucked-up variations on the theme, still had hope that her dad was somewhere in there, and believed he was worth saving from himself. Haru can extend him no such charity.
"You have a partner?"
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But what she says about the Metaverse... There's something still vicious in this Akechi, and it's showing just a little of its teeth as he says, "I'm sorry that happened," in a tone that suggests less genericized sympathy and more do you need help hiding a body? He continues, "Though that explains why you're more familiar with cognitive tricks than most. I presume you've awakened a Persona, then?"
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Is it rude to call him broken, probably. Does she care... well, he is still A Goro, so she cares enough not to say it to his face, or to have already tried to get inside his head. (Not that she's sure how she would without a cognitive distortion to work with, but she could damn well try.)
"I did, or I wouldn't have made it out of there." And then Haru smiles a little, the sort most people would mistake for demure and polite - but it's in response to that viciousness. "Father gambled with my life and lost, not that he knows it yet. But I think I'll have a good opportunity to give him what he deserves soon."
And her worthless fiance. As for help hiding bodies? She has that, just as her Goro has her help with his revenge (just... maybe not as he's currently planned it).
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But another comment concerns him more. "The 'broken one'?" He doubts she means the most direct past version of him or the one that's actually fairly well adjusted.
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It'd be less fucking disturbing if someone hadn't turned the realest person Haru knows into someone Not Real. The other Goros make a certain amount of sense to her, even if she hasn't talked to Shujin Goro directly yet (just his prickly preteen self, and she is genuinely glad someone rescued him). The broken one... doesn't.
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"The way you frame it - you think something did this to him?" Oh dear, Rose-Haru, you've presented him with a puzzle. And there is still enough Detective Prince in him that he's unable to resist a good puzzle.
(Not like there's anything better to do around here, either.)
"I've encountered heavy cognitive modifications a time or two before. It might be worth letting me have a look." To write the countless wrongs of our day...
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Besides, no world is as picture-perfect as the one he prattles on about.
"It might be. I'm not sure where to start if not the Metaverse, and I honestly don't know if he'd have any kind of cognitive distortion to work with."
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"Fortunately, my abilities aren't limited to the Metaverse, as you've seen. Though the psychic abilities that can cross over from the Underground are usually more subtle, I can use them just as well anywhere."
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"It can't hurt to try. I don't know for certain that he isn't really just... like that, for all I can't make the possibility make sense in my head. That would at least confirm whether it's genuine or forced on him."
And then hopefully he doesn't choose to just. Stay broken.
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There's only so many people here who aren't overgrown Noise. They'll run into each other eventually, all the more so that this Akechi knows to look.
(Something something the Reaper is coming for you joke here.)