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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So it was a revenge thing. [ Akechi with his furious, implacable sense of justice. What would that look like if it got twisted? If anyone would walk willingly the jaws of Shido's Conspiracy to chase his justice, it would be Akechi. ]
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If I hadn't already failed when I died, I'm sure that would have been my Entry Fee.
[He can imagine it all too clearly. Modified memory Entry Fees weren't uncommon, after all. His partner had one.]
My first target was Wakaba Isshiki, which I imagine you could have guessed, if our worlds run in parallel. From there, it was mostly Shido's enemies or loose ends he wanted cleaned up - Okumura, for example, though that was later. Then the Phantom Thieves appeared, things get complicated, and eventually Shido told me to clear the board.
I figured that getting rid of their leader would be easiest. They'd be scattered and unable to pose a threat after that, considering their reputation with the general public had already been tanked by pinning Okumura's death on them.
[He drinks again, giving Ren a moment to brace himself if he needs it, to prepare for the statement of the implication he's made.]
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I set it up to catch them in Sae's Palace. I caught him. Had him exactly where I wanted him.
I shot him.
[A slight pause, and his expression softens, just a hair.]
Or I thought I did. They got one over on me - I shot Sae Nijima's cognition of him, while the real one was spirited away. At the time, it filled me with a fury I hadn't known since I found out Shido's identity in the first place, but looking back, I'm almost proud of them.
After that, we both invaded Shido's Palace separately, they caught up to me, we fought, and then Shido's cognition of me left us all between a rock and a hard place. I locked them out and cleared the last obstacle.
[Which is a roundabout way of saying...]
If it had been only one of the cognition of myself or the collapsing Palace, I would probably would have survived. But not both.
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When he finally speaks, his voice is strangely flat. ] They faked you out in Sae's Palace, and with their leader alive, they targeted Shido for their next change of heart. Is what you're saying.
[ There was a lot of other stuff Akechi said too, all of it less important than this. ]
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You shot him, didn't you?
[The truth is also a weapon.]
That's why you reacted that way when I said I was dead, earlier.
[It's not an answer, directly. But it's also not not an answer.]
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Then he remembers who he's talking to, and he forces his hand back down. But he can't make himself stop fucking... fucking vibrating, like he's a gong and Akechi hit him with a giant mallet. ]
No, I didn't fucking shoot him. You're projecting.
[ His voice cracks halfway through. Maybe he hasn't shot Akechi, but he's thought about it so much that he sees it when he closes his eyes all the same. He hasn't shot Akechi, but if he'd been brought here two weeks later, his answer would be different. And even now, if he can't figure something out in time, if he doesn't make up his mind—
He hasn't shot Akechi yet. That's all. ]
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[A slow, deliberate setting down of his coffee mug, in such a way that the click of the ceramic on the bar seems amplified.]
I was a detective, remember? I sat in on enough police interrogations to know how people react when you hit them directly in the guilt.
[The ones still capable of feeling guilt, anyway.
It's reassuring, really, that whatever else this Ren has been through, he's still one of those people.]
But yes. Joker lived - though not without his share of bruises and drugging, and they went after Shido, as he deserved.
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How does he even get out of here? Is it as simple as walking back out through the door, after whatever Akechi did to get them in? ]
That's good to know. Thanks for the info.
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[There no silk, here, and no threat. Just an older, suddenly tired-seeming Akechi who picks up his mug again to stare into it a little bit before he drains the last of the coffee.]
Not that it doesn't fucking suck. Knowing that it wasn't really him only did so much to erase the nightmares.
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He is clever. [ His voice is quiet, and he doesn't quite hear the loneliness within it. He doesn't bother to deny that he's thought about shooting Akechi. With the way he's been reacting, that one's a lost cause. ]
They can't change Shido's heart. If they wanted to kill him, I could maybe work with it, but not a change of heart.
[ But he doesn't think they're likely to kill Shido. ]
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[It might seem a bit oblique, even a nonsequitor, out of context. But he trusts that even this Ren will know what he means. They're stuck orbiting each other, one way or another.]
Can I ask why?
[The curiosity is genuine.]
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Carefully, deliberately, he wraps his hands around his coffee mug again. ] It's not complicated. He'll talk about me in his big sad confession. And then I'll have the cops after me as well as the whole fucking Conspiracy.
[ And then he's said it, pretty much. He's admitted what he does. His shoulders are rigid. ]
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Instead, Akechi pours himself a little more coffee.]
While I can't say anything about Shido's confession in my universe with any certainty - death is the end of the adventure, and all - I can say that the pattern typically holds like this: When a person's heart is changed, they take credit for all their crimes, including those that were technically carried out by others.
That's what happened with Kaneshiro, you know. It took hours to actually get all the confessions out of him when he turned himself in.
[Goro Akechi, police detective, would know that in a way that this Ren - obviously not affiliated with the police - wouldn't. He had to sit through every hour of it. The only upside was that Kaneshiro's changed heart persona was wildly understanding of the fact that the detectives needed to take breaks from time to time.]
Not that he might not still implicate you, but I don't think it's as certain a thing as you believe. The heart-changed are quick to claim credit for anything that they might have possibly been responsible for. Unfortunately, I appear to be the furthest along on my timeline, and, well.
[He just admitted that he doesn't have the answers.]
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There's no way I wouldn't be implicated. Shido isn't some mafia thug. Everyone thinks he'll be the next Prime Minister. They'd want to know every single detail of how he did his weird Metaverse crimes. They'd squeeze him for everything he's got. And they'd bring in everyone else they could find, people the Thieves never touched. The only reason they'd have not to throw me to the wolves is if they needed me around for something worse.
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[Because it was a foregone conclusion. Shido would be Prime Minister one way or another, unless he died first - they wouldn't have called off the election on a change of heart confession, it would have just thrown the whole issue into confusion.
If it even happened before then. Heart-changed people like big, dramatic moments to confess. An acceptance speech would do it.]
I don't think it's as hopeless as you think, but ultimately, I don't know your reality, either. Not your struggles nor your crimes.
So, then: In possession of this information, what would you most want to happen?
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He wants his freedom.
The same things he's wanted this whole time, and almost as impossible to reconcile as ever. If Akechi makes it out of the interrogation room, cool, that takes the pressure off Ren having to come up with a plan to save him. But then what? Any plan with any chance of success would need the Thieves to work with Ren while knowing what Ren is, and that's never gonna happen.
And besides, Akechi might not even have the same plan for the interrogation room that this Akechi's Joker pulled off.
What does he want most to happen. What a question. He drains half his cup of coffee at once. ]
Fuck if I know what I want. Maybe Tokyo should just get hit with a meteor.
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[His turn to drain far too much of his cup at once.]
Nuking the entire cognition of a city is bad and I do not advise it.
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Did it, like. Leave? Or did people forget that it was there? How did they get from Shibuya to Toshima? Did they just circle around?
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[Which was understandably also unsettling.]
I'm more unsettled by thinking about what became of the people who were just there when it Inverted. The reports we eventually got back from the people who were able to get inside make Mementos look like a great place to leave your children unsupervised for an afternoon.
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Is this a bad time to mention I'm bombing Shinjuku in a week or so?
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... The one here or the one back in your world?
[This makes a huge difference in his response.]
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[ And thank fuck for that. He does so little stuff like that at home that he didn't even realize Akechi might think he was talking about blowing up a real Shinjuku. ]
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Which is why the way his face lights up... might be a little unsettling.]
How can I help~?
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I don't know. If you're a shinigami, do you have, like... life-sensing abilities? I'm gonna clear out the real people first, but it'd be good if someone could make sure they're all gone.
[ Thoughtfully, he runs through the planned program in his head. ] And I'm making the bomb on-site... Could also use someone double-checking my process while I do that.
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