dropkicks him right into the velvet room

[pyrrhicjustice]

[The Velvet Room is now host and occupant to a Goro Akechi who is lying flat on his back. It certainly seems he arrived that way, and he shows no sign of moving yet. His school blazer seems to have been rained on, although in the blue lighting of the Velvet Room it only seems darker than usual.

Maybe once he's been encouraged to move into better lighting, it'll be noticeable that the rain was of a distinctly red nature, but that's for then, and this is now.

Oh, and there's also a blue butterfly flittering nervously at Igor, who seems sad at its presence.

Poke the (not exactly) sleeping Akechi?]

Comments

[pyrrhicjustice]

[The butterfly takes as much in as she's able to - which isn't as much as she's used to, or that she'd like to.

So, she flutters right back to Akechi, lying on the floor with nothing outwardly seeming to be wrong with him, and flaps her wings above his face.

It isn't long before his eyes start to blink open, and when they do... He stills when the first thing he sees is that face. Perhaps if he'd had to re-orient himself in any other way, he'd have dealt with this better, but-]

You're dead.

[Having only just regained consciousness, he doesn't have much more energy for anything else - but he also doesn't sound angry or anything. Just... lost, confused, and resigned. He's pretty sure this is just his guilty conscience. Or Lavenza throwing some sort of fucked up trial at him.]

[willowandoak]

[ By the time Akechi's eyes open, Ren is wearing his concern more openly on his face. Akechi's words make him blink, though. ]

Nope, not yet. Sorry to disappoint. [ He leans back and sits down properly on the ground. ] But I can see how it could be confusing, depending on where you come from.

[ A world where he died, huh. A lesson, maybe? If he can learn about it. But that's not important right now. ]

[pyrrhicjustice]

No, you are. Bang.

[He somehow scrounges up the strength to pull up his arm, and point a finger gun right at the forehead of this... familiar face.

And then it drops back down, because he's. Very low on energy.

The butterfly lands sadly on his chest.]

[willowandoak]

[ Ren flinches hard. For a moment, his mind is utterly blank.

Then he comes back online, more or less, although his tone is clipped. ] Maybe the me you knew is dead, but I'm not him.

[pyrrhicjustice]

Ah. Of course.

[It hits him, now, just how much the Akira he'd be going back to... won't be the one he'd done all of those things with. A different Akira, in some ways.]

If you're a result of whatever this place is trying to push a guilty conscience onto me, I have a full laundry list of better things to be doing.

[willowandoak]

So pull yourself together and stop whining about your guilty conscience. Everyone has a guilty fucking conscience, but you don't see me telling everyone I meet they exist just to torment me.

[ He glares down at the new Akechi. His patience hasn't run out, or else he'd be gone, but it is starting to wear a little thin. ]

[pyrrhicjustice]

[Part of him wants to just say fuck off, because for one thing he wasn't whining about anything other than than being left the fuck alone and-

He doesn't do that. Because the last time he saw Akira was over a month ago, in that small room, and he can't help but... stare.

It's only by staring that he realises-]

You really aren't the Akira I know, are you?

[willowandoak]

My name's Ren, for one thing, so we can rule that out. Ren Amamiya. [ Another fucking Akira world... But at least Akechi looks a little more present. ]

Seriously, wherever you think you are, this isn't it. Can you, like, chill out a little and stop jumping to conclusions so we can get you set up?

[pyrrhicjustice]

Speaking as purely objective fact, Akira would have been able to tell the difference between whatever you think I'm doing and the fact that these conclusions are perfectly valid for everything I've just-

[The butterfly flutters slightly, momentarily agitated.]

For my... world, then.

[willowandoak]

[ More progress. Ren can handle snappishness; he just wants Akechi to talk to him, instead of... doing whatever he was doing. Ren doesn't want to think about it. ]

Why? What happened in your world?

[pyrrhicjustice]

I told you. I killed you. [Blink. He's still getting used to this.] Akira.

I killed you, and then the world started going to shit and nothing made sense anymore. [Sigh.] I mean that literally, by the way. Society stopped caring about [Shido. The truth.] anything. It was sickening. I tried to figure it out, but [you weren't there] I came up with nothing. Then reality began merging with Mementos. It rained blood.

And then, I was erased from public cognition as unnecessary. So I might as well have been dead myself. So you'll forgive me for assuming something had gone wrong and I'd wound up in hell.

[He doesn't actually care if Ren does or doesn't. You know he's feeling somewhat better when he's able to be sarcastic.]

[willowandoak]

[ There's a lot to unpack there, and Ren isn't going to do any of it yet. It was never going to be a good time to tell him these things, that his equivalent in this Akechi's world succeeded in assassinating the leader of the Thieves, or that Akechi himself was erased from public cognition and died. But right now, only a few days after the reaper's sugary-sweet Oh, I died, is worse than most. He sits silently, unblinking, as his mind slips into blank static again. ]

[pyrrhicjustice]

[He just continues to lie there for a while - starting to feel somewhat less like death warmed up with the help of a thousand needles, which is an improvement. Akira - Ren - is apparently as much for talking as he ever was.

Except... Lavenza flutters over, slowly and carefully, and he sighs.]

She's concerned about you.

[willowandoak]

[ The words take a couple seconds to penetrate, but then he blinks. ]

Sorry. I'm good. ...You mean the butterfly? Is it a she?

[ He may be talking, but his voice is distant. I was erased from public cognition as unnecessary. That'll happen to Akechi, if Ren kills him. Maybe not literally, because this Akechi seems to mean it in a very concrete way, but that's essentially his fate. The leader of the Phantom Thieves kills himself, as he should. Goro Akechi disappears. The world resonates with emptiness. Like this fucking place, only real. Forever.

But if he doesn't kill Akechi, they'll come after him, and when they find him he'll wish he was dead. Trapped and chained, scrabbling at the walls until his fingers bleed, or else enslaved, killing and killing and killing until he lies down and doesn't get up again. And those are the best outcomes.

He can't accept either of those outcomes. All he can do is choose a third option, and he can't accept that one, either. But he's coming round to it with time. ]

[pyrrhicjustice]

Her name is Lavenza, and she certainly sounds female to me. Although, I doubt anyone else can hear her. [Which... is something he is on a level with her on.]

She was attached to [not him] Akira. So you're... a familiar face.

[He doesn't need to have her say it to know that she misses him. He's still not sure why she hasn't leveraged that over him more than she already has.]

[willowandoak]

Nice to meet you, Lavenza.

[ He is calm. He is fine. Everything is fine. ]

And you too, Akechi. It sounds like you have a story. [ That is to say, Ren wants to know fucking everything. ] But maybe we can make sure you're good to go first? This place is kind of weird.

[ Because Ren is worried about him, and also, because then he'll owe Ren. ]

[pyrrhicjustice]

I don't know, it's preferable to what I left behind.

[He's not kidding. There's something about the place, even with Igor smiling over at him in a way that makes his face look so very punchable, that's more calming than it has any right to be.

But that's no reason to lie around being lazy when he isn't dying anymore. So, he pushes and levers himself upright, through the discomfort. Lavenza isn't convinced Ren is fine, and he isn't either, but then neither of them are fully "fine" themselves.]

[willowandoak]

I guess I can see that. With the blood rain and all. [ He scoots back a little to give Akechi more room as he sits up. ]

The first thing you probably know is, this place has a lot of copies of the same people. Lots of yous and mes, mostly. So make sure you have the right guy before you start telling people they're dead.

[pyrrhicjustice]

Quite.

[He rolls his eyes.] Just because it seems obvious now, doesn't mean it didn't feel like the logical conclusion after waking up like that. You can be sure I won't be doing it again.

[No, he's just going to bundle all of that up nice and neatly and repress it- shut up, Lavenza.]

[willowandoak]

Glad to hear it.

[ What else is there? He glances around. ] The doors lead to different places. That one's Tokyo. [ He points at the Tokyo door. ] You can make it take you to a different part of Tokyo by thinking about it. But it's, like... weird Tokyo. There are only certain places, and doesn't take any time to get anywhere. And it's full of cognitions.