and i ride in my red dress, and time stretches endless

[willowandoak]

Ren's been antsy lately. Easily startled, prone to snapping and to cringing away from stuff he handled better when he first got here. Stressed? Maybe that's the word. Owain stirs, which happens less than it used to, but Ren squishes him back down before he has the chance to offer alternative interpretations for Ren's state of mind.

It doesn't matter anyway. Ren has a street in Shinjuku to explode.

While it will be satisfying, the real point of the exercise is to answer the list of questions he has about the immediate aftermath of an explosion and the following hours. They all walk blithely around in this place they've found themselves in, but they don't know shit about where on the cognition-reality scale it is or how the cognitions process their surroundings. They haven't needed to know yet, but that could change at any time.

Thankfully, it's pretty easy to make a bomb when you can just wander into anywhere you want and grab stuff, so Ren has everything set up. He's done a test explosion to make sure his math was right and removed the risk of little kid interlopers and everything. He's chosen a side street, big enough to get cognitive traffic but not so big that a giant hole in the road will annoy real people. Now all that's left is to clear the area and do the deed.

You might encounter him at the following times:


1: bring your salt, bring your cigarette

Ren might want to blow up a street. Indeed, he might be hoping to take out some of the shit-awful cognitions. But he's not interested in killing any actual people right now, and that means he has to do a sweep of the area beforehand to clear out anyone who might be around.

The bomb is big enough that it'll take out not just the street he's chosen but a good section of the buildings on either side, and of course there's a fair chance that a fire will start and spread, even though Ren waited for a rainy day. So he starts work fairly early in the morning. He combs through shops and the empty apartments above them, he disturbs cognitions on the toilet, he pokes his head into nearby alleyways, he puts up handwritten signs: I AM BLOWING UP THIS AREA. GO AWAY. (Those are also part of the experiment.) Being responsible kinda sucks, actually.

If he finds a real person, he's going to approach—or perhaps you see him first.


2: i'll turn your sea to a desert

A huge explosion shatters the normalcy of a drizzly early afternoon. The shockwave rocks the buildings in Shinjuku for several streets on all sides of the blast site, shattering glass and toppling signs. If you happen to be looking in the right direction, you might see a plume of smoke and debris rising over the buildings, though the fire at its heart is surprisingly small. A moment later, rocks and other debris rain from the sky, pelting those who haven't had the forethought to seek cover.

After pressing the button to trigger the detonator, Ren has taken shelter in a bank with thick stone walls several streets away. The bomb takes a moment to work, as he knows it will, but that doesn't stop him from wondering if something's gone wrong with the remote signal, or the detonator itself, or the booster—but as the countdown in his head reaches zero, the bomb detonates. The bank trembles, rattling windows in their frames, but Ren isn't stupid enough to stand near those.

Something releases inside him as the ground trembles beneath his feet, destruction he caused with his own hands. He closes his eyes as the walls settle and lets out a slow breath. But the explosion itself was only half the point; he waits for the debris to fall outside, then puts on a facemask to protect his lungs and steps out of the building. As cognitions scream and fret, fleeing the scene—and he takes note that they're doing that—he walks calmly towards the hole in the street, hands in his pockets as ever.

The buildings on either side are in ruins, half-destroyed with their innards exposed to passersby. The first of Ren's questions about the nature of their surroundings will be answered now, but he's not paying attention; his gaze is fixed on the gutted structures. They evoke... something. He can't name the feeling. Something hungry.

There aren't many fires, at least.

Anyone who is (perhaps unwisely) drawn to the source of the explosion is likely to see him there, a lone still figure, recognizable as an Akira or a Ren by his hair and eyes, even if you don't know him to identify him by his shabby clothes.


3: bring your boy, bring your bottle

It's early evening by now. Ren is back at the scene of the crime, or perhaps he never left, although he's trashed the facemask by now in light of the lack of weird fires. He's set up a little lounge chair under a beach umbrella near the site of the explosion so he can watch comfortably. The site itself looks almost like it did at first, but Ren is already starting to notice changes. And the behavior of the cognitions is interesting.

Also worth noting, in his view, is the fact that no emergency services have showed up at any point. He's seen cops on street corners and shit, but if they don't respond to emergencies, could it be that this is a de facto cop-free world? A paradise.

He has food, too. Energy drinks and soda in a cooler, and all the snacks he could grab in a giant bag next to him. He's never going to get through them all. It was just fun to take them.

He'll be here for a little while, observing and making mental notes.

Comments

[willowandoak]

For a second, Ren just stares at her, with the same blank, half-present gaze that he turned on the ruined buildings.

That's a person, a little voice in the back of his mind finally reminds him, and he blinks. It... sure is a person. Another Okumura, at that, and this one dressed in a way that would probably drive her father crazy. Not proper. Maybe he should just give up on trying to figure out Okumuras at all.

"I lived here for a few months," is what he finally chooses to say. He could come up with a funny deflection, probably should, but. He doesn't.

[rosemaudite]

"Fair enough. If the damage sticks, would you like to blow up my father's headquarters?"

It'd just be more frustrating for everyone if the damage doesn't stick, though.

[willowandoak]

... Ren's eyes focus on her.

"Are you serious? Abso-fucking-lutely." That pigfucking pus-covered bloated leech on the world. Ren would kill him again if he could.

(The other Haru didn't like her giant house, either... He remembers that.)

[rosemaudite]

"Oh, excellent. Noir might object to the house taking that kind of damage, but I think even she could agree the offices aren't doing anything useful."

[willowandoak]

Noir, huh. "Should I be calling the other Okumura Noir? What should I call you, then? I'm Ren Amamiya, by the way," he adds, to avoid being called the other fucking name.

[rosemaudite]

"If you need to tell us apart, it's the easiest way. You can call me Rose." It's not her real code name, but she needs something in reserve, in case her Goro ever turns up.

(Not that she thinks it's likely.)

"Good to meet you, Amamiya. I barely know your counterpart at home." Which is to say, she's coming in with basically no assumptions.

[willowandoak]

"Nice to meet you," he repeats automatically. "I know my Okumura a little, but you don't seem much like her."

Ren... has made assumptions. But they keep providing him with predictions that are wrong, so, like. That must mean they're bullshit, right? They feel true, on an angry, visceral level that's hard to think around sometimes, but Ren can't afford to act based just on what he fucking feels. He's survived by thinking.

But the things he's believed about her still feel right. And he still despises her father. And it's just so fucking frustrating—

"I'm actually looking to see if the damage sticks around. That's one of the things I'm testing. But yeah, I can make enough ANFO to blow up that piece of shit building and then some. If it comes back, we could just keep doing it."

[rosemaudite]

"No need to drag my father into things." More so than your average Haru, she does not want to be associated with that man if she doesn't have to. (Things get a lot less complicated when your father tries to kill you, if indirectly.)

"It'd be less satisfying if it doesn't stick... but getting to destroy it over and over could be just as fun."

[willowandoak]

"Every time we need stress relief. Blow up Okumura Foods." He turns to look at the hole he blew in Kabukicho and takes a long breath. "...It's real effective."

He sure does hate your dad, huh, Haru?

[rosemaudite]

"I can imagine. But what did he do to you, that you're so willing to destroy his property?"

Still no judgement in Haru's question. If anything, she sounds... amused? Certainly not like she can't fathom a concrete answer.

[willowandoak]

He wouldn't give this answer if he wasn't in the mood he's in, weird and liminal in the aftermath of the explosion. But he is in that mood, so he does give it.

"I worked for him. Kind of."

[rosemaudite]

"Understood." And she does understand, the way that only people who have done that 'kind of' work can.

[willowandoak]

"Yeah?"

He studies her. Weirdly, he thinks she does understand. That... sure is something. Okumura sending his own daughter out as a teenage Metaverse hitman or whatever he had her do. Okumura would do that, too.

"Sorry to hear that."

[rosemaudite]

"Oh, he'll get what's coming to him soon enough." Now that she's decided what exactly is coming to him.

[willowandoak]

Ren raises his eyebrows, intrigued. "Sounds promising."

He would love to hear about it, of Okumura wants to share. But it's chill if she doesn't.

[rosemaudite]

"I haven't had a good opportunity yet, and I wasn't sure whether he deserved the relative mercy of death or not. Lately, I've been thinking not."

Certainly she's not going to leave him to be made a martyr to Shido's cause.

[willowandoak]

He eyes her for a second, weighing various risks and certainties. But he might as well say this; they understand each other enough that Okumura knows what he's been up to, and he wants to know how she'll take it.

"So if I said I killed him back home, would that be a bummer?"

[rosemaudite]

"My counterpart here might not be thrilled about it," she says, after a few moments. "But she... somehow still has complicated feelings about him. I still say he doesn't deserve to be let off that easily, but if I wasn't doing anything about the problem, I suppose someone had to."

[willowandoak]

Ren won't say it was under orders, then. And he won't say it at all to Noir. But to this Okumura, he offers a wry smile, mostly hidden behind his facemask but visible in his eyes.

"I don't have the resources to make someone like him really suffer. My Persona's ability gets worse at wrecking lives when people are rich. They can do damage control and shit."

[rosemaudite]

It's not like she doesn't already know where that order's likely to have come from.

"More's the pity. What about Goro, though?"

[willowandoak]

He's not expecting the question, and doesn't really understand it when it comes. They've established that he's the terrible murderer guy in his world, so what does Akechi have to do with anything?

"Goro Akechi? I guess his ability is that he never uses the same damn Persona twice. Don't know if the Phantom Thieves are into that kind of thing, though, except for the changes of heart themselves."

[rosemaudite]

"...He's not... there's only one of you?" And it's not Goro?

She's honestly baffled by that notion. It'd take something pretty extreme to stop him from trying for revenge at all (she gets it with the twelve-year-old and his older self; they were rescued).

[willowandoak]

"There's more than one of you...?"

Wait, hang on. Akechi and Okumura, teammates... "Are you from some kind of. Murderous Phantom Thieves world?"

[rosemaudite]

After a few moments, Haru laughs.

"What - no, no, the Phantom Thieves are hardly even a thing at home. I showed up here hours after Kamoshida confessed his crimes at their behest. My father threw me to the wolves, and a few months after that my Goro came along with his half-baked revenge plan, and... they decided introducing us before we unknowingly bumped into each other in the Metaverse was probably a good idea."

From the conspiracy's perspective, it was the worst mistake they've made to date. From Haru and Goro's, it was the best thing ever.

[willowandoak]

"Yeah, I've heard about some half-baked Akechi revenge plans since I got here. But it sounds like you two are luckier than most of us."

He kind of wishes he had a partner. Trust your partner, that shinigami Akechi told him, and there was only one person that could ever mean for Ren.

He doesn't want that for Akechi, though. And with all due respect to shinigami Akechi, he still isn't sure he could trust a partner if he had one. Regardless of all that, what Ren does or doesn't want, it didn't happen that way for him.