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

[pheasantboy]

... and he's gone. It is, in fact, the first time anyone here has so much as mentioned Palaces to him, and he's entirely out. His eyes unfocus; his lips part; he remains standing, but goes limp. He doesn't blink; he barely breathes.

In the background, unknown to either of them, some of those silk threads in his mental tapestry are hastily darning themselves, creating a thicker weave.

[willowandoak]

That's not normal.

"Are you okay?" Ren asks. "Akechi...?" When he receives no answer, he approaches, slowly and carefully with his knife still in his hand in case this is some kind of weird ploy.

But no, Akechi is just... totally zoned out. The back of Ren's neck starts to prickle with unease. Something is seriously wrong. He doesn't know what the fuck is going on, but a vague, hazy outline of the situation is starting to come into view, and Ren does not like it.

After a moment, he closes his knife and puts it back in his pocket. If he can, he'll take Akechi by the arm, not unaware of his hypocrisy, and guide him over to lean against a building.

[pheasantboy]

He goes. Like one of his victims left without their Shadow, he can be pushed or pulled in any direction; his feet move absently on their own. But it doesn't last long. After a few moments of that, he blinks, and notices the hand on his arm, and reacts not with violence but confusion. "Oh—"

Quickly, he tries to pull away. "Please don't touch me. We established, I think, that that's not a good idea."

[willowandoak]

"Yeah, sorry." Ren lets go as soon as Akechi starts trying to free himself. "You were just out of it. I wanted to make sure you didn't fall over."

[pheasantboy]

... right. It happened again. And not just with a Ren, but an unpredictable Ren who uses violence, blows people up, and carries a knife. His shoulders droop as he looks down at the too-clean pavement.

"Perhaps you understand why I'm concerned for your victims. You might think they're not real, but you're not the arbiter of reality."

[willowandoak]

"I guess? If I thought they were real people, I'd be weirded out too. But, like." He pauses, trying to figure out how the fuck to explain this to such a weird Akechi. He just hates seeing that face look so downcast.

"If it walks like a duck and so on, you know?" He would like to say If it walks like a cognition, but that may have been what set Akechi off before. "Like, yeah, it's good to make sure before you do an explosion, but I have. They aren't real. I know that as much I've ever known anything. I can back it up with a whole lot of past experience, actually, with real people and people-shaped things that weren't real. If I start saying oh, I don't know if that's real, for some reason, I might as well not know anything is real. I might as well not do anything."

Will that work? Who knows.

[pheasantboy]

"But they talk." How to make this clear, to make any of them understand? Again, he glimpses his own Ren, blinking and lost; he tries to hush the doubt that tells him, Ren wouldn't understand.

"They're no different from the people at home. They talk like we do. They smile. They're friendly. They like me. They want to be with me. They aren't like you, but they're real.

"They don't deserve to be killed just so you can—prove something." And there it is, the sliver of curiosity left in his heart and his eye, when all the rest was lost. "... what even is it you want to prove?"

[willowandoak]

"I'm not trying to prove anything. Just trying to learn." He eyes Akechi. They're no different from the people at home. That's... chilling. "Do you actually want the list, or am I just gonna get a lecture?"

[pheasantboy]

"I'm going to tell you what I think, if I think you're wrong. Obviously."

That look. He can miss a lot, when he's safe in his bubble. But his bubble's getting harder and harder to maintain.

[willowandoak]

Despite everything, despite how weird this guy is, that's such an Akechi thing to say that it could almost have come out of Ren's own Akechi's mouth. It would've been a lot more scathing if it had, but still. Ren surprises himself by breaking into a fond smile, soft-eyed as he gazes at the Akechi in front of him.

[pheasantboy]

... and he can't take it. That smile, shit. Just sometimes, sometimes they get through to Ren, and he smiles just like that. And he used to smile like it all the time; Akechi remembers—

It's like someone smashed in his face. His expression crumples, and he turns away. Fuck, what is he even doing here? "Excuse me—"

[willowandoak]

Ren's smile fades into a confused little frown. What now? Does Akechi hate smiling? That's a weird new wrinkle.

"Hey, are you okay? Did I do something wrong?"

[pheasantboy]

So many vague impressions he can't place. Smiles just like that (or sharp as knives), laughs that make him fly (or push him from his lonely pedestal). Hands on his shoulder, in his hair. (deliver your promise...)

"I. Shit. I'm sorry—" He presses the back of his hand to his mouth. In his mind's eye, Ren stares up at him like... exactly like....

"I'm sorry. I just, um. You reminded me of something. That's all." He feels like he should probably add something less embarrassing, so he does. "Don't blow anyone up."

[willowandoak]

Ren doesn't feel much more confident that Akechi is okay, to be honest. Like, even in the small, immediate sense, because it remains obvious that on a grand scale something is really fucked.

"I'm working on it. It would help if you left the area."

[pheasantboy]

"I'm really not stupid, despite what all of you think." Because he can be hurt; he just won't remember. Until something hurts him again. "If I leave, you'll just do it."

[willowandoak]

"I wasn't trying to bullshit you. Because I don't think you're stupid."

He considers Akechi. If he's going to try to stick around to stop Ren from triggering the explosion, that might be a problem.

[pheasantboy]

It's stupid how much those words touch him. Just a Ren, not Ren himself. He mustn't forget. "I see.

"What would you do? If you were me? Because to be honest with you, I think you just want to blow something up."

[willowandoak]

That sounds like Akechi, too. Ren doesn't make the mistake of smiling fondly again.

"Yeah, maybe. But that doesn't mean I don't also want to know stuff. For one thing, don't you wonder how the world will react to being blown up? Like... this is a cognitive space, but it's a lot more solid than some others I've been in."

He hasn't actually answered the question.

[pheasantboy]

... and again, he's gone. Cognitions are apparently fine to discuss, but the fact of cognitive spaces is not. It makes you wonder where he even thinks he is.

He stares through Ren, again. This attack won't last as long, but it will last long enough.

[willowandoak]

Ren sighs and waits for him to come back, keeping an eye on him in the meantime to make sure he doesn't collapse or anything.

Is it even safe for this Akechi to be going around on his own? He's so obviously an Akechi one moment, although a damaged one, and then the next he's like this. Like an empty doll. Anything could happen to him.

[pheasantboy]

... but he blinks, and comes back. His eyes focus; he doesn't realise anything has happened, just continues their conversation from... an earlier point.

"I'm serious. What would you do in my place?"

[willowandoak]

...Hm.

"Do you know you space out when I say certain things?"

[pheasantboy]

"... it happens sometimes. Yes, I know. It's not—anything I can control."

He folds his arms. "You aren't going to distract me. You clearly accept that I'm real, with all my flaws, so why not these people?"

[willowandoak]

"I'm not trying to distract you." That is actually, for once, true. The one time it's fucking impossible to have a serious conversation is the one time Ren is trying. "I asked because every time I even start to answer the question, you zone out. Like it's forbidden knowledge or something. So, like. No wonder you don't get it, I guess."

[pheasantboy]

"It's just something that happens to me." Stage 1 clear, or something. He feels as if someone suggested something, that he's been repeatedly given a possible explanation for what's happened to him. But it won't come to mind, so he moves on.

"I know people have advanced different explanations. I have a little trouble remembering them, to be quite honest with you. But that's just me. It's not a dark conspiracy." He says it with no effort at all, unbothered, emotionless....

But then he looks Ren in the face, and his face drops. Ren and his memory. What if it is different, like that?