ren amamiya (au) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
willowandoak) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
personavelvetroomdr2023-09-24 01:03 pm
willowandoak) wrote in personavelvetroomdr2023-09-24 01:03 pm
and i ride in my red dress, and time stretches endless
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
no subject
He doesn't have much chance to enjoy the quiet, nowadays. So he takes a moment here and does, smoking a cigarette on the dirty Mementos floor, letting Ren...do whatever he needs to do, mentally. He tries to give him an empathetic (or is it sympathetic?) "yeah, I know, I've been there, it sucks" smile. He's not sure he succeeds.
no subject
That's still probably true. But here, lying on the floor of Mementos next to Akira, he can't swallow them back down anymore.
"I don't want that." He lets out a deep, shaky breath. "I don't want that to happen to him."
It feels like pulling the lid shut on his own coffin. It feels like a release.
no subject
no subject
It's a stupid response, but it's still the first thing Ren thinks. Hulking bodies, glittering eyes, cruel mouths, and a bottomless well of greedy, grasping evil. Ren has seen enough of the worst of the Conspiracy's handiwork that his lungs fill with ice at even the thought of leaving them alive and just... trying to avoid them. Two years. Fuck. He'd never make it.
"Thanks." He doesn't sound like he believes Akira, however. "I'll work something out. I have a week or two back home to get around the Niijima Palace plan."
no subject
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A drag of his cigarette. "The only other thing I can say is that...well, if there was a way out for me, there might be a way out for you. You can take me as proof that there's light on the other end of the tunnel. Or don't. It's up to you, either way."
no subject
"I want to believe that." He stares at the grimy ceiling. "That's the trap."
rain all your broken pieces, storm / with each that falls there comes reform
"The gears of space crunch through the endless march of time," filaments of copper glitter from the light at the end of the tunnel, menacing and comforting all in one. "There is a forward and it comes unceasingly."
Before he can process what happened, it's gone, the glass in the back of his mind fogged once more. He recognizes it, of course. But there's nothing he can do about it right now.
At some point, when the silence has stretched long enough, he takes a deep breath in. "It's been a long day," Joker offers, blinking away the sparks of smoke and clouds of mirror that clouded his vision. "Wanna head up top? The ground up there is comfortable than this." He taps the floor with a finger, extinguishing his cigarette. To most people, anyway.
no subject
Slowly, he starts to sit up, examining himself for injuries. He feels... okay. Hurt but not flattened, thanks to the healing and the snack. It'll all disappear once he's out of the Metaverse, obviously, but the less injured he is when he leaves, the less exhausted he'll be in reality. Something something cognition. This will have to be good enough.
"Sorry I stabbed you," he says belatedly.
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"Thanks." He stands up and stretches gingerly. A series of clicks sounds as his joints pop one by one. "Mm... Fuck, I can't believe I have to stay out on the street all day after that."
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He starts to reach for his phone, but pauses. There is one more thing to address: "By the way, what the hell were you doing in the fight? Changing shape? Copying my damn Persona? How did you do that shit?"
no subject
As for that second part...he smirks. "It's something like that," he answers. "See you later, kouhai."
In the blink of an eye, he becomes something wrong-terrifying-monstrous-nononono, and then becomes a puddle of magnetic goo, falling up into the ceiling of Mementos. Then, he's gone, like a bad dream fading in the light of day.
no subject
And then he's just fucking gone.
Ren stares at the ceiling. "What the hell is your problem," he says to the absent Akira. "Fucking psycho." His heart is still pounding.
With a sigh, he sheaths his dagger and pulls out his phone. No going home to brood just yet. He has a long day of sitting around ahead of him.