personavelvetroomdr | (no subject)

[A message appears on the network one morning, not long after a certain Ren appears.

Not long after it goes up, some parts are edited out.]

Attention, "Crow" and "Joker." With the arrival of my Ren, we formally challenge you over your precious codenames. Let us prove to you that we are the ones worthy of the titles, while you are mere variations from a simpler, happier world. despite the power you wield. You may have seniority within this space, but we were forged in the fires of our hardships and have emerged on the other side of Maruki's reality. You two have likely grown soft from your domesticity. Perhaps you'll find us worthy opponents after all this stagnation. They say the spirit of competition can bring out one's best and their worst.

[Is it bold to proclaim the challenge over the network? Yes. But he'd have it no other way, really. Everyone deserves to know how serious they are.]

As for the rest of you, I'd like to start a little bonding exercise. Tell me something about yourself, and I'll tell you something about me in turn. Won't that be fun?

[It should be a simple way to start and prove that he's just as capable of "bonding" as Ren is.]

[ooc: Original parts of the message in strikethrough, with the edits after, if you want your character to have seen the original version.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You had a Palace. Well, I suppose I shouldn't be entirely surprised.

Since the primary condition for having one seems to be 'a distorted view of reality,' I'd say any of us who were

so afflicted could have had one. My friends found out it was there and offered to help me see things clearly, and I accepted. By that point my worldview was kind of breaking anyway.

Well, it's good that they took initiative when they did. In my reality, you learned the truth within Maruki's Palace, and his gut reaction was to re-expose you to your trauma to bend you toward his ideals.

...she went to Odaiba after they threatened her scholarship, didn't she.

I believe so, yes. I wasn't there at the time, but I was there in January.

Akira-senpai and I talked about that much right before I got here. I said that if they hadn't helped me when they did, I probably would have run off to Odaiba to sulk by the stadium because I was told 'for the first time in my life' that I was failing at something, and he said that particular Palace is there, and... while there was no guarantee I would've stumbled into it, he could see it being possible.

I hate to think what might have happened if I'd gone in there not as myself. And I'm especially glad it won't end in me being traumatised all over again just to make a point. I may not know how to do this for myself yet, but I don't want to do that anymore.

It's good that you have a chance to find yourself on your own terms. It was difficult in our reality, because we had to juggle Maruki's looming deadline and securing the route to his treasure. Removed from those complications, I believe you'll do just fine. After all, our Violet persevered in the end.

I hope so. It was easy to say I wanted it in the heat of the moment, but then I woke up the next morning and still had no idea where to start. Futaba-senpai calls it the Survive To The Next Day Challenge.

I don't know if I'm going to continue gymnastics after the next meet (if I even qualify), at least for now. For now, I need to try to qualify without completely copying Kasumi, but after that... it's been my life since I was four, and that was because of her. It can't be my life forever, and I don't know how much I want it.

Moving forward is much more difficult than you would think. You have time to collect your thoughts and weigh your options. Perhaps you can even practice your routines here without the pressures waiting for you back home.

Maybe I can. I think it'd feel weird to go to the gymnastics academy with no one else actually there, though, so I may need to find another place. [She's at least been keeping up an exercise routine, so she's not going to lose all her progress.]

I... can admit I probably wouldn't be here to make different choices if Dr. Maruki hadn't done what he did. Mom and Dad were very worried, and not without cause. But I still had no way to know what he was offering, and I wasn't in any state to actually ask for it, either.

Regardless of his intentions, the end result clearly brought its share of hardships that he failed to account for. Though it is good you survived, there must have been a better way to go about it.

Oh, it did. I'm not about to claim otherwise. The fact that it helped is incidental. He should not have helped like that.

Honestly, I'm impressed it took Kasumi's friends five entire months to snap at me about it.

If I had to guess, pity. You were mourning, so that likely determined how they treated you for some time.

I was mourning, sure, but so were they, and I was ripping open their wounds on a weekly basis.

Yet you're Kasumi Yoshizawa's sister. Perhaps they believed your mourning was of greater priority.

None of us were of greater priority. Not really.

But I do think the whole 'don't draw attention to other people's problems' thing worked in my favor, until they just couldn't take it anymore.

There's also the fact that ours is a culture built on politeness. Regardless of their feelings, there's the compulsion to hold one's tongue. But, obviously, they could only stand so much. How do you plan to face them in the future?

I've already apologised. If I stay in gymnastics, we're still going to be seeing a lot of each other. If they're willing to get to know me on my own terms after all that, I won't tell them no, but I also understand if they'd rather avoid me going forward.

Time will tell. Either way, you've done all you can. The rest is up to them.