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ichayalovesyou · 4 years ago

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THE BIG VULCAN BIOLOGY POST (aka Vulcan is a Hell Planet)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a biologist, astrophysicist, neurologist, animal psychologist or literally anything that would qualify me to talk about this with 100% confidence. This is the result of dozens of headcanons and obsessive deep dive research. I don’t want this post to be three miles long, so after I address the planetary stuff I will oblige y’all with a Read More.

Adsfasdkfjhaslkdfh I’ve been working on this post for almost a month SO HERE WE GO!

First of all, Vulcan (aka T’Khasi) is a HELL PLANET, which is part of the reason they’re so badass, I say this for the following reasons:

No moon(s) (natural satellites)

Sodium (Salt) is so rare on the planet that Vulcan’s oceans are freshwater

It’s a “Super-Earth” (as in big chonkin’ planet of similar composition to earth in the “goldilocks region”)

Let’s do this.

“Vulcan has no moon Ms. Uhura.”

-Spock, The Man Trap

Tons of things change about our planet if there was no moon:

Much darker nights (no moonlight)

Much lower sea levels since there is no gravity from the moon to pull it upward.

Lower and weaker tides because the water is pulled by the sun instead of the moon, and it depends on how large the Vulcan solar system’s sun is for how big the waves are.

Stronger winds from faster planet rotation.

Depending on whether the axis of the planet would straighten or tilt further without the moon’s pull, combined with the faster rotation would lead to more severe seasons (strong tilt) or no seasons at all (no tilt)

The first factor may lead to Vulcan eyes being very catlike even if they aren’t nocturnal (I think they’re crepesucular but we’ll get into that later). Which given the likely nature of their blood and their herbivorous eating habits they probably aren’t. The sky would still be so dark that our human eyes couldn’t even see our hands in front of us, being blind when the sun goes down could be a death sentence. Alternatively, if they didn’t develop strong night vision that may be one of the reasons why they have such strong senses of hearing.

The stronger winds, faster rotation, and stronger (or nonexistent) seasons come from the lack of resistance and friction that stronger tides and the moon’s pull create on our planet. I suspect that Vulcan is larger, or at least denser than Earth, but I’ve been informed that according to the TMP novelization that it does rotate faster. I also think that Vulcan’s tilt is on the more extreme end to get the hostile extremes like storms and heat that we see on Vulcan.

If you look at this image of Vulcan, water covers way less of the planet’s surface than Earth. I don’t think this is necessarily because Vulcan has less water, but that it isn’t spread as far because of the lack of moon, and the fact that the oceans are freshwater, I’ll get into that shortly.

“My ancestors spawned from a different ocean than yours.”

-Spock, The Man Trap

In the Star Trek: The Original Series (third) pilot The Man Trap, there is a creature that kills its victims by draining their bodies completely of salt. Spock encounters the creature but does not die, implying his (and Vulcans overall) body contains little to no salt. His justification is that his species did not evolve from a salinized ocean.

What does it mean to have oceans with no salt?

This has to mean that sodium is a very rare mineral on Vulcan, as the reason our oceans are so salinized is due to erosion of minerals by rainfall, carried from river to ocean. Salt in the ocean is also generated by submarine volcanic activity, which means either that the volcanoes on Vulcan (which we definitely know exist) somehow don’t produce salt, or the vast majority of the submarine volcanoes have been inactive for millions if not billions of years. The active volcanoes on Vulcan must be very far inland and/or Vulcan has almost no rivers, which given how hot the planet is, wouldn’t actually be too much of a stretch of the imagination.

Which means every single lifeform on T’Khasi, including Vulcans, evolved biosystems that exist without (or with very little) salt content. Any salt that exists would likely be deep beneath the planet’s surface, and within volcanoes.

No saltwater has a ton of consequences:

Plants (like underwater algae) are rarer and may not photosynthesize the same way Earth plants do, meaning less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, which means more greenhouse effect, which means higher temperatures.

The lack of salt would also mean less diverse plant life (at least as humans know it) and given the lack of visible rivers and vast swaths of desert on Vulcan, we can safely say vegetation must be hardier and infrequent.

Lower sea levels as the oceans would have lower density due to lack of salt.

Little to no water convection, which salt is crucial for on Earth. Which means warm ocean water doesn’t move to cold regions and vice versa. Creating extremes, the equator being obscenely hot, and polar waters freezing at the poles more extensively.

Lack of convection means more frequent and stronger storms like hurricanes.

If you thought the lack of a moon made Vulcan inhospitable, compound it with the low sodium factor and you’ve got a planet of even more severe extremes than before. The heat, and the decrease of plant diversity definitely explain why the vast majority of Vulcan is rocky desert, even being near the water poses more extreme dangers than it would on earth due to the increased frequency of hurricanes.

“Mr. Spock is much stronger than an ordinary human being.”

-Kirk, This Side of Paradise

I am almost 100% sure that Vulcan is either bigger or denser than Earth. Which would explain why Vulcans are so much stronger than Humans and other species that exist on similar gravity worlds.

Effects of a high-gravity planet or “Super-Earth” include:

Everything is shorter or has very strong foundations, plants, animals, structures, and people.

More “Armageddon” class asteroids would hit the planet (like the one that killed the dinosaurs and created the Gulf of Mexico)

Larger liquid mantle under the planet’s surface, higher pressure under the surface as well.

Weaker magnetic field due to lack of convection in the planet’s core (not to be confused with the mantle interacting with the planet’s crust). Which means a weaker atmosphere, lower magnetism in surface metals, and increased vulnerability to solar flares.

More volcanically and seismically active due the the increase in the mantle’s size and generated heat, more earthquakes, and more volcanic eruptions.

Would have to have a smaller sun but be closer in orbit to it than earth.

Extremely deep oceans, potentially with water under so much pressure at the bottom that it becomes solid like ice. Luckily Vulcan is not an ocean world, because the pressure would block the planet’s core from interacting with the atmosphere, which would prevent life as we know it from happening.

There is plenty of evidence for this on so many levels. We never see any plant life similar to trees on Vulcan. Nor animals significantly larger than Vulcans, the ones that are bigger are much more muscular. Vulcan’s sky is more red than blue because of the lack of oxygen molecules for the light from the sun to filter as blue. I actually headcanon that Spock is unusually tall for a Vulcan because of his human heritage (Leonard Nimoy was around 6ft tall) , and may have had heart and muscle problems in his teens and early adulthood while on Vulcan.

Perhaps Vulcans are the result of many more extinction level events than we are, contributing to their hardiness. Perhaps they are, evolutionarily, not too much older than we are, and had more incentive to develop extraterrestrial technology than we have, so that they could repel Armageddon Class meteors and defend their planet against Solar Flares? Space travel being born out of self-preservation rather than curiosity. Which would absolutely account for their attitudes in the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise.

It could be that Vulcans still maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle even today because their planet is so incredibly volatile. Unsentimental and utilitarian in anything less than the most sacred of architecture long before they adopted the teachings of Surak. Their own survival more valuable than any structure that would inevitably be damaged or destroyed by their planet’s harsh environment.

In summary, Vulcan is a Nightmare Planet because:

So, so many much natural disasters, like, so many, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, twisters, just, so many more than Earth.

Water is relegated to specific locations in the world rather than spread across it due to lack of flow and lower sea levels.

Extreme temperature changes, intense heat, intense cold, hard to breathe, stronger gravity.

Due to the planet’s hostility, there is a smaller diversity of life than we have here on earth, which means fewer and hardier food sources that, like Vulcans, are very difficult to kill.

So… How do they handle it? What features have they developed to adapt and thrive in such an inhospitable place?

First thing is first, lets talk about

BLOOD

“My hemoglobin is based on copper, not iron.”

-Spock, Obsession

Funny thing is Spock, it’s not hemoglobin at all! It’s hemocyanin! In fact, there are earth animals that have it, among them Horseshoe Crabs, crustaceans, mollusks and spiders!

Hemocyanin is blue when it hasn’t been exposed to oxygen, and blue-green when it has, according to some sources on Vulcans their blood is orangey red when unexposed to air and that’s why they have pink lips and so on, but we can brush that off as chemical variation within their hemocyanin. Better yet, maybe it’s trendy for Vulcans to wear pink lipstick nowadays, ‘cause Surak knows how horny Humans and Vulcans are for each other XD! Anyway!

Hemocyanin does quite a few things that our blood can’t, it’s uniquely built for high pressure, low oxygen environments, as well as endure temperature extremes like cold (not unlike nights on their planet). Not only that, but it coagulates and clots WAY faster than our blood. Which means wounds seal themselves off from harmful bacteria and stop bleeding much faster than hemoglobin. Pair that with the Vulcan ability to enter a healing torpor, no wonder Spock keeps surviving environments and wounds that would definitely have killed a human.

Now, the animals I listed don’t have veins, which for us carry oxygen around via hemoglobin, so it’s possible that the same difference that causes Vulcan blood to be a coppery orange-red beneath the skin, is the same reason they have veins. Allowing them to look more like us and lack the exoskeletons and deep ocean delving that their earth blood cousins have.

“The ship’s temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I’ve adjusted the environment in my quarters to 125 degrees.”

-(Elderly) Spock, The Deadly Years

Oh goodie, the Vulcan blood temperature discourse has arrived, the age old question, are Vulcans warm-blooded or cold-blooded? The answer to this question is

YES

I am firmly in the small (but hopefully growing) camp Vulcans Are Heterothermic. Among the earth animals we know to be heterothermic are bumblebees, several species of bats, the opah fish, and the arctic ground squirrel. Of all these animals, despite the opposite temperature intensity of Vulcan’s environment, I’m basing how Vulcans function on the last one, the arctic squirrel.

Which means they can deliberately control their body temperature in accordance to the needs of their survival. I imagine, just as arctic ground squirrels can drop their body below zero as needed (entering what is called a “daily torpor”) Vulcans can do the same. In turn, they could possibly skyrocket their bodies to temperatures that would be a lethal fever for humans. Which makes both McCoy’s “nonexistent Vulcan metabolism” comments in various episodes, as well as describing his blood as “ice water” make sense. As well as Spock being able to handle the heightened body temperature caused by Henoch in “Return to Tomorrow”. It also explains why Spock was in far better shape than Bones in the freezing temperatures of the planet from “All Our Yesterdays”.

However, like arctic squirrel newborns, they start out as ectothermic (cold-blooded) which lends itself to the Vulcan infants needing even more skin to skin to survive than humans theory by @acesexualspock. Being born cold blooded would prevent them from immediately dying the second they were exposed to the dangerous extremes of Vulcan’s heat. I also think they slowly lose the ability to control their metabolic rate as they grow older, slowing down dramatically as they age, which is why Spock gets increasingly colder as he ages rapidly in “The Deadly Years”.

“The brightness of the Vulcan sun has caused the development of an inner eyelid.”

-Spock, Operation: Annihilate

I wanna thank @tribbleland for inspiring this part in particular.

I want to offer a special congratulations to furries people who let their love for anthro-cats bleed into their love for Vulcans, turns out Vulcans are very catlike! Like our feline Terran friends, Vulcans have what is called a Nicitating Membrane. It’s functions that would serve Vulcans well in their desert home include spreading moisture across the eye, protect the eye from small water and small debris (like sand for example), as well as protecting the eye from ultraviolet radiation, which is more or less what Spock said in that episode. Other animals that have Nicitating Membranes aside from felines is actually the majority of the animal kingdom, and primates (like us) are the exception and not the rule. I also subscribe to the idea that Vulcans have other desert dweller features like thick hair and eyelashes, sealable nostrils, big feet, a crepuscular sleep cycle (avoiding extreme midnight and midday temperatures), and a tough as nails digestive system!

As an added bonus fact since this section is pretty short: It makes purrfect sense for Vulcans to purr! In cats purring is an emotional regulator when they are angry or scared (Vulcans are ALL about regulating their emotions) as well as purring when they are happy. It is also a mechanism for healing themselves, their kittens, and their owners, the frequency at which cats purr (25-140 Hz) cover the same frequencies that are therapeutic for bone growth and fracture healing, pain relief, swelling reduction, wound healing, muscle growth and repair, tendon repair, and mobility of joints. I’m over here getting emotional about the mental image of like, Spock or Tuvok or smth sitting next to a wounded crewmember and just like, purring with a completely straight face and that is soft and just a little funny and I am emotionally compromised.

“And are it’s natives predatory?” “Not generally, but there have been exceptions.”

-Spock to Trelaine, The Squire of Gothos

Surprise! This isn’t just going to be about Vulcan dietary needs, it’s gonna be about animal behaviors and self-domestication as well! I was trying to think of herbivores that are capable of eating meat, and then this idea hit me like a bomb going of in my head-

Vulcans are like Hippos!

I don’t mean I think they used to be hippo-like (visually anyway) somewhere along the evolutionary line. I mean that they were probably big, extremely aggressive, pack roaming herbivores that are able to eat carrion when food is scarce. Have you ever seen a video of a group of Hippos smashing an alligator to smithereens? They kill more humans than any solitary predator on the African continent! What about a murder of crows killing a cat that injured one of them, or a group of bison saving a calf from a lion?! Herbivores can be insanely aggressive while still being social, plant-eating animals.

With that in mind, let’s talk about self-domestication! This is something that we humans (and to an extent, cats too) did way back in our biology according to some studies, we bred out aggression and bred in cooperativeness and curiosity. Cats, while partially domesticated by us, started looking for mates that were more sociable so that their offspring could exist closer to humans (and their food) as well as to tolerate other cats. While I do think Vulcans self-domesticated to a degree, I do not think they were able to do so nearly to the same extent as humans or our deliberately domesticated companions. Vulcan is a harsh, violent, and unforgiving planet, even more so than Earth, if Vulcans were naturally as friendly and curious as we Humans are now, they would not have survived as a species.

I believe this is why their emotions are so primal and strong, and things like Pon Farr and their unusually high wariness of the new and unexpected still exist so strongly. How do they live together in such high numbers and develop a functional society? They developed other means of coping as a work-around the impracticality of decreasing aggression!

“Call it a deep understanding of the way things happen to Vulcans.”

-Spock, The Immunity Syndrome

So, how do you have a species as aggressive, unforgiving, and frighteningly strong as Vulcans keep from completely destroying itself (aside from Surak’s teachings)? You take the empathy that humans already have, turn it up to 11, and tack on every evolutionary possibility to increase it. We already know how the Earth comparisons for Vulcan empathy: the extreme vitality of touch for the survival and emotional stability, cats purring to heal each other and themselves (and regulate emotions), nonverbal communication, the ancestral instincts of an infant animal being able to walk days after its born. What if we had all of these traits in remarkable spades, Vulcans certainly seem to! (Be prepared, the science starts getting a little squidgy because there are no real world comparisons and neurology research is very jargon heavy)

Electricity is a fundamental part of the biology of nearly all living things, it allows synapses to fire, regulates our internal organs, and gives us our senses of touch and movement. Skin to skin is so incredibly vital to the survival of infants, and the emotional stability for adults, that needing any more touch could be impractical and counterintuitive. So what if we got more from less? What if our sense of touch, and the acuteness of being able to read the emotions of others from body language and touch manifested as a form of what looks like from an outsider’s perspective, telepathy!

Now what if the radius of the sensation of touch could be extended much farther, say being able to sense someone to the same intensity I described in the last paragraph, like, through a wall or from across a room? What if you could connect to other lifeforms with the same ability like a chain circuit that could connect a whole species together in one giant circuitboard? I just described what Vulcans call the kwar’ma’khon, the telepathic energy that connects all Vulcans to each other!

Imagine having this same intense telepathic connection to someone for an extended period of time, like a t’hy’la or Bond Mate. What if you had a relatively easy to master non-lethal attack against other members of your species, that comes to you easily due to your intrinsic understanding of nerves and touch, like the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. In turn, what if, through the intensity of this connection you could transfer everything you knew and saw and felt to another person in the event of your death. That way, if you survived the harshness of your world without dying violently or unexpectedly, you could deliberately pass on that knowledge and those instincts to your next of kin, like the Katra. (thanks @distractedducky @spacedancer1701 & @find-me-in-outer-space)

Now, that’s A LOT of empathy on top of A LOT of aggression, if you don’t have a work around for any of these, as a species you’d be rendered a complete emotional wreck pretty much 24/7 (or whatever the time cycles for Vulcan are). Which is where @ineffablebuddies theory that Vulcans can control, or at least mitigate their incredibly strong emotional reactions the same way they control their nervous system and metabolic rate. Which is how they are able to be touch telepathic, able to enter a torpor at will, and be heterothermic in the first place. The only reason Vulcans come off as unemotional to us is because we simply do not see and feel the way that they can. Unlike us, because of their ability to control their own internal chemistry, if they follow Surak’s teachings and/or Syrranite ideology, they can take that emotional regulation to the extreme.

(BIG EXHALE) Congratulations on getting through this insanely long post! I hope you enjoyed it, if you want sources on any of my non-tumblr post research just let me know in the notes. LLAP! 💚🖖🏻💚

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natiebugs · 3 days ago

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OH WOOOOW!!! ✨️✨️✨️

I love your version of my oc ❤️

Thank youuuuuu!!!! (^♡^)

Here's a gift for you, I hope you like my friends now...

Here's her curiosity

Gift to: Curiosity for: @natiebugs

#trivia murder party #gifts #tmp #Trivia murder party 2 #Trivia murder party 3 #tmp oc #trivia murder party oc #oc #curiosity #Trivia murder party curiosity #Curiosity trivia murder party #tmp2 #tmp3

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stonedtrek · 5 years ago

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I understand that not all of the movies are going to appeal to all fans but I really don’t get it when people trash TMP. TMP looks incredible, it has detailed practical effects and special effects that still stand up pretty well forty years later, and it has an excellent score with a true overture. In my humble TMP stan opinion, it is one of the best pieces of Star Trek because of its meditations on the interpersonal relationships of the crew and it’s core theme of pure exploration and mutual understanding with the complete unknown...the crew’s interactions with V’ger are mostly based on discovery, not hostility, (with the exception of Decker, who ends up fully embracing V’ger anyways). also, the grand reveal that the Scary Alien actually been ourselves the whole time?? that human curiosity is both infinitely prolific and potentially extremely dangerous????? Star Trek at its finest.

#yeah i know the pacing is fucked up but its no worse than Dune #star trek #tmp #its 3:05am and i have some fucking THOUGHTS

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parchmentedscrolls · 5 years ago

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For My Sake, Not Yours

My piece for the Shuake Big Bang 2020!

Fandom: Persona 5 Characters: Goro Akechi, Akira Kurusu, Sae Niijima Pairings: Goro Akechi/Akira Kurusu Words: 7,512

Read on AO3

!! Please check the tags for potential triggers!

Check out Aleks’s superb art for it here!

Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp.

Goro’s footsteps are too loud in his ears.

Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp.

His shoes clack too hard on the floor.

Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp.

His heels slam too forcefully into the ground.

Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp.

The balls of his feet press too deep into his shoes.

Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp.

His hands are too tired from practicing the motions of the gun.

Tmp, tmp, tmp, tmp.

Too much, all at once.

Tmp, tmp, tmp . . .

Everything fades away.

He doesn’t notice Sae until she’s right in front of him. “Akechi-kun?” she asks, startling him into consciousness.

Of course, he doesn’t let his composure fade. He can’t afford to, not with what he’s meant to do.

Momentarily, he’s grateful for his gloves—if it weren’t for the stiff leather, his trigger finger would have twitched.

His jaw is too tight as he forces a smile, hands automatically moving to adjust his tie. “Why do you seem so surprised?”

Sae shakes her head, clearly stunned. “I needed my director to step in to get access, and I was directly responsible for this case. How did you get approval?”

Goro’s movements are jaunty and stiff, but his voice remains calm and even. “For the same reason you did. I am heading up the investigation team, after all.” He quirks an eyebrow, but keeps his head lowered in feigned thought. “It’s only natural that I’d get the right to interrogate our culprit as well, don’t you think?”

“They assigned you command?” Her sheer, unfiltered shock was almost comical, right down to the break in her voice—if it hadn’t been for the situation at hand, maybe he would have laughed.

Then again, Sae Niijima is one of the few people who still has his respect, despite everything. He can’t bring it upon himself to be too cruel to her. “That was a joke, of course,” he replies with forced lightness, finally looking her in the eyes. “I’m merely here to assist with the public security interrogation.” He almost tilts his head to glance around, but he can’t risk allowing his body to shake—not if he’s meant to follow through with complete ease.

He has to do this.

Instead, he continues without faltering: “I am surprised it’s this far underground, though . . .” Careful, probing. “There aren’t any others incarcerated here, yes?” No one will be able to hear what happens at all? Nobody will ever know if things got a little violent . . .

He realizes a moment too late that he said the last sentence aloud. His throat tightens. Hopefully, hopefully, Sae won’t pay too much attention to it. One more slip up and I may well end up getting caught before I can—

“If I remember correctly,” Sae says, thankfully ignoring his (frankly, quite concerning) statement, “didn’t you say there was another culprit besides the Phantom Thieves?”

Goro dusts the front of his jacket. “That was but a lie I spread to set them up,” he says, praying she’ll miss the slight crack in his voice—that, or that she’d attribute it to him still being in his teens.

He needs to get a hold of himself.

Or preferably, distance himself altogether.

He recalls Sae’s Shadow, twisted with envy; how willing she was to put people’s lives on the line for the sake of being able to prosecute someone for the Phantom Thieves’ case, just for the sake of a promotion.

It works—he no longer feels as guilty about his lie. He laughs lightly into his fists. “Oh, I’m sorry! I forgot that I had deceived you too, Sae-san.” He can’t shake the venom from his voice.

Goro decides he doesn’t care. “After all, if you wish to trick your enemies, you must first trick your allies.”

Sae frowns, almost disappointed. “So it was you,” she says quietly.

What . . . ? Goro feels his expression harden, but he doesn’t respond.

“You’re the one who sold out the Phantom Thieves.”

Just how much did Kurusu tell her? Goro was under the impression that he would be the last person to reveal the identities of anyone he’d worked with. He was too loyal, he cared too much about his friends to sell them out.

More importantly, why does Sae sound hurt?

His voice comes out like steel: “Is there a problem?”

She reaches into her pocket, pulling out a familiar phone. That’s Kurusu’s. “Akechi-kun,” she says, voice even as she meets his eyes, “does this phone look familiar to you?”

Of course it does. But why are you showing it to me? “Hm? Excuse me?”

The next moment, he feels a sharp pain run through his head, like he’s been shoved underwater for a fraction of a second. Like . . . a distortion, of sorts.

Robin and Loki stir in his mind.

Nice try, Kurusu.

But you can’t fool me that easily. He tilts his head and looks at Sae, all innocent curiosity. “What is this phone?” The Nav app . . . so they knew?

“It belonged to the leader of the Phantom Thieves. I believe you’ll need it for your investigation.”

He shakes his head and forces a smile. He doesn’t like it. He wants to get out of his head again. He’s feeling too many things again. He doesn’t want to touch Kurusu’s phone.

And besides, the logician in him (the only part of his heart that’s truly awake right now, perhaps) murmurs, there’s a chance Futaba Isshiki can have Kurusu’s phone tapped.

“Not personally,” he feels himself saying from far away. “I was acting alongside the Phantom Thieves myself, remember?” It’s echoing in his head and he really needs Sae to be gone and he needs to be gone and if she just leaves he can finally finally finally get back out of his head again—

If he’s shaking, his body tilting forward and back ever so slightly, he doesn’t know, and Sae doesn’t tell him.

“True. This is undoubtedly a great accomplishment,” she says, voice flat. “Good luck in there.” And finally, finally, she leaves, and the second she’s gone, Goro can feel his mind relax, slipping into the comfortable nothingness that accompanies most of the jobs that he orders.

A cursory glance confirms to Goro that he is indeed in a cognitive world; the panels on the wall and the tiles on the floor are more muted, the numbers on the keypads around the doors ever so slightly blurred; the flooring under his feet like air when he steps down on it, like there’s no gravity pulling him down.

The numbness in his fingertips is already spreading across his arms by the time he reaches the door. The guard posted outside it is standing there, almost unmoving. He knows it’s one of Shido’s men.

“May I ask that you accompany me? Going in unarmed to interrogate a murderer makes me uncomfortable . . .” he trails off, every syllable rehearsed to sound innocent and concerned.

The guard just nods as he opens the door and steps inside, and in a practised motion, Goro reaches forward, pulls his gun from his holster, and shoots the guard with it, watching as he collapses beside the table that Kurusu is slumped over, covered in bruises and blood and scratches.

Something inside him pounds at the stone wall Goro’s built around his heart, shaking the all-encompassing numbness he’s been feeling since Sae’s Shadow fell.

You knew they would do this.

Not to this extent.

Liar. You know what the police are like.

And even though Goro knows it’s only a cognitive being, with no autonomous thoughts and superimposed emotions, a sharp pain cuts through the numbness where he bites his lip. You planned this, stop being ridiculous.

Shido planned this.

You are Shido’s lackey, you are his henchman, you are his gun, you are his knife, his armour, his son. You are him.

Do I have to be?

A searing pain manages to break through the wall, and it finally crumbles. Goro’s carefully mimicked smile of confidence drops to reveal a bitter, mournful scowl.

He’ll know if you don’t kill him. He’ll be able to tell.

Goro doesn’t know if it’s truth or paranoia, but he grits his teeth, raises the gun once more, and shoots the false Kurusu in the head. Blood seeps down slowly, trickling between his eyes over the left side of his face.

It’s only when Goro tastes copper in his mouth that he realises that he’s biting his lip.

Can’t say I didn’t kill him now.

He exhales shakily, stuffing the gun into the cold, stiff hand of Sae’s cognition of Kurusu, even as he dematerialises in his hands. Goro can’t help but feel that something about watching Kurusu’s helpless form disintegrate at his touch is sickeningly symbolic.

You’re doing it for Shido?

What choice do I have?

More than you might think.

Goro stops. If Kurusu did have a plan to get out of here alive, and it involved Goro killing a cognitive copy of him, there has to be some way that he planned on escaping.

And, from what Sae’s just told him, it involves convincing her.

Which means he won’t need to kill Kurusu after all.

You don’t have to do everything Shido says. When you tell him the deed is done, just recall how easy it was to down the cognitive copy—

I don’t have to do everything for him.

I’m tired of being a puppet.

He makes up his mind, his heart set with new resolve, and takes out his phone, finding the Nav app on and activated. If I had taken my phone out, for any reason whatsoever, their entire plan would’ve failed. Besides, did they really think I wouldn’t notice that I was stepping into the Metaverse? Are the Phantom Thieves that stupid, or just that willing to put their leader’s life in danger?

He casts one more glance at the empty interrogation room, and deactivates the MetaNav, watching as Sae’s mild cognitive distortion falls away to show the actual Kurusu, sitting at the interrogation room table, smirking as though he doesn’t realise that the reason Goro Akechi is standing right in front of him is to kill him with no remorse.

He’s lucky I won’t.

He’d be dead otherwise.

He may not have the guard’s gun this time, but his own is within the inside of his blazer, next to the silencer, carefully tucked away.

He sneers at Kurusu. “You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

Kurusu, beaten and bloody as he is, manages to keep the smile up, but his face twitches a little from the pain. “We were hoping.”

His composure irritates Goro more than anything else. “And now that I’ve gotten to the real you, what do you plan on doing?”

Kurusu tilts his head, the insufferable, ever confident leader he is. “Convince you to not shoot me in the head?” he asks, as cocky as ever, lifting his left arm to make a finger gun and point it at Goro. Goro doesn’t miss the exhausted tremble in his arm. “You haven’t gotten to me yet.”

“I could flick you in the forehead and you would be out cold. I could take all the time I like, could enjoy watching your head splatter across the table, and you would be defenseless throughout it.”

“But— you aren’t,” Kurusu chuckles weakly, even though his eyelids are already drooping.

Shido’s face flashes in Goro’s mind, smug and accomplished. “Just consider yourself lucky that I’m not giving him the victory of getting rid of you.” I’m doing this for my sake, not yours.

Kurusu’s expression briefly switches to confusion as Goro takes off his blazer, steps around the table, and places it over Kurusu’s shoulders, his touch deft and gentle enough to ensure he doesn’t agitate any potential places for injury.

“Akechi—”

“Quiet.” Goro’s voice is cold and flat, leaving no room for argument as he hoists Kurusu up onto his shoulders, looping one of his arms around him, while Kurusu’s other hand grips at the edges of Akechi’s blazer, holding it tightly shut in front of his chest.

“I’m assuming any cameras here have been disabled if you were planning to get out. That, or Oracle has their feeds hacked.”

Kurusu nods weakly, not specifying which one was correct. Instead, he just drops his head against Goro, his face pressing into Goro’s neck.

Under any other circumstances, Goro might have appreciated the display of vulnerability and the subconscious trust.

He has half a mind to tell Kurusu to play dead—with his hands occupied supporting him, he won’t be able to get them out of the room and provide a suitable explanation as to why he’s taking him outside alive.

“How did you plan on getting out of here?” he asks Kurusu, not wanting to waste time speculating while the other boy looks like he’s halfway off to a drugged dreamland.

“Sae . . . gonna come back. ’Taba’s . . . tellin’ her evrrthinn . . .”

“Right,” Goro says, shifting his position so Kurusu can lean on him without straining his already injured neck further. Instead, Kurusu just buries his face deeper into Goro’s neck, hiding under a curtain of his hair.

Briefly relieved that he isn’t ticklish, Goro shifts a little, giving him some leeway to open the door. He figures he can, of course, shoot the guard like he had done with the cognitive one, but it’ll likely be too much of a mess to deal with, especially if Sae is to come back here like Kurusu says she is.

And if he wants to make things work; wants to get through this with minimal impediments, the only reasonable course of action is to make it seem as though he had no real intention of killing Kurusu all along, that it was all a ruse to fool Shido while conveniently taking a small inconvenience out of commission.

“Kurusu,” he says, “my phone is in the left pocket. Take it out and activate the Nav, to Sae-san’s Palace.”

Kurusu nods, shakily pulls it out—it isn’t locked, much to the Goro’s relief—and opens the MetaNav, mumbling the keywords to Sae’s Palace in it.

The same sharp flash and following numbness ripple once again, and the interrogation room warps briefly before settling. The cognitive guard and Kurusu had both already dematerialised.

Goro wonders, briefly, why the cognitive Kurusu had bled. In every Palace he’d been to, cognitives dematerialised the moment they were ‘killed’. Perhaps Sae-san’s cognition is a touch more realistic than most of the other people whose hearts he’s been into?

All aside, it’s for the best that both cognitives are gone now. Kurusu’s state right now is fragile enough as it is.

Goro’s pleased to note that the door to the interrogation room itself is still wide open. “Come on, Kurusu. One step at a time.” He notes with acute awareness that while he’s no longer softening his tone, it isn’t devoid of concern.

Eventually, the two manage to make their way to the elevator. Sae-san will probably intercept us before we leave the station . . . then getting Kurusu back to Leblanc is in her hands, he thinks, watching Kurusu slowly disentangle himself and prop himself up against a wall. In the meantime . . .

He pulls out his phone, dialing a number he knew like the back of his hand. “Shido-san,” he says, looking Kurusu directly in the eyes, “my job is complete.”

Kurusu’s eyes widen, and Goro can see him trying to figure out exactly what’s going on, noting the name of the aggravator. Goro puts the phone on speakerphone, unable to fight the smug grin that forms as he thinks of just how weak Masayoshi Shido really is. It’s so easy to put him on speaker in front of the Phantom Thieves’ leader that it’s comical.

And besides, there’s one more thing he needs to confirm.

“I’ve told you not to call me by name,” Shido hisses, but Goro isn’t paying attention.

Instead, he’s looking at Kurusu, whose body has gone completely stiff. Any sense of exhaustion is gone, and Kurusu appears to be completely alert. I was right. Kurusu definitely recognises Shido. His voice, at the very least.

“Regardless,” Shido says, regaining his composure, “all that’s left is to deal with the remnants.”

Kurusu frowns, clearly suspicious, but from the look in his eyes, Goro can tell that his head is clouding again.

Goro sighs. “The continued deaths of these teenagers would be a bit much, don’t you think?” And would be highly suspicious as well. His paranoia may have been what’s kept him in high regard until now, but it’s astounding that it hasn’t bitten him back yet.

Still, though, pandering to him is necessary for now . . . “I considered making it appear they had a falling out . . . but that would only amplify public frenzy.” A pause. “They’re still mere teenagers. They’ll barely even be noticed by the public, Phantom Thieves or not.”

“Is there any possibility they’ll want to avenge their leader?”

“No chance,” Goro says airily. “They’re nothing but cattle anyway; they have no backbone without his guidance.”

Shido asks him a few more questions, all of which receive glib and pointed responses. At one point, Shido insists that Goro should take care of Morgana as well, to which Goro explains that killing a cat of all things would be ridiculous, as though he’s talking to a petulant child.

He feels so powerful, so in control of Shido that it’s positively exhilarating. That it’s so easy to expose such a powerful and atrocious man to Kurusu, who, despite everything, is staring at Goro with a ghost of a smile.

An excuse or two later, followed by a short update on the SIU director’s inevitable fate, Goro ends the call. The moment the rush of power fades, he’s filled with the familiar disgust and nausea he always feels whenever he talks to Shido.

“What was that?” Kurusu asks, clearly bewildered, but before Goro can even open his mouth to respond, the elevator doors open.

Kurusu doesn’t press for an answer. Instead, he tries to stand up on his own, and stumbles into the elevator.

“Kurusu, you’ll injure yourself further.” Goro’s voice is firm as he shuffles closer to Kurusu, offering his shoulder and back as a means for him to rest.

Kurusu��s mind is addled enough that he doesn’t hesitate, wobbling slightly as he steps toward Goro and almost collapses into him. “Mmm.”

A small moment of repositioning later, Kurusu is completely leaning on Goro, his head is once again buried in the crook of Goro’s neck—something that would have earned him a light smack upside the head if it weren’t for the situation. Instead, Goro’s gloved hand finds its way to cup the nape of his neck, before his fingers thread gently through Kurusu’s hair.

The tenderness of the skin beneath his glove, coupled with the way Kurusu flinches into Goro’s neck is enough to determine that there must have been plenty of head trauma involved with the officers. Disgusting scum. Goro makes a brief note to find out the names of the officers.

It’s not like he doesn’t know how to change hearts now.

It’s at this moment that the elevator doors open, revealing Sae Niijima standing impatiently outside it.

Goro finds her gape and sheer disbelief almost worth it—he’s sure it’s a sight as it is: the half-broken, barely conscious leader of the Phantom Thieves clutching the Detective Prince’s blazer around him as he nuzzles into his neck and hair.

It must be all the more of a shock to Sae herself, who’s come back in this direction with the expectation that Goro’s there to kill Kurusu, only to find their arms latched around each other.

“Huh—but—Alibaba said—” She shakes her head, and Goro files away that name for later use. Alibaba is Futaba-chan, huh? “What on Earth are you doing, Akechi-kun?” she asks, eyes narrowed.

Goro doesn’t bother trying to put on the usual act. “Frankly, I'm rather disappointed that you would have such little faith in me, Sae-san.” His eyes harden. “However, the longer we wait here, the less chance Kurusu has of leaving alive.”

Sae, to her credit, seems wary of Goro’s sudden change in both attitude and tone, but she nods. “Alright,” she says, and gently lays a hand on Kurusu’s shoulder.

He shudders at the touch, gripping Goro’s shoulder tighter and hiding his face completely in Goro’s hair. “Kurusu,” Goro says softly, threading his fingers lightly across the younger boy’s scalp, “Sae-san’s here to help.”

Goro feels Kurusu’s eyelashes flutter briefly against his throat before he relents, shifting his weight so that Sae can support his other arm. Before Goro knows it, the three of them are outside, Sae helping Kurusu into the backseat of a car.

Feeling more self conscious now that the imminent danger is gone, Goro hesitated, using his ‘nice voice’ again. “I’ll . . . be taking my leave now.”

“Oh no you won’t,” Sae says, a firm hand falling on his shoulder, steering him into the car beside Kurusu. “You, Akechi-kun, owe me a complete explanation.”

He can feel himself deflate. “Just as I expected of you, Sae-san.”

Sae doesn’t smile. Goro doesn’t blame her, either.

Looking at Kurusu, Goro’s sure he’s on the verge of falling asleep, and when his head tilts to fall onto Goro’s shoulder, he doesn’t object.

He directs his attention to Sae instead, who’s seated herself in the driver’s seat. “Will the Phantom Thieves of Hearts be there when we arrive?” He fidgets with his gloves for a moment, then decides to take them off altogether.

“I’m not sure,” Sae just says, eyes on the road. “But you owe all of those kids an explanation as well.”

“So I take it you’re aware of their identities?”

“I have my suspicions, but Kurusu-kun neither confirmed nor denied them.”

“Is that so?”

Goro sees Sae’s lips purse in the mirror. “From what I’ve gathered, Akechi-kun,” she says, taking a sharp left, “you’re the one perpetrating the psychotic breakdown incidents, and possibly even the mental shutdown ones, too.”

For once, Goro doesn’t know how to respond.

“So it’s true . . .” she sighs, then meets his eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Knowing you, though, there’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” Goro doesn’t elaborate.

Kurusu turns a little, angling his head on Goro’s shoulder so he can look him in the eye. “You said . . . sum’n called . . . Shido?”

Sae is alert immediately. “Shido as in . . . ?”

Goro sighs. “Yes, Masayoshi Shido, the current minister of financial affairs and founder of the United Future Party, and a candidate for Japan’s next prime minister.”

A pause, before he continues: “Also, the one who orchestrates and takes requests for the psychotic breakdown incidents, in exchange for political and financial support, using the Metaverse as per the cognitive psience research he had Wakaba Isshiki undertake several years ago.”

“Those are connected to him as well?”

“He stole the research from a university graduate and had Isshiki work on them herself, and was even able to supply to her the finances and privacy she needed to conduct her experiments. He was even able to silence any concerns regarding the ethical aspects.”

“Ethical aspects . . . ?” Sae echoes, clearly confused.

“But . . .” Kurusu coughs. “But the psychotic breakdowns . . . how did you . . . ? None’v us can . . .”

“Of course you couldn’t figure it out,” Goro says, taking care to lower Kurusu’s head back onto his shoulder. “That’s an ability unique to my Persona.”

“But . . . Rob’n Hood . . .”

“I’ll explain it later. You’re in no state to retain any information like this.”

Kurusu nods, and falls asleep on Goro’s shoulder almost immediately.

“It’s impressive that he’s comfortable enough to sleep . . .” Sae murmurs, the rest of her sentence going unspoken: Considering he believed you were going to kill him for almost a month.

“For what it’s worth, Sae-san,” Goro says, steeling himself so the lie slips from his mouth like smooth honey, “I never intended on actually killing Kurusu. The Phantom Thieves seem to make a habit of acting without having all the information they need.”

He pauses, before continuing, “Well, then again, there would have been no way for them to know my true intentions, but it’s rather irritating to be judged for your actions by someone unaware of what’s going on.”

Sae, at the very least, seems to believe him. “The fact that he’s here in the car is enough for me to believe that there’s some truth to what you’re saying, I suppose,” she says carefully, “if you were lying, he wouldn’t be alive now. But that doesn’t explain what’s been going on with you, Akechi-kun. Were you the one who killed Wakaba Isshiki and Kunikazu Okumura?”

“Yes, I was,” he says plainly. There’s neither any reason nor point to refuting it.

Sae looks disappointed. “I see.”

“Now that you know this, what are you going to do about it?” Goro asks curtly, not bothering to waste time building up to the question. It’s something of a relief to be able to finally drop the pretenses in front of Sae.

“Nothing as of yet. I presume that the Phantom Thieves will be more adept with the questions they’d like to ask you. And if Shido is behind this as you say he is, your testimony will be vital in having him behind bars.”

Goro blinks a few times. “You’re— you’re not going to arrest me?”

A shadow of a smile crosses Sae’s face for the first time. “Not until you and I have a long talk about what exactly compelled you to get involved with this in the first place.”

“Al . . . alright,” Goro says, not having expected her to take it so well. After a moment’s pause, he bites his lip, then asks, “Sae-san?”

“Yes?”

“Could we stop by my apartment on the way? There are a few things there that could prove vital to yours and the Thieves’ investigations.”

After a moment of debating it with herself, Sae agrees, on the condition that he stays within her sight at all times. Unnecessary given the circumstances, but she does have good reason to be suspicious. He can’t really blame her.

When the car stops outside an apartment complex in Kichijoji, Kurusu finally stirs, blinking slowly. “’Course you live in Kichijoji,” he says, seemingly able to string words together properly, at least.

“Go back to sleep, Joker,” Goro just says. “Sae-san and I just need to pick up a few documents.”

Something shifts within Kurusu’s eyes. “Wanna come too.”

“Kurusu, you’re injured and exhausted. You really should wait in the car until—”

“Come on, Goro,” he mumbles, clutching onto Goro’s arm. “Let me see your house.” Kurusu looks like he’s attempting to bat his eyelashes flirtatiously, but scrunches his eyes too hard for it to work.

Goro raises an eyebrow at him, and Kurusu’s head falls. “Don’t wanna be alone yet,” he admits quietly, and something—guilt, perhaps?—bubbles in Goro’s gut, popping with an ugly heaviness.

Which is ridiculous, because he shouldn’t be feeling guilty at all. Kurusu is alive, Shido is none the wiser, and Sae isn’t completely shunning him.

His fingers trace the lines of Kurusu’s face gently, thumbing a bruise over his cheekbone. Kurusu shudders, but leans into Goro’s touch, trapping his hand between his face and neck. “Please,” Kurusu whispers, and shifts Goro’s hand slightly, and—

Oh.

With the lightness of a feather, Kurusu’s lips place a small kiss on the heel of Goro’s palm.

And somewhere, in a part of his heart he thought he’d buried under layers and layers of time and determination and numbness—

He inhales sharply.

—stars explode.

For a few moments, it feels almost like time stops, with Goro’s hand clasped tightly in Kurusu’s, his fingers pressed in the crook of Kurusu’s neck and his palm warmed by the soft heat of Kurusu’s lips.

“Please?” Kurusu finally angles his gaze up to meet Goro’s, and his resolve crumbles.

“Not to interrupt the two of you, but we’re running low on time and Kurusu-kun will need to rest as soon as possible,” Sae cuts in, already waiting outside the apartment complex.

“Fine,” Goro grits out, lifting Kurusu into a bridal carry, solely for the sake of convenience, because if he knows one thing about Akira Kurusu, it’s that he’s just too damn stubborn to back down. At the very least, like this, he can keep Kurusu from doing anything too stupid.

He tries to ignore the heat that flares in his face when Kurusu’s eyes light up and he wraps his arms around Goro. Aren’t you being too careless? You should know that I had every intention of killing you up until less than an hour ago, so why are you so . . . so trusting?

Then again, it’s not like Goro can exactly get away with it in broad daylight, right in front of Sae.

As though he’s read Goro’s mind through his expression alone, Kurusu mumbles, “F’you were gonna kill me, you’d have done it earlier,” and promptly falls asleep with his head resting on Goro’s chest.

Goro hates him so much. He hates how easily Kurusu can read him, he hates how well Kurusu can handle every little change, and he absolutely despises how tightly Kurusu has him wrapped around his little finger.

But most of all, he hates that he can never bring himself to really hate Kurusu, because everything would be so, so, so much easier if he did.

Sae clears her throat, prompting Goro to collect himself. He very carefully ignores her pointed glance and raised eyebrows as he leads her to the elevator. Luckily, Sae doesn’t press him.

Unluckily, his landlady does. “Ah— Ake-chan!”

He barely withholds a grimace. “Mikoshiba-san.”

Her eyes brighten. “Why, and I see you’ve brought your . . . boyfriend? Not to worry, child, I won’t tell anyone. And who might you be?” she asks, turning her attention to Sae.

“Mikoshiba-san, I think there’s a misunderstanding here. My friend here is injured, so my coworker and I wanted to bring him here to be safe.”

Kurusu picks exactly this moment to nuzzle closer to Goro in his sleep.

Goro briefly imagines dropping Kurusu’s overly affectionate self to the ground as unceremoniously as possible.

Mikoshiba tries to pat his head, which he manages to swiftly dodge. “It’s alright, dearie, I’m not judging you. My son also . . . ah.” She seems to reroute her thoughts as she realises that perhaps outing her son to the celebrity that lives in the building may not, in fact, be the best idea.

Goro is going to need a long break after this.

Thankfully, Sae manages to occupy Mikoshiba with a completely different conversation as she follows them into the elevator, and up to the twelfth floor. Mikoshiba, thankfully, takes that moment to help unlock the door, and Goro immediately makes for his room so that he can finally put Kurusu down on his bed.

Kurusu snuggles into the sheets (which, Goro realises belatedly, he’s meant to wash tomorrow, but whatever) the moment his head hits the mattress. “Goroooooo,” he mumbles sleepily, clutching the pillow, “conmfy . . .”

Goro promptly decides to ignore him. Instead, he turns to his cupboard, opens his socks drawer, and removes the false bottom from it.

This, at least, draws Sae out of her conversation with the landlady about Goro’s abysmal sleeping habits.

“A false bottom?” she asks, having walked over.

“An obviously placed one, too,” Mikoshiba comments from the doorway. “Isn’t a socks drawer always where the false bottom is in mystery novels?”

“That’s because socks can take up an amount of space that can disguise the actual depth of the drawer,” Goro says, glossing over it. “But the whole point for this is that it’s meant to be obvious.” Not bothering to go too deep into his explanation, he glances over his shoulder. “Mikoshiba-san, with all due respect and my sincerest apologies, we must ask you to leave. This does contain confidential police information.”

“Of course, dearie,” she says, turning around immediately. “I saw nothing at all, no matter who asks.”

“Thank you,” Goro just says, waiting until he hears the sound of the door closing.

“What do you plan on doing if she does tell someone?” Sae asks, her tone somewhere between patronising and wary.

“I wouldn’t need to. By then, this”—he pulls out the drawer completely, placing it on the side table—“will already be gone.”

Sae reaches into the drawer, pulling out a single notebook; one that could be bought at any convenience store. “This?”

Goro doesn’t look at it, instead focusing his attention to the thick slab of wood he’d just removed from the base of the drawer. “You can go through that if you want, Sae-san, but it’s only a dummy.”

Nonetheless, Sae shifts through the pages, frown increasing. She’s about halfway through the book when she closes it. “Why would you even keep this, Akechi-kun? And what do you mean, ‘it’s a dummy’?”

“That’s supposed to be an easy find for if Shido ever has his lackeys ransack my house.” He reserved one page for each of the targets Shido’s ever assigned to him, containing their name, who ordered the hit, what happened to their Shadow, how they were affected in reality, and the consequences they faced. “Aside from what happens in the Metaverse, it only contains things he knows.”

“I see,” Sae says primly. “So then, what is it you really wanted to bring?”

Goro lifts up the wooden slab, places it onto his lap vertically, and tugs at the top edge, which slides off with a click.

“A box?”

Goro doesn’t respond. Instead, he carefully pulls out a string tie folder from it, along with a clear file and another sheet of paper.

Sae picks up the clear file first, and Goro’s breath involuntarily hitches. He doesn’t look at her, instead wandering back to his bed where Kurusu is fast asleep, buried deep within the covers.

He remembers how he’d been asleep for two days straight the first time he’d slept on that bed. After a lifetime of sleeping on floors or thin futons or blankets, sleeping on a proper bed had felt like heaven. For Kurusu, who’s spent the entirety of his probation in Tokyo sleeping on a mattress over fruit crates, it must be a small paradise, being able to sleep on a proper bed.

After a moment’s hesitation, he sits down next to Kurusu on the bed, and slowly reaches for Kurusu’s free hand.

“Mmm,” is all the response he gets as Kurusu’s grip on Goro’s hand tightens, but Kurusu’s eyes slowly open, bleary and tired.

Akira Kurusu smiles at Goro, and as the final nail in the coffin, tugs him closer with all the forcefulness of a spring breeze.

Something inside his chest—your heart, you fool—shudders.

For the smallest of moments, Goro considers lying down next to Kurusu, letting himself take advantage of the open trust and comfort; considers curling up next to him and letting himself fall asleep; considers opening his heart to Kurusu and being as vulnerable to him as Kurusu is to Goro right now.

Using his last name feels like an uncomfortable insult to Ku—to Akira’s trust.

Quietly, in full seriousness, Akira asks, “Can I call you Goro?”

“You’ve already been doing that,” Goro just says.

“I mean, normally.”

When was the last time he was called Goro willingly by someone he knew? He can’t even remember if he’s been referred to by his given name since his mother died.

Against his better judgment—or perhaps, because of his better judgment?—he says, “. . . Alright.”

He doesn’t miss the way Akira’s entire body relaxes further, and Goro feels the inexplicable urge to twine his hand in Akira’s, to let their fingers lace together—

“He’s your father?” Sae’s quiet, horrified whisper ends the moment, drawing both boys back to reality.

“Who’s whose father?” Akira asks, completely lost.

Goro can feel goosebumps forming across his skin. “Did you read everything?”

“I haven’t gone through the finer details, but I have the gist of it. Do you know if he still has Isshiki’s research?” Sae asks, brows furrowed.

“What’s going on?” Akira demands.

Goro has half a mind to tell him to go back to sleep, but knowing Akira, it won’t happen now that he’s even slightly rested.

“On the way here, I mentioned Masayoshi Shido, the one who organises, takes the requests for, and orchestrates the psychotic breakdowns and the mental shutdowns that I carry out in the Metaverse.” Goro’s voice is businesslike, detached.

“He’s behind numerous political and corporate scandals, thanks to the aid he’s received both in the Metaverse and out of it. In exchange for both public and financial support, he takes requests for the psychotic breakdowns from his co-conspirators.”

“And you . . .”

“Yes, I’m the one that does it. I don’t want to have to explain this too many times, so if the others are going to want to know exactly how, I’ll explain it then.”

Akira nods. “That’s . . . probably better.”

“In that case, I’ll go into the details about Shido’s actions then as well.”

“So . . . you’re doing this for him because he’s your father?” Sae frowns. “In that case, why do you live alone, Akechi-kun? And why become a detective? How come I’ve never seen him? Why are your surnames—”

“Sae-san.”

Sae falls quiet, but her expression is still troubled.

Quietly, Akira says, “I thought you said your father was out of the picture.” A pause, before he meets Goro’s eyes and rests his hand—covered in purple and red bruises—on Goro’s. “I understand if you don’t want to tell the others, but . . . can you at least tell me who you are, Goro Akechi?”

He tells them about his mother, who’d been courted by Shido, then dropped like a hot brick the moment he found out she was pregnant with Goro. How he’d ruined her life just by existing.

He tells them about the foster homes, the orphanages; about how you needed to fight just to make it through to the next day. About finding the MetaNav and subsequently awakening to Robin Hood, then promptly being found by Wakaba Isshiki, who had a connection to Shido.

About how Isshiki was the one who found out about Goro’s biological connection to Shido, the one who used him as her way of breaking through to the Metaverse, the one who made him awaken to Loki before he was ready, the one who first had him try to use Loki’s special ability, Call of Chaos, to make Shadows go berserk.

Then, about approaching Shido on his own and offering his aid to him, all in the hopes of building him up, and how when he was so sure Shido was at his peak, he’d pull the rug out from under him, make all this information public, and as the cherry on the cake, reveal that Goro Akechi, the son he would never have acknowledged, was the one who did it all, from start to finish.

When he finishes, Akira and Sae both seem to have been left speechless. There’s a distinct look in both of their eyes that Goro has only ever known as—

“I don’t need your pity,” he says, spitting the word out like venom. “I’ve made it this far, and unless you intend on arresting me here and now, I don’t plan on backing out of this.” Goro’s fists are clenched before he’s even realised it.

He hates pity. All it is and has ever been is a method of self-justification for the fortunate, so they can keep themselves content by feeling bad for those worse off, complacent in their sympathy without ever needing to do anything to change it.

“This isn’t pity, Akechi-kun,” Sae says quietly, aligning the contents of the folder before putting them aside and leaning forward.

At the same time, Kurusu shuffles closer, and begins to unclench Goro’s fists, one finger at a time.

“Aki—?”

Akira still doesn’t look up, but when he’s done, he lifts Goro’s hand up slowly, and presses a gentle kiss to his knuckles. “Let’s destroy this rotten system for good,” he says, then looks Goro in the eye. Akira’s eyes aren’t filled with pity or sympathy, but a raging storm of fury and determination. “And we’ll take down Masayoshi Shido with it.”

Something fiery and unwavering rushes through Goro, and his hands grasp tighter on Akira’s. “Do you plan on changing his heart?”

“We were planning on changing the heart of the person we figured you worked under regardless, but after hearing this, he deserves it,” Akira says, entirely serious about it. “And from what I can tell, you want him to suffer the consequences of his actions just as much.”

He does want Shido to suffer. He wants him to suffer for the woman whom he’d abandoned, for the innocents whose lives he’s treated as stepping stones to his success.

“Of course.”

There’s a few beats of silence, after which Sae speaks up. “Akechi-kun,” she says quietly.

The dam bursts.

Goro looks up at her, to see her hand descending onto his head. Sae smiles with all the warmth of a mother as she ruffles his hair lightly. “You’re a strong kid; I’ve known that for a while. It’s probably wrong for me to say this, as a prosecutor, but I’m proud of you. Not of your actions, obviously, but of you.”

Goro can feel his eyes burning. “I . . .”

Proud of him.

“When you make Shido confess his crimes, I’ll be there to finish up with the prosecution and arrest. And if it comes to it, Akechi-kun, I’ll do my best to lighten any sentences that come to you as much as possible.”

Any words Goro had prepared don’t leave his throat. Instead, he shudders a little, and Kurusu comes closer, proceeding to wrap his arms around Goro in an embrace.

“Do you want me to go call Makoto and the others now? I’ll take a while for them to reach, so you’ll have some time for yourselves.” Sae asks. “Or would you rather we go to the cafe?”

“Could we stay here for a bit longer?” Akira asks quietly.

Goro tries to collect himself. “You can call the others here, Sae-san. Akira needs a comfortable place to rest, and that’s not possible at Leblanc. Plus, if he intends to continue faking his death, it would be ideal if he wasn’t going in and out of his living place.”

Sae nods, then pauses. “Why is it not possible for him to rest there?”

“It’s fi—” Akira starts, but Goro cuts him off.

“His bed in Leblanc is a thin mattress over fruit crates. He’s sustained multiple violent injuries from the interrogation, and his attic’s environment is not conducive to his recovery.”

Sae nods again slowly, and leaves the bedroom, already on the line with her sister.

Akira sighs, flopping back onto Goro’s bed. “Shido was the one who had me put on probation,” he says, staring at the ceiling.

Goro turns to look at him again. “Your record is for assault, right?”

Akira nods. “I barely did anything. He was trying to force a woman into his car, and I tried to pull him away. I’m pretty sure he was drunk; he lost his balance and fell onto the pavement and hit his head. I didn’t really do anything, but then the police came, and they obviously believed his word over mine. He got that lady to lie about the situation, too.” A pause. “I wish I’d punched him, looking back.”

Goro thinks back, recalling Shido summoning him in a foul mood, with a large bandage over his forehead near the end of March. He distinctly remembers finding the sight obscenely amusing. “That was you?”

“That shiny bald head could do with another crack in it,” Akira grumbles quietly, and Goro can’t help but laugh. It’s so surreal—the person Shido had intended him to kill was here, lying down next to Goro on his bed, talking about how much of an ass Shido is.

“It could,” he agrees.

Akira looks at Goro again, something playful in his eyes, and he tugs Goro down towards him, leaving Goro lying down beside him. “I’m glad you didn’t kill me,” he says gently.

Goro pauses. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my sake.”

“That makes me even more glad, then. It means you didn’t want to listen to Shido any longer. That you chose to defy him of your own free will.” Akira takes Goro’s hand again, interlacing their fingers together.

“I know that,” Goro just says.

“Good,” Akira mumbles, and before he can say anything else, his eyes close into an easy sleep.

He must’ve spent all his energy staying awake this long, but at the very least, Goro can tell that Akira is miles more comfortable and relaxed than before.

Before he can think twice about it, Goro kisses Akira’s forehead, then allows himself to drift off beside him. I’m doing this for me. I’m choosing this. I have my own freedom. It’s for my sake, not yours.

It feels good to finally have a say in making his own fate.

Hope you enjoyed! You can find my AO3 and Twitter here!

Feel free to join the Discord server as well if you want to see more of my writing (with previews~)!

Again, the absolutely amazing art is Aleks’s, whose Twitter is here!

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xxforsaken-angelxx · 5 years ago

Text

=> A Friendly Secret Visit.

chimericarchitect Howdy! I wanted to ask about the rods and how that was coming along.

xxforsaken-angelxx aww shit yeah i got them i just slipped on messagin you

chimericarchitect Neat! So, let me know whenever it is clear for me to come and get them and I'll do that.

xxforsaken-angelxx gotcha > You'll send her a time for later today, after your shift is over.

chimericarchitect > Presumably he will send updated coordinates since it's a ship in space and you will, at the time allotted, go there to pick up the rods. It'll be great.

xxforsaken-angelxx > He will, and she'll be teleported straight to his block.

> Or at least part of his block. It visibly looks like a study, with floor to ceiling shelves on the two walls without doors that are loaded with jars of herbs, crystals, bones, and basically any other magical trinket that gets used in his kind of trade. That and what's probably a fairly narrow curation of books, most of them looking old or otherwise well loved.

> You're at your desk nestled in there, in front of an oddly old looking computer. You're dressed in full goffik attire, with the boots and the long coat and the whole nine yards.

chimericarchitect > Saness might like what she knows of Grinmaww, she might think he seems a pretty decent troll, but that doesn't change the fact that he is an unknown. She is dressed accordingly, in what she used to consider 'cool adventurer attire,' something good to tussle in or go for an impromptu roam. It consists of a sturdy white vest over long dark sleeves, equally white boots over flexible black pants, an overly vibrant neckerchief, and a wallet chain on her hip that definitely doesn't connect to a wallet. With her sunglasses up in her stark-white dandelion puff of curling hair, useless but available, Saness looks like a starry-eyed kid dressed up as a cosplay biker.

> She arrives in a blossoming yellow-green light, accompanied by the sound of something stretching sharp, the hollow bell-tone echo of a rubber band snapping, an unnaturally compressed static twang. It's only a fall of a few inches to the floor of the ship, boots tmp-ing with the weight of her existence as the glow recedes as rapidly and efficiently as it had appeared. With her face fully exposed, it can be noted on a glance that her hair grows in this shade. That, or she spends way too much time dying her eyebrows and lashes.

> Immediately Saness looks to Grinmaww, the full attention of 5' 10" of dimension-hopping globetrotter drawn right to him by some force unknown. There is a sort of reckless energy to the way she carries herself, careless of her color, focused intently and intensely on the only other troll in the room. It lingers for a heavy second, gears turning behind her eyes, before scattering nearly as immediately under the force of her own curiosity and whimsy, the dopey little 'o' of her mouth and the perplexed pinch of her brow turning to a wowed smile while the slightly flighty hands-out posture of her arms falls to her sides as she straightens. Her eyes gleam when they catch light, a reflective plate of lime snapping here and there over all of the fascinating and colorful doodads filling the walls of this space.

> "My dude, you are absolutely killing this aesthetic."

> She defaults to common Alternian, for all purposes friendly and easygoing in tone, if a little bright with excitement.

xxforsaken-angelxx > That cracks him up immediately, after those few seconds of regarding each other in silence. His face is...oddly stretchy, the skin pulls a little farther than most people when he smiles.

> Which is why he doesn't, when he rises out of his office chair to full 6'5" stature. It's not exactly an Ampora Resting Bitch Face, his eyes stay friendly, but there's all the signs of someone who keeps their expressions trained.

"Well shit, mission fuckin' accomplished then. I'm diggin' your whole look too, though. Y'look cute."

> And how dare she, frankly? Meeting someone from a whole other universe was supposed to be a big deal, both from a mental and security standpoint, but here she was waltzing up with the aura of a box of novelty rubber ducks. It's hard to be all serious at that, bah.

chimericarchitect > Cute, huh? Saness grins a little wider, something easy and lopsided. She's being very loose with her expressions, leaning heavily into what charisma she possesses over her own stranger-danger default; there has not been one single Eridan in the history of fish-or-otherwise bastards that she has ever gotten along with, but in counter she has a great and hopeful fondness for Makaras and clowns in general. All she has to do is be her charming self and *surely* things will work out. Surely. So far so good, right?

"Well shit, mission fuckin' accomplished!" she intones in quick mimicry, momentarily affecting his cant and general tone of bearing. That too falls away, dripping from one instant to the next with the pulse of a rabbit. A flourish places her splayed fingertips over her chest, the goofish mockery of a stuffy tilt to her chin. "Saness Casper Psuede, The Mischief, at your service and pleased to finally meet you, Grinmaww!"

> She is, perhaps, a bit much at full-tilt, hyped to be here and make a solid first impression. Ideally, Grinmaww will like her as much as she hopes to like him. That's the plan. The scheme. The big cannoli. *Maybe* this critically informal introduction will entice him into relaxing as well. A girl can dream.

xxforsaken-angelxx > Hearing his drawl coming out of her makes him laugh again, and he instinctively tries to go for a handshake. Just a casual one. Business casual.

"Man, you're somethin', arentcha? And somethin' that should use Mischief more often, that's a good one."

> Truth be told, he was already fond of her. Being in the position he was, he tended to like people who had a different view of the world, and Saness kept fitting that to a T. Even discounting her inherent otherworldly-ness, she was people smart in a way he couldn't manage, and just...had a certain way of things. Maybe a way that clashed with his way sometimes. But it was an interesting way, and an interesting clash.

> Sure being the leader of a big ass ship also put him in that same zone of inner stranger wariness, but y'know. So far so good!

"Nice to finally meet you too."

chimericarchitect > The Dreaded Handshake, As The Prophecy Foretold. With how sharp she keeps her claws these nights the best she can do to cover up is to wear fingerless gloves, but that is inconducive to the possibility of reacting to danger, and she anticipated that the ever-present threat of engaging in polite society might rear itself anyway. Thus, a counter arrangement has been prepared in advance: completely naturally, despite her lack of hand cover, as if this was the response expected of her, Saness reaches past Grinmaww's outstretched palm and clasps his covered forearm. A bracing, friendly gesture!

> It's loose enough an action that she doesn't have time to react to new information, or to accommodate the unexpected. From this close, she can feel her hair standing on end, a fresh tingle across the nape of her neck. This isn't Chill Boss Aura, the weight of his presence more intense with proximity, but rather something else entirely. Something otherworldly. The trouble with keeping her features emotionally available and reactive is that, they are, in fact, emotionally available and reactive. Her eye scrunches slightly and her smile ticks one degree toward uncomfortable on the matching side.

> Braced like this, she gives his arm the single handshake pump of proper business, albeit a fraction of a second delayed.

> Quick, say something.

"Ah, yeah, you think so? I thought it was kinda, heh, on the nose. If somebody were to roll up and introduce themself with the title of 'Mischief' you'd have certain expectations, I'd think."

xxforsaken-angelxx > Eridan isn't oblivious enough to miss her sudden awkwardness, but it's also not like he knows his own aura, or any other reason Saness might avoid handshakes. In his mind he just went too formal, like a dumbass. He goes a touch sheepish when she goes a touch awkward, and flicks his hair and plays it cool when she lets go.

> The third eye he draws in his paint wasn't peeking through his bangs until now.

"I mean, sure. But that kind of expectation would probably get you some friends around somewhere like here. Mischief and clowns go together, right?"

> Hopefully, at least?

chimericarchitect > Once released she gives him a conspiratorial smile, waggles a finger, and says, "Those mischievous clowns," in that fake-cursing sort of tone, meant to confirm his assertion.

> Now that she's aware of an otherworldly presence, she is Aware of it. It's kind of just all over the place, isn't it? And her new friend appears to be the epicenter...

> From this point out, her attention is going to be partially split. Whatever it is, it doesn't *feel* directly threatening, but it's definitely unlike the clown deities she's met. It's... not quite familiar. Grinmaww's angels? But it doesn't feel like the angels she's known either, not... quite... Perhaps they aren't angels at all. That's the unsettling part. People and things that identify as other things can have a lot of reasons for doing so. Half the angels she's met weren't so nice anyhow...

> Most of the time she keeps her attention politely fixed on Grinmaww, but it slips through him or past him here and there, occasionally flitting elsewhere in the room. Saness cannot help but be wary in the back of her mind.

> Uncultured, she points right at his face.

"In every timeline I've visited or heard of, face paint holds a lot of personal significance to the clowns who wear it." Her arm drops to her side and she rocks on her toes in a gentle and harmless fidget. "Is it too personal to tell me about? I'm curious."

xxforsaken-angelxx > There's those in the church that don't believe that *any* of the entities are who they say they are. Some believe they're all more of a subconscious figment than anything else- not nonexistant, per se, but a form to let the troll mind comprehend something uncomprehendable. Eridan does believe in his angels, but he's not... unfamiliar, with the idea that they might not be so straightforward.

> He doesn't know that's what's on her mind, but *they* do. They can sense her attention. They know she can feel them. And they...want to play nice, actually. Yes they're everywhere, yes they have him in their grasp, but does that have to feel so bad? They can at least try to be a bit more friend shaped.

> Meanwhile, their host gets thrown by that question. Not in a defensive way, just in a purely off-guard one.

"Uh, no, it's not, it's-" He gestures, aimlessly. "It's not actually *that* big of a thing? For us? Like it's real fuckin' important, don't get me wrong, but it's not like- it's not *sacred.* It's fashion."

> He shoved his hands in his pocket, and gave his jacket a bit of a flounce.

"I uh...picked mine when I was pretty young. The whole painted on smile and the tears and the secret eye. It's all kinda obvious. But I still like the vibe. Still me and such."

chimericarchitect > Saness can... kind of feel them, the attention of Grinmaww's angels in response to her awareness. She can detect the things they broadcast most blatantly, the more gentle way they coil, the intentional friendliness. Perhaps an act like that would put a more paranoid troll on higher alert, but where most people have a healthy level of mistrust for the unknown, developed or instinctual, Saness has stubbornly hoarded olive branches to clumsily brandish at anything that exists. If they want to be friendly, then by the stars, Saness is going to give them her reckless trust and put her faith where her mouth is.

> Understanding that the angels are at least *similarly* aware of her the way she is aware of them, Saness begins working through the process of lowering her mental hackles, just as intentionally relaxing as they intentionally displayed peace. She loves being cool and playing nice, well and truly.

> It helps that Grinmaww is so cute. Look at him, fumbling and fluffing his feather. Normally she would giggle at him, laughter comes so easily to her, but with her focus split, all she does is smile fondly. It feels safe enough to relax around him, and they all vibe together as a unit, so... Yeah. Everything is cool and she is pleased to make more than one acquaintance. Yep. That's what she's rolling with.

"So, dedication to fashion is really important, but being a clown is not an organized religion beyond being purple and... being goth..." The last part is said almost like a question. "Would you be in trouble if you didn't wear paint, if it isn't sacred? What about like, partial coverage? In public and stuff. Oh, and, um, the whole... distinction thing. Goth is more elegant? Than punk? Or like, grunge, or emo. Are you supposed to dedicate yourself to YOUR aesthetic or is there a dress code? Is 'goth' an important word? Does equating it to other aesthetics come across as rude?"

> Special Move: One Thousand Needling Questions no Jutso.

xxforsaken-angelxx "You don't get in *trouble* for not wearing the paint, no. Like, most people around here wouldn't want to be out an' about without it or nothin', but just in the way anybody else who wears a lotta makeup wouldn't. Partial coverage's fine, too. I know this one chick who does a pattern with half her face, 's'cool as hell. And there is absolutely not a dress code beyond legal modesty and safety regulations, I almost can't believe you gotta ask that."

> He says it with fondness, as he leans up against his desk. He could talk about this stuff forever, he just had to settle into the rhythm of it. His gods seemed to enjoy it too, maybe, almost curling up beside him once he got on a roll.

"Self expression is important to us. It's an inherent part of our magic. We're all brought together around a school of thought with magic that's about experimentation and what you feel, so, like. If you're callin' up the damned with scryin' bones, why the fuck *shouldn't* you wear a full black velvet cloak, y'know? Why not wear it out to get a sandwich every night, if that's what makes you happy?"

"So comparin' us to punk or whatever else is rude just 'cause it's not us. We have an ideology, and punk has a totally different ideology, an' none of us really want to be lumped together when it doesn't stand for the same thing."

chimericarchitect "Then... what is the goth clown ideology? Under that umbrella of self-expression and exploration... are there pretty pastel clowns, peppy and chipper, or clowns that... essentially aren't goth? That sounds really kind of cool though, being encouraged to pursue happiness in the empire. Are there purplebloods that aren't clowns, or is it kind of mandatory?"

> Saness is slowing down a touch, pretty sincerely fascinated by this topic. Culture in general is wildly engrossing, but she has a particular passion for the heavy familial nature of mirthful society.

> She follows his lead, to a degree, crossing her arms and resting her weight unbalanced on one leg, hip cocked out just slightly to accommodate. Very laid-back. One foot taps, keeping time with the pace of her thoughts.

"And, I mean, I *assume* it's just purplebloods and not other colors that join the faith in your society, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Doctrines and ideologies tend to conceptually elude me, but I do so love to hear about them."

xxforsaken-angelxx "Just purplebloods, but it's not mandatory, no. Most of us end up here anyways, but there's plenty that don't. And..."

> There's a pause as he chews on his words a bit. He's had to explain something to this effect several times before, and every time it's a little different. A little closer to what someone who's Grand Highblood might say.

"We think that belief is the most important part of magic. The rituals you do and the entities you work with are just...methods. What makes it *work* is what you feel. And if you *know* that, then you can take your belief and apply it on purpose to somethin' workin' to your advantage. So we just... believe in doin' what personally works for you. Celebratin' what personally works for you. There's no reason you can't be cheery and also goth, or be some pastel fuck and also goth. We're only gonna question you if *you* don't think you're doin' it right. You have to believe you are. Genuinely."

chimericarchitect > Saness inclines her head, an inquisitive pinch to her brow. It's not fully intentional, but she keeps mentally checking in on the spectral presence surrounding Grinmaww, akin to curious little 'are you still there' pokes while he talks.

"That's what goth is? Celebrating the self?"

> Her expression smooths away and she straightens with a soft laugh.

"I mean, heh, wow." She waves a hand, gesturing over his whole him.

xxforsaken-angelxx "I have no idea what you're talking about," he says, playfully shaking his head.

> The angels are also very there. They're Always there. Or at least, some of them are. Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less, but there's always *something*.

> They tend to poke back, too. It's fun having friends.

chimericarchitect > She shakes her head, still smiling.

"Alright, so, next question. I think I saw the answer before on tumblr maybe, but I don't remember it at the moment. Can you always sense your angels?"

> Yeah she came here with a purpose, but Saness has never been very business-oriented. She hasn't been here long enough for the recycled air to bother her, she's barely been here long enough to appreciate the fact that she's in space. Vacuums and stable pressurized ships aren't as easy to replicate, she's kind of lucky not to be experiencing some kind of reaction to the environment. The thought is starting to creep into her head, the idea that there could be so much more to see.

> Somewhere in the bowels of this contraption, Hydromatic dangles in some kind of torture stasis.

xxforsaken-angelxx > Somewhere, Hydromatic is at their station, filing through dozens of simultaneous requests and trying to scrape up the spare seconds to fantasize about their matesprit. Piers is somewhere as well, possibly finishing his shift.

> And the ship is just generally bustling with life. It was a massive place, filled with a town's worth of purplebloods. Each one had their own magic, their own loud style, their own gods...

"Pretty much always, yeah. Sometimes I get distracted, but they're always there."

chimericarchitect "Does it still get lonely sometimes, even if you're never alone? How old were you when you like, met them? And, um..."

> Saness glances toward the door and lets her continuation hang in the air for a moment, not quite stilling so much as slowing her idle animation. There's a lot to consider, all the mystery and intrigue just beyond, but she knows full well she'd never be allowed to pass through. Not in a thousand sweeps. What would she even do? Act like a lost tourist and get Grinmaww into trouble?

> She slides her focus back into the room, back onto her host and off of stray thoughts of the fantastical. Her hands go into her pockets and she gestures toward him with a shrug of her shoulder.

"Are the subjects of everyone else's devotion so present as yours? Can you sense or otherwise detect them yourself?"

xxforsaken-angelxx "I'm not the lonely type. But I met 'em when I was like...five-ish? Which is young, for us. I had more resources than most wrigs would've, an' I just...had a strong pull, I guess."

> A strong pull and a florid imagination. His eyes follow hers before he can get too wrapped up in thinking about his old hive life, though. If it were anybody else, he'd be glad to show her around the ship. There were constant visitors on the Hydromatic, so one more wouldn't be terribly out of place.

> As long as they were like, actual Imperial citizens with travel paperwork. And not of a blood color that didn't exist here. So unfortunately that wasn't happening, even if they both wished it would.

"...I don't think everybody's are. Kinda depends. But magic just has a vibe, I can feel that usually."

chimericarchitect > ...Huh. What if he's picking up magic vibes off of her? Wicked undid those... locks or whatever, and she did attend a single quarter of lessons at the magic college, even if she was pretty much fully incompetent with her abilities. She would think, 'nah, they're totally different things probably,' but here she is and she can sense his angels, so... maybe not? But maybe it's like, a warlock thing, rather than strictly a magic thing. She doesn't have a magic sugardaddy hovering around her twenty-four seven for him to detect. Or even like. Sugardaddy La Croix. Residual sugardaddy. Hint of having been near a sugardaddy that might have side-eyed her once.

"Well, the angels seem really pleasant and friendly, and if that says anything about you then, heh." Even with all of her training Saness's face is soft, tender cheeks squishing firm when she smiles. It doesn't stretch like Grinmaww's or Ringleader's. "How old do clowns normally take on a patron?"

xxforsaken-angelxx > The magic here *was* different from magic elsewhere, but mostly in how certain the clowns were of its mechanics. Magic was considered an action, a movement of energy. It wasn't something just sitting around in people willy nilly, in their minds. Without something actively magical lying around, there was nothing he was attuned to sense.

> His face softened a little at her compliment, and a small "Aww" slipped out before he could think it through.

"It uh, depends though. Six is when most people really start socializin' online, and that's a big factor for decidin' to participate in the faith. So seven-ish is the most common for gettin' serious with contactin' things, as far as I know."

chimericarchitect > A little 'o,' either of interest or surprise, anoints her.

"Did you meet them before you met any other clowns or joined the faith then?"

xxforsaken-angelxx > His eyebrows raise a little.

"Before I met any other clowns, yeah. But I was pretty set on being involved since I could read what I had about it."

chimericarchitect "Did I ask something strange? Sorry."

> Saness tries to play it cool, another pretty flash of a somewhat sheepish smile, but she is a weenie and the lift of Grinmaww's eyebrows causes her to fret a secret amount.

xxforsaken-angelxx > He tries to look reassuring. Or as reassuring as a much taller goth clown can.

"Nah. Just haven't had anybody ask that. Nobody really asks an heir how they started, y'know?"

chimericarchitect > It works, she's as easily reassured as she is unsettled. Intent is always WAY more important than appearances to little ol' Saness. She tilts her head, birdlike. Why *wouldn't* anyone ask?

"Well... How *did* you start?"

xxforsaken-angelxx > Eridan stews on that for a second, digging through his memories of his old swamp hive for the answer he was looking for. Then, when he found it, he very seriously said:

"Clown grubby books."

chimericarchitect > Her mouth opens, and then it closes. She considers this. Raises a finger. Opens her mouth again with the sound of an H turning to a W, then closes it again. A hum. The finger lowers.

xxforsaken-angelxx > He watches her flounder, and provides nothing. There's a smile in his eyes. Specifically a :o)

chimericarchitect > It ends with her giggling, one arm crossing her front to rub at the other. Her general demeanor has an air of vulnerability at the shift, gentle and earnest in both the way she speaks and the way she looks at him, smiling soft as a peach. Saness's eyes still gleam to an unnatural degree, the ever-present predator, but she's about as scary as a snail covered in dew drops.

"Sorry, that sounds really cute Grinmaww... Were they pop-up books? I hope you had a pop-up book, I have a little collection of those, I think they're very charming..."

xxforsaken-angelxx > He ends up laughing back at her, crossing his arms and actually smiling a little. She's so cute? She's so cute. Why does everything happen so much.

"Of course they were pop-up books. Like just one of 'em but what kinda church would we be if the grubby book wasn't a pop-up one. That'd be bullshit."

chimericarchitect > Her smile widens eagerly, the rubbing arm stopping in more the fashion of a half-formed self-hug.

"I wish I could read them. Obviously it inspired little you? You're here and all, and you seem happy to."

xxforsaken-angelxx "I sure am. Love this place, always have."

> He glances at one of his bookshelves in particular, scanning for a particular spot and then stammering.

"I uh- I still have the pop-up one. Like just a newer copy, lying around. You could, uh...I'd let you borrow it, for as long as you have the tubes, if you want. It's not like it has anything too secret."

chimericarchitect > Saness covers her mouth when she starts laughing this time, both hands. It lasts a good moment, eyes scrunched up with a fond sort of mirth once more. She's been charmed, how dare he. Like really, how dare he. This isn't the troll she made this trip to make friends with!

> And yet, she can't say she minds the direction this is going. Not one bit. What a good place this must be with leadership like this.

> She lowers her hands to rib-height, curled into loose and amicable fists.

"Really?" She pauses to nibble her lower lip, literally biting back another short string of giggles. "If you don't mind, I'd very much like that. Really."

xxforsaken-angelxx > Phththhghbhbhb, goes the clown. There's indignant hand waving and everything. He's trying to be NICE and she has the AUDACITY to like. Handle it in a playful friendly way. Rude.

"I don't mind at all, just lemme fuckin-"

> He strides over to the bookshelf in question, pulling out the thick little book from the spot it's been tucked away in, among serious magical tomes.

> The cover has a generic looking purpleblood wriggler, notably un-goth. They're curled up against a sheeplike lusus in a cool-toned forest scene, watching a glittery butterfly float overhead. A gold whimsical font proclaims that "Magic is Everywhere!"

> He shows her this for a second, then places it next to the other things she came here for.

chimericarchitect > Look at this guy. What a guy! A guy who keeps a copy of his wrigglerhood pop-up book in his block! A guy that would lend it to a near-stranger with a smile! A guy that bends and breaks the rules to do whatever is best or most interesting! A guy that doesn't get annoyed when he makes other people laugh! A guy with a really impressive propeller hand dance!

"What, you aren't going to flip through it with me? Don't you want to take a trip down memory lane with your new friend~?"

> Saness flounces along in Grinmaww's wake, leaning around him to rappa-tap a dance of her claws on the cover before he can fully rid himself of the book. She no longer minds the increased density of his aura by proximity, having decided that yes, they are friends now. It's a mostly-sincere question carried on a teasing tone that leaves him room to turn her down without anything getting awkward; he can brush her off as playing or he can take her seriously and crack open the book, and neither answer would be wrong.

xxforsaken-angelxx > Her hands get lightly swatted away. Bap, bap bap. It's kind of fortunate that he has a boyfriend now and everything, otherwise he'd still be terribly unused to people just...approaching him.

"Look, if I'm gonna give this thing to my 'new friend~'," he says, mimicking her badly, "Then I want you to enjoy this the proper way, which is all curled up at hive or whatever. It's the cozy kind of wriggler book. Don't at me."

chimericarchitect > Saness accepts her defeat with wiggly fingers, politely stepping back out of the range of his personal space. She is a self-satisfied creature.

"Cozy wriggler book, you've got it."

> She stuffs her mitts back into her pockets (all better, no touchy) and resumes rocking from heel to toe, watching Grinmaww with interest.

"I have so many more questions for you, but like, I realize this wasn't supposed to be a social visit and you are a very busy troll." Gotta check in. Gotta give him an out.

xxforsaken-angelxx > He settles back into leaning up against his desk, all casual like. But clearly with his feathers playfully ruffled. If it weren't for the paint there'd probably be a bit of a blush...which Saness might can guess anyways, with how much time she spends with clowns.

"Nah, I don't mind. Once I'm off work it's not like there's anything I'm supposed to be doin'."

> That and he's really enjoying her company. But he can't just like, say those words out loud, right?

chimericarchitect > That's enough of an invitation for her! Beaming, Saness makes an invisible 'desk' out of her psi and leans back against it, copying him like the silliest roly-poly.

"Great! You're even cooler than I'd hoped, I like talking to you."

> Apparently she can just say whatever the fuck she wants, unabashed while in her element. A single clap!

"Tell me about your lusus!"

xxforsaken-angelxx > There's clear amusement in her parroting, but also...a lack of questioning how the fuck she's doing that. Miming is a pretty common skill around here, after all.

"A goat? But like, a fish goat. An angler fish goat. Real big fucker that'd go around the swamp eating basically anything."

> There was a bit of disdain in his voice. It's fairly obvious that he didn't have a *great* opinion of his goat figure.

"Think I gotta pass that one back at you, though. What was your lusus like?"

chimericarchitect "Uh, well..."

> She would be more phased by having bonked so clumsily into the Makara-standard experience of bad wriggler-lusus relations, but Grinmaww just asked a bit of a tricky question. It's obvious that Saness has to really consider how to answer this; for a moment she even looks off to the side, brow pinched.

"I don't really remember my lusus. I had a guardian, and she was a troll."

> The "sort of" that follows is said lower. How does one smoothly segway into 'I have amnesia and also the troll that looked after me when I came-to was actually some kind of life-force golem'? The answer is, you don't. You just don't.

xxforsaken-angelxx > Obviously there's curiosity that arises from that 'sort of.' Like, sort of a troll or sort of a guardian? It's an easy follow-up, and one he doesn't take. Instead, he gives her a somewhat sympathetic look.

"You don't gotta talk about it if you don't want to."

> It's said both sincerely and flatly. He's not effected by whatever emotions she has around the subject, but is okay with them. No judgement, but lots of instinctual professionalism.

chimericarchitect "R-right..."

> The flat tone doesn't feel like it fits with the sympathetic look. Saness does not thrive in professional or formal environments, and even the gentle stiffness is enough for her to trip and flounder over. What is she *supposed* to say? Is this one of those secret codeword things people do when they like someone and want to be polite, but don't actually want to hear what they have to say?

> And besides... *Does* she want to talk about it? It's reflex to say 'no she doesn't,' and that coupled with the above is enough to sway her decision.

"I don't believe I ever got around to asking. Are limebloods extinct in this timeline?"

xxforsaken-angelxx > He *would* be interested, but he's not... supposed to be. Being a boss has it's tolls, one of them happening to be that he has a firm habit of not prying too hard. Any piece of extra information is something that can trip up the works of Imperial bureaucracy.

> So she takes her out and he lets it be, moving on to answering her next question as if nothing happened.

"Yeah, they are. Though the real dock against you is the fact that you don't have paperwork for existin' here. Like, you could go all hemo-anon or whatever an not stand out, but not havin' a travel record would get you in trouble real quick."

chimericarchitect > She's quick to focus on this new topic, grasping at it a bit like a life raft. It was one little hiccup, everything is fiiiiine.

"Really? Travel record? ...I implanted an identity to assume on an Earth once so that I could open a bank account and a few other things, but like, I imagine something like that might be a bit more difficult in this timeline. Earth is just... Not very savvy. Then again, on a standard Alternia, there are LOTS of available identities to assume, trolls die super constantly on the ground..."

> Grim thoughts are grim, and Saness makes a face. This line of thought isn't pleasant, and she isn't neutral about it, no matter how plainly she likes to talk about it.

"Who even checks for those? Everyone I pass in the hall? Do you have to confirm your I.D. at every doorway?"

xxforsaken-angelxx > Eridan points up towards the ceiling and gestures around.

"Cameras. There aren't any in here, but they're pretty much everywhere else. Anyone out of place would get spotted immediately, an' then you'd get flagged down for some questions."

> There's an attempt to not make the word "questions" in that sound ominous. An attempt. But the eyes of the Hydromatic were in fact everywhere.

chimericarchitect "Oh, so the 'travel records' are digital, and Hydromatic can identify people and locate aforementioned records on the spot, and if something doesn't line up, then yadda yadda? Or do you mean, Hydromatic would send security after me or whoever else walked mysteriously out of a closet because they're just *that aware* of every single familiar face and *that aware* of who has gone where? Because, I've got-"

> Saness grabs for her wallet chain, pulling the end of it out of her back pocket. It's definitely still not attached to a wallet; it's attached to a retro sylladex!

"I've got..."

> Operating this thing is not efficient. She's still flipping through it... There's a reason technology moved on without this little pocket-lunk.

"I've got this amulet, it was a gift. A disguise amulet..."

> Fwip fwip fwip... She just wants to show him a neat trick, man... Why does this have to be so har-AHA!!

> With a declaration of triumph, she retrieves a very simple locket on a very simple chain, proudly holding it aloft and grinning mischief at Grinmaww.

xxforsaken-angelxx > He just...lets her. He's the one with an even more old-fashioned looking computer sitting behind him. But he has no idea what exactly a 'disguise amulet' implies. Like, it *feels* magic, but there's a lot of extents that thing could go to. Instead, he just answers her questions.

"It's like a facial recognition system, just with an actual pair of eyes as a step in the process. If you're authorized to be on board here, and also to be in whatever rooms you're goin' in, then everything's fine, mostly."

chimericarchitect > Saness nods along, but she only half-cares about the answer to her question. It's not like she's going to be skulking about on the ship.

"Okay, so, check this out. Do you have any printed photos? Small ones, or ones you don't mind being folded? Magazine cutouts count, it'd just be cooler if it's someone that you recognize from this timeline rather than whoever I have in my pocket."

xxforsaken-angelxx "Uh-"

> Now it's his turn to awkwardly fumble around for something. He turns to start going through his desk drawer, pushing around this and that. There was a lot in the damn things. A few pipes, art supplies, spare papers, weed...

> Eventually he found a photo tucked away amongst it all, and handed it over.

> It's a picture that was only able to print halfway for some reason or another, leaving only one person in the image. Said person is Nymede, the Hydromatic's lead IT specialist. She was in an open shoulder top and hot pants and fishnets, with big fuzzy legwarmers. Her face was half obscured by a gas mask, and she had bright purple and fuchsia hair extensions.

> She was...probably in the helmsblock, or near it, there was biowire visible behind her, but there was no sign of Hydromatic themselves.

chimericarchitect > Is it void nonsense? A lack of ink? Some sort of printer malfunction? A certain helm being fussy about their picture being taken and purposely botching the job? The world may never know, and further, the world is unconcerned. Saness accepts the photo and gleefully pops open the locket. There was already a photo inside - one of Saness that has been color-edited to have black hair and ordinary teal eyes - that she hastily replaces with the photo of this very Fashion(tm) clown person. She gives it a playful jostle once it's closed away.

"Now, hang on, this is the cool part-"

> The moment she slips the locket over her head, Saness is no longer standing in the room. Instead, in every physically perceivable way, Nymede has replaced her. Eeach visible detail is accurate to the picture, and Saness-as-Nymede gives a little twirl.

"Tadaaa...!"

> It doesn't alter her voice, unfortunately, and Saness still sounds like herself. She moves like herself too, despite whatever change in height there may be, fluffy legwarmers flouncing realistically to match.

xxforsaken-angelxx "Wow what the fuck."

> That was. Perhaps less enthused sounding than he intended, and he cracks up the second after that leaves his mouth.

"Man, what the *fuck*-"

> It is perhaps somewhat alarming to see a perfect clone of your friend, even if you think it's fucking hilarious. Boy is it realistic, though. He saw Nymede just tonight, and he wouldn't have thought twice if she'd been able to mimic her voice. Scary, but incredibly impressive!

chimericarchitect "Isn't it neat? It's basically a hologram. The projection is magic and it has the most basic of shells to give an amount of resistance when touched, but if you pressed against it you would sink through until you touched me. When used to mimic smaller things, the parts that hang out turn completely invisible, but can still knock into things if you aren't careful."

> While she talks Saness is wafting Nymede's arm back and forth, looking it over herself. She has back some of the same energy she came in with, the excitable quickness to the way she carries her borrowed form bleeding into how quickly she talks.

> She pauses only a moment, snapping her attention from Nymede's arm to Grinmaww's face. There's more she wants to say and show him, but she's not the type to sprint on ahead without someone.

xxforsaken-angelxx > He's following along, mostly, the way someone tends to when they're fascinated by something they don't *really* understand. Holograms were a thing in common use here, hard light was something he understood in theory, using magic to create tech-like results was...imaginable, at least?

> Which amounted as far as it being conceivable, and him having no idea how the fuck something like that would actually be made. Miracles, man.

"Neat is a real fuckin' understatement for that."

chimericarchitect > She chuckles and goes to remove the locket, zooping back to her regular appearance with a sideways flicker as soon as the chain is off her neck.

"You can even disguise things as people, or people as things, or things as other things..."

> Saness looks around the room for an easy target that doesn't look like something personal or sensitive, something she could feasibly loop the chain around.

"...and you can keep the chain on the object you want to disguise while keeping the locket somewhere else, it will continue to function so long as neither are destroyed..."

xxforsaken-angelxx > There are, frankly, a lot of Things in this room, so there's a lot of potential targets. There's several large quartz samples of different colors that could easily have the locket wrapped around, or some of his jars of common herbs like rosemary and thyme. Or for something even safer looking, she could nab a big black candle.

> That last part is what really surprised him, though. The parts could work separately? The locket didn't have to be on the chain? It wasn't just the locket that did the thing? How the FUCK did this thing WORK?

chimericarchitect > Badda-boom, she slips the locket off of the chain and wraps the pretty metal in a loose cascade over an unsuspecting candle. Nymede appears where it was, but nearly completely physically static. If the candle was lit, she'll be wobbling her head around in a way that could be considered eerie, mimicking the flames with the limitations of hair and a neck.

> What's more, a candle is much smaller than a person, and... the projection seems to shiver and warp a lot like it is strained, glitching in a way that Nymede *definitely should not be moving* in. Saness seems to find these wild distortions and unnatural behaviors to be entirely hilarious, pointing up at her and giving the whole thing a very good laugh.

xxforsaken-angelxx > It was not lit, just sitting around waiting for use. But that only mitigated the weirdness of this somewhat. Like, here was one of his best friends, in lifelike form, magically superimposed over a candle when she really shouldn't be. The whole thing wibbled around with the uncanniness of a wax figure and the function of spaghetti code.

> He also thought it was fucking hilarious, and laughed with her.

chimericarchitect > They'll likely spend a moment in shared laughter before Saness reaches into the illusion to fumble around and remove the chain. As before, Nymede stretches sideways and zlorps out of existence.

> Saness is still a bit breathy with laughter when she speaks.

"See, that's... I can be anyone, or anything, except maybe - pppbb - a candle, or a spoon, haha!"

xxforsaken-angelxx "That's fuckin' mindbogglin' to me. But impressive as long as you're not tryin' to dodge the guards with bobblehead candle clowns."

> He shakes his head, still giggling a bit. What a time to be alive and in charge of this joint.

"I've been doin' magic for a long ass time an' I've never gotten to see shit like that.

chimericarchitect > A bit more laughter and apparently show-and-tell is over, because Saness is putting her magic tool back into her sylladex - but she courteously remembers to take out the picture and offer it back toward Grinmaww on an open palm.

"The multiverse is a vast place and... I guess I've seen a lot of things!"

> Actually, it was talking to Pierce before that really put it into perspective. She's a veteran of mystery...

xxforsaken-angelxx > The picture gets placed back roughly where it was before, in one of his desk drawers. Possibly not even the same desk drawer? There are only so many things that can be in his goth mind at one time.

"Guess so," he says. "And guess I haven't seen much at all."

> Which was solely exciting to him, really. There was nothing he loved more than learning about the way everything flowed along in the universe. All a vast *multi*verse meant was he never had to stop.

chimericarchitect > Prrp! Saness proceeds to brush herself down for reasons unknown, satisfied with his response. There is a threshold here that needs to be respected, and unlike some of her friends, she's going to try and reel it in before crossing it.

"There are a lot of things I could show you, but I think maybe that's enough for a first meeting. I may not be the most vibrant or interesting tour guide, but I am a willing and attentive one!"

xxforsaken-angelxx > There's a small scoff at that second part, immediately.

"You're plenty vibrant. I do think we're good on the touring for now though, yeah."

> His hand creeps a little towards the collection of things he's supposed to be passing along to her. It's that business instinct again.

chimericarchitect > That was? A compliment? Yeah, no, it's cool. It's COOL. She sure hopes it's a compliment and not some sign that she overwhelmed him though, but if it is then man, it sure does sound like Grinmaww is completely clueless, he should meet her friends, *they're* the vibrant ones... And probably also very literally insane.

> She doesn't fuss when he moves them toward the end of their visit, quirky in her lopsided-smile sort of way. Saness rocks on her toes with her hands jammed deep into her pockets. She'll wait politely for him to gather himself up and bring this meeting to a close; it is his place, after all. Grinmaww is the floor master.

xxforsaken-angelxx > The look he gives her seems to support the compliment theory... But a moment later he's distracted. No objection, time to give her the things. The picture book first, and then the two psychic tube-y things. They're neatly labeled with label machine stickers, one from Pierce and one from Grinmaww.

> They actually came out pretty distinct looking. Both of the glow bits are lit a similar shade of purple, but Grinmaww's is...actually a good bit fainter. He's never really had any other chances to compare himself, though, so it doesn't even strike him as odd. Pierce is just good at shit like this, obviously.

chimericarchitect > Her hands are freed from her pockets! In order! To accept a darling pop-up book! And the actual tools she came for!

"Thanks so much for being such a good sport. I'll get the bracers and your cozy grubby book back to you as soon as I've finished!"

> They disappear from her palms, slorped up by her sylladex like so much loose spaghetti.

"It will take me a little longer than normal to complete these though, as I'm uh, a little bit preoccupied back at hive."

xxforsaken-angelxx > He shrugs, and...smiles just a little. Why must she be so goddamn pleasant all the time always.

"That's fine. Ain't like there's any rush anyways. Just get 'em back when you can."

> There's a moment of realization on his face when he remembers that she's just going to like...zap out of herself out of here. And not use a door. Which means that normal farewell dialogue cues weren't going to happen.

"It was uh, real nice seein' you an' all man."

chimericarchitect > Saness wouldn't know a normal dialogue cue if it bit her full on the bulge, farewell or otherwise.

"Somenight we'll have to figure out how to swap tours for realsies!"

> Rather than saying goodbye or returning the compliment like a civilized or well-adjusted troll, she gives her new friend a big smile and an even bigger dwarpy salute, turning on her heel for dramatic effect as the crackly light consumes her once more.

> Just like that, she is gone.

#ooc #logs.txt #(( featuring 20 questions with saness and silliness #(( with a small side of plot #(( no warnings needed

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