Goro Akechi | 明智 吾郎 (
pancakeboy) wrote2023-09-12 09:15 pm
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[ic] so choose the colour you will fly
For all the talk of blowing up the Diet Building, and his little rampage through Shido's office the day he arrived, Akechi doesn't try his father's keywords until the day after he learns everything. Or at least... some things. The shadow of how things might, or might not be.
The ship is right there, no different to how he remembers. He moves through it uncostumed, unmasked, just as he always has, in that mossy green jacket that's slightly less tailored than his shirt and pants; he belongs. The guests titter and giggle about their privilege; the cognitions look through him as if he isn't real. Sometimes he feels eyes on him and looks up, only to realise he's looking into a mirror.
Eventually, far inside the ship, in the balconied chamber with the plants that the Shadows patrol, he drops down into a chair. Could call Loki and run rampage here, if he wanted. Could pull his gun and put a bullet through each of those patrolling Shadows, one, two, three. Could use his claws, tear those plants from their holders for a start. Shred the velvet, punch through the walls. Scream and scream and scream. Beat the palace hollow till whatever's lurking in its deepest depths shows up to finish him.
But he doesn't. One mustn't, after all—heh—rock the boat. Even if you want nothing more than to tear a hole in the hull and go down with it. Even if you've been running, and running, and someone's dropped a brick wall into your path.
Abruptly, his head snaps up, eyes sharpening. Someone's here.
The ship is right there, no different to how he remembers. He moves through it uncostumed, unmasked, just as he always has, in that mossy green jacket that's slightly less tailored than his shirt and pants; he belongs. The guests titter and giggle about their privilege; the cognitions look through him as if he isn't real. Sometimes he feels eyes on him and looks up, only to realise he's looking into a mirror.
Eventually, far inside the ship, in the balconied chamber with the plants that the Shadows patrol, he drops down into a chair. Could call Loki and run rampage here, if he wanted. Could pull his gun and put a bullet through each of those patrolling Shadows, one, two, three. Could use his claws, tear those plants from their holders for a start. Shred the velvet, punch through the walls. Scream and scream and scream. Beat the palace hollow till whatever's lurking in its deepest depths shows up to finish him.
But he doesn't. One mustn't, after all—heh—rock the boat. Even if you want nothing more than to tear a hole in the hull and go down with it. Even if you've been running, and running, and someone's dropped a brick wall into your path.
Abruptly, his head snaps up, eyes sharpening. Someone's here.
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"Perhaps not. But I do know how lonely it is, when the adults who are supposed to be helping you are making you do their dirty work. I know how easy it is to stop thinking of ordinary people as consequential. I know I would've broken under the strain alone, sooner or later, but presumably you still came into this with a goal in mind, so maybe that helped."
(She doubts it, but she's trying to meet him halfway here.)
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Had his alternate, then, met this Okumura in the Metaverse? And felt sorry for her?—as he's never been able to eradicate? You turned up, and then he went back on his promise....
Again, everyone here knows who he is, what he's done—or they will; that cockroach on the floor, with all its secrets scattered. He's starting to peek back at what he's done himself, too—and so he sighs. "You know, there's another of us here. Neither me nor you, if that makes sense." He doesn't identify the other as one of the Kurusus. "He's a lot less talkative than you. Less friendly, too."
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Both of their worthless fathers deserve to be destroyed; it's just a question of how and when.)
"As for the rest... I guess by now I'm predisposed to open up to you, even if you're not exactly who I'm used to. Comes of having only known one other real person for so long."
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The flaws in his plan—or in his heart, and in his mind where he was blinded—are also just beginning to quiver in his awareness.
"You think that's wise, do you? You see a face you think you know, and offer it your trust?" And he sees them, as if side by side—this one, and the other one here, who spoke the words that have damned him. And his own Okumura-san, the distant one with her probing questions, who he's increasingly convinced must know, if he was to be defeated. Why do you seek justice, Akechi-kun?
He continues, sounding brittle. "Because I'll tell you this for free: my world's version of you has no cause to love me. But I suppose you'll thank me for that as well." Actually... considering all she's said, maybe she will.
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But that's her poor coping mechanism, and him convincing himself he's in too deep to quit now is his.
"Wisdom doesn't apply as often as we think it should." Besides, at least this isn't Broken Goro. (Or, well. He's broken in ways Haru understands. He's himself.)
She considers that statement for a moment. "Someone decided Father had outlived his usefulness, I take it?"
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He tilts his head a little more, studying her; purses his lips as he thinks of the putative ruler of the ship they're both on. Shido plans to dispose of you once he becomes prime minister. The thought alone makes him want to melt through the floor like a ruptured Shadow.
"Are you telling me that doesn't anger you at all?" Because some of the ways people propose dealing with Shido almost make him scream.
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(There are plenty of other ways she can repay him. He wants to go to space so badly? That can be arranged.)
"But if I wasn't doing anything about him, I suppose someone was going to sooner or later."
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It's a diversion, but like so much of what he says, it also happens to be true; he's starting to see her with a clearer eye. "They say everyone has a point past which they won't be pushed. When they'll turn around and fight. From what I see, most adults never notice their indignities. And if—" He cuts himself off, before he can go too far: the ones that do don't fight, they die. "—well, that doesn't matter at all.
"I suppose, if he'd been stupid enough to prove your limits, he'd never have been left to me." And Ren and the rest would have been left to entrap a different patsy; it would have made no difference. Except perhaps to Okumura-san.
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They probably wouldn't have chosen to work together (Haru wouldn't have chosen this life at all, if she'd truly had a choice), but she wouldn't choose anything but her partner in crime, at this point.
"Father gambled with my life, and lost. Not that he knows he's lost yet - we haven't had a good opportunity to deal with either of them yet. But he lost all the same."
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Because he's been here a month, comparing notes. He's learned a lot about himself, and what he might have been and still could be, or not; more about Shujin's school counsellor than he ever expected to need; a startling amount about the young head of the Kirijo Group, who's approached him a couple of times at parties; and even how to summon a Persona in what passes for the real world.
But nobody—not a single soul—has suggested to him, at any point, that Haru Okumura might be complicit in his crimes....
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(Haru, if anyone else has set up shop in Iwatodai, they were normal and didn't do so in the love hotel. You wouldn't have seen them regardless.)
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A green moon, though? "And you haven't mentioned your activities to anyone else?"
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"Not in any kind of detail. The twelve-year-old you knows I'm close to my Goro, and that I've been doing this for a couple of years, but... I didn't get into specifics."
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"You've noticed there are synchronicities—shared events and coincidences—between many of the worlds we come from? One of those is the fact of a criminal exploiting the Metaverse." It's careful wording; she may well recognise it from her own Goro, that removal of responsibility from himself. "Those criminals—plural, in your case—use various others to that end. And as more of us arrive here, day by day, bringing new information, and new examples of how things have gone... it's become almost impossible to conceal my true identity."
And oh, how he hates that—being stripped of his masks, exposed by others. She probably knows it. "The point is that I've yet to hear anyone so much as suggest you as a candidate." In other words—she can keep her secrets, if she so wishes. And why would he offer her this chance? Why warn her? Simply put—because he can. If she causes trouble, after all, he can always change his mind.
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She does raise an eyebrow, though. "You have no practical reason to offer me your silence. But it's appreciated. I haven't decided how I want to handle things here yet, but I imagine the truth will come out sooner or later."
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"And you're wrong. I do have a reason. It may be too late for my secrets, and I'm not offering you an alliance, but—I also don't need more enemies here." Like that piece of shit soiling Ren's name, the one who now brightens so many of his thoughts about the 20th. The thought lets a little of that snarl escape.
"And I'm afraid your father was still a complete idiot. Just, by the sounds of it, one too close to—" and he nods around at the splended décor, that sadly is not hanging in rags—"someone else we could name." Far be it from him to not go off on rants at the drop of a hat.
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"Not throwing me to the wolves knocks him down to 98 percent idiocy or so. I didn't say I was giving him a free pass." The last one of those was, in fact, when he threw Haru to the wolves. Her father is nearly as worthless as his.
"Mutual non-aggression suits me fine. But if you need backup for something and don't want to ask yourself, odds are good I'll be available."