[ic] a silence more eloquent

[lakebrat]

All right, the jerk of the train that apparently conveys him from one place to the next was no more welcome the second time. That's going to take some getting used to.

As is the fact that Yongen looks clean. Like someone polished the alleys and the bricks, or nudged them ever-so-slightly out of focus. Goro's not entirely paying attention, though. What the hell is he going to do about Ren?

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[cybermask]

She had been walking back from LeBlanc. It was weird seeing the place from her childhood but she was getting used to it. She saw Crow and smiled. "Hey!" Wait a second where was his gloves? Where was his ring? He might have taken off his gloves, but the ring would never be off him. Unless it broke. Which she doubted it would.

[lakebrat]

Futaba. Quite like home, turning the corner from the station and seeing her outside. He's smiled before he knows he's doing it...

... But, okay. Not his world. Not his Futaba, clearly. He still smiles, though. "Hello, there. In case you were wondering, I'm not Crow. I'm another one."

[cybermask]

"Missing the ring to be Crow." She smiled. He seemed to like her so far. Maybe he was close to his version of her. That was a nice change of pace. A lot of them had the guilt over her head.

"It's nice to meet you. I'm Futaba Akechi."

[lakebrat]

Akechi? Right, there was the board, wasn't there? "That's a new one. Is it like the board said? You're his sister?"

He doesn't seem too alarmed; if anything, he seems weirdly pleased.

[cybermask]

"Yep, that's me. The other two versions of me hate their akechi or is a small child taken in by the birb." She liked him immediately. He seemed happy about her in the way Akechi's expressed it.

"Are you close to me in your world?" She asked leaning in.

[lakebrat]

Two? His face stiffens. Crow had said the role of agent of chaos seemed to pass between Ren and himself, in different worlds, but those are alarming odds. Small sample size, sure, but still alarming.

"I suppose you could say that. We're friends, in my world. I live above Leblanc, so we see a lot of each other." He looks past her down the alleyway, a little nervously, before his own smile returns. "That's why I'm here, in fact."

A small child taken in by the birb—er, bird? It's like Alice in Wonderland.

[cybermask]

"Yeah, I don't spend a lot of time here. Haven't since I was little. It's strange to be here." She smiled.

"It seems a lot of people stay at LeBlanc." Why was Sojiro at the center a lot?

[lakebrat]

"Well, I don't know about that. I only know why I'm here. I suppose Boss has to do something with his attic." Or is it something about Leblanc and the Phantom Thieves?

He leans on the wall beside him. "Who else usually stays there, then? Is it just me and Ren?"

[cybermask]

"You know. I don't know who stays there. I haven't seen him in years. She hmms. I don't know if anyone here actively stays there. But this world has a weird sense of warping your perspective of places. Like if you wanna go to somewhere you know without people staying there. Though don't count on being alone. We are here to form 'bonds' after all."

[lakebrat]

He gives Leblanc's awning another worried look. "That would be a problem, wouldn't it? I don't want to impose on an existing tenant. And I'm not sure I have anywhere else to go."

Which is to say, he doesn't want to get thrown out, and he has no home in his own world besides Leblanc. He looks back to her, though, oddly gentle for an Akechi. Oddly understanding. "What is it, problems at home?"

[cybermask]

"Oh, no. Just taking down Shido. If I wanted revenge for my mother I couldn't stay with him." She hummed. "No it shouldn't be a problem. If it is there's apartment buildings. You can just take a home. People kinda stop existing if you move in. And there's no rent."

[lakebrat]

They stop existing? no, Ren had covered that before he left, hadn't he? Pick an apartment, kick out the cognition if there is one... His face hardens, lips turning down.

"You know about Shido too. Is he...?" The party responsible, of course; the worst. The parent they allegedly share.

[cybermask]

"That seems to be a universal constant despite everything else that changes. That and Maurki if you have him." She tilted her head. Why was that? What made Shido so special or was he just a means to get them all to where they are.

She notices his face change but didn't comment on it.

[lakebrat]

But he shakes his head, moving on. He's spent a lot of time trying not to think about his father, and a lot more time failing at it; practice, in this case, makes adequacy. The moment passes, and he focuses back on her.

"Yes, Maruki. That's a whole new problem, isn't it, as it turns out?" He sighs through his teeth, looking up at the sky through the trees—then he blinks.

"Huh. The leaves have changed colour. I suppose they would."

[cybermask]

"Yeah, whole other issue." She followed his gaze. Change color?

"What time are you from?" She asked after a moment. "I'm from November, but I've been here a few months." How long has she been here? She lost track. Christmas was a while ago, and she knew she was here for that.

[lakebrat]

"November, yes. They'd all turned dark." The leaves overhead now, by contrast, are a pale, fresh new green.

"I suppose if I'd needed anything else to prove it all, that would have done it. I'm not sure I'd have a cognition of randomly different leaves."

[cybermask]

"Unless it was the time that something good happened. Cognitions are weird. There's not really just negative ones. Palaces feed off them, you see them the most in mementos, but the cat bus certainly can't just be from negative associations." She shrugged. She needed to dwell on what her mom wrote more.

Could it be possible to have a palace only on positive emotions? Delusion maybe. She'd add that to the list of tests she needed to run.

"No, it's April now. Time seems to still run here. I didn't think it would for a while. Time doesn't pass back home. You can return to the point you left." She smiled.

[lakebrat]

"So Igor told me." The real one with the squeaky voice, not the fake. That's going to take a lot of getting used to. "And according to the board, people have gone home and texted back, and confirmed we return to the moment we left....

"I don't know. I'm still going to worry about that." Though less than he would have done if Ren hadn't been right here. He brushes his hair behind his ear, Madonna-calm; then he smiles again.

"I should have known you'd be the one with all the inside theories about cognitive psience. Well, you and the... other yous."

[cybermask]

Oh she didn't know people could text still. That made her feel less bad about the time she knew was coming with her and Ren being apart.

"I don't know if the other mes have as much as a curiosity as I do. The little one just started getting into cognitive things. I haven't seen the other for a while." She shrugged.

"I take it I have an interest back home?" Yes, give her the juicy details about your home.

[lakebrat]

"You do. You're our secret weapon with the inside knowledge." Everything Futaba brought to them, alongside her determination to trace her mother's killer—awkward as that is, it shines bright in Goro's mind like a diamond.

[cybermask]

Yeah, that sounded accurate. She did study a lot. "There's a lot of information that you can find from mom's work as well as strange things online from independent sources." She smiled. There's been one inconsistency. "Do I provide backup or am I on the front lines?"

[lakebrat]

"You're our navigator." He gestures slightly above his head with one hand. "Above the battle, pulling in all the information in your UFO."

It's not that he doesn't like the idea of Futaba on the front lines. She certainly has the right, if she wants to. It's just that it's always more comfortable to have her protected far up, or at the back. "Does that sound familiar, or are you more frontline yourself?"

[cybermask]

Ah yes, that persona she was familiar with, especially after recent events. "Front lines myself. It's only me and Goro afterall." She kept far away from the theives. She didn't work well on teams and she swore them off after that disaster.

"I've got the ufo too, but I've also got Merlin which I use for most attacks."

[lakebrat]

"Merlin, the wizard? Really?" His face blossoms into life, connecting despite himself, as he's rather prone to do. "I'll be sorry now if you tell me it's a bird."

Only him and her, though? Seeking revenge on Shido alone? Without even Sojiro? More alarm bells are ringing.

[cybermask]

"Yep!" He seemed to be enjoying finding out about her personas. That was something she liked to entertain.

"I guess he's got bird like qualities, but he is mostly based on the wizard."

[lakebrat]

"I suppose that gives us something in common. My Persona is Lancelot—well, the first one, I mean. The knight of the Round Table." Who betrayed his master, and died a sad death alone in disgrace, but let's not examine that too closely. His mouth twists a bit knowingly as he tells on himself.

"You've got the power of the wild card too, hm?" When nobody else on his team does; it's only him, and, it seems, Ren. Is that significant? Are more such people brought here? Or is it something else?

[cybermask]

Oh? That was interesting! Lancelot, she'd need to see him in action. A good ol' two people team up.

"Yeah, didn't know I could do anything with it until I came here." She shrugged. "I had the blue door but it was locked when I went to it most of the time. The hypothesis I have with the wildcard trait is that it means whatever events happen around you, typically you are caught in the center of it. Those here that don't have that trait don't seem to have a large major, for lack of better words, plot."

[lakebrat]

"They're not the protagonist, you mean?" Different worlds, yes, but he hazards it anyway—his own Futaba would relate.

[cybermask]

"Yeah, exactly!" she smiles. "I need to do more testing but, the wildcard tends to be able to have a bit of space to have their own team and it seemed whatever happens, happens around them. If it's the phantom thieves, or SEES. The metaverse or Tartarus or the Tv dungeon situation."

[lakebrat]

"Huh. Which ones are SEES, again? A predecessor of the Phantom Thieves, I take it."

He saw them mentioned on the board, but not in any useful detail.

[[ooc: and then they went to investigate Leblanc and its attic, and BMTaba saw Goro's attic and saw him have a minor happysad over a mysterious pot of sunflowers, ooooooh.]]