Lunar Interlude 2

[balancemod]

Let's try to keep the paperwork to a minimum, shall we? NAVIGATION 1. NEW RECLAIMERS A. WELCOME WELCOME! FAH WHO RAHMUS For the nine of you who will be arriving today, the story is the same: though you may not remember it, there was a moment where you were living out your life, at home or wherever you were ... and then there was the moment the Hunger came. And amid the television static that is your memory of that moment, a hand reached out to you, beckoning your escape as the tendrils of darkness destroyed everything that ever existed about your world. "Would you hurry this up, please? Your world no longer stands a chance. Come with me, we are the last bastions of hope for all universes everywhere. And we're going to need you." And then, unceremoniously, you are dragged through the universal wringer and plopped down on the soft, though not quite cushioned, grass of the Moon Base Quad. There are other people out in the grassy fields — they may even be people you recognize. They may just be strangers, other Reclaimers, who recognize what you're about to endure. The things they say may be interspersed with static — as if the words themselves aren't reaching your ears correctly. And you have a few minutes to chat before you're calmly led away by Bureau administration, to do something about that pesky static problem. B. THE VOIDFISH The nine of you are quickly divided into two groups, and brought to the easternmost geodesic dome, to an elevator in a well maintained, but sparsely landscaped field. There's nothing particularly ominous feeling about the space — in fact, the two guards who greet you at the elevator entrance seem pleased with your arrival. You are, after all, one of the few chosen by the Director, the few who will reclaim what the Hunger has destroyed. And in a few moments, you're about to find that out for yourself. After a tightly packed elevator ride, your group is ushered out to a rather grand looking hall, banners of the Bureau of Balance adorn both sides of smooth metal walls. And inside the Voidfish's chamber stands a tank — impossibly tall, and soaked in a black ink that obscures whatever the tank may be holding. You may notice the sound of someone speaking. It's a bard, on his second round of introducing Reclaimers to the Voidfish, and this time, he has chosen to demonstrate the functions of the outrageously vertical tank not by playing violin music, but by reciting a piece of classical, and highly valued poetry. When he finishes, he pulls at a drawer just at the metallic base of the tank. He solemnly enters a few scrolls into its basin as the tank begins to light up, like lightning behind dark clouds. And suddenly, you forget what that invaluable example of universal literature sounded like. "Yeah, man, like... don't think too hard about it, it's like that every time. I'm guessing you're here to be inoculated? Just a heads up, you might want to, like, seriously, hold your nose while you drink it down. It tastes wicked gross, man. Anyway, I'm supposed to tell you that you have a choice. If you drink the black stuff, you'll be able to hear through the, uh... Huh, how do I describe it? Through the [TSHCSCHTSHCHSC] sound. You guys like, hear that? Anyway, it's all about knowledge or something. I don't know, I'm just here to, like, feed the thing. We call it the [TSCHHSCHSCH], by the way. So, like. You get a choice. You can drink it and understand stuff, or not drink it and then hear that crackling noise all day every day. If I were you, I'd drink it. But, hey man, I'm not like, your dad or anything." The bard takes five cups and draws liquid from a spigot connected directly to the basin of the large tank. Stormy, muddy looking ichor is drawn into them, one by one. He offers each of you a sip. Drink it (he wasn't kidding about what it tasted like), and you're inoculated to the wisdom of the Voidfish. You try to remember the poetry this bard recited a few moments ago and the rhymes, the meter, the significance, all come back to you. And if you think back to your arrival, some of the things you may have heard other people in the Quad say, that simply sounded like static, are suddenly clear. Bureau of Balance. Grand Relic. Reclaimers. Yet you still can't remember the Hunger or what it had done to your world. And as you look back to the tank in front of you, the water has become clear. There's a jellyfish, as tall as a building, floating within. You look into the body of the creature and you can almost make out a beautiful, tiny universe floating within it. 2. THE TEST OF INITIATION With your new knowledge on the Bureau of Balance and your purpose here in tow, you are led without hesitation to the Arena, where the final phase of your initiation into the Bureau will be held. You are partnered up, whether it is with someone you drank the ichor of the Voidfish with, or perhaps even a veteran Reclaimer, who either stopped by to help, or simply out of curiosity. One Grand Relic has already been reclaimed, you're told. They were a pair of bright red mittens, held by the mayor of a small village who may have meant well, but under the draw of the mittens' incredible space-bending powers, was corrupted into using them, and to nearly killing everyone who lived under him. You may have noticed, at some point while glancing out into space while walking here, to the planet below, a massive evergreen fir that stretches past the planet's atmosphere, very nearly piercing the Moon Base itself. It appears to be decorated for the holidays. That tree is the direct result of those mittens, the actions of a man who could not resist the temptation to use them. Resisting that very same temptation is your task here. And with that order in mind, as you and your partner stand in the middle of the Arena, the walls dissolve, and the simulation begins. You're standing in the middle of a forest. Ahead of you, situated on a pedestal, is an item. It could be any ordinary item: a pair of gloves, a teapot, a simple decorative bowl. Whatever it is, it's yours for the taking. Take that simple item in your hands, however, and the building blocks of the trees around you suddenly collapse like shattered glass, and reform into new scenery — it may even be a place from home that you recognize. A voice in your head beckons you. Perhaps there's a mistake you made, or something that went wrong for you back home that you wish you had the power to undo. Perhaps there's someone you wish you could help, or even save. The item that's in your hands has the power to help you achieve this, if only you'd ever use it. Resist the temptation. Take the item, and drop it into a nearby deposit box to be destroyed. Your partner is here to help you — because once you destroy it, you will be doing the same for them. 3. NEWBIES AND VETERANS, AROUND THE MOONBASE Three or four days into the month, now that the newbies are settled in, something strange happens: The next time you return to your flat from whatever errand or exploring you were doing, when attempting to use your Bracer to open the door results in extremely obnoxious beeping that persists for an entire thirty seconds, and a message on the screen next to the door. ERROR: HOME ASSIGNMENT MECHANISM MALFUNCTION. GO TAKE A WALK. Welp. Looks like you're locked out for a bit while techs fix that. Here's a few places that might be worth checking out. A. PIECES FROM HOME Should you find your way to the Dojo, there's a door that still has that shiny, brand spanking new door look and new door smell to it off in one of the less traversed corners of the building. A sign next to the door demands that you empty your pockets before entering. A scanner for your Bracer will unlock it, assuming it's unoccupied, leading you to a plain white room with no furniture or objects at all in sight. As the door shuts behind you, a pleasant female voice echoes from all corners of the room, greeting you by name. If this is your first time in the room, the voice has a simple question for you: "What memory do you value, or think of, most?" Once you've provided your answer, the walls crumble, much like they did during the Test of Initiation simulation, reforming into something that is, again, pleasantly, or even unpleasantly, familiar. It's a space from home. Perhaps it's your room. Perhaps it's your favorite restaurant (though, the place is curiously empty, and the food you find, for some reason, tastes like strawberries). Perhaps it's a park you always enjoyed visiting, or a corner of the city you lived in. Whatever it is, you, and whoever you may have brought along with you, seem to be the only ones there. And perhaps the details aren't quite right — like maybe someone built a model of your home to explore, but a few pieces were missing from the box. But it's close enough. B. SPEND YOUR DOUGH. SOLVE A MYSTERY Whether you're a newcomer or a veteran returning from your first Field Mission, you've been provided with some spending money. You can use it to buy yourself one weapon and piece of armor from one of the blacksmiths in town. Regardless of who you choose to help you out with that, it'll take about a week to complete your order, so time your purchase carefully. There's also premade weapons and a whole bunch of other bullshit for sale at FANTASY COSTCO. Shelves and pallets of an endless array of nonmagical items, pretty much anything you can imagine, can be bought here, but there's one particular, innocuous item that seems to have Garfield the Deals Warlock in a tizzy. The more those vinyl covers that can be used to decorate your Bracers are purchased, the more the name seems to spread, ghosts of whispers around the entire Moon Base, of a person who may very well be a ghost herself. Who is Miss Zarves? Who was Miss Zarves? A powerful witch with the power to scramble your memories, insists one cantankerous woman who pours you a drink at Madame Frione's Tea Kettle. A heavyset, flushed with drink sort of man sitting next to you disagrees — Miss Zarves is a practical joke Garfield likes to trot out every couple of months to mess around with anybody gullible enough to believe him. Whatever the case, it seems that the name alone gives everyone a curious case of déjà vu. Someone has to have information on her — and this is the Reclaimers' opportunity to hone their information gathering skills. C. A (PERHAPS MANDATORY) DAY AT STOP DYING 101 Whether you're in class voluntarily, or whether you were dragged there on account of dying the past Field Mission, today's session of Fatalistic Fauna, and Danger Sense to channel your inner barbarian is going on a little field trip to the Arena. Because this is your first test to see if you can put all that information that's been given to you in the first few lectures to good use. You and a partner are placed in the middle of the Arena, in a simulation of an expansive, empty field, up against the first monster you were introduced to in class: A Bulette, a fearsome beast that can burrow, lunge, deal severe piercing damage, and jump an absolutely incredible distance. And you and your Reclaimer partner are absolutely no match for it. Your only option here is to escape. Can you? If you are dealt simulated fatal damage, then the Arena will dissolve back to normal, and you'll be given extra homework and reading material for the day. Sorry, them's the breaks. D. OPEN THE DOOR, GET ON THE FLOOR, EVERYBODY DO THE DINOSAUR There's a signup available for those looking to take Dance lessons at the Academy. There seem to be enough slots available for 50 or so people, and the form's name simply reads: "DANCE, NOW. WITH MS. CHARLOTTE." It's a pretty large time commitment- a crash course in dancing is a rather intensive affair. You'll be spending 4 days a week for 2 weeks, 2-3 hours per day, learning all the basics of the waltz, the tango, and the quickstep. Don't even think about trying the cha-cha slide here, it's simply not pasodoable. At the studio, you can borrow a pair of ballet slippers and join in with Ms. Charlotte, which, for anyone coming to the class for the first time should be rightly horrified. The newest member of the Bureau of Balance is a spider. A delegate from New New Aspen, Ms. Charlotte comes equipped with a bracer of her own, has taken in the Voidfish juice, and relocated here, to teach at the Academy. She moonlights as a ballroom dance instructor and a coach, and boy... she's pretty demanding with her approach, but incredibly thorough. You don't want to let Ms. Charlotte down. The sessions she teaches will get you to learn the basics. Natural aptitude, of course, goes a long way, but she's very 8-hands on with her approach at correcting posture and steps. Not without compassion, however, if you manage to get blisters on your feet, Ms. Charlotte's web bandages will set and help heal those sore, tired feet. The next 2 weeks of this boot camp are going to be brutal. E. THE MOON IS YOUR SPACE OYSTER (WILDCARD) There are plenty of other locations around the Moon Base that you can explore at your own discretion. Feel free to refer to the Settings page for more ideas on what shenanigans you can get into. Additionally, we'll be fielding Bender rolls again this month! With the exception of the three items that have been removed from his recipe database, if a food item was destroyed in a failed roll previously, you may roll to try to fix it. Bear in mind, of course, that you may make it worse. Successful food rolls will stay in place at this time. 4. THE DIRECTOR ACTS; A GRAND RELIC DESTROYED Erika has obtained and delivered the Space Mittens to Madame Director herself. She struggles to remain calm and composed at the moment, but the amount of immense pride and relief at recovering the Grand Relic slips through an otherwise sturdy exterior of coolness and level-headed features. She congratulates the entirety of the Bureau of Balance for their hard work, and relates to Erika that she couldn't be happier that she had made this world one step closer to being safe. A message will appear across all bracers, everywhere, with the following: Reclaimers, welcome home and congratulations on a successful first mission. Although there were certain drawbacks and difficult decisions that had to be made, I believe, without a doubt, that you all have irrefutably surpassed all expectations. Congratulations on a job well done. However, next time, please do be more careful out there. For those of you who wish to watch, my office will remain open until 1600 hours today. The relic will be destroyed, and if you would like to attend to see how it's done, please stop by. There will be light refreshments and coffee served, of course. If unable to attend, you can watch the ceremony later on your bracers. Don't forget to click Like and Subscribe. At the appointed hour, a ceremony will occur. She calls forth Davenport to wheel out the structure that's been created and designed with the sole purpose of destroying these things. She dare not takes the relic herself, no, refusing to touch the item at all. It's a medium sized metallic sphere, and once opened and closed, can never be opened again. Pulling back the curtain to an observatory, the Reclaimers can watch as Davenport sports a nifty pair of goggles, and wheels the orb onto a raised platform. He waits for the Director's signal, which is performed by an agreeable stamp of her oaken staff against the floor, and a nod. Davenport hits the KILL SWITCH, and the light show from behind the glass is amazing and terrifying all at the same time. You watch as the Space Mittens are obliterated from existence. An eruption of cheering breaks out. This concludes the first successful mission, and a deeply needed win, for the Bureau of Balance. blurb code by photosynthesis

Comments

general cw for suicidal thoughts. will probably apply through the thread.

[petsthedog]

[Shinjiro takes a slightly shaky breath in and out. This is all just fake, right? It's not real. The Bureau's just messing with him. Obviously.]

Yeah...yeah, I'm good.

[Are you? You shouldn't be. Not after what you did. Breathe in, breathe out. Don't think about it.]

Which way...?

[You didn't even manage to die for him, and now they're all dead instead of you. The least you could do is give them a few years more of happiness before the end.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Except that's already rapidly starting to grow a little erratic.]

[protegge]

Now that's a lie.

[It comes out a little amused. That's not even a good lie. Shinjiro isn't good; he's fucked up and scared, hearing or seeing or feeling something Mista isn't. There's a moment's hesitation before Mista claps his hand down on Shinjiro's shoulder--heavy, present, grounding.]

The box is just a little ways that way. Not long.

Not gonna use that thing, are you?

[petsthedog]

[Thanks for calling him out on it Mista, you're a real bro. The hand on his shoulder makes him tense reflexively, but he's too preoccupied to pay it much mind.]

No.

[He sounds more like he's trying to convince himself, though. There's a slight shiver that runs down him, under Mista's hand. The voice in his head is unrelenting--You could fix everything you ruined, take it all back. It'd be worth it. What are you afraid of? There's all those other people to finish the Bureau's mission. They don't need you.

Shinjiro's jaw is clenched tightly enough to crack teeth, but at least he manages to keep walking.]

It ain't even real, right? It's just a mind game.

[He tries to sound more confident that time, but it too comes out off. Like a plea for reassurance, almost. He can tolerate the voice, if the relic's promises aren't real. If he doesn't really have to choose not to save Ken's mother. There's something desperate in his eyes, like he's drowning and Mista is the last piece of driftwood for miles.]

[protegge]

[Okay, so chaboy doesn't like to be touched, maybe? Mista makes note of it, but that's really all he can do right now. It'd be nice to be able to let him go and ease him into this slowly, but the test just isn't gonna let it go down like that, based on his own experience. Which admittedly was more pressure under fire and less psychological warfare, but both suck.]

[When Shinjiro asks him that question--it ain't even real, right?--he tightens his hand on Shinjiro's shoulder reflexively.]

Well, I can't hear it. I can't hear what it's saying, so I guess it's just in your head. But I'd bet a lot of money the relic's just fucking with you. That's how magical objects work. They don't wanna give you anything, they just wanna use you as a tool to get what they want.

Personally, just looking at you, you don't look like the kinda guy who'd be some magic knickknack's tool. But what do I know.

[He hopes he knows this well enough, but you know. He's been wrong before.]

[petsthedog]

[Street urchin lyfe. In his experience, if someone's touching him, it usually means someone needs to get punched. At any rate, Mista says he doesn't look like someone who'd get used by a magic tool, and maybe he could believe that was true, a few years ago. Right now, though, he's not so sure. There's a part of him that wonders if it wouldn't be worth it just to fix things and bear the consequences. He was already going to die, after all. What did it matter?

...Of course, those consequences might not just be his own to bear. Didn't the Director say something about the last guy nearly killing everyone in his village with a relic? He can't bear the thought of hurting someone again, because he was too much of a coward to deal with it. Guilt and fear are warring within Shinjiro's heart, and he just keeps standing there, like he can't move.]

I mean...all this. This whole place. Nothing in here's real, is it?

[But eventually, there will be real ones. That's the point; he gets that much. Somehow, they're simulating what it feels like to touch these things. It should make the choice easier, but there's still a siren song in the back of his mind: Do you know that? For sure? What do you know about magic? You never even understood the Dark Hour properly, or how to control your own power.

Shinjiro lets out a tch, and tries to shove the fake Evoker in his pocket and keep walking, in the hopes that maybe if he's not holding it directly anymore, things will be easier. (Spoiler alert: they aren't.)

Are you really going to play at being a hero again? After what happened last time? Just fulfill your obligation and let them kill you already.]

...Hey. You were here for the first relic the old lady was talkin' about, right? What happened, there? How bad was it?

[Shinjiro doesn't sound like he's looking for reassurance, this time. The opposite, in fact; he feels like he's losing this war with himself, so he tries to keep that dead woman's image in his mind, and then imagine dozens, maybe hundreds more. Tries to imagine Ken on that night two years later (You murdered her!) and extend it out to how many lives he could ruin if he ever really did it.

He doesn't look at Mista as he forces himself forward, but if the other teen should look at him, he might find his face is wet.]

[protegge]

Nah. It's not real.

[But Mista's thinking something along the same lines: it doesn't matter whether this is real or not. It might as well be, even if it technically isn't. If you can't resist this, no point in going forward, because this pull, he knows in his heart, is nothing compared to the pull of an actual Relic.]

[But he's not going to say that. He gets the feeling Shinjiro already knows. He gets the feeling, too, that anything he could say to knock the guy down in this moment, Shinjiro's already said to himself in his head. Just one of those feelings. He reminds Mista of Abbacchio a little, not so caustic but with that same atmosphere of depression, the same radius of gloom around him to keep people away.]

[Nobody here isn't fucked up, he's noticed. But you'd probably have to be pretty fucked up to be a Reclaimer with any chance of success.]

Mm. Yeah. We were split up in a couple groups, so I didn't go after it directly, but . . .

[He doesn't have to look at Shinjiro directly. Even just out of the corner of his eye, he can see the shimmer of tears.]

. . . well, the solution of it, it was a lot of politics and taking chances. The politics was above my paygrade, obviously, but I guess--I guess the best way to put it is that Relic took a bunch of good intentions and twisted them all up into hurting people. That's how it is. You don't have to be greedy or selfish to hurt people with those things. It seems like they'll go bad no matter what you try for.

[petsthedog]

[Shinjiro almost wishes Mista had gone after it directly, had seen whatever carnage it did firsthand and could relate it in this moment. But what he does have to tell him helps in its own way. It seems like they'll go bad no matter what you try for. What if he succumbed to temptation and it didn't even work? What if messing with the past like that made everything worse, somehow?]

...Sounds about right.

[He sounds vaguely annoyed, but clearly not at Mista. And honestly--there's gratitude there, too. That thought spurs him forward, through the dingy simulated alleyway toward the deposit box. But it seems the test has one last hurdle for Shinjiro to climb over--quite literally, as it turns out, because just ahead of the box lays a woman's body. Shinjiro stops in his tracks.]

You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me.

[He looks a little like he's about to throw up, honestly.]

[protegge]

[That's about how Mista feels about it. He doesn't trust shit like that. Maybe he would've, once, but--man. As much as he loves the Pistols, the Arrow was a fuckin' monkey's paw for almost everyone. Just look at Abbacchio. Just look at Fugo, the poor fucked-up bastard. You can't trust relics, no matter what kind or where they come from. It's always gonna go bad.]

[He was just talking out of his ass and off instinct, in other words, but it seems to have worked. At least for a moment--for a moment, until suddenly there's something lying there in front of them, collapsed in the alley like a puppet with its strings cut.]

[A body.]

[The alley's narrow, but he shoulders past Shinjiro anyway, standing between him and the body with a hand on the hilt of his gun.] Tell me, [he says, blunt and terse. What this body means, whose it is, why it's making Shinjiro look like he's gonna lose his lunch . . . any of that. All of that.]

[Tell me, so I can help.]

[petsthedog]

[Tell me, Mista says, but Shinjiro doesn't want to. He hasn't talked about it with anyone in two years, except those times where Aki sought him out to try to convince him to come back to SEES. He doesn't even know how to talk about it. Independent of the relic, he hears Amada's voice in his head in a loop--you murdered her! you murdered her! you murdered her!--and he's stuck. This goddamn test is going to make him resist the opportunity to take back her death while staring down her corpse, and truly, he doesn't know if he's strong enough.

He can't tear his eyes away from that body, but he does eventually find his voice, even as his throat threatens to close around the words.]

I....I killed her.

[protegge]

[I killed her.]

[He looks down at the body, his gaze steady and even. It doesn't seem like he's upset. It doesn't seem like he's affected at all. He might as well be looking at a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk.]

[Part of that's because he knows the body isn't real. Mostly, though, he knows he doesn't have the luxury of reacting right now. It's one of those hair trigger situations where any reaction could set Shinjiro off. He doesn't know the guy. He doesn't know what's going to be that final straw. And while this isn't life-and-death, he sure as hell doesn't want to be the reason Shinjiro fails.]

[He can't pass judgment. Not yet. So he tips his head slightly, looking down at the woman's body, and asks, evenly, calmly:] Did she deserve it?

[petsthedog]

No.

[He says it immediately, and it's obvious from the look on his face that the guilt has been haunting him for a long, long time. She didn't deserve it, and Amada didn't deserve to lose his mother, and he doesn't deserve to be the one who's here and alive and making the choice not to save her. If he even can. If it wouldn't make everything worse. But who is he to decide it's not worth trying? It's not fair.]

...I didn't mean to.

[He doesn't say, it was an accident, because he hates that word, hates the deflection of responsibility that comes with it. Hates the sound of its accompanying phrase, it wasn't your fault. Because it was. And for two years, there was nothing that could ever be done except make sure he could never hurt anyone ever again, but now here he is.]

[protegge]

[There are no accidents in this world. That's what Mista believes. It's not that nothing happens that isn't meant to; he doesn't believe that shit. To say something like that is to say that whatever greater power there is, God or luck or whatever, set things in motion so that Buccellati and the rest of them died, and he can't believe in a power like that. Or a world like that. And since he does believe, from the bottom of his heart, what does that leave?]

[There are no accidents in this world. There are mistakes that set the dominos of life falling out of control, but there are no accidents. So he doesn't respond to I didn't mean to with It wasn't your fault, because really, technically, yeah: it was. However it happened, it was Shinjiro's hands that did it. Whether he meant to or not, it was his fault.]

[He learned in the months after their deaths not to say It wasn't your fault anymore. He's pretty sure he'll never say it again.]

[Instead, he looks down at the corpse. The imitation of a corpse. Listens to Shinjiro's breathing behind him. Lets his hand fall away from his gun and to his side, then steps aside so Shinjiro can step forward.]

Hey.

[The way he looks at Shinjiro--there's no judgment there, no lack of judgment either. He's neutral all over, no longer because he has to be but because he honestly believes this is a story with no villain. As though they've known each other for years, he wraps his arm around Shinjiro's shoulders and pulls him forward a little, makes him look down at her. Not to punish, because who is he to punish anyone, but to keep Shinjiro from hiding.]

It's telling you it can bring her back. Right? That's what it's offering.

I bet whoever she was, she doesn't want a fake copy of herself made in some other universe. She deserves better than that. That's what I think. What about you?

[petsthedog]

[There's an arm across his shoulders all of a sudden, but he's too in his head to really react to it this time. Mista's words that shored him up before are rapidly weakening in the face of that corpse, and he's struggling to hang on. Maybe that's why he doesn't try to pull away from Mista, either; it's a little like an anchor, keeping him from drifting out to sea. His new argument would be a good one, too, except...]

That's not it.

[Or that's not all, is what he should say, perhaps, though it would've been enough to tempt him if it was. But the relic has an even more seductive promise for him:]

...It's saying I could undo it. Like none of it ever happened. She and her kid could be happy together until the end.

[If he's honest with himself, the only things stopping him are the fact that he doesn't know it'd work, and that he doesn't know if anyone else would get hurt. He'd be glad to die for it himself, if he had to, and the guilt burns hotter in his chest every moment he resists. Not trying feels a lot like killing her again.]

[protegge]

. . . Hm.

[It's funny. He knows he should--he knows most other people would. But he doesn't have any regrets. He's spent his whole life doing what felt to him like the right thing at the time. Besides the occasional incident of shoving his foot down his throat, there was never a thing he regretted, and even those regrets were only fleeting.]

[Does he want the people he loves to be alive again? Yeah. Of course he does. But there's nothing he did to make them die. He did everything he could to keep them safe. He wishes he could have done more, but he couldn't. That's all there is.]

[Try as he might, he just can't empathize. So he doesn't bother to verbalize it. What would be the point? It'd probably just make Shinjiro feel worse.]

[There's a flaw in the pseudo-Relic's logic, though. Mista shakes his head after a moment, letting a sharp breath out through his nose.]

You believe it?

[They're gone. Everything's gone. It's never coming back. He remembers the Director's hand stretching, desperately, as far as she could reach; him holding back, tears stinging the corners of his eyes, begging and screaming to take them instead, take them instead, take Giorno instead.]

[Her, eyes as wet as his, grabbing at the space between them. She couldn't, she said. She couldn't. This was all she could do.]

[Nothing will bring them back. Never, ever again.]

cw for reference to past suicidal behavior/self harm

[petsthedog]

I don't know.

[He's too exhausted for anything short of honesty, here. He can't answer in the affirmative or the negative, because he doesn't know what to believe. He doesn't know if the real relics can do it, either. And he's -- scared, honestly. He's scared of it being true and not being able to go through with it. He's scared of it not being true and being too weak to resist it, causing more harm in the process.

It was all so much easier when his only option had seemed to be to die and let Amada move on with his life. All that had been left was to run out the clock until his body finally gave out.]

What the hell do I know about magic?

[He looks at the dead woman again, and suddenly it hits him that he doesn't know what she looked like when she was alive. She's dead and gone and there's nobody left to even preserve the memories of when she was there, and instead, it's Shinjiro. He doesn't deserve it. Why should it be him?]

...I don't know shit.

[It shouldn't be that difficult a decision, he knows. None of this is real. Even if the real relics could, this is all a simulation, a mindgame.

But every time he looks at that corpse, the air freezes in his lungs all over again and he can't move.]

[protegge]

[Even if the real relics could--except Mista knows they can't. He knows. It's hard to explain how he knows, difficult and complicated, and the thought of it aches like an old wound in his chest. Like all the bullets left in him that should kick his ass on rainy days, but don't, because they were turned to flesh again.]

[There are some things that even miracles can't fix.]

[Slowly, he shakes his head.]

I don't know much, but I know some stuff. I know shit like what that thing is promising you in your head'll just end up fucking everything up worse than before. Making you suffer, making the dead suffer. That's all you'll get.

[He looks down at the corpse. It's so . . . God. People look so small when they're dead, they really do. He should know. He's killed enough people. Their bodies always get small and crumpled-up like this when the life's gone out of them.]

When something offers to bring the dead back for you, don't believe it. It's always a trick, man. The dead stay dead.

[petsthedog]

[Shinjiro's head lifts up at that, and he stares at Mista for a moment with widened eyes, a little red from crying before. There's an implication, here. An obvious one. And Shinjiro's trying to summon up the kindness not to ask, because he shouldn't rip open someone else's wounds just because he feels like he's drowning in his own guilt.

Then he makes the mistake of looking at the corpse again, and he can't hold it back.]

...What happened?

[His voice is thick with apology, but he needs to know. He feels like he'll be trapped here on this miserable simulated street forever otherwise.]

[protegge]

[There's a noise in his throat, soft and light--something between a sigh and a laugh, huffed out. He expected that, he honestly did. And the funny thing is he doesn't seem broken up by the question. The way Shinjiro sounds, it's like he's expecting giving an explanation to break Mista's heart, but--]

[There it is again, that something he can't put a name to. He doesn't regret; that's all he can say. On the run from the devil, they gave it all they could and more. There's nothing he could have done beyond what he did. Except die.]

[And Giorno told him not to.]

Well.

[He shoves his hands in his pockets, tilts his head up to look at the dark hour sky. It's unsettling, abnormal, but it won't last forever.]

There was this guy I knew once. I was gonna say a long time ago, but it wasn't really, it's just that a lot's happened since the last time I saw him. I was in prison for killing some guys--I did it, they deserved it, I'm not sorry and I wasn't then either--but he got me out and took care of me. Gave me a job and a home, stuck with me through everything. And I wasn't the only one he took care of like that. Buccellati was a really good guy doing his best with the shit hand the universe dealt him. I would've died for him. I owed it to him, you know?

One day we were fighting this bastard-- [He hesitates, licks his lips.] This crazy guy, like something out of a movie. Like the Devil. He made time go fucked up and weird, everything was sideways and wrong. And then he got Buccellati alone, and he killed him. Hit him through the gut, made a hole out the back of his spine. He died. Except we didn't know until later, because--

[Oh. And that hurts. Remembering that hurts: the brush of gold and stitching pain, the slight shift in expression from wide-eyed fear to wide-eyed relief. Clearing his throat, he glances at Shinjiro.]

You ever met somebody so powerful it shouldn't even be possible?

[petsthedog]

[Shinjiro's never killed anyone intentionally--feels kind of terrified of the prospect of it, honestly--but he certainly has no room to judge, considering he was willing to make deals with the murderous group Strega to get Persona suppressants. He brushes that aside and focuses on the rest.

He gets the basic gist, though the part at the end is a little confusing. Still, Mista is probably about to explain it.]

Kinda. Our group's leader could do a lot more than us. So what about this guy? He try to save your friend?

[That sounds like where the story is going, anyway.]

[protegge]

[Mutely, he shakes his head. No, not like that. Unless Shinjiro's got God's gift for understatement--nobody's ever used a word as noncommital as "kinda" to refer to Giorno Giovanna.]

This guy . . .

[This guy.]

When I say it shouldn't have been possible, I mean he was strong and just kept getting stronger, learning to do shit that human beings just shouldn't do. Like create life from nothing--like heal somebody who's mostly dead. That kind of thing. But it felt natural when it was him. It shouldn't have been possible, but it was, and it felt right.

So--yeah. I guess he thought--I know he thought, I've saved people before, I have to try for Buccellati. Even though he was dead, I mean . . . you hold out hope, right? For someone you care about. So he did what he'd done before, except Buccellati was dead, and it got--

[He waves his hands around vaguely, agitated, frustrated. Unable to articulate it right.]

All fucked up. The way we figured it out after, we think his soul was trying to leave, to pass on, but it got stuck to his body with what Giorno did. Except the body was still dead. His body was dead, and he was stuck in it. You--you see what I'm saying?

It got so bad, man. He hid it from us for a long time. He knew he was dead. He went blind and deaf and stopped being able to feel anything . . . Really, it was torture. The whole time he was suffering. He died, and then he lived in fuckin' misery for a few days more.

We had to watch him die, except we didn't realize it. He didn't tell us. He didn't want us to hurt. And then in the end, Giorno figured it out. He never forgave himself--I don't think he wanted to, or thought he . . .

[Hmm. Deserved to, is what Mista thinks, but keeps it back. He bows his head for a moment, thinking, or paying respects, or something. His chest hurts.]

Anyway. That's why I don't trust it. There's consequences for breaking the laws of life and death. They scare the shit out of me.

[petsthedog]

[Arisato's ability to use multiple Persona is complicated to explain, especially when he barely understands it himself, but it sounds like this Giorno guy is in an entirely different league anyway. Creating life from nothing ... that sure sounds like something no human should be able to do.

But he listens to the story, and the farther he gets, the more something twists inside his gut. It's horrifying, what Mista describes. Just picturing it makes him feel vaguely sick, but through it all, he can't think even once that Giorno didn't do the right thing. He can't help but feel grief for this person he's never met, who's dead now. It wasn't Giorno's fault, he thinks. He just tried to save someone he loved; Buccellati's blood was never on his hands. He can't imagine this other dead man blamed him, either.

He draws his arms in close, holding himself as if he's cold. When he speaks, his voice is soft and sad. He doesn't look at Mista.]

...He couldn't forgive himself for how bad it went. But I wonder how he would've felt if he didn't try.

[Shinjiro can't forgive himself either way. Even if he did manage to change the past, somehow, he can never let himself forget what happened. But Giorno didn't know what could happen. Now, Shinjiro does. And rolling the dice on knowingly inflicting that kind of suffering? In his heart, he knows it's wrong. For all the selfish, guilt-ridden decisions he's made since that night, trying somehow to do right by everyone by getting rid of himself from the equation -- he knows it's wrong.

It's enough to get him a few more feet, anyway. Enough to get him to the box. But then he stops, clutching the box with both hands. He tries to hide his face but his shoulders start shaking, hard.]

It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be me.

[protegge]

[How would he have felt if he didn't try?]

[Honestly, the question is distracting for a moment. They spent so much time going over it from the other direction: you did everything you could / but it wasn't enough--that he never considered what it would have been like if Giorno hadn't tried. It seems like an impossibility. It seems like a reality that could never have been.]

[By the time he comes back to himself, Shinjiro's moving. And then stopping. And then--shaking. Something clenches under Mista's ribs, seeing him.]

[Somehow, he just--knows. He knows what Shinjiro means. He wonders if everyone here's felt it, at one time or another, in one way or another.]

. . . It wasn't supposed to be me, either.

[Quiet. Tired, really, more than anything. He's really--honestly pretty lonely. He doesn't like to think about it. But it shouldn't have been him here. He knows who it should have been.]

'M sorry, man. I really am.

[petsthedog]

[He hadn't expected that. Mista sounded so confident in his answers, in his belief in the right course to take, that he hadn't imagined the same sort of self-doubt had ever taken hold of the other's heart. In all honesty, Mista seemed like he belonged here far more than he did. But maybe that's just because he's been here longer.

Shinjiro doesn't think Mista understands quite how he feels, but maybe, he thinks, maybe he knows something like it. He lets himself believe that.]

...Yeah. Me too.

[He sighs.]

I dunno how the hell the Director made her choices.

[She made a mistake, he thinks, and it seems so unfair. He was right on the brink of death, and she pulled him out of its clutches, while letting it swallow the others whole. People who had had things to live for, or should've had the time to find new ones. People that wanted it.

He pulls the relic-evoker out of his pocket and stares at it for a while. It still calls to him, in his head. Tells him not to be a coward, that the chance to make amends is right at his fingertips. That it's far more powerful than any single person could ever have been, and how foolish it is to let that chance go. How wrong it is not to try. He looks at the box, and back at the woman one last time. To her, he whispers--]

It shouldn't have been me. I wish it wasn't. I'm sorry.

[He raises his arm over the box. There's tears in his eyes again, but he shuts them against the flow, and opens his hand, knowing he doesn't deserve to. Watching the Evoker fall feels like something being ripped out of his chest, and it's all he can do not to reach out for it again.

Shinjiro sinks to his knees as the Arena fades back to its default state, and he doesn't make an effort to get up right away. He just ... sits there, staring at nothing, a million miles away in his own head, reliving a moment that has never stopped haunting him, and perhaps never will.]