Akira didn't often become agitated, Especially when it involved reflections of his friends.
He knew Futaba had a good point - and a lot of concern - but it had felt as though she wasn't willing to listen to him. Eorzea was not a magical fantasy land full of fun and adventure; it was dangerous, and while yes, 'just don't go there' was an option, it was one he was unwilling to take.
Eorzea wasn't the only dangerous world, anyway - he'd needed a more serious fighting style for ages, after waking up in the Sea, and when Eorzea had offered him that, he'd jumped at the chance.
Thus, her anger had in turn angered him - leaving him stalking off into a forest somewhere outside of Republic city. He'd stormed away in the direction of Outside The City in a bid to find somewhere isolated and alone to just. Vent.
Technically, he wasn't supposed to use Shin's power like this, but both he and the Voidsent had been getting fidgety - inasmuch as a largely nonverbal otherworld entity could be.
So he opted to let loose. Burn energy in a way that wouldn't harm anyone.
The result was a black-dressed young man wreathed in red energy clawing gouges into a perfectly innocent tree, wishing idly in a weird mix of separate personalities that it was Moving, that it could Fight Back, but Akira was happy enough to just be burning energy, so the Voidsent settled for that too.
They wouldn't be able to keep this up for long - this ability was draining, and only ever temporary - but at least for the moment, there wasn't really 'Akira'. Just an Akira Shaped being treating a tree as though it had personally wronged his entire family tree.
He'd feel better afterwards - but energy buildup and anger had to go somewhere, and better that it be fed into a tree than into anyone he loved.
The creature was huge - much larger than most Shadows he'd fought in the metaverse, but no more unpredictable. It had it's abilities and it stuck to them - most of the tricks seemed to revolve around using it's size to it's advantage, or at least, trying to. Akira had plenty of experience fighting things bigger than he was though, and he was plenty mobile - size meant nothing if you couldn't keep up with your target, after all~
It was entirely too overconfident about it's power, too - Akira knew very quickly that this was a creature so accustomed to being The Strongest that the notion something could be stronger than it didn't even cross its mind.
It probably didn't help that the first several minutes of this fight, Akira had dedicated to only dodging and avoiding - putting in a few obligatory gunshots to keep it's interest, but ultimately just... avoiding. The creature seemed to be of the mind that such was all he could do, and that dodging was a sad, desperate attempt at staying alive.
But oh, how wrong it was. Akira's every move was calculated - he was much better at fighting now than he'd been back home - Eorzea was one of his favorite worlds for numerous reasons, particularly the amount of fighting styles it had that were free to learn to anyone of sufficient potential. And Akira had potential in spades.
As such, he knew better than run headlong into a fight with an opponent he didn't know the skills of - thus, in this unavoidable one, he spent time learning as many of the creatures tricks as it would use at this stage in the fight.
Noah and his gang, for whatever reason it had been that they'd not joined the fight, were definitely worried about him. There was certainly also an amount of fascination at how agile he was, judging from what little he could hear from them, but he was trying not to distract himself too much with them. They were safe, and furthermore, fully capable of defending themselves if it came to it.
Once Akira felt comfortable in his ability to read the creature's tells, predict its abilities and attacks before they would be used, he moved, pulling back for a moment as he reached up at his face-
"Satan-!" He cried, pulling at a metaphysical mask - and the shape of a monstrous, six-armed, six-winged deep blue serpent flashed into existence, coiled around him, and see-through in a way that indicated intangibility, or if you were particularly determined to believe it not real, a hologram. "Let's punish some sinners, huh~?" He hissed to the Persona - before changing tack, and rushing towards the creature before him.
Gods Hand was what he started with - the enormous blue serpent that was Satan moving as he did, never moving from their spot coiled around and hovering directly behind him - the both of them darting fast, taking advantage of thrown punches and too-wide swings to launch himself up, close to it's face for just long enough. Akira's mouth was wide open in a feral grin (it had been too long since he'd been able to really let loose) as he pulled an arm back as though to punch this Much Bigger Creature. And behind him, Satan moved in tandem - all three arms on the same side as Akira's, pulled back.
Akira's swing never technically hit. But it didn't need to make contact. The punch was metaversal in nature, channeled through him and swung by a creature with much more size and power - and that, DID make contact. Hard and fast and thoroughly unexpected, sending the enormous creature stumbling backwards with a cry of pain and shock.
A look at it's face - once both parties had settled - revealed that it was bleeding from the impact, though not fatally.
"Come on, you can do better than that, right? This is the first time I've been able to go all out in forever, I don't want it to stop THAT quick~!" He teased, Satan evaporating into smoke as Akira prepared to switch to something else. Fafnir was going to be his next choice, maybe. It'd be fun to take a hit straight-on and watch the force and momentum and damage of the punch be eaten up by the creature that threw it in the first place.
The creature's response was one of fury, and promised pain and death and all the things he'd heard a hundred times over. Akira didn't bother listening to any of it. His Personas sang with the urge to finally let loose.
Maybe he'd pretend to start losing halfway through so all his Personas could have a go~
It'd be delicious to throw a Salvation right as the creature thought it was about to win, only to watch its ugly face as it realized it's opponent was ready for another round~
There were many things the energy shields the ships of this world could block, Akira had learned. They were very sturdy, very stubborn and strong. Ships made to sail in space naturally had to be, to survive the debris careening around in the void of space. But to his eternal delight, metaversal energy wasn't one of them. How could it be? Noone expected it. Noone.
They didn't seem to know what to do with him as he made his metaverse-galleon swing around, the abnormal sea-ship riding the spacedust like it was an endless ocean - guns unloading at him, but his shadows shrugging it off with alternating tetrakarns and mediarahans.
The other shadows in his crew lent their power through the cannons - barraging the impressive, enormous, angular ship with a hail of metaversal damage that cut straight through their shields - melting through the plating with ease so much that it made him laugh.
He and his crew were doing it the way that all sea-ships did - strafing runs along the enemies sides, with smaller, faster cannons mounted along the deckrails to knock out any smaller ships that dared to come within range.
"Another run, and they'll be goners~! Lets see what kind of goods they drop, huh~?" He called out, his shadow-crew reflecting his excitement.
The ship was almost down, he could tell by the way it was trying to get away from him and his impossible seaship. But they wouldn't. His ship was faster. It ran on cognitive energy, and the thing about that was that it didn't run out.
If he willed it, it would happen.
This ship was a monster, because he believed it to be so. And he trusted it wouldn't fail him.
The bulky things here never dropped much of value to him, but that wasn't the point.
If they wanted to challenge him, well.
They'd learn soon enough to give him a wide, wide berth.
Rare was the time where Moth was truly angry. They were older than old, had seen the birth of life, and the end of it. Had seen numerous, uncountable glories and atrocities - such was the life of the soul of a Star. Patience and calm was their very name, after such a long and slow existence.Â
But this.
This angered them.
Of all the various energy types, named and unnamed, 'Deathâ energywas... particular. It could mainly be gained by giving - a spirit that passed on, if grateful enough, could offer a fragment of it to somebody, which could then in turn be used to make any number of things, or given to a weak spirit in turn, to empower them. Skykin used it for particularly powerful spells, or to empower yet-earthbound spirits in exchange for a strength boost of their own via the resultant rush of grateful emotional energy (Dynamis, the others had called it).Â
Death energy was given. Only ever given - a rare prize from grateful Skykin and Spirits alike.
But this man. This man had stolen it. Destroyed innocent lives and sucked up what Death came from it - not even positive Death, but tormented, agonized, terrified Death. All for power.
Moth was rarely angry.
But they were angry now.
They could feel their Self, their huge, starsized, furious self roiling beneath the surface of the tiny, childsized body theyâd chosen for themselves. Ordinarily, they kept all of themselves contained. Held within, because releasing all of that energy was noticable and scary and dangerous to those around them. They didnât care about that now. They were alone with this miserable excuse for a creature, and allowed their shell to crack and shatter, releasing all their carefully compacted starstuff in a blazing hot burst of combined energies.
Their form was still vaguely human - a head, a body, arms - but much, much bigger. Bigger, and containing no remorse.Â
Moth preferred to look and act like a child. They preferred to be nonhostile and peaceful. But they were not nearly as helpless as their preferences implied.
The little spider drone was one of several versions heâd made - the first successful one had gone to Soul (who he hoped liked it enough to not toss it at first opportunity or forget it in a closet somewhere) but he had since made a few more here and there, whenever he got the chance to practice - and since tinkering with machines, especially little ones, helped relax him.
He hadnât yet figured out how to actually make the little drone a spider - sure it could probably climb walls via pushing against two adjacent surfaces and using itâs many legs that way, but that wasnât the same thing.
Still though - itâd serve well enough for a test. Simple enough that if it broke, it broke, and advanced enough that if it worked, heâd probably be able to tell.
In theory, this would be similar to possession. Not simply sitting within it like he had with Freddy that one time, but fully taking it and making the whole of it his. It would be like when he practiced possession that first time - except there wouldnât be any fighting. The soul of the possessed sometimes fought back when he went inside, and it was hard to ignore the feeling of Somebody Else when he sat inside something with a soul.
This would be empty - so in theory, itâd be a nice hollow space waiting for something to fill it.Â
Or maybe itâd be solid, and heâd have to make the space himself. Then again, the code was there, so the space already existed.Â
Heâd just need to sidle himself in alongside it, and take the reigns.Â
And so with a breath that was more for comfort than any actual function, Akira dove in - gently sinking into it and looking for the Something that resembled a space to fill, a thing to replace, or to become.
Or to join with. A temporary mixing of parts, he realized, settling and diffusing within it - the machine didnât fight him as such - the code certainly didnât know what to do with the sudden addition of Stuff but made room for him all the same, shifting aside but at the same time trying very hard to continue doing what it was programmed to.
Akira, not familiar with anything that was happening, did the equivalent of moving aside, letting the small amounts of largely inactive code flow around him. It would be better, easier, to just let the code move and to watch it as it did so. Observe how it worked from in here, rather than brute forcing it.Â
Little by little, he reached out - taking command of a bit here, a bit there. Slowly replacing the actual code. Either that or he was simply going with it, adding to it, giving worlds more depth to something otherwise shallow.Â
It felt... strange. New. He liked it.Â
Again he watched the code - without relinquishing the parts heâd slipped himself into control of (feeling the gears and wires and metal in the most peculiar of ways, but feeling them all the same), navigating his way around to where the vision was. He needed to see. And heâd written this code, as simple as it was, so even inside he knew what to follow - at least once he familiarized himself with how it read from in here.Â
And so, see he did. In the strange, digital way that it saw, Akira saw. Not the clear vibrant images of a biological eye, but distances and sizes and data data data constantly being read and read and read- and understood, albeit barely. There was so much of it, and it nearly overwhelmed him - so he let the details wash past him, let the machine handle that because a human didnât think about all the little ways the BRAIN handled visual data, so neither would he as a machine try to understand it all.
He simply reached out to the other parts, the other movable parts and pieces, settling himself down into it in a fascinatingly strange way. He could feel the shape of it, and it wasnât a human shape, but despite the unrelenting oddness of the shape not being what he was âsupposedâ to be, it still felt a bit like a glove fitting perfectly. Strangely comfortable, despite knowing it wasnât his (usual) size or shape.
Only once the original code sat still and waited within him for orders did he experiment with motion.Â
Akira almost immediately tripped over the numerous legs, falling to the floor with a metallic noise (though heâd had the forethought to already HAVE it on the floor before trying this)
This was going to be a hell of a learning experience.
It was odd, how tired he felt. A bone-deep exhaustion he hadnât felt in a while, and attributed to the whole... Remnant and making a âHellâ for Goro thing. He hadnât been able to do that before, so of course heâd be drained. Maybe it had been force of will, or simply the ghost version of adrenaline keeping him up before.
All he knew was that whatever it was, it had worn off. Heâd fallen asleep - and whatever vague part of him was aware of that, was in no rush to wake up. Akira simply curled up where he lay, roll over, and sink deeper into sleep.
Sleep felt like a better option than being awake right now. He could get up and do things another day...
The first thing he could feel on waking up, before anything else, was a thick, overwhelming rage. The second was lingering pain from stab wounds. He didnât have the presence of mind to hide any of them (not that anyone that could see him was near him enough to require hiding them at all) as his first action, upon realizing where he was, was to focus his vision into Third Eye, and fly off.Â
It occurred very slowly that he was, somehow, a child again. Not important, he figured. Time bullshit, something something âhis own world wasnât that far inâ, rubber banding ages and some shit about how old he was âsupposedâ to be at this point in time.
He could feel the Other Being huddled away in his core - asleep, inactive, unaware. Resting after what had happened? Akira had no time for rest. Nor had he the temperament for it at this moment. No, Akiraâs mind was full of energy and hate and rage and plans.
Goro was here, and if the years spent with his Other-Half-But-Not had taught him anything, it was that Third Eye was damn good at tracking people. And unless Goro had also managed to hop worlds... He was somewhere in this world. On this planet.Â
A hiss of rage, something nearby shattering in a manner that no longer satisfied any part of him, and Akiraâs mind was already deadly focused.Â
As much as he hated seeing Clara go, he both really did feel terrible for accidentally interrupting Soul and Henryâs snuggling time with her - and also was relieved he was being left to his own devices. He had an itch that needed satisfying, a knife he needed to practice with, and a burning need to run run RUN-
Not in a hiding kind of way, oh no - the weight of the knife, the feel of the coat, subtle differences aside, it made him feel... better. More him, more energized.
So off Akira went, into the night. Part of him knew Clara would be disappointed. Henry too. Soul... Maybe. But what did he care what they thought. Hypocrites. Soul especially - who was he to say what was good and bad when he turned around and fucked over his own family?
A perfect candidate for Palace-work if heâd ever seen one. A shame he still couldnât get into the Metaverse.
Akira had to be careful. Cautious. Third Eye to light up camera angles and any nearby people - blind spots that he HAD to keep track of if this was to work. This... itch, he was following. The Something that had been bubbling up inside him, doubly so since heâd finally seen his old knife made new again. Said knife that he twirled in his hand before tucking it away again, out of sight.
Not now. RUN now, HUNT now - play later.Â
He couldnât hunt Goro, unfortunately - Goro was a target for later, for when he had more clues about where the young man could have gone. More practice with Third Eye and maybe he wouldnât need clues, though. Wasnât that a thought~?Â
All this practice with his ghostly abilities, too, and he wouldnât even NEED to be solid, he could possess him and impale him on his own cookware-! Or make smaller wounds, even just imprison him in his own head - oh wouldnât that be fun~
And then his eye was caught- a young man. Loud, rude, immediately making Akira want to be anywhere else. Or maybe sock him in the nose.
Perfect.Â
Akira - who had thus far been making his way slowly across rooftops - began tailing the fellow. Watching carefully - painfully slowly, making an odd noise here and there to spook him, herd him into solitary locations - until finally the time was right. The itch pushed at him, adrenaline roaring- and he struck. Leaping down off the rooftop, taking full advantage of both the darkness and Metaverse-based practice to sneak up behind him-!Â
Muffle him, quiet quiet no noise no attention. Canât be seen, canât let the Security go up this early into the game. Asshole noone would miss, a brief thought about Phantom Thieves Donât Kill but They Killed Him so the rules didnât APPLY ANYMORE- quick thrust as the itch raged, hold him hold him hold him-! Still. Quiet and still and a small amount of nausea quickly drowned out by an odd, elated adrenaline rush at the success. Unnoticed, unheard, and unseen. Just like with Shadows. Shadows, but easier. Softer. They died faster, took hits harder, and were equally as predictable.
Hunting humanities dark side for months made it simple to play with the real thing.
At first, he didnât understand how Henry could get so out of control so quickly.
Demi had slipped away the first moment he had a chance. Not back to his world, no, but being home and being, at least vaguely, distantly, in control? He didn't like it, on... well, several levels. Being aware brought a whole host of other problems he'd spent ages shoving so deep into a corner that it made it easier to pretend it wasn't real, or hadn't happened, or just pretending he didn't have any memory of the event.
Which was why he was on a roof in a distant part of Tempo, with Vivi hopefully not near enough to hear - it was a reasonably tall building, and Demi laying flat on his back, arms folded over his chest, quietly singing towards the night sky.
"In the evening sky, one more star tonight blinks its dying light... Burning brave, as it fades down into ashes..." He could have gone home. Could have easily slipped away for just long enough to shove it all away again. But that would have made Vivi sad, made Ghost sad - and also would have made Ren very disappointed in him.
So, distant roof, with a song that just felt right. Even though he was struggling with some of the notes on account of feeling quite sad, given the thoughts he would have rather not been thinking about.
"Hark, upon the wind, an eternal song - of the blood, and the pain, and the fierce days of battle." He sang softly, voice wobbling slightly with sadness. "Back into the earth your bones may have gone... But your souls are still burning bright. May your dreams be of peace and light..." A small little crack in his voice, and he shifted - curling up into a sad little ball on the roof.
Was it bad that part of him hoped Vivi wouldn't find him until he felt better?
He knew, as soon as it started. The second it started, he was aware of it. A sudden headache that wasnât really a headache, pain behind the eyes in a very specific way. And a rush of energy that his body didnât quite know what to do with. Oh, how he knew this, knew it as intimately as a person could - heâd been on the other end of this once before. Distant, gazing, knowing who he was, and not knowing, at the same time. Riding the rush of energy to his Other Half. To Akira.
He knew that this meant. What it signified. Although heâd made as much peace as he could with the idea Akira wouldnât be coming back, this new, sudden rush of very intimately familiar energy killed him inside, just a little. But at the same time, he grabbed it, held it, drew it close because even if it wasnât Akira, it was still important. Still Akira enough. It was his Other Half regardless of what form or shape or personality it bore.
His âShadowâ - standing before a caged version of Arsene himself - had tried to goad him. Had been goading him, and it had taken everything in him not to say that it wasnât him - because it was. He knew it was, that was the point of a shadow. It helped a bit that it had taken Akiraâs shape - taken his shape, but not his existence. Arsene knew Akira. Could feel what little remained of him, sleepy and distant, but notibly - aware. Watching, somehow, despite not technically being awake, in this moment.
It wasnât hard to guess why.
But the more the Shadow goaded, the more the sensation began to creep up on him - and the more it built up, the stronger it got. Until everything in him screamed a denial-
And so, now he was at this stage. Taking oneâs own future, their own freedom, into their hands - ripping an oh-so-familiar horned mask off his face, and screaming a name that came to him unbidden.
âGurathnaka!âÂ
It was different than his own entrance, when Akira awoke to him. Showoffy in a radically different way; instead of blue fire, it was a thick, almost liquidy grey-black smoke, circling around him in an almost teasing way - he swears he sees squinted eyes and a sly grin hidden in the smoke - before it coalesces at his side. Thereâs the vaguest impression of a human shape beneath the swirling mass of liquid-smoke, and a pair of blinking white eyes.Â
Even more, the stance it takes under that smoke is achingly familiar, but instead of lingering on it, Arsene instinctively leaps with them into battle. The Shadow-Construct - not Akira, never Akira - itched to fight regardless of him not saying it wasnât him. And so they did.
Arsene had, for a while, not considered himself at top form. And he really wasnât - not compared to how heâd been before, when Akira was fighting Maruki. He was a shadow of his former self.Â
And yet... he held his own. He and Gura working in tandem, a reverse of what Arsene remembered but so natural that he barely had to speak a word. It was as it had been before, but just a little bit different.
Eventually, they won. Beat down the thing that wore Akiraâs face, that yelled all of Arseneâs own insecurities and false beliefs back at him. Arsene passed the thing by with a soft look - and released the cognitive Arsene. He was his own person, and he always would be.Â
No words were said to the cognition - and no words were said back. Merely a look exchanged, before the cognition dissipated into nothing.Â
The Palace lasted only a moment longer before, itself, melting away into little motes of nothingness, sending Arsene into a dream he wouldnât remember on waking.
The Palace, though... Heâd remember that. Heâd remember that clearly.
Once he'd settling into his new shape - or, settled enough that he could type properly and didn't hurt all over - Decaf almost immediately dove back into Mementos. Sure, maybe it was a bit soon, and sure, maybe that one Futaba had been telling the truth in that the Chalice was genuinely dangerous, but she'd adamantly refused to say why, which was enough of a reason to him, to just... ignore her.
It couldn't possibly be any more dangerous than her, after all.
So down he went - testing out his new wings now and again as he went; jumping, gliding, nothing too dangerous, and only when he was alone (which to be fair was most of the time) but testing all the same.
The Chalice had his interest, had it bad. Why was it down there, what was it's purpose, why were there Shadows in all the cells around it - why had it given him a room.
He had to know. He had to know. And no amount of threats and half-baked 'warnings' would stop him from finding out.
A Shadow executed, and several others robbed of their Desires. Last night had been a very good night indeed, and now that it was the next morning, Decaf held a single, shimmering Desire stone in his grasp. This was probably going to go poorly, he was willing to admit that. Very poorly, which was why he'd implied to Futaba that he'd be fine.
He didn't want her to get any more involved than she already was - not out of concern, oh no, he couldn't care less what she thought about his state of affairs, but because he'd ditched his old team specifically because he knew they'd get in the way like that, and now here he was with a Futaba that he didn't have the power to get away from.
His own fault, really. Best he could do was throw reassurances at her until she believed him and left him alone.
Like now.
"Alright. Experiment time." He said, gauging the stone's size. It was a reasonable size, to be sure, but not so big that he would choke himself getting it down. Hopefully it worked. The more power he had, the better things would be - for himself, and for everyone. And if Futaba was hellbent on keeping him from the Depths, and from trying to forge some sort of connection with that giant cup, then he'd do the next best thing.
So, down the Desire Stone went.
And, in so doing, down Decaf went as well.
Eating a what amounted to Just A Rock was all he felt for only a scant few moments before whatever energy was contained within the thing flared, escaped it's little prison, and into him. It burned in a strange way, like he was on fire, but inside. Then, it escalated - pain, not just physical, but mental. He was screaming. Arsene was screaming. Both of them in tandem in such a way that Decaf, buried in pain and firey energy, ceased being able to tell which end was him - because they both were him, both were 'Akira' so why was there a distinction it was him him him - and then, something snapped.
Something that was never meant to snap, a barrier never meant to go down, never meant to vanish quite so thoroughly.
Then, there was no distinction between 'Arsene' and 'Akira'. There was just 'him'. Him, and pain, and the agony of something that was-happening-or-had-already-happened, of lines being crossed and barriers not just being ignored and crossed but stripped fully away.
One could only hope he hadn't just ruined whatever chance he had of being 'saved'.
It was his first time back in the Metaverse since he'd gotten his phone back - which frustrated him, but not as much as it would have otherwise since he'd had his phone back for a while now, and had simply slept for what felt like ages before actually doing anything. Still, though, all the time spent in the real world had him feeling heavy, and Arsene's form felt stiff. He needed practice, on top of getting back to work asap.
Assholes wouldn't deal with themselves, after all. Unfortunately.
But as he went about - hunting one of myriad Shadows on his list of the things - there was a thought in his head, now, from something the distorted Futaba had said to him. It was offhand, and definitely not meant literally, but he couldn't stop thinking about it.
What *would* happen if you ate a Desire? He doubted it would feel nice physically, being as Desires manifested as fairly large stones, but past that...
Destroying a Desire (or a Shadow) killed the person in question. Shut their mind down and their body with it.
Taking a Desire made the person your puppet, made them obey you without question - after all, their Desires were yours, to hold as tightly as you wished.
Consuming a Desire... Theoretically, it would act the same as taking, wouldn't it? Taking a Desire and making it yours, making their Desires your Desires and thus rendering them a puppet for the rest of their days, for as long as you yourself existed.
But there was another issue. What happened to the person who consumed those Desires?
Taking them didn't lend any power to him exactly, having them at all didn't make him stronger - it just gave him sway over more and more people, controlling them to make sure they obeyed real justice, and not the fake shit perpetuated by so many people nowadays. But consuming one... Hm... Would that give him power? Essentially consuming the Heart of another, taking their power as his own. If it worked, he'd grow in strength exponentially.
And then even less people would be able to control him.
An even sharper grin than usual stretched across Arsene's fiery mask.
He was feeling significantly better than he had hours previous. It was hard to explain what had happened, beyond just being full of distress and upset and wanting to think of anything else but what the topic had drifted onto, despite him being the one that had brought it all up.
Initially, he'd simply put his phone down and forced the thoughts out - meditation for a while, knowing that going to Mementos wasn't an option with Vivi still as ticked as she probably was.
And then... then he'd moved onto something else. Once he'd had more control of himself and less wild distress.
"I've got my memories, always inside of me..." Singing had always helped, even if it was just to himself. Or... he thought it always helped. Was it him? Who knew. Who cared. If it helped, it helped. Him or not. "But I can't go back - back to how it was." Sure, maybe the song choice was a bit hypocritical given how he kept acting, but he didn't care.
"I believe you now... I've come too far. No, I can't go back, back to how it was." He didn't let himself think too hard on it. It was a song, it made him feel good, and the tone resonated with him. It didn't matter as long as it made him feel better.
"Created for a place I've never known-!" It wasn't too loud. He didn't want to risk waking anyone up that might've been sleeping, being overheard and interrupted in the middle, having the entire mood disrupted and tossed out like trash. "This is home - now I'm finally where I belong, where I belong~" Okay, maybe he was thinking about the lyrics a little bit. Maybe he liked thinking of Vivi's place as 'home' and the song had stuck with him for that reason.
But that was fine. He liked it. It was nice.
"Yeah, this is home - I've been searching for a place of my own; now I've found it. Maybe this is home! Yeah, this is home..." It made his heart happy.
For now, anyway. He seemed prone to having that sucked out of him at a moment's notice.
A violent, burning urge to destroy is the only thought running through his head. A need to break, shatter, destroy anything that happens to cross his path and is even slightly more than visible, or not nailed down. Thankfully - or, it will be thankfully once he calms down - heâs not in the library, so itâs not books flying every which way and snapping into pieces as they impact with the walls.
It is, in fact, the room that had been made specifically for him to break things in, as heâd just barely had the presence of mind to drag himself in there when he woke up with a head full of nothing else but obliterate.
Everything was infuriating. Everything needed to break. Goro had run off like a coward and so the energy had to vent into everything else, because it had to be somebodyâs fault and if âsomebodyâ wasnât here, then heâd break and break and break until nothing was left-
Things had started calming down, up until that moment, that thought - and then they were back to being violently flung across the room at rapid speed, impacting with the walls and if not shattering, then certainly fracturing with a sound that, really, only made him throw with more vigor.
If he was of sound enough mind to see himself heâd probably note with some amount of dismay that he looked exactly as dead as he actually was - bulletwound in his head looking as though itâd been made mere moments beforehand, and not months prior on a boy that had been drugged to the gills and half-beaten to death before even getting to the gun part.
With luck, noone would see him in that state.Â
With luck, Clara wouldnât see him in that state.Â
He hadnât worked on a puppet body since Edwinâs, technically. Inaba, his little rabbit, didnât count - a rabbit was different from a human, even if the general process was the same. But he remembered said process very clearly, heâd taken so much pride in what heâd done that there was no way heâd allow himself to forget.Â
It was too useful.Â
Moonjumper had intentionally withheld the fact that, technically, heâd have power over the body too - such was the nature of spinning your own magic to make an equally magical body - but he also had no intentions to pull that particular thread. Why would he? The spirit lived with somebody with ice magic, and Moonjumper was long done with ice magic. Heâd already died once to ice, thank you very much.
He couldnât be sure why heâd offered, Moonjumper thought, sorting through his gathered materials. Maybe he was going soft, maybe it was just that one October heâd drowned in guilt finally catching up to him. Hell, maybe he just felt bad about there being so many dead kids floating around that he wanted to do something about it, since his magic did seem to revolve very tightly around souls and the moving around thereof.
His materials to solve that âdead kids with no bodiesâ problem, were... different, from what your average dollmaker would use. All from Subcon forest, as the forest itself could be considered a ghost - so spiritually and magically dense that merely the wood itself would probably skew any magical sensors, and the forest as a whole might very well give electronics a big double-middle-finger with how much energy the trees all gave off.
Which is why Subcon wood was best for his dolls. Easy to possess, easy to sink into and wear like a nice thick jacket. Easy to enchant with all the bits and bobs a body might want to have. Even eating!
Heâd never be 100% sure how âeatingâ translated, flavorwise, but Edwin had certainly never complained of things tasting different to how he remembered, so perhaps the enchantment did itâs job perfectly. He could only hope.
The body as a whole, magically, was rather complicated. Magic and spells and enchantments weaved together in a way that only somebody who could actually see what they were doing, could - spells wrapping around each other but never through, the magic weaved like a sweater.
Delicate work, because magic wasnât tangible, it was energy, and he was technically making his work look like swiss cheese - or it would look like swiss cheese if it didnât look more like thread, to him, than a formless gathering of energy.
Enchantments to move, enchantments to make sure the boy could come and go as he pleased (those were complicated, and took a while to set properly - usually the point of these bodies was âsoul goes in and never comes outâ), enchantments for everything a body might need, including hydrophobia. Well, not technically hydrophobia specifically, but a layer of enchantments to aide in keeping dirt outside and not inside.Â
The âeatingâ bit was clever too, in his opinion. Subcon wood wasnât alive, but neither was it technically dead - he liked to call them Schrodinger trees - so their enchantments had it so that food consumed would be broken down by internal layers of magic and processed into raw energy for the wood and enchantments themselves, and perhaps the ghost himself; Moonjumper wasnât sure of the conversion rate, he just knew it worked.Â
Then again, maybe Subcon wood was self-sustaining and didnât need the energy at all, in which case most of the converted energy might go to the ghost. He certainly didnât know. Either way, the body survived (supposedly) off of a magical feedback loop of âwood generates energy, enchantments feed off energy, convert consumed food back into energy for the wood and the enchantments, ad nauseam.Â
Moonjumper was fairly sure he knew what the kid looked like. All those âJokerâ kids tended to look largely identical. Hopefully the kid didnât have intentions of growing his hair out, because while Moonjumper was magical, he was no miracle worker. Growing Hair required yet more energy to generate all that wasted material, so it was easier on everyone if he just had the one length and let them figure out the rest.
Extensions existed, after all. No magic needed!
Itâd be a few days before it was done though. Even then, heâd want to look it all over for mistakes - the last thing he needed was another angry ice-witch after his ass for some dumb overblown mistake.
There were small things outside. It was something they had never payed any attention to, in the Lab. In Relith. Small things had been beneath itâs notice - if they werenât needed to get past a troublesome area or get around an obstacle, they hadnât payed any attention whatsoever to the things.
Unlike now. Outside. Where there were no obstacles, no soldiers.
Right now, it was relaxed. Offering some trust to the Blue Human named Vivi - taking human shape itself. Sitting on the ground, which was admittedly rather wet, but they didnât mind. Wet was good. Wet was relaxing. They liked wet. Wet was cool, and damp, and Not Fire. Wet was safe.
Vivi seemed both amused and troubled by their desire to sit specifically on the wet ground, but they didnât feel like explaining themselves just yet. If they did, she might get worried again, might try to convince them that dry was better. That it was safe, too.
But it wasnât. Dry could burn. Dry couldnât douse painful flames.
But that wasnât important right now. What was important, was the tiny red dot of a creature currently ambling mindlessly up and down their fingers. A ladybug, Vivi called it, as soon as sheâd noticed them staring at it, fixated on the small, impossible fragile thing that didnât have the mental capacity to realize just how close to death it even was. Didnât have the slightest idea that with just a thought, they could crush it, or consume it - both done so fast it wouldnât have time to even realize it was in danger.
They didnât harm it, of course - it would greatly upset Vivi, for one, and for two, they wanted to... observe it. Watch it. The scientists and soldiers had been violent to them, sure - and certainly theyâd been just as violent back - but Relith was Relith. Maybe Vivi was planning to hurt them, maybe not, but such a tiny thing as this little red dot? Harmless. nearly invisible to them.
And thus, their mind yet again drifted back to the Dot. Back to watching it skitter slowly across the flesh-that-was-not-really-flesh, wondering if it knew, if somewhere in itâs tiny mind it could comprehend that this thing it was wandering across was Not Human.
âItâs... so small.â They said, finally, in their so-soft, multilayered voice. Vivi nodded, coming in close and saying that it wasnât even the smallest creature out there - many were smaller, there were bugs out there so small you couldnât even notice them unless you were specifically looking for them. âSo much smaller than us.â They added, after a moment. âThere were none of these in Relith. Or perhaps we werenât looking either. Small was unimportant. We didnât care about small. We cared about our anger. Not escape, either, just revenge.â They rambled, not watching Vivi this time. Not seeing the troubled expression that moved across her face - sparing them from a moment wondering why it bothered her so much.
Killing the men for hurting them was just... logical. It made sense. Relith wouldnât have stopped because they cried out in pain when burned, or when separated into so many little pods.
âThis is better than the lab.â They said, watching with interest as the little red bug unfolded an equally tiny pair of wings, and buzzed away with delightful speed. Tiny, but quick. âWhat other small creatures exist out here?â
Vivi grinned.
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