Akira expects there to be a fight - expects not-Akechi to get back up and start swinging. Or shooting. Or to turn into somebody else to try and drag him down with, like Shido. Not real, though, he reminds himself. None of this is real. Or… well. It is, technically. All of this was ‘real’ in that it was a real place, and this was really happening, but it wasn’t his real. Not the real versions of the people he’d known, the places he’d been. He wasn’t a part of this place, and so, to him, it wasn’t real.
Perception was a weird thing, sometimes.
But then it all turns to… sand. Sand, sand, and more sand. Akira can’t help but let out a long, loud, groan.
“Of course there’s a giant cognitive desert. Because going through one of those already, clearly wasn’t enough.” He hoped this one didn’t include the unbearable heat of the real thing, like Futaba’s had.
Akira didn’t miss the way Raven had spoken at first, though, making a mental note of how Raven clearly didn’t expect this to happen, which made him put his guard up. ‘How did’, as well. Something wasn’t right. Not real, he told himself again.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned-” The young man began, speaking to Raven, wherever he might be- “it’s that the Metaverse doesn’t answer to a damn soul if the person doing the ordering isn’t on the throne.” Unless you were Jose. Because Jose was just that special, apparently. One day he’d learn how and why Mementos just bent to the kid’s whims so easily. “Sometimes it goes along with you, sometimes it decides to punch you in the stomach and do something else.”
On the path or off the path didn’t seem to matter, at first glance - either way, there was a whole lot of nothing - but Raven clearly knew this place enough to know it shouldn’t be here. So, on the path he stayed. And added a new set of things to his mental chant; This place isn’t real. I’m Akira Kurusu. I’m a Persona user.
God he wished this place felt like his Metaverse did. It’d make it so much easier to keep track of it not being real - his little corner of the Metaverse felt more floaty, more… malleable. It functioned on belief and perception; if you believed a toy gun was a real gun, so it would become. If you believed you could make a particular jump, you probably would.
And when you spent enough time in it, you could feel that.
“Not gonna lie, though… last trip I made through a cognitive desert would have ended really badly if not for a whole lot of pure luck.” Akira - still following whatever seemed to be acting as a ‘path’ out here - let some of the nervousness slip into his voice.
This wasn’t a mistake, but damn if he wasn’t a bit unsettled by this whole thing. The Metaverse was never not spooky as hell, he’d give it that.
“Giant desert, meet soul of rebellion. Let’s see what tricks you’ve got up your sleeves.”
The music points the way, in the ‘path’ through the desert there isn’t much. Sand. But the constant music is there. Just a soft, otherworldly melody leading Akira along.
The desert reflects the light of the non-existent sun above. Hellish hot and all moving towards its end point. The mirage at the end of the desert. The horizon that stretches back and back and back into the depths of the once mirror maze... A dim shape that is not there and is.
Any perception of time becomes lost. Raven even seems to stay quiet. (He’s chewing his nails, a habit he thought he’d kicked long ago.)
The heat saps as much as it can from Akira, seemingly even trying to sap away his memories. Blur them just as much as the shape in the distance is blurred. No need for things like those here in this desert mirage. The sand kicks up every now and again, settling in as a small distraction from the heat, and also trying to pull away at ‘Akira’ or the parts of Akira that make ‘Akira’ Akira as opposed to just a ruffian wandering the desert.
But eventually, the shape in the distance becomes clearer. A town, made of ivory and reflecting back all the light around it. Whether this town is or isn’t real doesn’t seem up for debate, as the further one walks, the closer one gets, but the farther one walks the farther away one gets.
This is Mirage at the end of the desert.
Towers of ivory seem to spring up all around him, the town that was far in the distance is now right on top of him. Or... is it? As the towers can’t seem to decide if they actually want to be there with him, seemingly flitting back and forth between right next to the path or far off into the Mirage.
Until the space ignites around him, and the desert becomes a velvet room. Not The, mind. Simply A Room seemingly made of and from the color of Velvet. It’s exact contents don’t seem to stay in place, moving and changing as soon as they solidify.
Then there’s The Old Man, who is neither old nor a man. “Welcome, glad you dropped in.” His accent is thick northern British. “Why not come in, and stay a while?” The Old Man smiles a crooked smile all teeth, almost no sincerity, “Yer just a youngster eh? Youngest we’ve had. Welcome!” He scratches his chin, contemplating, or not.
Still the room that is a velvet room does look inviting. Even if the furniture and decor can’t seem to decide what sort of room it wants to be. For a moment is does seem to take the shape of a familiar jail cell, before once again changing and seemingly settling into a gallery, with Grand Candelabras lighting the way to the grandest ballroom to never exist, made from several intertwining kaleidoscopes in a grand tableau that makes a spiral towards the center. Fractals forming fractals forming a ballroom floor made of fractals forming fractals, spiraling on and on, down and down.
“Take a rest, Ya must be tired.” The Old Man gestures to the center of the ballroom. “Just lay on down, and all those problems o’ yours’ll be like sand.” A dark chuckle, “if y’can even remember yer problems, but then, all the more reason t’just lay on down. Not like you’ve got somewhere t’be, aye?”
