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re-1124c41 · 11 months ago

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The ward was nearly silent. Outside, beyond the closed door, there were quieted sounds of machinery and voices, of trolleys rattling by and footsteps dutifully following them. With the window cracked open, there was a soft breeze rustling the sheer curtains and tickling over his arms. On the bedside stand, a whiteboard and marker sat next to a vase of flowers and several well-wishing cards.

There was a low hum of the monitor on the other side of the bed, a near imperceptible drip of the fluid in the IV bag feeding into the catheter at his elbow.

A gentle knock on the door, before it creaked open and someone peeked inside. It was enough to stir him from dozing into wakefulness.

He wouldn’t have recognized the man, if not for his hat and his suit. Something painful in his heart clenched as the visitor stepped quietly into the room. He tried to swallow, opened his mouth to speak as the man approached, but no sound came. The bandage at his throat was too tight, the injury too painful, to even utter a greeting.

“Good evening, Desmond.” Skulduggery Pleasant said softly. His face was a sloping sort of oval shape, with wide brows and light brown hair combed back. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

Desmond sighed and let himself deflate back into the pillows. He shook his head a little, and Skulduggery nodded.

“I’m very sorry for what happened,” Pleasant said sympathetically. “I hope the prognosis, however, is a positive one.”

Resignedly, Desmond nodded and reached for the whiteboard his wife had left at his side. He scribbled a short message, the catheter in his arm and the medication in his system making his handwriting sloppy.

They say I’m lucky. He wrote. They say it missed my jugular. Apparently I’m concussed too.

“Then I promise to keep this as brief as I can. You need rest if you’re going to make a fully recovery,” Skulduggery said sagely. “I wanted to see you, to make sure you are going to be all right.”

Desmond used the hem of the blanket he was tucked into to wipe the board clean. It left a black smear and residue on the cloth, but he didn’t care – he was already writing again.

Thank you for coming. I think I’m concussed.

“Yes, that is quite apparent, yes.”

Have you seen my wife? I’m worried about her. I don’t want her to be mad I missed Alice’s dance recital.

“I spoke with Melissa earlier, whilst you were in surgery,” Skulduggery replied gently “She’s not mad, she just very worried about what happened to you.”

The next question took Desmond a moment to put into words; finally, it felt best to take the most obvious approach.

Where is my daughter, Skulduggery?

Skulduggery was silent as he considered the question. Almost too quiet, Desmond felt, for comfort. He couldn’t have been certain, and he put most of it down to the concussion and the amount of hallucinogenic medication he was on, but the memories of the incident were…

Terrifying. They were awful, horrible memories that he wished, more than anything, were just conjuring’s of his badly bruised mind.

Skulduggery reached into the collar of his white shirt and a moment later, the face he was wearing shifted and melted away, receding back to reveal the polished white skull underneath. Desmond watched the process with fascination – once, the whole ordeal had frightened him. But now it was more of a morbid curiosity. Where did all that skin go?

“She is safe,” Skulduggery said eventually. He sat on the edge of the hospital bed, looking down at the hat in his hands. “She…she asked me to come and see you.”

Please bring back my little girl, Desmond found himself scrawling the words without a second thought. Please. I need to see her.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea right now,” Skulduggery replied gently. “She is going through something beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed, and until we know what we’re dealing with and how to make things right, I’m afraid that it’s better if she stays at a safe distance.”

Desmond could feel the tears dripping down his cheeks. His hands were trembling and there was nothing he could do to stop them. So it was real. The feathers, the screaming.

The blood.

Skulduggery reached over, somewhat awkwardly, and put a gloved hand over Desmond’s. “I am sorry, Desmond.”

Swallowing back more tears, Desmond scribbled again.

What will happen to her? Is she a monster?

“No,” Skulduggery said quickly. “She is…changing. There are things happening greater than you or I, and she made choices – she took the brunt of the forces at play to protect those she loved. For the greater good, but it has caused her a lot of change, and suffering. She never meant to hurt you.”

Can you protect her?

Skulduggery was still. “I can try.” He cleared his throat, and stood. “I’d better go, and leave you to rest.”

Wait, Desmond’s silent plea caught Skulduggery’s attention as he waved a hand to stop him leaving. I need to ask something of you. Please.

“Anything.”

He hurriedly scrawled his request, having to backtrack and smudge out a few mistakes along the way, but finally, he turned the board back to the skeleton.

You must have something magic to make people forget. I don’t want my family to be burdened by my daughter’s disappearance having anything to do with my situation now. My Stephanie is not to blame. Please, there has to be something you can do to make us forget.

For a while, Skulduggery seemed to think on it. Then he replaced his hat on his skull, reached into his collared shirt, and a new face, different to his previous one, flowed up over the bone. This one had black hair and deep-set eyes.

“I might have something that could work. You’ll need to give me a day or two to modify it, and there’s no guarantee it will even be successful as it’s untested on erasing events after the fact. But I can try.”

Desmond nodded along, before scrawling again. Let me be your test subject.

“I wouldn’t want to expose you to any possible side effects, Desmond,” Skulduggery began, but Desmond waved him away, and pointed at his scribbles again. Defeated, the skeleton wearing the false face sighed. “Very well. Give me some time, and I’ll be back.”

-:-

It took longer than a few days – in fact, it took nearly two and a half weeks, but true to his word Skulduggery returned. It was the morning that Desmond was being discharged, finally able to go home with his bereft family. Melissa was still tearfully speaking with the police, Alice clinging to her side and her hand clasped tightly in Desmond’s as he sat beside them in a wheelchair.

The next thing he knew, Skulduggery was stepping through the big automatic doors into the hospitals main foyer. It was the walk that gave him away; so purposeful, so dignified. Relief washed through Desmond at the sight of the skeleton detective – although, he was a little cloudy as to why he was so relieved. Since his concussion had eased and he’d regained a little more of his senses, he couldn’t quite grasp the details of that conversation he’d had two weeks ago.

He had had to erase all the things he’d written on the whiteboard – the doctors theorized it would likely take a few months until his vocal cords healed well enough for him to speak again, and even then, it would likely mean another few months following that in speech therapy.

“Edgely’s,” Skulduggery greeted them all kindly, and Melissa just about threw herself at the detective in a rage, demanding answers. How dare he be so absent when their family was so distraught? How could he live with himself when Desmond nearly died and Stephanie was gone?

Her grief came out so venomous, it felt sharp to Desmond even though it wasn’t aimed his way. He hated when things drove his beautiful wife to such fury.

Skulduggery was pressing something between his hands, saying words that didn’t quite make sense to Desmond’s ears. Suddenly Melissa stopped her wrath and listened, confused. Alice was squeezing his hand tightly, completely wrapped with the words Skulduggery spoke. Something about a mugger, with a knife, hiding out in Grimwood. That sounded like it made sense, Desmond’s addled mind decided. Someone who hadn’t meant to hurt him, just tried to rob him and it all got out of hand so quickly, someone with enough remorse to call an ambulance before fleeing the scene.

Stephanie’s panicked eyes were fading from the picture. Like an oil painting that was having something new painted over the top. She wasn’t gone – well, she was, but she had gone on a case. Off saving the world again. Different colours changed the shape of the scene. A blurred face hidden by a dark mask. The flash of a blade, painted over claws covered in blood. That’s right, wasn’t it?

Whatever was in Skulduggery’s hands was glowing a beautiful soft lavender, brightest at its core. Desmond marveled at it as the skeleton’s deep voice seemed to captivate even the police officers standing around them, two of them no longer trying to physically restrain Melissa from attacking Skulduggery. Her eyes were clouded, uncertain. Then they cleared, and she was nodding along like it was all perfectly simple.

All of a sudden it was over, Skulduggery pocketing the thing he’d been holding onto. He was here to wish them well, to bring them his deepest condolences once again about the horrible mugging gone wrong just the other day. That they were doing everything in their power to track down the person responsible and bring them to justice.

Relief was the first of many things Desmond felt. Thank goodness Skulduggery had come to see them, to reassure them they were going to be safe. The skeleton detective was saying something about posting someone on guard around the Edgley house for a few days, just to be sure. Grimwood had already been locked down and safe guarded against any other potential intruders. They were on the case, hunting down the mugger so that this would never happen again.

Everything was going to be all right. Desmond gave his little girls hand a squeeze, and she looked down at him and smiled. He couldn’t crane his neck back very far without putting painful pressure on the healing wound across his throat, still heavily bandaged, but she reached down and wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a big hug.

Shortly after, they left the hospital, Desmond successfully discharged and sent home with a lap full of painkillers and anti-inflammatory medications. A follow-up appointment scheduled with the doctor for next week to check on his throat injury. Melissa drove them home in a subdued silence, Alice in the backseat staring idly out the window. Skulduggery had given him a plain white envelope when they had parted ways with the detective in the parking lot, and as the girls had been fussing about getting all of Desmond’s things from his hospital stay packed into the boot, the skeleton had passed him the envelope with the instructions that it was only to be opened when he contacted Desmond that it was safe to do so.

Desmond was still confused by that instruction. Why wouldn’t it be safe to open the envelope at any other time? Why did he have to wait? Surely, he reasoned with himself, if Detective Pleasant had said so, then it was to be done.

And then their eldest daughter vanished. Stephanie had disappeared, as if into thin air, barely a week later, with no trace or sign left behind. Grimwood was completely deserted – even the blood on the pavement outside the front entryway had been power-washed clean. Where he’d had that run in with that mugger, where his injury had occurred.

The heartbreak was immeasurable. He felt like he’d rather the pain of his throat being slashed all over again, if it would stop the pain and sorrow in his heart. Oh, how Melissa and Alice cried. There were many nights of lost sleep in the following weeks, many visits from the police and many more from Skulduggery, promising that everything and anything that could be done to find their first born child would be done. But their beautiful dark-haired daughter was gone.

Still, Desmond held onto the envelope, like whatever was within it held all of the answers to the universe, answers he somehow knew he wasn’t ready for. Answers beyond his comprehension of the world.

But curiosity won out eventually. It didn’t take all that long, really, for Desmond’s resolve to wear thin. He lasted several months, lasted through many trips to the doctors and through many sessions of speech therapy. Through the long days of bereavement and through the many hours of holding his sobbing wife, of cradling his youngest daughter until she cried herself to sleep. The envelope sat in the back of his sock drawer, where he’d forgotten about it many times already; some times from the outstanding circumstances and some times because he had thought it such a good hiding place, surely no one would find it. Until he had come across it in search of a pair of socks with no holes in the heels, and he had remembered. And the curiosity had started chewing at his mind again.

Finally, one night when Melissa had gone to fetch Alice from a slumber party that their daughter had wanted to come home early from, Desmond took the mystery envelope and taken a walk down to the pier. It had been one of Stephanie’s favourite places to spend her teenage years, if he was remembering right. It gave him some comfort facing the prospect of opening the envelope he’d been made to promise he wouldn’t dare peek into until he was told he could.

He had considered calling Skulduggery, to double check if it really was all that serious that he not open it, but had reasoned that if the sly detective really hadn’t wanted him to look inside it, he wouldn’t have given Desmond the envelope in the first place.

So he sat on a rock, running his thumb over the white folded piece of sealed card, and tried to imagine what was inside.

Then, he slipped his thumb under the seal, and gingerly tore the envelope open. Into his hand fell a long, dark grey feather, speckled with white. It was beautiful.

The night of the incident came flooding back to him, almost knocking him right off the rock he’d perched on. Getting out of the car at Grimwood several months ago now, hearing the sounds of pained cries and retching. Seeing his eldest daughter, blood and dark matter running down her arms, vomiting into the plant pot on the front step by the door. The panic in her eyes, the way her teeth bulged and grew sharp. The thudding in his chest as he felt so torn – to run screaming from the horrible scene, and to run closer, to bundle his baby girl up into his arms and try and protect her.

The way she’d shoved him away, the strange gurgle he made, echoing in his ears, as his breath suddenly went all strange and something hot went running down his neck and stained his shirt. The way he’d fallen back against the car, the way Stephanie had been screaming and crying. She had fallen to her knees in front of him, blubbering and saying she was sorry, she was so sorry -

The sirens overhead, waking in the ambulance. Opening his eyes to the ward after the emergency surgery. Who had called the ambulance? The tears as his wife and daughter came running in on the heels of the doctors.

Desmond was shaking. It was a splash of salty sea-spray over his face that brought him back, found his feet under him. Somehow he’d stood up in his shock, stumbled right to the edge of the pier, still clutching the feather, as if he were ready to cast it into the sea.

Oh, he remembered now. The conversation with Skulduggery. He had wanted to forget, and he had ruined it. Whatever the skeleton detective had done, Desmond had gone had ruined it for himself. Oh, you stupid man.

He took a step back, let himself plonk back down onto the rock, and held the feather close. He couldn’t stop the sobs as they shook his whole body. His daughter had turned into a monster, and now she was gone. And he would have given anything to forget all over again.

#mercy a writes #sp roll the bones #desmond edgley #skulduggery pleasant #mercy a's art #mercy a sketches #tw: blood #tw: body horror #valkyrie cain #alice edgley #melissa edgley #tie-in to the main Roll the Bones story

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estpunk · 2 years ago

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Alice in Borderland: Shuntarō Chishiya (INTJ 5w4 549 sx/sp)

MBTI

Dominant Ni

His Ni is apparent many times in the manga. He chose to stay in one spot during the tag game to observe his enemies first (Ni prefering prediction over Se action). His dominant Ni is also very apparent when he set Arisu up. When he saw Aguni's confusion when he opened the black envelope he concluded that the content of the envelope is most likely empty. After setting Arisu up, he picked information again when Aguni looked into one spot because he felt uneasy that Arisu tried to break the fake safe, hence he was looking at the location of the real safe. He used his Ni briefly in blackjack too, guessing that one of the players is a magician because of how he looks.

He used his Ni a lot during the Beauty Contest game. He thought that the success rate for the King (Kuzuruyu) and tried to infer the meaning behind it and considered the success rate to be fair. He knows that Kuzuruyu is a lawyer, that the game venue is a court with gigantic scales as the decoration. He also mentioned that the value of all life is equal is the ideals of a lawyer. As the game progressed, all of the players' choice are nearing the number zero, which is an equilibrium (there will be no exchange of points cause rationally everyone will choose zero in the end), which is in line with Kuzuruyu's ideals. He then understood what Kuzuruyu is trying to weigh (he is trying to find the meaning behind the game). After implementing his strategy for the game he saw Kuzuruyu keeping up with his new strategy which means that he already predicted that this could happen and he concluded that Kuzuruyu is trying to weigh the value of life from the game. Then as they conversed more he found that Kuzuruyu is unable to choose the worth of a life and he inferred that he became the citizen to let the game decide the worth for him and hoped that he'll eventually become numb to it (before that he asked Kuzuruyu if he kept participating in these games and becomes the citizen himself and losing his human emotions would it increase the pain and Kuzuruyu said it's possible).

He also kept his eye on Daimon and inferred that she is a frank person because she kept asking things that she doesn't know to other people. Because of her personality he predicted that she would choose a random number. He narrowed down her number of choice and associated some of the numbers that he eliminated with the numbers that are usually seen a lot in daily life (64 with a ding from a video game console commercial and so on).

Auxiliary Te

He used his Te too in the tag game. He chose a spot where he can observe everything from above and he thought that it doesn't make sense to wander around when you don't know where the it will emerge with limited visibility in the apartment. He also used Arisu to bait the real safe from Aguni (knowing that Hatter is a cautious person, so the safe must be hidden) when the militants are celebrating his coronation as the King of the beach (finding the safe without bait during an opportunity like this wouldn't be as effective and could get you caught or you wouldn't find the safe at all when they're going back).

He also used his Te in the blackjack game. He knows that if he knows how many cards are left then he will know which cards are left since all of the decks are the same, then he categorised which cards are advantageous to the players and which ones are advantageous to the dealers and counted the ratio of the said cards from the deck and from this formula he can decide how much he should bet. During the last few rounds of blackjack he knows that the old lady despised one of the players, a trick master, because it reminded her of her husband (that player has used his gun to kill another player, so he can't use his gun again), so he cheated again to trigger the game system to allow the lady to use the gun and of course that lady killed the trick master.

During the Beauty Contest game he decided to break the equilibrium by choosing the number 100, knowing that Daimon is a frank person and because of his choice Daimon won the round and repaid him by choosing 100 in the next round.

Tertiary Fi

He sometimes evaluates his personal values like in the tag game when he said that as long as he survives, he doesn't care how many people will die and he reflected on this value, whether or not it's human to have that mindset. He also justified his wrongdoing after he set Arisu up by saying that there isn't anything that someone shouldn't do in order to survive.

When Daimon died during the Beauty Contest he said that her sacrifice is not worth the exchange of his own life and he realized that his emptiness is there even before the Borderlands. During the last round of the Beauty Contest, he said to Kuzuruyu that equality is impossible since there will always be one side that will be sacrificed to reach "equality" or to implement "justice" (black and white Fi judgment due to auxiliary Te). After figuring out Kuzuruyu's personal values, he played with it, forcing him to make a choice with his value and slightly mocking him that if he doesn't like to make decisions (since Kuzuruyu can't decide the worth of a life), he can just kill him off since the rules of the game is impartial. After Kuzuruyu died he realized that he thought Kuzuruyu as an interesting person because he envied his interest in life, which he doesn't have.

After he was shot, he told Arisu that he used to view the human beings as stupid beings. He said that he despised the sincere ones, he berated people who put in their effort, hurt a lot of people, and shunned a lot of people who have good will and intentions. He realised that he was probably jealous cause those are the things that he doesn't have. He felt like he has no purpose and his mere existence is just to show how empty a human can be and deep down he just wanted to be understood. After he went back to the real world he decided to live an honest life.

Inferior Se

His Se inferior showed up during the tag game because he prefers to know the prediction first instead of acting in the now. He also used the things around him during the Witch Hunt to make a flamethrower.

Shadow Functions

Opposing Ne

During the game of Tag when he saw Karube suggesting the players to work together he doubted that his idea will work out easily. He considered the possibilities of the other players risking themselves to go to the walkways to find the base, risking themselves to reveal their locations to the it, and risking themselves to trust the intel from another player. His assumptions are later proved to be wrong cause Usagi risked herself to work together with everyone else.

Critical Parent Ti

During the Beauty Contest game he quietly criticized the old man for using his own logical deduction, using his own intelligence as his basis and he thought that if he kept doing that he won't win the game and won't understand the workings of an "idiot". He also called out Kuzuruyu's obsession with equality is illogical since he is the one who is trying to assign superiority or inferiority to human lives by creating the game.

Trickster Fe

During the Witch Hunt he said to Mira that he never wanted to understand the hearts of others. During the battle royale he said to Arisu that he despised sincere people and he couldn't help but to shun people's good will and intentions.

Demon Si

No data.

Enneagram

5w4 549 sx/sp

*this includes my own interpretation of his character

As you can see in the manga he values information and deem it important. He keeps collecting things after the games too. Since 5s are afraid of being deprived of their resources, he told Karube that his information is not for free.

As you can see in the manga him being neglected by his parents form his 5 core. As the result of the neglect he becomes empty and apathetic (one of 5 traits). He was never taught how to love and he has to conquer the world on his own since he was a kid and depended on himself, making himself competent (hence the 5 fear of being incompetent, making them hoard a lot of information and knowledge for themselves). His 4 wing makes him envy what people have that he doesn't have. He threw a letter of a father who wanted to redeem himself because he envied him as he doesn't have a father who really cared for him. As 5w4 he is jealous of other people who are seemingly not empty and have a purpose. Because of his emptiness he feels that he has no purpose, that life is meaningless. The result of his jealousy is his antagonistic behavior to people. He tried to fulfill that emptiness with some random knowledge (you can see that when he quotes some random knowledge about utopia or monalisa in the manga) and pursued medicine to see if he could care about life. As 5w4 he felt that he came to the world being neglected and not being accepted as who he is by his parents and he assumed that they had him just to look normal and just to be a good hospital director. Since the void of his 5 is endless, he might view that to give is to deprive himself, so he becomes selfish.

Even though he has no interest in the concept of life, his 4 wing makes him intrigued to find what's missing in himself, his sense of purpose and he just want people to understand him and to see him as who he is.

From the explanation above you can conclude that he has 5 and 4 in his tritype. His gut type is a 9 since he doesn't provoke people that much and tried to be peaceful even though he is frustrated. Because his 4 his higher in the tritype stack than his 9, he doesn't really mind to tell how stupid people are.

His Sx instinctual variant makes him want to find a person that he finds to be interesting in Borderland (that's like his sole purpose there) and he finally met Kuzuruyu. His Sp second makes him consider his own survival, but not at the expense of his Sx since he is willing to take risks to find that one-on-one connection and turns out what makes Kuzuruyu interesting to him is him being the opposite of himself, valuing life even when his life is the cost.

#alice in borderland #shuntaro chishiya #chishiya #cheshire #cheshire cat #mbti #intj #5w4 #type 5 #sx/sp #fictional-intj

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