#calls it delusions somehow manages to be one of the best analysis of not just makotos character but p3 as a whole i dont understand

[elle-p]

Akira Ishida's Persona3 The Movie #4 Winter of Rebirth blu-ray comment translation

Ideas about Persona 3 The Movie

For Makoto Yuki, the 4 chapters of Persona 3 The Movie were the story of how, after Death was sealed within him and his heart became hollow, it began to fill up and repair through his interactions with the Specialised Extracurricular Execution Squad.

I feel like as a part the adroit way the narrative is structured around the recollection of Makoto's memories, the timeline and timing of what is revealed is shifted, so that the audience members who hadn't exerienced the game version may have felt a sort of eerieness when seeing Makoto's position when he first appears. Moreover, many of the plot points that happen in every chapter, for example things like the misunderstanding regarding Yukari and her dad, the case of Junpei and Chidori, and Aragaki-senpai and Amada-kun's relationship, seem depressing and gloomy. However, it's not because they are cheerful and happy, but because they accurately depict the wounds that people carry inside themselves that Makoto, by meeting and understanding them as he progress through the chapters, is able to aquire the precious things everyone should have.

I believe that the reason why Persona 3 The Movie's 4 chapters were well recieved by the audience was not just due to their interest in seeing the story they experienced in game in a film, but also because the scenery that Makoto sees made an impact and they related to it, and were curious to see how things would develop. This is how Persona 3 The Movie depicts the various ups and downs of the experiences that make up people's hearts, but my understanding of the word 'Persona' is that it comes from psychology.

When I first heard about the title and contents during recording, I wondered why you would call the incarnation of yourself for battle a Persona. A mask that people wear to represent themselves externally. It becomes a weapon to fight your enemies, the things that face you. This seems like everyday communication itself. So, when I think about the original meaning of Persona, I can make my own satisfactory reasoning as to why Makoto's Persona isn't in the form of a single one that evolves, but instead uses multiple from the beginning. The empty minded Makoto has no desire to be seen externally. It doesn't matter to him; he doesn't care how he's seen, so there's no reason for him to limit himself to one mask. What do you think? Personally, I quite like this reasoning. By viewing Makoto as having been an empty vessel, it makes it a major necessity for the story to develop him as a character in the film. Is it too much of a stretch to say that Makoto Yuki's story isn't just limited by the framework of a game, and has the potential to withstand the development and adaption, so therefore it was inevitable that it would be made into a movie? Speaking of which, the climax scene of Winter of Rebirth. After all he's been through, regaining his lost humanity and filling himself, Makoto reaches the point where he is willing to sacrifice his own life for his friends, just like his mother once did for him. There is no recklessness that comes from the indifference to the fear of death as in Spring of Birth. In order to achieve their shared goal of protecting the proof of existance people leave behind, Makoto decided to save the friends who had filled him and given him the elements to reconstruct himself and the world in which they live. And, as you all saw, this action was based on a self-sacrifical idea. For this reason Makoto, who can wear the masks of many Personas, gets every one of them shattered, and in the end can only move forward without wearing a mask. Don't you think this is a very symbolic scene?

He entrusts his friends with the same word his mother told him: 'live'. If a mother's love for her child is the ultimate, unsupassed thing, then you can say that Makoto's inner self, which can pour out that selfless love from the bonds with his friends, has completely regained human form. In addition, there is a mechanism in place which means that you can only go to the last stage without wearing the mask of a Persona. This can be seen as a message that the power to stand up to Nyx, the last opponent, the environment, and the world resides in someone's true essence, and that it is impossible to do so while wearing a false mask. It is also suggested by the composition that it is necessary to wear the mask of a Persona when defeating enemies, and to expose your true self when protecting loved ones. I would like to say that there is no way that exposing your true self could lead to strength, but once reset and gained new experiences, Makoto reached the next stage before others, attaining the answer to life. He is no longer an ordinary person. Even though it's fiction, I'm glad that it was Makoto and the others that were given the mission to fight Shadows in the Dark Hour. If it had been me, since I still haven't found the answer to life, the world would have ended on January 31st as planned, and these ideas would have never come into the world. If you think about it, that could have been okay, too.

劇場版「ペルソナ3」にまつわる妄想

結城理にとって劇場版「ペルソナ3」の全4章はデスをその身に封印され、心が虚ろになってしまった彼が、特別課外活動部の仲間達とのふれあいを経て、その中身を満たし直していくまでの過程をたどる物語でした。

理の記憶の甦りという物語構成の妙として、時間軸とそれが公開されるタイミングがズラされていたりしたので、ゲーム版に触れたことがない観客の皆さんは初登場時の理の立ち位置に一種の不気味さを感じたのではないかと思います。そのうえ各章で起こる事件は、例えばゆかりの父親に対する誤解や順平とチドリの一件、荒垣先輩と天田くんの関係など暗くて重いものが多い印象です。しかしそういった明るくてハッピーなものばかりではない、人が内側に抱え込んでいる傷の部分をきちんと描いたからこそ、彼らに出会ってそれを見つめることになる理も、章が進むにつれて、本来、人として持っているべき大切なものを、欠けることなく獲得していけたのだと思います。

劇場版 「ペルソナ3」の全4章が観客の皆さんに受け入れて頂けたのも、ゲームで体験したストーリーを映像で見てみたいという興味の他に、そんな理の見る景色に影響され同調することで、その先の展開が気になったからという部分もあったのではないでしょうか。このように人の心を構成する様々な経験の起伏を描いた劇場版「ペルソナ3」ですが、そもそもペルソナという単語は僕の理解では心理学周辺で出てくるものですよね。

一番初めのゲーム収録でこのタイトルと内容を知ったときに、バトルをするための自分の化身をペルソナと呼ぶなんて、何でシャレてるんだと思ったものでした。人が対外的に自分を表すためにかぶる仮面。それが敵、自分に向かってくるモノと戦うための武器になる。これは日常のコミュニケーションそのものに見えます。だから、そういうペルソナを本来の意味を考えると、理だけが一つのペルソナの進化という形ではなく、初めから複数のぺルソナを使い分けられるというところにも自分なりに納得のいく理屈をつけることができそうです。心の中が空っぽの理には端から対外的にどう見られたいという願望がありません。そんなことは彼にとってはそれこそ「どうでもいい」ことであって、どう見られても構わないからこそ、かぶる仮面を一つに限定する理由がないのです。どうでしょう。自分としてはこの理由付けの仕方、なかなか気に入っています。理が空の器であったと捉えることで、映画の登場人物として物語を展開させていく大きな必然性を持たせることにもなるのです。結城 理の物語はゲームの枠にとどまらず、映画化という展開にも充分耐えうるポテンシャルを持っていた、だから映画化されるのは必然だったというのはちょっと暴走し過ぎでしょうか。暴走ついでに、第4章『Winter of Rebirth』のクライマックスシーン。これまでの経験を経て、一度無くした人間性を取り戻し、中身を満たすことができた理は、かつて母親が自分にしてくれたように、仲間を生かすために自分の命を投げ出すという境地にまで達します。そこには第1章『Spring of Birth』の頃の己の死の恐怖に対するどうでもよさから来る蛮勇はありません。自分たちが存在した証を守り残すという全員の目標を果たすために、理は自分を満たしてくれた、自分を再構成するためのエレメンツをくれた仲間と彼らが生きていく世界を、今度は自分が救おうとしました。そしてそれが自己犠牲的発想に基づく行動だったのは皆さんも感じられた通りです。そのために数多くのペルソナという仮面をかぶることができる理が、ことごとくそのペルソナを打ち砕かれ、最後はその仮面をかぶらずに先へ進む。これはなかなか象徴的なシーンだとは思いませんか。

「生きろ」と自分に伝えてくれた母親と同じ言葉を仲間に託していく。母親が我が子を思う母性愛が、究極、無上のものであるならば、仲間たちとの間にその無償の愛情を注げるまでの絆を楽いた理の内面は、完全に人間としての形を取り戻したと言えるでしょう。それに加えて、ペルソナという仮面をかぶらない形でしか最後のステージに上がれないという仕掛けが用意されているわけです。これはニュクスという究極の敵、環境、世間に立ち向かえる力を宿す場所はその人の本質的な部分にしかない、虚飾の仮面を被った姿では無理なんだというメッセージにも見えるわけです。また、敵を倒すときにはペルソナという仮面をまとい、大切な人を守るときには自分の素の姿をさらけ出すことが必要だったという構図も暗示的です。自分なんかはとてもじゃないけれど素の自分をさらけ出したところで強さに結びつくとは到意思えないと言いたいところですが、一度リセットされ、新たに経験を積み直した理は、人より先に一つ上のステージ、命の答えに到達しているのです。もはや凡人ではありません。フィクションとはいえ、影時間でシャドウと戦う使命を与えられたのが理達で良かったとつくづく思います。もしも僕だったとしたら、命の答えにたどり着くのはまだまだ先のことでしょうから、世界は予定通り1月31日に終わっていたでしょうし、そうなったらこの妄想が世に出ることもなかったでしょう。そう考えるとそれもアリだったかもしれませんけどね。

[justforbooks]

Perhaps the single most lucid, succinct, and profoundly terrifying analysis of social media ever created for mass consumption, Jeff Orlowski’s “The Social Dilemma” does for Facebook what his previous documentaries “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral” did for climate change (read: bring compelling new insight to a familiar topic while also scaring the absolute shit out of you). And while the film covers — and somehow manages to contain — a staggering breadth of topics and ramifications, one little sentence is all it takes to lay out the means and ends of the crisis at hand: Russia didn’t hack Facebook, Russia used Facebook.

That may not be a mind-blowing idea for anyone who’s been raised on the internet, but it would be wrong to think that Orlowski’s film is only speaking to the back of the class. While “The Social Dilemma” is relevant to every person on the planet, and should be legible enough to even the most technologically oblivious types (the Amish, the U.S. Senate, and so forth), its target demographic is very online types who think they understand the information age too well to be taken advantage of. That’s zoomers, millennials, and screen junkies of any stripe who wouldn’t have the faintest interest in a finger-wagging documentary about how they should spend more time outside.

Taking a top-down, inside out approach to the basic nature of the social media experiment, Orlowski’s film doesn’t waste any time in proving its bonafides (and using them to strike fear into your heart). It begins with an ominous nugget of wisdom from Sophocles, who would have crushed it on Twitter: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” From there, Orlowski introduces viewers to some of the most worried-looking white people you’re likely to find these days: The designers, engineers, and executives who invented social media, and then quit when they began to understand the existential threat it posed to all civilization. The guy who invented the “like” button. An ex-department head at Instagram. Even one of the techies responsible for Gmail and Google Drive. As annoying as it can be when someone tells you to quit Facebook, it’s hard to ignore someone who’s actually quit Facebook.

Orlowski’s star interviewee, however, is a guy who’s often referred to as “Silicon Valley’s conscience.” His name is Tristan Harris, he’s the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, and his measured alarmism serves as a worried voice of reason throughout the film as “The Social Dilemma” strives to bridge the gap between abstract threats and direct consequences. The most overarching of those macro concerns is a free-to-use business model that coerces people into betraying their own value. As the saying goes (and is quoted here): “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

With the help of articulate testimony, illuminating visual aids, and a well-crafted thesis that elegantly articulates the relationship between persuasive technology and human behavior, Orlowski fortifies the familiar argument that addiction isn’t a side effect of social media, but rather the industry’s business model. Our data is used as a currency for these companies, but our time is a far more precious commodity — how much of our lives can they get us to forfeit over to them?

The more time we spend on social media, the more valuable our human futures become; the more valuable our human futures become, the more that advertisers are willing to pay for them. And how does a company like Facebook or YouTube (which is technically Google) convince us to spend more time on their platforms? They change our fundamental perception of reality, as The Algorithm is designed to populate things into our feeds and queues that will excite/agitate us towards engagement, pull us deeper into our respective rabbit holes, and silo us all into our separate realities. It’s surveillance capitalism run amok, as well as a peerlessly effective recipe for extremism.

Orlowski, recognizing that diagnosing the problem on such a profound scale is enough to make even the most rational of people sound like they’re suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, devises a bold and semi-successful way of making these enormous concepts feel more life-sized. Every so often, Orlowski cuts away to the scripted tale of an average, middle-class American family in order to more practically illustrate the effect that social media has on our lives. And by “our lives,” this critic means to stress that “The Social Dilemma” is more interested in Facebook’s impact on the average teenager than it is in — say — Facebook’s impact on the genocidal violence against Muslim Rohyingas in Myanmar. But Orlowski knows his audience.

“Booksmart” actor Skyler Gisondo plays a high school kid named Ben who’s addicted to his phone, “Moonrise Kingdom” breakout Kara Hayward is his concerned older sister, and — in a touch of absolute genius — “Mad Men” star Vincent Kartheiser plays several human manifestations of The Algorithm itself, selling Ben reasons to stay on his phone like some kind of dystopian Pete Campbell. These sequences first arrive with the queasy awkwardness of an after school special, and seem determined to make teenagers roll their eyeballs right out of their heads. But if these dramatizations can be more than a bit too on the nose, they’re redeemed by an emergent — and very amusing — self-awareness that reflects our own; a certain level of irony is required to get through to people who regularly tweet about how much they hate Twitter (aka “this website” aka “this hellsite”).

The least effective of these moments can make it feel as though “The Social Dilemma” underestimates the persuasiveness of its own arguments, but the most valuable passages help to illustrate one particularly alarming sound byte from elsewhere in the film: “We’re so worried about tech overpowering human strength that we don’t pay attention to tech overpowering human weakness.” It’s helpful to see how social media can inflame our inherent need for approval, and discourage people from taking risks that might alienate the online community. It’s convincing to see The Algorithm alert Ben to his ex-girlfriend’s new relationship so that he’ll spend more time sifting through her photos, and — in a frustratingly reductive way — watch The Algorithm populate Ben’s feed with videos that radicalize him into the fold of a political movement called “The Extreme Center,” a cute touch that nevertheless draws a false equivalency between left and right.

Is “The Social Dilemma” persuasive enough to convince a MAGA zealot to stop binge-watching Ben Shapiro nonsense and buy a subscription to a newspaper? It’s hard to say. But the film will definitely make you more cognizant of your own behavior — not just of how you use the internet, but how the internet uses you. And it will do so in a way that feels less like an intervention than it does a wake-up call; Orlowski and his subjects recognize how the internet has created a simultaneous utopia and dystopia, and they aren’t under any delusions that we’re able to wish it away. Their documentary isn’t instructive so much as directional, and thereby most fascinating for the implications it leaves you to consider on your own time.

How has social media shaped the way we think about (overlapping) things like politics, race, and entertainment? What impact does siloing people into their own realities have on our faith in empathy, objective truth, and some kind of shared understanding? And does the isolated and algorithmically-programmed nature of streaming video make it less of an alternative to the theatrical experience than its antithesis? As human futures become human presents, these questions will only grow more urgent. In the meantime: Quit Facebook, don’t click on Instagram ads, and — for the love of God — make sure that your Twitter feed is set to chronological order instead of “showing you the best tweets first,” because the only hope we have left lies in the difference between what you and The Algorithm consider to be good content.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[drizzitwrites]

Football RPF Challenge - Day 18: Overcoming an Obstacle

So, despite once again having almost no time (this whole November holiday thing where people come over and my house has to look presentable for guests is really throwing off my writing time, seriously), I want to at least START with today's prompt. As I look through the scene notes I've made before writing I'm under no delusions that I'll actually finish it or get to the part where they are ACTUALLY overcoming the obstacles (maybe one of them), but, honestly, this fic (part 2 of the new series, the one that deals with Vincent's injury) is basically a whole series of obstacles that these two have to overcome, so if I were to start at the beginning and write them overcoming obstacles together I'd have to write the whole fic. Which I will do, someday, of course, but for now we'll just concentrate on one in the series.

In this, Vincent has just re-injured the foot that was hurt for the whole second half of the previous season that kept him out for months at Fener. You'll read more about that in a few days when I have to address the "worst day ever" prompt in the list. Suffice to say, Vincent has been taken to hospital for imaging and further analysis on the injury and Christian has driven over straight after training to be there with him. After much discussion and deliberation they've both decided that the best thing for Vincent to do is go through with having surgery. Currently it's Friday afternoon and the surgery is scheduled for Monday morning. In the meantime, Vincent has been given crutches and a plastic boot to brace the injury and has been instructed not to put any weight on that foot at all. The obstacles begin with Christian trying to get him home from hospital and only get worse from there once they get home.

Christian wheeled Vincent's chair up to the now waiting vehicle, and Vincent made to push himself out, but only succeeded in almost tipping the chair over as he overcompensated for the loss of his right foot as a lever.

"Just wait, Liefje. I'll help you up." Christian shook his head at Vincent's impatience, then stepped around the chair to Vincent's right side and grabbed Vincent's elbow firmly.

"Count of three," he said. They counted off together and on three Vincent pushed out of the chair with his good leg, while Christian lifted him at the elbows. It was awkward and Vincent knew his shoulder joints would regret the twisting and wrenching as he used them to support the full weight of his body, but he somehow made it to a standing position without upending himself, the wheelchair, or anyone else, so he figured he should call it a win.

His head spun and his vision went black at the edges and he nearly collapsed back down to the chair, but a firm arm around his back, fingers pressing into his hip, held him fast.

"Pas op." Christian's voice in his ear, tone low. "I’ve got you." He ducked under Vincent's elbow and threw Vincent's arm over his shoulders. Vincent let himself lean into Christian as he tried to find his feet--or, his foot, he supposed--closing his eyes and holding tight until the waves of dizziness passed.

It was still odd, the two of them standing out here on the sidewalk with their arms wrapped around one another. For so long they'd gone out of their way to keep a respectful distance from one another whenever they were somewhere that people might notice them, and here Vincent was, effectively draped across Christian in the midst of a crowd.

All around them, people bustled in and out and hospital staff on their breaks relaxed on benches in the last few rays of sunlight, and Christian paid none of them any mind, his eyes only on Vincent. Granted, it wasn't as though they were locked in some kind of passionate embrace or anything, more like Christian trying to keep Vincent from toppling to the ground as he attempted to balance on one leg and hop towards the car, but it still felt strange.

"Okay," Christian said. "Just a few steps. Go ahead and lean into me if you need to."

"I can use the crutches," Vincent mumbled in protest, but Christian shook his head.

"I already put them in the car, it's not far, I'll help you."

He took a small step forward, the arm wrapped around Vincent's back giving an insistent press as he urged Vincent to move along with him.

Vincent stared down at the sidewalk. He was a footballer, and prided himself on his absolute control over his body in most situations, but with the amount of painkillers the nursing staff had dosed him with before sending him on his way he wasn't exactly confident that he'd be able to walk on his own if he had the use of both feet, so he leaned into Christian and let him half lift, half drag him towards the car.

"Okay," Christian said once they'd reached the door. "Here." He reached up and pried Vincent's hand from it's apparent death grip on his shoulder--and Vincent had no idea he'd been holding on to Christian that tightly; he'd have to apologise later for the inevitable bruises he'd left. Christian shifted, ducking beneath Vincent's arm to stand behind him, his hand still holding firm onto Vincent's waist as he dropped Vincent's hand onto the cool metal roof of the car.

Christian's car, Vincent noted. Christian's very small car.

Being the sort of person who absolutely loathed driving in any and all situations, Christian had never gone in for the fancy sportscars or the enormous SUVs that most of their fellow teammates had requested. Instead, he'd opted for what he liked to refer to as "something practical that isn't the world's biggest pain in the arse to park" and drove a Mini. And not the regular-sized, practical four-door version with actual room to move about, no. He'd chosen the smallest of them all, the three door hatchback that Vincent wasn't convinced he fit comfortably in on a good day.

Vincent stared down at the passenger-side seat and let out a groan.

"What's wrong?" Christian's words were clipped and rushed with panic as he leaned in tighter against Vincent.

"Nothing," Vincent replied. "Just...you couldn't have brought my car?"

"What?" Christian asked. "No. I told you, I came straight from training. What's wrong with my car?"

"Nothing," Vincent said again. He heaved out a sigh and hopped forward, sliding his hand along the roof of the car as he tried to find the best angle to somehow maneuver himself into the seat.

The sidewalk, thankfully, was level with the parking lane here--probably for situations exactly like this one--so at least he didn't have to step down off the curb on top of everything else. He twisted around, booted foot still suspended in the air, and shifted his right hand to the lip of the car door, using it for leverage.

Christian's hands guided him down, their warm press against his torso comforting and familiar. Vincent kicked his right foot out in front of him, the weight of the boot straining the muscles of his leg as he struggled to hold his foot above the ground. He was plenty strong, but he hadn't been able to properly warm down after training and the cramp in his muscles combined with the numb of medication and the emotional overload of the day had all started to take their toll.

He somehow managed to find the seat, reaching behind him with his left hand and bracing it against the seat back until his arse connected with the soft padding at the edge. He shifted backward, wincing and sucking in a sharp as his booted heel bumped against the pavement. Christian was there immediately, dropping down to a crouch and lifting Vincent's foot off the ground.

"Go ahead, Liefje. I've got you. Slide back a bit...good."

Vincent shifted back on a slow release of breath, Christian shifting along with him until Vincent was fully seated, good leg bent at the knee to let his foot rest against the ground, injured leg still cradled in Christian's hands.

"Now what?" Vincent asked, turning his head to examine the available leg room.

He looked down at his foot, then back at the legroom, then back at the boot. "I don't think I fit."

"Oh!" Christian exclaimed, then lurched forward, checking himself just before he bounced Vincent's foot off the pavement. "Sorry. I...can you hold your leg up for a second?"

Vincent shrugged, but did his best to contract all the muscles in his thigh and calf. This made his foot shift and twitch a bit inside its protective shell, and Vincent couldn't help the sharp cry he let out as pain surged up his leg, even through the haze of pain medication.

"Ah. Het spijt me," Christian yelled out. "Just for a bit."

He dropped to his knees and reached around Vincent's leg with his left hand, right hand still cupped beneath the plastic encasing Vincent's calf as he did his best to keep supporting some of the weight. He rooted around beneath the seat, letting out a string of soft curses under his breath until he finally gave a triumphant shout and Vincent's entire body lurched to the left.

The sudden movement combined with Vincent's dulled reflexes and the fog in his brain, caused Vincent to let out a yelp and fling an arm out in a futile attempt to grab for the frame of the car door. He missed, and his left foot kicked out from under him and shot upward to connect solidly with the boot, right where Christian's hand still held it firm.

Christian let out his own shout and pulled his hand away on instinct, causing Vincent's foot to slam into the ground.

"Oh, fucking hell! Krijk de kanker!" Vincent screamed out as a wave of pain rolled through his body, making his vision go black once more and his already unsettled stomach heave. He sucked in a breath against the pain and let his head drop against the seat back.

"Vince!" Christian's voice in a panic. A moment later Christian's warm touch on his leg--the good one, not the one he currently wished he'd just decided to detach from his body.

Vincent opened his eyes, then regretted it immediately as the world around him pitched and rolled. He slammed them shut again and let out a groan.

"Gaat het?" Christian asked, his voice an octave higher than normal. "Should I call someone to help? What can I do?"

"Just..." Vincent said, taking a moment to suck in another breath and try to force down the waves of nausea rolling over him. "Give me a minute. That... godverdamme that really fucking hurt."

"Het spijt me zo," Christian said, shifting closer and pressing a soft kiss to the back of Vincent's hand that was still resting against the seat back.

Vincent flung his eyes open at the gesture, startled by Christian's warm, soft lips on his skin out here in such a public place. "Christiaan?"

Christian shrugged, then flushed pink as he looked around them at the steady stream of people flowing past the hospital entrance. "Well...that's...um. Okay." He nodded. "You feeling better? Ready to try again."

He absolutely was not ready to try again--completely convinced that if he so much as attempted to shift from this position there was a good chance he was going to be sick all over the pavement and Christian's car and probably Christian himself--but he really wanted to be away from the hospital and well on his way to home and his bed, so he gave a weak nod. "Ja, just...move slowly, okay? I feel really ill."

"Oh. Do you need...? Can I get you anything? I should get someone?"

Christian scrambled to his feet and started towards the hospital entrance. Vincent managed, somehow, to grab a weak hold on his wrist and tug him back. "I will be okay. I just want to go home and rest."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Vincent lifted his head from where it still reclined against the headrest, moving slowly and breathing deeply against the spinning and tilting in his brain. Christian bent down and raised his foot off the ground once more, shifting along with Vincent as he slowly turned his body then bent his knee to lift his right leg into the car.

His toe bumped, briefly, against the dashboard as they went, causing Vincent's stomach to lurch once more. He waved Christian back and leaned out of the car in case he needed to be sick, but after a few shuddering breaths everything managed to stay down. He took a moment to be thankful that he hadn't been able to eat anything since his light lunch between training sessions earlier that afternoon.

Together, they just about managed to negotiate Vincent into the car. He had no choice but to rest his foot against the floor, the bottom pressed into the limits of the available legroom, and he was very convinced that if Christian hit even the slightest of bumps on their way home everything was going to go rather poorly for them both, but technically he fit and all he wanted now was his bed.

"Alright?" Christian said, slipping back into the car after returning Vincent's wheelchair to the orderly at the intake desk.

"I doubt it," Vincent said. "You may as well call ahead to arrange for someone to give your interior a deep clean. I feel truly awful."

Christian frowned over at him. "You look it, too. Maybe you should stay in hospital for the night. At least until you feel better."

"Christiaan, I did not just go through that whole ordeal of trying to wedge myself into your entirely too small auto only to have to somehow get back out again. Drive slowly and I'll do my best not to be sick all over your car."

"That hardly inspires confidence, Vincent. You're really pale. Maybe I should get you something--water or some medicine or I don’t know--."

"I just want to go home, Chris."

Vincent's voice must have sounded every bit as weak and pathetic as he felt because Christian stopped talking, snapped his seatbelt into place, started the car, then reached over and grabbed Vincent's hand across the steering column. "Okay, Liefje. Let's get you home."

[estrellamientos]

Damnum Ferre ch.1

So I mentioned on @canon-typical-violence that the first chapter of this fic exists.

Their first civil conversation afterward is held at blaster- and sword-point, respectively. The second one goes worse.

Hux passed through conscious shakiness or disorientation some hours ago; he has long been worn down to what feels like two-dimensional nothingness but lacks the smoothness to be glass. Glassy calm he knows well, and fury like the flat of a good blade (his own, for instance), and this is neither. He’s something depthless and empty and abraded, lacking the wherewithal to find itself repulsive.

There are marginal advantages to this. For example, while he would normally take a running inventory of pain before moving on to not allowing it to affect him, Hux currently can’t manage to keep a listing of the damage in his head. This applies to all of the damage at hand, admittedly, but tabulations of what matters can be written down just as this is disregarded. He works easily through the due diligence of sacking the erstwhile Resistance base for all the nothing it has to provide, at any rate, and through their own forces’ withdrawal. He does not think about pursuit at this time, the way he does not think about the common features between one breath and the next.

It is not that he has ever forgotten the taste of blood, particularly his own, but that it is staying in his mouth beyond all reason, currently. This is odd. Psychosomatic, he presumes, unless he’s managed enough reverting to old bad habits to tear the lining of his throat. Irrelevant, at any rate, as in he will not permit it to become relevant. He does not stop.

By the time Hux can in good conscience return to the *Finalizer* he feels like Crait’s sanded off the surface of his skin the way it seems to have grated the contours of his mind. Not that anything hurts, save when he breathes. Merely that he seems to be lacking things he shouldn’t need to lack: edges, definition, grip; the ability to meaningfully distinguish stimuli that are himself from those that are not.

It does not notably impair his functioning, at least not to a degree that is intolerable; however, that is given the fact that the scale for said range of tolerance is currently a quietly horrible study in adaptation all its own.

Hux watches over the buzz of busy misery that surrounds him, not least because it wouldn’t do for him not to be tracking it, but he does not issue reprimands for individual acts of incompetence. None are irreparable—in fact (he may feel toward this later, should he remember to) people recover remarkably well, it’s merely the density of casual mistakes to recover from—and the apparent widespread agitated despair is too universal to selectively punish. Selection of particular actors would be unproductive even as examples to the rest. The solution, whatever it is, lies beyond mere individuals.

Beyond most individuals, anyway.

He knows better than to keep his distance from Kylo Ren now but Hux finds himself doing so anyway, at least for the duration before there’s a ship solid under his feet again. It is a somewhat pathetically short span of time, he realizes later, for all that it seems to stretch infinitely while he’s within it.

Ren allows the search and the withdrawal (Hux sternly does not call it a retreat; therefore neither does anyone else) to happen without any incident significant enough for people to bring to Hux’s attention. This is an acceptable state of affairs, though perhaps only in the way that inevitable things must be.

He waits, then, until he can corner Ren, and does not delude himself that Ren doesn’t know he is being cornered, in the particular manner that passes with little effort for drawing him aside into an unremarkable and vacant mid-level meeting room Hux knows the template for better than his own bare hand. There is a casually risible normalcy to it, of table and chairs and blank walls lacking sufficient importance to merit a viewport. If the lights were on it could be anywhere in spacetime after the first _Resurgent_ launched.

Hux does have his blaster ready, this time.

(Armitage Hux’s gift is preparation in advance; likewise his curse. He is, however, not in the habit of making the same mistake twice.)

“I don’t know if you can stop a shot from this distance,” Hux says. His teeth still taste like blood, so mildly there’s the impression of it being just the natural state of things at this point. It feels almost more like a faculty of the air, especially given how dry his mouth is. “I don’t know if you do either. I *do* know—” Know what? Not what Ren’s willing to risk on the subject, beyond that it’s enough to have walked in front of Hux without complaint. For all Hux knows Ren wants to die outright. It’s as close to a working theory of what he’s been witnessing as any. “You killed Snoke.”

Ren turns to face him, slow, easy. This is in no way outside what Hux went in expecting, when Ren let himself be steered to leave his back open so easily as to be outright consent, when the door reformed behind them. Ren is an egotistical, hubristic idiot, but he is not dead.

Neither of them bother with light, and the ship is running on her mildest level of power conservation. It’s a preventative measure, while they determine how much damage there is for the unscathed and the functional to make up for, for how long. The trace available illumination is sufficient, both for this conversation and for operations throughout. What light there is collects in Ren’s eyes and, when he speaks, shows on his teeth.

“Do you now,” he says, his voice rough as well; from salt, presumably, and from screaming. Ren fumbles some of the emotional coordination he’d need to achieve a noteworthy level of cruelty, but Hux notes the symbolic effort of it as a matter of record.

The problem with standing close enough to Ren to not be backed against door or wall while promising a shot in the spine—or, now, the gut—is that Hux can’t evaluate him as a whole threat. He simply doesn’t have the needed width in terms of viewing angles. As such he has to choose: he can watch Ren’s face, like a man who is having a conversation.

Or he can watch Ren’s hands, like a frightened animal, and feel it in his neck.

Hux has considered before, generally in the context of early childhood education (and, more prosaically, particularly while illuminating others on why they have forfeited any right to tell him their opinions on early childhood education), how much of the distinction between sentients and subsentients can be demonstrated by way of death. A subsentient animal has no meaningful understanding, fear, or anticipation of its own demise. It cannot develop a conception of its inevitability in general, nor a particular preference between facing an oncoming death and looking away before the moment of impact. Nor can it act on such a preference—or against it—were it to somehow internalize one anyway.

Confrontation, cowardice, and the rest of that family of emotions are a sentient prerogative. This is naturally relevant at even the lowest levels of human acculturation, for reasons that should be patently obvious and yet still forced Hux into *years* of mere parodies of would-be academic debate.

He’s sure Ren would have an opinion on the subject, if prompted, for Hux to be irritated by, were he to be given the opportunity. If he hasn’t developed it, Hux is resigned to confidence in Ren’s ability to determine one on the spot. Ren, as a murderer and a telepath, is uniquely disposed to potential usefulness with regards to analysis by the living of the experience of death in general; it is Ren *himself* who would make the effort useless at best. He is an unreliable witness consistently more interested in finding ways to make himself an obstacle than in relevance or truth. That Hux has never had that *particular* debate with Ren does not change the fact that he knows this.

When Ren’s arm moves too fast and fluid to bother with, when his lightsaber hums to life at the corner of Hux’s eye, Hux does not particularly react. He flinches on some level, and he feels it on his face, but it’s doubtlessly both unimpressive and unimpressed: more a microexpression with delusions of grandeur than anything else. His blaster stays perpetually steady.

“Of course I know, Ren.” Hux couldn’t keep the tiredness from his voice to save his life; as such he doesn’t try. “I know everything.”

Ren does something like laugh, like he thinks the lie is for his benefit: short, barking, not quite wild. His features don’t reach wildness either, merely managing to reach *for* it, even with the advantage of drinking in flickering red plasma light as an intensifier. There is remarkably little of him left, all told, if only the excisions were relevant or permanent. In both of their cases the net effect is not dissimilar to the feeling invoked by surveying the wreck of the *Supremacy*: the vast majority still usable, patently alive, objectively a unique threat and enduring achievement, yet stripped of menace despite largely retaining its function. “No you don’t,” Ren says. Staring at him, and not swinging, like he thinks he’s managing to say something else.

“I know you’re hopelessly outmatched,” Hux answers, dry in both form and function. His own tongue slows him down, sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“By *what*?” Ren snaps, but the rage makes no travel down his sword arm; Hux only realizes belatedly that it could’ve. The matter didn’t cross his mind for—many reasons, but not least among them is the fact that neither of them are looking at their weapons at all. The hum of Ren’s saber this nearby sounds positively faulty, though Hux lacks enough experience with simple uses of kyber to know from that how much of it is due to flaws of the crystal or of the housing, or of the character of lightsabers more generally. “Organa has *nothing*,” Ren’s going on, making a solid effort at passion, his voice snagging roughly on itself, “and the girl is—”

“Irrelevant,” Hux says. Ren lets him. (Hux, for his part, lets that carry him away; it doesn’t occur to him not to.) “They are currently irrelevant. You’re outmatched by yourself. You are on track to burn down everything of value in this galaxy and, presumably, should you continue to—to miraculously survive your mistakes otherwise, in the next.”

“I should kill you for that,” Ren halfway growls, making no effort to do so. Something of the ambient loss gives the ludicrous impression that the idea is new to him.

Hux holds his gaze accordingly. “You should,” he says. His own voice runs more placid about it than he’d expected. “And you won’t.”

“Really.” Ren is trying; this is noticeable; it’s why he fails. He’s never been able to be the threat he ought to be in mere conversation, Hux has found. It’s not surprising that what serves him in power and menace on the battlefield isn’t recaptured into a static exchange merely by the presence of the sword that represents it.

If it were just Ren’s lethality in question, that aspect of him would never go missing; he is self-evidently a weapon more obviously than he is a man. But Ren doesn’t work as a sustained, present ultimatum any more than a lightning strike could, and his lightsaber is fixing to give Hux a headache.

“So why not just shoot me, General? You remembered a gun this time.”

It’s surprising that Ren’s aware, even that much, of what went through Hux’s mind in the throne room. Barely less so, come to think, that he didn’t contest being assigned Snoke’s death at all. Hux says, “I’ve no great interest in dying, Ren.” Pointedly.

“Then what’s this *about*?” Ren’s lip pulls back from his teeth; Hux can’t tell if the line of brutal light at his side shifts with a tremor of the blade or just with Hux’s own blinking, gaze too fixed on the fire that paints Ren’s face. “You’re right, I should j—”

“I am invested in my continued survival and that of the Order,” Hux cuts in. He does not have to try hard at all *to* make it cutting, an accusation of a contrast worth noting out loud. This is the only reason he manages to do it, the same way he manages this conversation’s fixed tableau largely through the kind of even immobile calm that can only come from holding a blaster steady. “And my assessment of your inevitable, *contagious*, and self-inflicted ruin—” It awes him to see Ren take even that with merely a twitch, which is why Hux keeps going. He’ll rationalize it into a test later. It is not a test now. “—was dependent on you taking up the mantle that would destroy you *alone*.”

“So you should—“ Ren shakes himself for a second, from the neck up only. It completely ruins any authority or composure acquired by rephrasing. The central problem being, of course, that he doesn’t need it. “No. You *will* help me.”

Hux will deny, later, to himself, that he then spends a second imagining saying no. It rips through him anyway; it is unexpected; it is wholly unmanageable. Left to his own devices Ren is in fact sure to drive the Order into the ground. It will splinter faster and with less hope of salvage than any Republican dream. And, curiously—given Hux doesn’t think he would’ve made this assessment a week ago—he thinks Ren really would even know it was his own fault. Maybe even entirely.

For a second he imagines that: Saying no. (Leaning into the saber blade he won’t deign to look at, even, before Ren thought to do something more elaborate. There’s something seductive about the furious plasma at the corner of his eye, a manner of drawing him in of a vertigo-like genre with the kind of hubris at which Hux succeeds as much as with flight at which the human body fails.) Turning the entire conversation into one last spiteful feint. Letting Ren, for the first time in his life, experience the consequences of his actions.

He imagines the consequences themselves by the end of the beat, though. What it actually means—anathema—for the Order to fall. (And for Hux, were he to do otherwise and survive to see it, a neo-Republican execution; even if they end the war with enough collaborators to form a jury he can’t imagine anyone would waste the time.)

Hux thinks of Rae Sloane wearing the blood on her uniform like rank insignia; of the first flash of certainty of knowing that his father was not the Empire, that his father was a disgrace.

Snoke was not the First Order. Hux is not the First Order. Even the millions dead today were not the First Order. And Ren *certainly* isn’t.

He’ll give Ren nothing else aside from this pause: let the man know Hux still had to think if he has to, if he’s even equipped to notice, but Hux offers no change of expression, no resigned or irritated breath. He wouldn't be standing here if in the end he didn't know already exactly how this story goes.

Clipped and atemporal, the words as at home in his mouth now as they would have been five days or months or years ago, he says, “Of course, Supreme Leader. What do you need?”

At that Ren still stares at him, oddly slow to adapt. “I’d be more convinced you mean that,” he says, “if you weren’t still pointing a blaster at me.”

The corner of Hux’s mouth twitches quickly, to an extent that may or may not be visible. “Naturally,” he says, already thumbing the safety back on. Shifting his gaze isn’t necessary for that, nor for holstering it, although he knows immediately that keeping the conversation up to standards is about to get vastly more uncomfortable. He expects mistakes, as such, like breathing. “Sir?”

“Incredible.” Ren’s voice is flat in a way that makes the Republican in him positively blare with it.

It’s harder to read his face once his saber retracts, but the last relatively detailed look Hux gets gives him the odd impression Ren reciprocating on the armistice has happened without his conscious assent. The surprise seems too deep and fundamental to merely be a (honestly unmerited) reaction to Hux himself.

Ren takes a step back as he returns his saber to his belt, spending the rest of the distance between himself and the room’s normalcy to the point that he almost walks into the table, the motions far less polished. “So this is a truce?”

“Truces are for enemies, Ren,” Hux says. Ren looks at him for long enough that Hux’s eyes readjust in the interim, so perhaps it was the wrong thing to say. Certainly Hux has pushed further and in more directions than he’d at any point intended, egged on by every time Ren let him. Presuming Ren’s not about to change his mind about that and snap Hux’s neck, he’ll have to reassess. For now, in order to watch Ren blink at it more than anything else, Hux pitches his voice away to add, “Lights to fifty percent.”

Fifty percent lighting on even slight ship-wide energy austerity is entirely forgiving; he catches Ren’s face on the end of the reflexive blink that lets him, too, school himself accordingly. “Right,” Ren says. “Enemies.” He sounds not sarcastic as much as like he was recently made aware of the idea of sarcasm and is still forming a conclusion on it. “So what do *we* need, General?”

Hux shifts into parade rest; he even allows his spine to have an opinion on doing so, briefly, before he dismisses it. “We need to know where we stand,” he says, wonders idly if Ren finds a double meaning in it. Then he immediately gets carried away again. “The majority of the dedicated fleet is intact but a full survey of the damage will take time. A full survey of the death toll will take longer. The rest of our forces are largely dispatched on the frontlines of invasions of what had been selected as vulnerable targets prior t—” Prior to Starkiller. Hux swallows the mourning viciously and clears his throat after. “We can expect them to begin reporting back soon if they haven’t already, and that will give us a better picture of what we have to work with for recovery. For now I r—”

Ren raises his hand and Hux stills. He stills *immediately*, giving the lie to his own performance, stopping so fast he feels his pharynx click. All Ren does with this, though, is to scrub his hand over his face; the other finds the small conference table he’d not quite backed himself against and leans slightly on it. Hux understands the impulse on both counts, but it does Ren no favors. He doesn’t need them; this continues to be the problem.

(He will. Will he know?)

“Better question,” Ren says after a moment, his tone an oddly fragile tangle of resignation and embarrassment. “Now that you’re committed to not shooting me if I do, does anyone need *me*, or can I—can I get some sleep.”

The tiredness in Ren’s voice scrapes along Hux’s own bones, which is overall unsurprising. Beyond the obvious of their recent exertions, even Hux’s rudimentary understanding of the Force indicates it must require some manner of energy tax from its practitioners. He blinks, though, waylaid enough in thought to answer on a slide further into autopilot prompted by the obvious mistake of it, like Ren’s an errant subadult or some uppity commander. “Even under crisis a significant disruption of sleep/wake cycles is a choice of last resort,” he says on blank didactic reflex. “And even for essential crew. The alleged gain in having *any* given person present can only be weighted against the cost of their absence after considering that loss of function from sleep deprivation is immediate, punishing, and progressive, as well as compounding on itself. The idea carries the same wretched cost-benefit ratio as returning injured soldiers to the field when others are available. A—”

Ren is staring at him. Differently, this time, the emotion gap produced by the drop-off in threat filled with Hux’s own belated humiliation.

Hux bites his lips savagely, resigned to the certainty that his face is coloring with embarrassment. Those debates had taken *ages*, immediate practical relevance making them worse and more protracted than the issue of death, back when Order command had been laboring under an even worse infection of old Imperials spoiled by upbringings where they’d had lives to underexploit—even to waste—than it currently is. So much of Hux’s life takes place in contexts where he can better things by explaining them that the reflex endures long after he’s lost his grasp on common sense.

(The only thing that curtails it is certainty of lack of *understanding*—that is, a guarantee of failure—and Ren is not Snoke. Of course that has disarmed him.)

“My apologies,” he chokes out. “Habit. There were—arguments. For a long time. About establishing priorities, by people who didn’t *recognize*—” Hux strangles his own voice again before Ren can, though at this point he’d probably welcome it as help, before realizing at last why he’s actually doing this.

Because Ren just blithely handed Hux permission to tell Ren to hurt himself and all but promised he would do it in the asking, and Hux still needs to tell him no. The good thing is Hux knew to talk himself out of doing otherwise before he even recognized the option. The bad thing is that the managing of it is so hard Hux has to spend his own dignity on necessity and do so out loud.

“We don’t,” Hux says, still drawn inexorably to take the long way of it, more so knowing now he’s hit on something Ren is crushingly, subhumanly inept with, to an extent Hux can’t yet so much as model. The realization that both the down payment on Hux’s continued survival and the delayed cost of him making it this far will have to be fixing Ren to at least manage to fake it, and the prospect of in *any* way *fixing Kylo Ren* is—”We don’t hurt our own unless it is necessary for the advancement of the First Order. And recovery efforts are already in motion. Yes.”

“An actual answer, Hux.” Ren is still staring: nakedly, some kind of upset Hux isn’t going to further disambiguate for as long as he can afford to read Ren as not planning on lashing out with it. For now Ren looks merely like an impending implosion, and Hux can not care. Any extent to which this manages to penetrate far enough to be refreshing is annulled when Ren remembers his own rank, though, even slightly. “And then you’re dismissed.”

Shifting to an actually pertinent routine distracts Hux from the knowledge of his off-script failures as much as anything could. Ren may not appear disposed to push on any of those fault lines currently, all the fight gone out of him with the decision that Hux doesn’t merit fighting, but Hux’s mind will surely pick up the slack. He nods sharply. “Sir.” Thinks before he speaks, this time. *Not* about the open wounds of the present, or about the other questions Ren has opened, unintentionally and in great density, thus far. “It’s… in everyone’s interest that you rest, frankly. We can reconvene when—”

*When we’ve both recovered somewhat,* he almost says. Hux himself isn’t sure quite why he opts to kill the sentence so viciously instead. It’s not too gentle on Ren; aggravating him further now has ceased to be useful. It’s not irrelevant; it is the strict description of his concern at hand. It’s not impossible; Hux can’t afford not to recover.

What, then?

“Right,” Ren says, into that emptiness, after a moment. “All right.”

The way his eyes fall shut seems more than anything like the action of gravity on a great and inert weight (seems like Hux has ceased to exist), not like the function of a mere human body, such that Hux can’t find him pathetic quickly enough to be affected. Instead he’s seized with the nonsensical urge to ask if Ren plans on falling asleep here, on his feet, in a mid-level conference room. Strictly speaking, as far as Ren’s poor decisions go, something that *human* is unlikely to be beyond him.

Hux leaves, instead, exactly as requested and without another word. Quickly, as well; it is somehow even more uncomfortable than being watched by Ren *not* to be. He is aware of no gaze on his turning back, not even of the air-pressure shift he has gathered is the Force as metaphor made real actor.

It’s not that Hux’s sense of such things has ever been inerrant, or even reliable; it is, instead, exactly enough to make him wonder, and nothing more.

He does hope that Ren has the sense to drag himself off and actually rest. It happens almost in spite of himself. Hux can recognize, regardless of the quickly-ignored opinions of his individual bones, that this has been brutal for Ren as well, because it has been brutal for everyone, to varying degrees.

Ren will be more bearable when he is more effective. At worst, when he inevitably gets in Hux’s way, that will enable Hux to act with the confidence that Ren meant to and proceed accordingly. At best…

Who knows? Hux thinks, so suddenly that for a moment it drags him almost to a stop. Who would know? Who has *seen* it? At Ren’s best—

Maybe he’ll even be useful.

[anangelicday-mrwolf]

Wolfsbane : Noblesse Fanfic (post-ending)

(previous chapter)

Chapter 37 – Yuigi’s Mystery

“Sir, we have a situation!”

Sangin and Yeonsu bolted into the room, their motion so forceful that they might as well have demolished the door.

“We just had an explosion in sector 32.”

“Sector 32? That must be...”

“That’s where we have a facility that belongs to the ex-chairman.”

Of all the places.

Taesik, the director of KSA, minced a biteful of his lips, grasping his desk tightly by its either sides.

“Do we know the cause?”

“We dispatched the agents who happened to be nearby. They testified that the topmost structure of the building – which is in the ex-chairman’s possession – was utterly destroyed. Luckily we have zero casualty so far, due to the time and location of the explosion. Not to mention it was built in an area not dense in transient or residential populations.”

“...That is good to hear.”

“I am terribly sorry to say this, but it is too soon to call off the alarm. We have yet to find the one to blame.”

“...Did you notify them?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Takio said he’s on his way right now.”

“Very well. You two look into the exact number of casualty and magnitude of damage. We must get ready for the aftermaths, including the media broadcast.”

Sangin and Yeonsu nodded in understanding.

They remained silent, but they knew what used to stand at the scene of trouble. They also knew who was lodging there.

Which was why they mentally mumbled in synchronization: Did she finally do it?

*****

Yuigi was running.

She had been stranger to a chase for such a long time.

However, unlike her previous experiences, she was the one on the run.

“Where do you think you’re going? I just put up a fight and gave you an invitation – don’t you turn down the party!”

The man croaked behind her, sounding much more like a toad with his voice raised.

Currently, Yuigi was luring him.

She could not say for sure if she could muster even one-sixteenth of her original power, but she remembered how she could make a colossal building crumble to the very bottom with a mere punch, as if breaking a toothpick.

She knew herself too well; she could not dare engage in a brawl where the safehouse once maintained itself.

‘There’s no reason for me to reserve myself a lecture from those three, given that I can make it back alive.’

She ultimately reached the area where 6th, 7th, and 8th Elders were lost, still under KSA’s management – a thoroughly vacant space, impeccable for a clash-slash-clamor.

‘No, it won’t be a clash. Clash applies to a case in which the involved parties engage in a mutual combat. What I’ll soon get to encounter here would be a one-sided beating.’

Yuigi directed her eyes, slightly hazy with bitterness, towards her choker, somehow feeling heavier than usual.

“Like I said, you have no idea how elated I am, Yuigi! For at last I have found a chance!”

The modified human smirked, making it so very blatant that he was in ecstasy.

‘Duh, of course I have no idea. I was too busy trying to recover my well-bombarded eardrums.’

That was when Yuigi got curious of what he had said to her upon entrance.

She was aware of the fact that bad guys who talk a lot have so much to offer.

Though verbal manipulation is far from her usual style of battle, Yuigi warmed up her lips in preparation.

“Oh, so that’s what you jabbered about when you crashed through the door? Thanks for filling me in.”

That moment the man’s face was crumpled in displeasure.

“I happened to be busy in thoughts. Damn, speaking of which, I didn’t even get to enjoy my late-night snack. I’ve been waiting to savor it since last night; I wonder if I can get it later. Then again, since the entire building is gone, I should start cleaning the mess. And figure out who to send the bills to pay for the loss.”

Yuigi peeked at him, making herself appear as unconcerned as possible.

Just as she had wished, his face was plastered with doubt concerning his own hearing capability, soon to be marred with question regarding her words.

“That was the prelude of my glorious history of spotlight. You were supposed to be my witness for the moment...! And you didn’t hear anything I spoke?”

“Nope. To me, getting a treat as scheduled is more important than that stupid speech of yours.”

“Why, you...! Stick this to your head – the codename’s Kornel. The new hope and star of the surviving Union! And as I get my revenge for my dear friend Mark, I...”

Kornel flinched and held his tongue, in the course of his frenzied monologue of screech and spit.

And he smiled as if telling Yuigi that it was a nice try.

“You were planning to pry out info from me. Sorry, but I’m not falling for it. I’m not that hopeless.”

Well, you just spilled the codename of your closest comrade. That counts as a lethal mistake in my point of view.

Yuigi did not dispense her opinion, for Kornel did have a point: she could no longer collect intelligence from him.

And she had neither the plan nor time to give it another try. Kornel flexed his fingers and closed the distance between them.

“Since you were keeping yourself hidden in such a place, I assume your skills have turned unworthy of flaunting. It’s a shame that I can’t pummel you while you are in best condition and fully furnished, but I hope you’d understand. When will I ever get to beat a Cerberus? Oh, and allow me to thank you in advance – thank you for serving as my stepping stone to the higher ground!”

With a pregnant thud, Kornel flung himself forward.

Instinctively Yuigi’s senses were whetted to the extremity, and she fixed her eyes upon his fists and correspondingly maneuvered herself in the air.

Kornel launched the kickoff of their game with light punches, their pressure and power nevertheless not even close to the definition of kickoff, and darted towards the red-haired woman. As she ducked and turned in evasion, she could run a self-diagnosis.

‘Reflexes. Speed. Rate of reaction. They’re not so different from what they used to be. My powers may have been only partially retrieved since I was freed from Crombel’s lab, now chained by this choker. But this isn’t so bad; I can handle this, I think.’

And Yuigi got to pay for speaking too soon.

“So this is piece of cake for you, huh? You do live up to the name of the Cerberus.”

So here goes the real deal.

Yuigi had a feeling that was what Kornel’s grin was implying.

Swoosh!

Pow!

“Urgh!”

Kornel’s body faded as Yuigi kept her gaze on him, and right after an impact equivalent to that of a tank’s missile bored through her side.

Despite the painful delusion that half of her form was shattered into dust, Yuigi lifted her body to find out what just occurred to her.

Thus she came to behold Kornel lifting his enormous fist, about to powder her for good.

Bam!

Yuigi gave a kick to her legs at full force, to be gravely astonished by how Kornel had already caught up to her.

‘He looks like a toad, but how come he’s so fast?!’

As far as she was concerned, he was just a bit slower than Takio, based on her memories from the day he exhibited his nimbleness with a glass of water when she first opened her eyes in the safehouse.

Therefore, she had no choice but to altogether pledge herself to dodging.

She was not completely cornered, to her gratitude.

‘No energy manipulation or body transformation. Looks like he’s the type that deals with physical melee based on superhuman speed and strength.’

The moment her analysis met its end, out of habit she attempted to counterattack.

As she had commonly done so, Yuigi concentrated the energy within to eject it in the shape of a beam.

Just then, an unexpected pain yanked her neck, rendering her whole body numb.

It was thanks to the choker, molded by Tao and assigned by Takio.

Simultaneously, she could feel the energy that sparked across her palm withdrawing itself, like fire dumped with water.

Kornel did not hesitate to throw himself towards her, and after a series of despair and helplessness came a thought: Should I just give up?

Yuigi did not even wipe the blood off her throat, a mark left by the slash of wind that very nearly beheaded her. She was captured by the idea that even if she makes it out of here, she still has no life.

‘And I don’t want to stay as a nuisance to him.’

Takio may have thought she was blind to the fact, but she knew.

She knew that M-21, as much as he tried to make it invisible, was not happy at all with her presence.

Although Lunark’s visit set a guideline for her future behaviors, she knew that Takio was on a rather away-from-good terms with his teammates for her sake.

And just then she could see no reason why she should keep on with her current status, void of a purpose but surely a hindrance to her savior.

‘Let’s just give up.’

Her body stopped struggling, as if it were waiting for her statement.

She could feel all of her cells drained of vitality, as if her biological clock has been broken.

Meanwhile, Kornel did not halt his attack; he was right onto her face, which was a sign for Yuigi that this was it.

However, the air enveloping her heaved with a swoosh, and Kornel’s movement went past her.

No, she went past it.

‘What the...?’

She was ready to die. She did not mean to move whatsoever.

Nonetheless, her body scrambled as Kornel lunged towards her once again.

And her body began to move on its own.

‘What the heck...? What is going on?!’

She could not control any of her appendages.

It was as if her mind was cut off from her flesh, trapped in a shell in humanoid configuration.

On the other hand, her steps and actions had turned much more precise.

Apparently Kornel realized the change; his face was muddled with confusion.

But not long after, he snickered, seemingly onto something in his mind.

“A puppet within the Union, and a puppet outside, I see.”

What are you talking about?

Yuigi’s words were mute, her voice box incompliant.

“In the past, I could pick up a couple things about you by pure chance. Including what Yuri did to your body via Crombell’s order, when you were made his test subject. And what you had gone through when you found yourself at the Union for very first time.”

Yuigi did not like the way he was bickering.

For some reason, she felt like he knew something that could devastate her entire world once she learns.

What are you trying to say?

What is it that you know?

Tell me. Say it now.

No, don’t. Don’t say it.

Please let me stay ignorant.

A myriad of thoughts summoned within her soundless lightning, vortex, and squall.

“Did you know that you’ve been serving your archenemy?”

Kornel’s declaration turned Yuigi’s inner lightning into thunderstorm.

“How very pitiful. You haven’t realized who gave you your misfortune.”

Her vortex within transformed into a tornado.

“You’ve considered Union your everything, haven’t you? Well, guess what? It’s the Union that took everything from you.”

Her squall recast itself as a hurricane.

And the said hurricane struck her from head to toe, igniting every nerve of her physique.

What is that...

“...Supposed to mean?!!”

The phrase that was to be left as a thought erupted through her lips.

She could feel control back in her grip; Kornel stiffened upon her shift.

He soon repositioned himself to continue his assault, but he had to hold onto the idea.

“Miss Raciela!!”

Bang! Bang!

With a sheer cry, bullets unusually amplified in power directly landed on where Kornel was locating himself.

Kornel hurriedly took steps back, as Takio secured himself before him.

The Union agent winced upon recognizing him.

A purple-haired gunner. A gray-haired werewolf shifter. And an electric whipper with locks of white hair. In whatever circumstances, don’t you ever face off against them. Or so help me......

‘Damn it,’ muttered Kornel in his head, as he composed himself and gritted his teeth.

“Looks like fortune favors you. But don’t you think this is the end of it. Now that I know you are here, you have just provided us with an additional weapon. You’d better mark my words!”

Contrary to his you-can’t-do-anything-about-us stance, Kornel did not waste a second in running for his life.

Takio kept his gun poised and ready to fire until Kornel was made perfectly scarce, to finally turn to Yuigi, who remained immobile until then.

Her reply to his question of her safety was nothing like what he was anticipating.

“Tao.”

“...Sorry?”

“The guy who used to be in DA-5 with you. The one who is still on your team. I need to talk to him.”

(next chapter)

Yes, Kornel belonged to the assassin team under Crombell’s ownership, along with Mark. The fact that he was Mark’s closest friend is my creation for this fic, so I hope there would be no confusion on this matter!

Now this fic is slowly reaching its highlight chapters. I’ll do my best to bring a good finale for my series! :D