#but it's happened once or twice now and hooboy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

phantoms-lair · 4 years

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❧ ❧ ❧

Three huh, hooboy

Ritsuko wasn’t sure what she was expecting from the third child, no one was since Gendo had lost him, but the smile boy wearing an honest to god black cloak and ornate rings wasn’t it.

“So you’re telling me I was asked to come here in order to pilot a giant robot to fight that giant angel thing?” Shinji asked. “You can’t be serious!” Misato protested. “He’s had no training.” “AWESOME! And they said coming here was a bad idea! It’s even my color. Load me up!” Misato resisted the urge to facepalm. Where was this fearlessness on the way in?

A1 Clips attached Shinji was brought in the entry plug and the LCL started filling in. “Should I be concerned?” Shinji asked, still remarkably calm for the situation.

“The liquid is breathable, you were oxygenated this way for nine months after all.” Ritsuko explained calmly.

“Not what I was worried about- oh hey, this stuff tastes great!” Many of the the bridge workers, who’d grown to tolerate the smell of LCL looked at Unit 01 in confusion and a little disgust.

Gendo’s Kid Ritsuko reminded herself. “Unit 01 Launch.”

“Sure he climbs into the giant robot, but not my car.” Misato grumbled. “Okay Shinji, I need you to focus on walking.” The mecha took one tentative step. Then another. Shinji giggled and the robot began to bounce on it’s toes, before slipping and landing on it’s behind.

“Shinji are you okay?” He didn’t seem damaged from the feed, but the life sign readers were malfunctioning and not telling Ritsuko anything. “All okay-dokey.” Shinji said in a sing-song voice before straightening himself out. “Oh look, there’s the Angel. LET’S WRASSLE!” “Ritusko what the hell is going on?” Misato asked as Shinji attempted to suplex the Third Angel. “He wasn’t acting anything like this before.” “It just a hunch, since we don’t have enough data and the readouts aren’t calibrated properly to him,” which sounded better than saying they weren’t working, “But I believe he’s having a unique reaction to the LCL which is putting him in a hyperoxygenated state which-.” She sighed, realizing she had to simplify. “He’s getting high off the LCL.”

“That can happen?” Misato asked, aghast.

“There’s no evidence of it happening before, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. He’s been getting progressively more twitchy the longer he’s in there.” She gestured to the plug feed where Shinji was drumming his fingers on the controls, tapping his feet, and grinning like a loon.

“Oh God, we have to pull him out.” MIsato had paled considerably. She didn’t even want to think about the damage that could be done in this state. “Shinji you need to-” “DEATHTRON HAMMER!” Shinji charged at the Third Angel shoulder first. The AT Fields clashed, creating a red aura around Shinji as he broke through and began pummeling the Third Angel before suddenly retreating and climbing on top of the deployment shaft. “And now the grand finale. Passed down through the Valentine Family, ARTEM BUSTER!” Cackling he leapt off the shaft and landed elbow first, right on the Third Angel’s core. The resultant explosion blew him off, causing him to ragdoll through the air, before landing in one of the mountains.

“We got lucky,” Misato said grimly.

Section 2 seemed all to happy to shove the boy at Ritsuko. He was still under the effects of the LCL and was talking a mile a minute, occasionally going into a fighting pose and punching the air a few times as if to make a point.

Ritsuko pinched the bridge of her nose. As Misato said, they’d gotten lucky he’d defeated the Angel in this state. He clearly wouldn’t be able to pilot until they could counter whatever he was reacting to in the LCL. “Shinji, we need to give you an exam since the senors in the EVA were malfunctioning and not picking up anything.” Shinji paused in his reenactment of his fight. “You mean like beating and heartbeat and stuff?” He went back to his play fighting the air.

“That’s correct.” Ritsuko felt a headache coming on. “Your sensors are probably fine.” Shinji tried to do a spin kick and failing. “I just don’t have any.”

“You don’t have any life signs?” “Nope.” Shinji gave them a big grin, with canine teeth that were a little too long and sharp. “I’m a vampire.”

The two college roommates looked at each other. “Shinji, vampires aren’t real.” Misato started to explain.

In response Shinji turned into a purple hued bat and began an erratic flight in circles, cackling all the way, not knowing how many plans just went up in smoke.

~~~~

Shinji raised by someone else is a common enough trope in fanfiction. I at one point thought of trying my hand at it and went with the Valentine Vampires from Shadow Hearts. It never got past the planning stage, but damned if this wasn’t going to be a fun Shinji

(Note: Shinji ‘died’ in a car crash before being brought back as a vampire by Hilda, so he’s terrified of being in cars)

(More under cut)

~~ “Later, I need to talk to you. About The Case.” There had been a time when 'The Case' had been the drunk driver that hit his wife. Now it was the dark cloud that had hung over Inaba for nearly a year.

Yuu froze. “Is something wrong?”

“No I just – I just need a little more information,” Dojima decided. A hell of a lot more was more truthful.

Yuu nodded. “After Nanako goes to bed, I'll tell you anything you want to know.”The emphasis on the word 'want' puzzled Dojima. As they sat down Nanako reach for the remote and flicked on the TV. Dojima felt a slight chill down his spine, knowing that his daughter had once gone through a similar screen.

Then it hit him. The reason for Yuu's odd manner of speech was to give Dojima an out on some things he might be disturbed by. What little Dojima knew about the occurrences was frightening and mind blowing. Yuu was giving him a way out, trying to protect him from having his world blown apart even further.

Stupid kid, always trying to protect everyone around him. It was moments like this that Dojima would never admit to. Watching his nephew shine in sports and academia was something for any family member to be proud of. But it was watching how he cared and looked out for people, how he protected everyone he came across with the same ferocity that Dojima himself had, that made him wish Yuu had been his son, not his sister's.

Still, Yuu could protect his friends, Nanako, and any other passerby he met, but trying to protect his uncle was taking it too far.

The evening seemed to crawl by at a snail's pace. It seemed a small eternity before Dojima finally finished reading his daughter a bedtime story and turned out her lights.

Yuu was waiting for him in his room, two cups of tea steaming on his table. Dojima tried to start the conversation, but his nephew cut him off. “Ten minutes”

“What?”

“It normally takes Nanako about ten minutes to fall asleep. I don't want her listening in on this conversation.” And thus began the longest ten minutes in Dojima's life.

Finally Yuu put down his tea and looked Dojima in the eye. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.” It's more than just the details of the murders. It what his nephew has been through this past year and why on Earth he didn't tell anyone. He did muttered Dojima's subconscious. Twice

“This is your last chance to back out,” Yuu warned. Receiving no reply, he sighed. “It began the day after Yamano's body was found. Yosuke was treating me to a meal as a welcome to town and Chie came along. We met Saki-sempai...” Yuu stopped and shook his head. He hadn't known and there was nothing he could have done at that point. “As we parted, Chie told us about this Urban Myth, the Midnight Channel. That if you looked into a turned off TV at midnight on a rainy evening, you'll see your soulmate.”

Dojima raised an eyebrow.

“Don't give me that look. I know how childish it sounds, but I had already seen Chie play the Nutcracker Suite on Yosuke with very little provocation, and besides, what could it hurt? It wasn't like anything would actually happen.” Yuu chuckled self deprecatingly. “As the clock struck midnight, I looked out the window. Three streetlamps glowed; red, yellow, and blue. The rain was light, but you could still hear the patter on the roof and pavement.”

Dojima felt a chill run up his spine in a way that he hadn't since he was a small child. The faraway look in his nephew's eyes told him he wasn't just telling the story, he was narrating it as he relived the events in his mind.“When I first heard static coming from the television, I thought it was my imagination. I turned around to see the television, that has been off a second ago, was on. I saw flashes of a girl, running from something in fear. The images only lasted a few seconds, then faded to nothing, leaving only the slight glow of a TV that should have been turned off. That's when I heard the voice.”

“I'm still not sure what it was, Izanagi perhaps,-” Yuu continued, ignoring the question his uncle was about to ask, or perhaps too far gone in the memory to realize Dojima had been about to interrupt. “-it's voice seemed to cleave my body in two. I thought my head would explode from the pain. It's word echoed through me: 'I am Thou and Thou art I. Thou art the one who opens the door'.And then – silence.”

Tension left Yuu's frame. “The only sound came from rain, the only light from the streetlamps. I wasn't even sure if what had just happened was real or not.” Yuu turned from his uncle, towards the TV. “I don't know what I was thinking. At that point, I'm not even sure I was. I just reached out...” Following his narrative, Yuu stretched his right hand out, his fingertip barely touching the screen.

Dojima felt his heart leap into his throat as a ripple pattern flowed across the screen from the contact. Yuu had yanked his hand back, the tentatively reached out again. This time he didn't pull back, pushing his am into the screen nearly up to his shoulder.

Yuu looked at him calmly, completely unphased by how impossible what he was doing was. “This is how it started Uncle. If I hadn't stayed up that night, perhaps I never would have gotten involved.” He pulled his hand back out. “The voice in my head, the images that showed on the Midnight channel, the power that lets me pass through the door, all were important to solving the case.”

“You have a lot of unused vacation time. It's time to call it in. I knew eventually you'd want to know the whole story and we'd discussed how to explain. We decided the best way was to walk you down our path, to reenact the major moments of the case. Tomorrow we'll head to the one place that was the key to our investigation. I'll continue the story there, where we first got involved.” Yuu's expression softened. The take charge tone he had been using evened out to the gentle voice he associated with his nephew. “I know what you just saw isn't easy to accept. It wasn't easy for me either, for any of us. There's no nice way to explain everything that happened-”

“There's never a nice way to explain murder,” Dojima growled, trying the quiet his thumping heart. A large part of his mind trying to find some explanation for what he just saw.

“No, there isn't, but this...it got messier in far more personal ways. You'll see. Rise and Naoto are coming over tomorrow to play with Nanako. And we'll begin on the path of the investigation. You should get some rest.”

“And you expect me to just fall asleep tonight?” Dojima asked dryly, not sure if he was being serious or trying to lighten the mood.

“It would be best, tomorrow will be tiring. That place always is.”

“That place?”

“Trust me,” It wasn’t a statement, from his nephew, but a plea. Because Dojima hadn’t trusted him on the important things. And because of that a bunch of kids had to face a murderer alone.

“I do.” More of a promise than a statement. That he wouldn’t discount what his nephew told him ever again.

~~~~ One of the few things that left be dissatisfied in Persona 4 was Dojima’s whole ‘lets not talk about it’ after the fact. He’s the type of person who’d need to know and understand before he could put it to bed in his mind. So this, Backside of the TV would be the group walking him through it to try and gain that understanding.

A haunted looking man stared into his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He had come so far, from the child of poor farmers in his home country to being one of the top programmers in a large-scale American cooperation. Was he really prepared to throw it all away?

There was no doubt about it, a product recall at the late stage would destroy global trust in the company. Competitors could easily move in and remove his company from the picture. Not only would he certainly be fired, but he would be unhireable. All for something that had less than a one in a million chance of happening.

But what if it does happens, eh? His conscience whispered at him. Could you go on living with yourself knowing some poor soul gets hurt because you did NOTHING?

The man splashed some cold water on his face. It wouldn't do to lose control of his emotions. There was only one thing he could do, and he was going to do it with pride and dignity. Drying his face with a towel, the man marched out of the restroom with a renewed sense of purpose. He marched to the main meeting room, where all the major stockholders and even the company president were waiting.

Trying not to let his fear show, he moved to the podium, sliding his notes and proofs into the small cubby within it. One final deep breath and it was time...

“Gentlemen,” began Rodrick McStewart, “The Pinnacle chip is flawed.”

“A 'flaw'?” Armando Guitierrez's voice sounded innocently curious, but it was all Roddy could do to keep from shivering. “What kind of 'flaw'?”

“One I've never seen before,” Roddy answered honestly. “If activated, the chip's ability to increase the rate of information flow goes into overdrive, the consequence of which are, to say the least, dire.”

One of the stockholders leaned forward “What do you mean 'dire'?”

McStewart sighed. “The computer would start downloading information from the internet at an unseen rate. And not just one or two files, it would try to download the whole bloody thing. Rather than slowing down as this continues, it speeds up causing the system to critically overheat in under a minute. It's not unlikely the computer would explode, causing serious damage to the user in the process.”

It was silent as a morgue. “W-What are the odds of this happening?” Another suited man asked.

Crud. He was hoping that wouldn't come up. “I've calculated the odds at four hundred and fifty million to one.” As he feared, he watched the entire boardroom relax, joking amongst themselves that they had been scared of nothing. The fools saw such a large number as unreachable. But the truth was the chip had already sold over 60 million units on pre-order alone. In under a year it would reach five hundred million, practically guaranteeing at least one accident.

Guitierrez took a deep breath. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Roddy. I will discuss this with the shareholders. If you would please wait in my office, we can discuss this further and see how we can salvage this.”

He knew he was being dismissed, but it was more than he had thought he would get. At least Guitierrez was willing to listen to him in private, even if he was going to spend the next hour telling the stockholders there was no problem.

Guitierrex's office was a long rectangular room, the north side of which was completely glass. The mahogony deck used the window as a backdrop. Roddy flopped down in the wheeled leather chair in front of the desk and pulled out his notes. On one of the pages was a picture of the Pinnacle chip focused in on it most important feature, the 'Broken Arrow' core. Many times McStewart wished he could have spoke with the R&D team that had developed it. It's power was amazing, McStewart was sure the chip he had built around it wasn't accessing a fraction of it's true power.

“Thank you for your patience Roddy, no sit, sit” Guitierrez gestured for the programmer to remain sitting in the wheeled leather chair. “How could this has happened?

“The Broken Arrow core is so powerful. Moreso than we ever could have guessed. A system built around it would probably be the most powerful system in existence, but a normal computer just can't safely handle it.”

“I see,” Guitierrez walked to the north wall of his office, which was a solid glass window letting in the cold December sun. “We shall have to rally as quickly as possible. How many other developers are aware of the flaw?”

“None, I didn't want to start a panic, not until I was completely sure.”

Guitierrez turned his back from the window “A wise move Roddy,” He gripped the back of Roddy's chair. “I thank you for your final service to this company.”

Roddy had expected to be fired. What he hadn't expected was for his employer to start pushing the chair at top speed towards the window. He also hadn't expected the window to not me made of hurricane glass.

Shards of shattered glass fell with him as he tumbled out the window. He hit a tree branch with a thud that probably broke all his ribs but halted his fall enough to survive it. As quickly as he could he made his way to his car. He wished he could just call an ambulance, but he didn’t want to give Guitierrez the chance to finish the job.

Elswhere, Debbie Douglas put in the preorder for one of those Pinnacle chips. It would be just the perfect thing to give Dexter for Christmas.

~~~~

An attempt to redo Freakazoid as a more serious superhero story. Not much more to be said.

#Anonymous #Ghost Writing #NGE #Shadow Hearts #Persona 4 #Freakazoid #I don't know why it moved the readmore to the top of the document #by it won't let me fix it

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tk-duveraun · 6 years

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The Taun Fawn and the Orobird 7/?

For @awaari Read the other parts here.

Hooboy, I spent way too long looking for pictures of the SW animals instead of just googling them. If you are really that curious, go ahead, but they’re just animals.

As mentioned on Part 1, there are roughly as many Sith as Jedi. In the Empire it’s capital treason to be a Forcer who is not a Sith and similar for harboring a Forcer. As with Galathan talking about the Jedi, this is merely Dorian’s interpretation of the Sith.

Dorian spent a week alone in the tiny, Coruscanti flat. His precious (hideous) teacup remained untouched in the center of his battered coffee table. Twice a day, he carefully balanced the tea service on the free edge of the table rather than move it. Every time he heard footsteps in the hall, he was sure it was the Jedi come to take him to their temple for re-education.

On the eighth day, he was so full of nervous energy that he messed up waxing his mustache so badly that it was stiff and crooked at an awkward angle. The Force was absolutely no help. Since he’d stopped wearing the Force-suppression cuffs, he’d felt wave after wave of unspecific dread.

When he heard the footsteps of, at least, twenty people down his hallway, Dorian nearly fainted from stress. Feeling lightheaded, he walked to the flimsy door and opened it before the Jedi and their enforcers could break it down. When he saw what was on the other side, he could only blink dumbly.

Galathan looked weak and his skin was pale under his light tan. He was leaning most of his weight on a simple bo-staff and the squadron of footsteps came from the… menagerie of animals around his feet. A nekarr cat, two akk dogs and three different colored gizkas were all nuzzling the Jedi’s legs. “Dorian?”

Flustered, Dorian took a step back, holding the door open for the Jedi and his companions. “Gal… you look better?” His gaze kept flipping between the animals and the Jedi even after he closed the door.

“Sorry about them. This happens every time I’m injured,” Galathan said after gingerly sitting on Dorian’s couch. He leaned his staff against the empty cushion next to him. “Master says they’re more sensitive than regular animals because of all of the ambient Force energy in the temple.”

“Oh. It’s, ah, not a problem.” Dorian said woodenly. He went into the kitchenette and made up the tea service to bring some kind of normalcy to the situation. By the time he brought it into the living area, he felt as if he could have a conversation without making a complete fool of himself. The red gizka croaked mournfully when Dorian relocated it from his chair to the floor.

Galathan seemed equally ill-at-ease as he busied himself making a cup of tea rather than speaking. Once it was done, he delayed even further by picking up Dorian’s garish treasure of a cup and making him one as well. Without any other means to delay, Galathan finally said, “So you’re a Sith.”

Dorian kept his gaze on his teacup, the drink prepared perfectly to his preferences because of course Galathan would know by that point. He swallowed and glanced up. “My master wasn’t the only one Darth Malgus turned to blood sacrifices for the sake of the war effort.”

“I’m not- I don’t-” Galathan shook his head. “I thought that was just part of being Sith. That’s how it works.”

Dorian chuckles and it sounds half-hysterical, even to his own ears. “Yes, well, Jedi are emotionless droids, that’s how that works, isn’t it? That Dark Side is rather how we’re defined, isn’t it? But the truth of the matter is that if you’re Sensitive and Imperial, you become a Sith or die. My father always taught me that the Dark Side was a shortcut to power that can only lead to madness. He and Alexius managed to get me through my formal training with minimal casualties.”

“Why not defect earlier? Why would your father go through the trouble of protecting you from other Sith instead of just leaving?” The greenish gizka rested its chin on Galathan’s thigh when he started getting emotional.

Dorian sighs and takes a sip of his tea. “It’s not so simple, abandoning your family, your legacy, your people, everything you know… And that’s ignoring the propaganda about how horrid the Republic and the Jedi are. It may seem bad in the Empire, at times, but we can only believe that the Republic will be worse. Nevermind that I would have been taken from my family and my father would have been subject to retraining, re-education, whatever you call it.”

Galathan absentmindedly stroked the gizka’s smooth back. “But what he knows is wrong. The Sith are wrong. The Empire is wrong. Doesn’t he need it?”

“Loving my mother, loving me, is wrong? Whatever blackmail or nationalism Darth Malgus used to sell Father on sacrifice is clearly wrong, but I’m not going to resent him for not throwing me out with the bathwater. And some part of you must agree with me or we wouldn’t be sitting here because you would have turned me in to the Jedi.”

Galathan took a deep breath and then winced, clutching his side. “That’s fallacious reasoning, but you’re not entirely wrong. You’re a good man, Dorian. I can see that and I don’t think the Force is best served with you shipped off to some isolated Jedi enclave for the extent of the war. But you must be honest with me. Is there anything else you’re hiding? Any information you held back because it might give you away?”

Dorian reached up to twirl his mustache and grimaced when he felt the stiff hair. “Nothing actionable. Darth Malgus made no few comments about some major, devastating strike against the Republic, but everyone with the Force knows that by now. I can barely sleep for the tension headaches it causes.”

Galathan nodded in agreement and rubbed his temples. “I’ve felt it, too, and I can’t say it’s not nice to have outside confirmation that something’s coming.”

“I’m sorry for deceiving you, Gal. You’ve been a great friend and I took advantage of that.”

“I don’t agree with what you did. And I don’t know if keeping your secret is the right thing, but I’ve had a long time to consider my options while I recovered. I just hope it it’s the right decision.”

#Taun Fawn & Orobird

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reflectingiridescent · 7 years

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Ship Meme!

Open-tagged by @ezrisdax

Its perfectly okay to use the same ship for multiple questions~ Just fill it out as best as you can. Link your own content wherever you can!!

First Ship you ever read fic for: I think it was Piper/Leo from Charmed.

First Ship you ever wrote fic for: Meredith/Derek from Grey’s Anatomy.

Ship you write the most now: By word count, Susan/Talia from Babylon 5. By quantity? LOL, Amanda/Lee from Scarecrow and Mrs. King. (shoutout to @holomoriarty haha)

Ship you read the most now: I think I read a lot of gen right now hahaha. Headcanoning around female friendships is the new black. But let’s see...@leyenn has a really cool series that has this pretty alternate - and canon-compliant - take on Riker/Troi. And @troi-in-monochrome has a nice slow burn series happening between Beverly and Deanna. And @cosmic-llin has some insightful Beverly/B’elanna! All kinds of things!

Newest Ship: It occurred to me the other day that Wesley Crusher and Kes would be cute together, and now I feel like I need to go back and watch a ton of things to confirm.

Rare Ship you wanna read more of: A lot of my ships are rare! Maybe Ro/Kira, because the possibility is really interesting! Selar/Alyssa because #SickbayRomance. And Sheyla from SGA!

Your taboo Ship: ...does this mean that they’re like, siblings or something? I don’t...think I have one? Someone call me out if I’m forgetting something.

They never met in canon Ship: SOMETIMES I THINK GEORDI/B’ELANNA WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY CUTE. Wesley/Kes. Ro/Kira.

Your unexpected ship: Cam/Sam from SG-1 really took me by surprise.

The ship you always forget to give love to: KORRASAMI <3

Ship your OC with a canon character (if applicable): Same or across universes? I guess my sassmaster fem!Hawke ends up with Isabela 9/10 times (and the other time she ends up with Merrill, just so Isabela and Fenris can have that delightful dialogue they have if they hook up).

A ship you’re embarrassed to ship: I once read fic that was really, really convincing Daniel/fem!Cam/Jack’s clone. Like Cam had been born female instead of male? Amazingly written. And like, I’m glad I read it because I’d never really understood how polyamory worked before, so then I started looking stuff up to understand. But also I was introduced to early 2000s Stargate fandom, and hooboy. HOO. BOY. You can’t unsee that.

Your most romantic Ship: Sophie/Nate have such an action/mystery thing going on. I love it. But I also love the down-to-earth feel of Lorelai/Luke.

Your sexiest ship: Aeryn/John.

Your most tragic ship: Susan/Talia Talia lives. Nerys/Jadzia (optional Nerys/Jadzia/Lenara). OH WAIT. Willow/Tara. *sobs forever* Will/Alicia. Meredith/Derek. Addison/Mark. Why is everyone dead?

A ship you want more content for: All the wlw!

Tag: @samcaarter, @youblowuponesun, @ussjellyfish, @loverskisslikedeath (I hope it’s ok if I tag you twice in a row! You seemed to like it in the last one), @croixmeridies, @crazytarawitch - if you feel like it, or whoever wants to do it

#remember when work laid me off and this turned into a star trek blog lol?#and then I got another job and it stayed a star trek blog?#we live in strange times #memes #tag memes

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ryntaia · 7 years

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Is it bad I want to read a drabble about the headcanon where Goro and Futaba are half sibling and they find out about it? (Can I just say that I love your writing? ;w; )

Pfft anon I think about this headcanon non-stop, of course you can have Sibtaba and BroGoro drabbles.

/cracks knuckles

hooboy okay let’s break out the Oniichan. Also, I hope you guys don’t mind the name I gave Akechi’s mom. She needed some name and this was the placeholder one I’d been using for a while.

EDIT: Fixed some issues with this one. I hadn’t realized that my strike outs had not transferred over when pasted, so Shido’s letter turned into a rambling mess. It still is (purposefully) but its a little closer to what I intended now. Sorry about that confusion.

She poked that box with her toe, she ran her hands across the cardboard surface, she even drew on it once or twice…but Futaba Sakura did not even think about opening it for what had to be a month.

It was understandable. When the plain box had arrived as Leblanc, return address of Masayoshi Shido hastily scribbled on the side, Futaba and Sojiro were close to flipping a coin on whether or not to keep it. Her legal guardian had wanted to throw it out into the trash immediately—if it hadn’t of been for the last few months, the redhead hacker would’ve sided with him immediately. Instead the box had been stashed up where she didn’t have to look at it all time: Akira’s room in Leblanc.

She couldn’t avoid it forever, though. Even if she didn’t want to face the man who had been responsible for her mother’s death, well, she had managed to face the teenager who had actually done the deed. She was nowhere near what could be called ‘close’ to Goro Akechi, but she had faced him head on when the brunette had been dragged back into the world of the living. They didn’t talk much and Akechi typically left the attic when Futaba or any of Akira’s friends were at Leblanc…Futaba didn’t know where the boy went at these times, and all Akira would tell her is that Akechi was taking a walk to clear his head.

Which was why right now she sat on Akira’s bed with the bespectacled teen sitting across from her, and Akechi leaning against the far wall. He was like a lean cat, his figure pushed out slightly with his eyes always darting around yet never leaving his target—his prey. He kept his distance but his dark eyes always seemed circle the room right back to the box in the middle of Akira and Futaba.

It was only fair, Akira had reasoned with her. It’s your mother, but its his father…and it’ll only be for an hour.

God, Akira was a great guy, but sometimes he was SUCH a great guy that it drove Futaba up the wall. He would stick his neck out for anyone, even if that someone had literally pointed a gun at his head and pulled the trigger. Though she wasn’t really interested in going into the specifics of that, the looks they kept giving each other, the hours they spent alone, the…

Lord, it was best to just not think about it.

Instead she reached out and finally—finally—undid the string tying the box together. It was like as if each time a fold of the box fell away from its contents, the brunette seemed to slide closer behind them. Thankfully he seemed to be staying closer by Akira, but Futaba kept a watchful eye on him as she revealed Shido’s unexpected gift to them all. Which….

…was a letter in an envelope stacked on top of a bunch of paper files.

She groaned, slipping her fingers under the paper and ripping out the letter inside. It was a short letter, seeming like it had been written in a few minutes with no time to spare, but it had the familiar handwriting that Shido had boldly publically displayed. Here, it wasn’t so bold—despite the slapdash way it appeared to be written, there were numerous signs of eraser marks peppering the entire sheet of paper. Several bits of text were just plain crossed out. Even the signature was lopsided.

Miss Sakura,

Enclosed is the last of the files documents related to the use of research of acquirement of Wakaba Ishikii’s study on the cognitive psience of the Metaverse. I hope you can make use of I hope that it will benefit I’m sorry.

Masayoshi Shido

Futaba wrinkled her nose—she wanted to be disgusted but Akira had reminded her time and time again that before she opened the box that she would be seeing the sentiments of Shido after they had changed him. His actions before had been impure, but whether had made the choice to feel it now or not, what the letter had expressed WAS the truth the ex-politician was feeling. He was not lying, he was not trying to manipulate them, he wasn’t trying to gain anything. Even if it felt empty to Futaba…

She shook her head and rifled through the files, throwing the letter to the side. Akira caught it and handed it up to Akechi—the brunette didn’t even bother with it, immediately tearing Shido’s words in half. Futaba absentmindedly listened as Akira admonished the detective, unwillingly to actively partake in whatever Akechi had to gain from this. Instead she tucked her red hair behind an ear, tilting one of the pictures in the box to the side curiously.

It was a photo of her mother.

Futaba didn’t have many photos of her mother. They had all been confiscated by the men in suits, she assumed because they thought any one of the pictures could hold a secret. The only picture she had managed to keep had been an old picture from when Futaba was first born, with her mother standing next to her crib with a tired smile on her face. She wore a lab coat in that picture, hanging heavily on her burdened shoulders and covering up her sleek black dress. Futaba couldn’t remember seeing her mother in that labcoat very often; Wakaba had not worn it at the house very much.

Yet in the picture she held, her mother wore that exact same labcoat.

She was standing in front of a nondescript clinical building with a smile on her face and a clipboard in hand. To her left stood a brunette woman who looked almost vaguely familiar, thick hair tied into a braid that ran over her shoulder. She had the same tired eyes that Futaba could remember her mother having, yet she worn no lab coat. Instead she wore what seemed to be a light green hospital gown. She stood against the far side of the picture, and from it she could see a hand resting on her shoulder. It wore an unmistakably garish gold ring on the pointer finger.

She tossed it to the side; it was caught by Akira, who showed it to Akechi. The detective seemed thrown off, almost frazzled, for a moment. Futaba did not stop to ask why—the picture under it grabbed her attention far more. It was the same woman with the brown hair, only this time she was standing aside Masayoshi Shido—who was blocking his face from the camera with his hand. But his unmistakable scowl and goatee were still apparent through his fingers, the sheen of his orange lens reflecting off the camera lid. The woman still looked very tired.

“Give me that.”

Futaba shifted backwards as Akechi snapped up the photo from her, revealing the one underneath it—the brunette woman, eyes sad and smile barely managing to stay afloat as she sat on a chair. Wakaba was standing behind her with a similarly frazzled look on her face, trying to force a smile all the same as her painted nails gripped firmly as the back of the brunette woman’s chair. There was an unmistakable swell at the stomach of the unknown woman; her thin hand seemed to be lain across the green fabric.

She let the photo fall out of her hands to the side; the only photo left was an oddly distinct photo of Masayoshi Shido on his own. It almost looked like a driver’s license photo. His mocha eyes stared straight ahead, and for a moment, it almost drew a feeling of fear out of Futaba. Quickly she shook her head and focused in on the photo—there had to be SOMETHING in it that would tell her something. But she couldn’t find it, couldn’t figure out what had possessed her mother to have this odd photo of Masayoshi Shido. It fell to the side as she ruffled through the papers—the only photo of the four that Akechi hadn’t taken to stare oddly at. The redhead wasn’t going to bother to ask. Instead she pulled out what looked to be a pair of hospital admittance papers.

The top one was her mother’s admittance to deliver Futaba. The second…seemed to be the admittance of another pregnant woman, two years prior to Wakaba’s. She scanned the file, but her eyes caught on the name. Slowly, almost disbelieving, Futaba lowered the paper to stare blankly at the brunette detective gazing almost longingly at the photographs that she had thrown to the side.

Akane Akechi.

“Why are these files together…? Mom knew…?” She mused to herself, placing them each aside each other to study the documents thoroughly. While she examined them, Akira rifled through the box between them. Before she could think any further into it, a folded and yellowed piece of paper dropped on top of it. Futaba looked up at Akira questioningly; his hand laid on her shoulder immediately after giving her what he had found.

“The only thing that matters is you. Not them.”

Birth Certificate – Futaba Isshiki

Mother – Wakaba Isshiki

Father – Masayoshi Shido

Futaba’s head reeled as she tumbled backwards away from the box, legs furiously pushing her body against the wall. Her eyes stared out at figures she couldn’t truly see, her eyes blurred by confusion and distress and her ears blinded by the dull hiss of a scream bubbling in the back of her throat. Her hands couldn’t find a place to stay, couldn’t find a way to hold herself up as she sunk deeper towards the ground. She could only see the blurred shapes of Akira handing Akechi the paper and the both of them swooping down by her.

It made her want to scream; instead, when she tried, she found herself with a mouthful of water. The hacker coughed loudly, realizing she had been hyperventilating as her mind screeched at her the implications of what Shido could’ve done to her mother, how this possibly could’ve happened, how even when she had been a product of the worst aspect of Wakaba’s life, Wakaba had still managed to love her so dearly despite her hard work masking it…

She looked up from the glass in her hand to stare at the two boys hovering above her; Akechi immediately slid back away from her. But before he could get away, the hacker’s precise fingers shot out to grab him by the tie and dragged him back in, knocking the glass of water in his hands to the ground as he was brought face to face with the redhead. Akira watched carefully from a distance, one hand cautiously raised if he needed to intervene. Futaba already knew he didn’t have to; she just lifted her chin to meet her mocha brown eyes with Akechi’s dark brown ones.

It was always in our eyes, wasn’t it.

“I think I just might be starting to understand you a little more…” She whispered. Her throat felt like it had been clawed apart. “…brother.”

And behind them both, scattered pictures of two women—one with short black hair and sharp eyes, another with long brown hair and a tired smile—stood alongside a menacing picture of Masayoshi Shido.

#Persona 5 #Futaba Sakura #Goro Akechi #Akira Kurusu #Masayoshi Shido #Wakaba Isshiki #the kids aren't alright #Anonymous

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