<@Ardweden> [Satoshi finds himself falling, out of space and out of time, for what feels like forever but also not long enough. He barely has time to get used to it when he lands, less than gracefully, on what feels like concrete. Fortunately it's not face first, so he doesn't break his nose - again.] <@Ardweden> [Start.] * @Satoshi groans softly and slowly pushes himself upright, dusting off his sleeves and the legs of his jeans. <@Ardweden> [Satoshi feels sore, but nothing's broken. His eyes still need to adjust, but some moonlight shines through the largely unfinished roof above, which should help.] * @Satoshi stretches and looks up at the sky. "Where am I?" Then he blinks, realizing that his voice sounds like his own. "Hey. I'm... I'm me?" He runs his right index finger down the line of his nose, feeling its crookedness, and pokes his tongue into the gap created by his missing tooth. "I'm me." Then he looks around. "Where am I? Did I fall into the World Reversed?" <@Ardweden> [He looks around. The building he's in is familiar... there's a board, that Kaede almost fell off of once when crossing the gap in the floor. and the elevator that he's not entirely sure works. The walls are unfinished, and he remembers them being perpetually under construction. Only the building was finished, wasn't it? He's pretty sure they actually finished constructing it after what felt like the end of the world...] * @Satoshi turns in a circle. "Here. I'm here. How can I be here, though? This is Tokyo." He takes a few steps towards the elevator. "Or World Reversed Tokyo, because they finished that building. I think. But why would it still be unfinished here? Unless this has to do with what Haruko said about the World Reversed starting to fall apart..." He stops, feeling a pang of sadness. "But... could I really have traveled from Bangor to Tokyo? Though I guess... maybe there's only so much World Reversed left." <@Ardweden> [Satoshi is pretty clearly talking to himself; absolutely nothing responds to him.] * @Satoshi looks for a way outside. "So I'm here, and I'm me, and I don't... I don't know what to do. I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting anything that happened so far." He stops and closes his eyes for a moment. "Not..." He bites his lip and swallows, then opens his eyes. "Not the things that I saw." He resumes looking. * @Satoshi stops. "Wait. If I'm in the World Reversed..." He looks for shadows. <@Ardweden> [Now that Satoshi's looking, he finds one - the silhouette of a man, thinner and shorter than he is, wandering along the wall.] * @Satoshi swallows. "Okay. Okay I can... I can handle this. I've seen them before and they didn't seem to be coming after me, and if Takeshi explored the World Reversed, he must have had some way of dealing with them. Assuming they actually needed dealing with." His eyes dart around, looking for a doorway or an exit or some way out that doesn't involve climbing or the sketchy elevator. <@Ardweden> [The consturction site is SO SKETCH though. It takes Satoshi some looking, because he really doesn't want to look that way, but he sees another Judged - this one a woman, maybe in kimono - walking slowly along a different wall and into what looks like a stairwell.] <@Satoshi> I need to get out of here, Satoshi thinks, not saying things out loud because he doesn't want to draw their attention. Hopefully he's not broadcasting anything telepathically. He doesn't think so. He's gotten better at not projecting. But there don't appear to be any doors - how are there not any doors - and the stairwell seems to be the only way out of there. So he waits for the woman(?) to move forward, and then heads for the stairwell. <@Ardweden> [She does move forward, taking her sweet time. When Satoshi finally enters the stairwell, she's gone. But it is actually a stairwell, as he sees descending, corrugated metal stairs in what light there is.] * @Satoshi takes a deep breath and slowly walks down the stairs. There has to be a reason why he's here. It's not just him revisiting his own past; things like this didn't happen the last time. Wait. The last time. He and Kaede ended up here, and they made their way back to the Tower - Tokyo Tower, the only Tower he thought existed back then - so maybe that's what he's supposed to do now. Man. What if after all this, he just ends up back in Tokyo? It'd save him on plane tickets, but then all his stuff would be in Bangor. He shakes his head. No, Satoshi. Concentrate on this. <@Ardweden> [Satoshi goes down the stairs. And down more stairs. Man, there are a lot of stairs.] * @Satoshi prefers this to the elevator. And the board across the floor. He shudders. But the fact remains, he's in the World Reversed for certain - the shadows confirmed that - and he needs to find his way back. Although, technically, he was in the World Reversed the moment he stepped off the elevator in Bangor, wasn't he? What if part of him's still there? What if his body is sitting in that ritual circle and he's projecting his soul or something? But things have felt solid so far- oh dear god please stay solid don't suddenly fall through the stairs. <@Ardweden> [Satoshi successfully does not fall through the stairs on his way down, and eventually he touches concrete again. The stairwell opens into a long hallway lined with what looks like lanterns - gas ones, he notes. He sees a couple of Judged along the walls, but they seem to pay him no mind.] * @Satoshi wonders who put the lanterns here. Maybe Winston? And Jin? He looks warily at the Judged but they seem to be ignoring him, so he proceeds forward. This is a weird way for a building to exit. But it's the World Reversed so... it's obviously already not reflecting the current state of the real world. Maybe it never did. Maybe this is part of the falling apart. He doesn't know. Maybe he'll find Winston, and he can ask him. For now, all he can do is keep going and hope that this leads him to what he needs to do. <@Ardweden> [Satoshi walks forward, his eyes adjusting to the new light (he can see so much better now!) and as he does, he sees someone walking towards him from down the hall. It's a man, maybe in his mid to late thirties, wearing a suit and a bowler hat.] * @Satoshi stops. Deep down, there was some part of him that was expecting this, but... * @Satoshi can't. He just can't he just... he turns to run, but there's nowhere to run the hallway leads back to the building he came from there's no way forward and no way back and Hideo is THERE. <@Ardweden> [Satoshi turns to leave, and when he does, he's struck with a sudden headache, his vision almost swimming. "Running again?" the man calls in Satoshi's own voice, which contains equal parts amusement and disgust. "You've always been skilled at stopping short of your potential."] <@Ardweden> [If there was any doubt in Satoshi's mind that this is somehow Hideo, that clinches it. He can see the stairs, and he realizes that he *can* run; even with the headache, he's in better shape than Hideo, and the other man can probably only follow him so far. He also realizes, however, that he did this ritual for a reason... and running now will take it through a different turn.] * @Satoshi almost falls to his knees under the sudden pain. God, his head *hurts*. Is Hideo doing this to him? Or is this the ritual? Or something else? It doesn't matter, though. He could get away, maybe. He could outrun him. But then what? This wasn't what he came to do. And some part of him knew that sooner or later, it was going to come to Hideo. So he clenches his fists, clenches them so hard that his nails dig into his palms, and turns to face his Judgement. <@Satoshi> Hideo. <@Ardweden> [Hideo stands there, maybe ten feet away, hands in his pockets and smirking. "Satoshi. That's the name she gave you, isn't it?"] * @Satoshi answers, "It's my name," trying to sound brave and confident but his voice is shaking just as much as he knows he must be. <@Ardweden> ["One of many," Hideo agrees, clearly not impressed. "We've had plenty of names over the years, haven't we."] <@Satoshi> "Y-yeah," Satoshi answers, because that's all he can think of to say right now. <@Ardweden> ["Judgment, at least, fits every time. Except this one, perhaps."] * @Satoshi blinks. "Well, you're certainly judging," he says before biting his lip oh god did he just snark back at *Hideo*? <@Ardweden> [Hideo raises his eyebrows, and dryly says, "I've never heard that one before."] * @Satoshi opens his mouth to reply, then stops. Finally, he asks, "What do you want?" <@Ardweden> [Hideo shifts his weight, slightly. "You are asking the wrong question."] * @Satoshi takes another deep breath. "You say I'm stopping short of my potential. You say Judgement doesn't fit me. But I don't want to be you!" <@Ardweden> ["You may not want to be, but you were."] * @Satoshi has to fight the urge to look down. "I was. And I'm afraid that I will be again." What. What is he doing? Telling *Hideo* his deepest fears? <@Ardweden> [Hideo makes a noise of agreement, then says, "You hardly know who you were."] <@Satoshi> And I'm still figuring out who I am. I want to be Satoshi. Judgement... Judgement is the thing in the shadows that makes people disappear. Judgement is what everyone was afraid of. Judgement is... is you. <@Ardweden> [He looks skeptical. "Is it, really. You *know* what made people disappear."] * @Satoshi lets out a breath. "The shadows, Hideo. You have to know what they are. Were none of them really your doing? Are they all from our predecessors?" <@Ardweden> [He waves a hand. "Immaterial. I would rather address what you said. A thing in the shadows? I never hid in the shadows. There was nothing mysterious about what I did - not to my contemporaries. Your words echo something closer to the present than when I walked the Earth."] * @Satoshi narrows his eyes. "Yeah, well, you let people die, Hideo. You stood there and did nothing. You could have helped them, if you were so powerful and non-mysterious." <@Ardweden> ["I could have. I did not. I had that right, just like you do."] * @Satoshi closes his eyes. "Yeah. I've failed people too. Just stood by and let things happen. I'm ashamed of that." He opens them and glares at Hideo. "But at least I'm getting a second chance." <@Ardweden> [He looks amused. "You could say that I have a third."] * @Satoshi draws a slow breath. "You're not wrong." <@Ardweden> ["Your concerns about Judgment have to do with the present," Hideo tells him. "But you place them on the past, which will not help you address them. It is only another way to run from, to *avoid*, what you fear."] * @Satoshi looks at Hideo and decides to lay it all out. "I want to be Satoshi. I don't know how to be Judgement. I don't know how to be both. I mean, I really don't know. I don't know how Judging works, and... and I don't want to. If I don't know how, then I won't be in a situation where I'll have to think about doing it. I don't know if we even *need* a Judgement now. Or if we do, what's expected of me. I don't want to give up my life, the life that I'm living now. And yes, I know how I got it." <@Ardweden> ["Then you have conflicting desires, because you're here."] * @Satoshi looks a bit sad. "Doesn't everyone have conflicting desires? And yes. I found this place, and I... I wanted to do something. I wanted to do something before someone else did. I wanted to make a decision before not- deciding took the option out of my hands. I'm kind of following the path that was originally meant for you." <@Ardweden> ["Well," Hideo says with a laugh. "This is it." Hideo spreads his arms, and Satoshi can see the Judged in the walls - not one, or two, but tens of shadows, turning them nearly black. "Your legacy. Exactly as you feared." His eyes are bright. "But that isn't the *entire* legacy."] * @Satoshi swallows. He can't speak for a moment. "What's the rest of it?" he finally manages to say in a voice barely above a whisper. <@Ardweden> ["I am. These powers and abilities you fear? They are a part of *us*. Just as the ritual was meant for us. You know that you are not the Ace. It is useless to us now. Let go and leave that to Masaru, who will be better at it than you ever could have imagined. You are Judgment, and no one is capable of handling your abilites the way you can." Hideo puts his hands back in his pockets and leans forward, his eyes burning. "You are to decide how you use them. You are *my* legacy. All I ask that you not disappoint me. I have sacrificed too much to stop now."] * @Satoshi unexpectedly feels the heaviness behind his eyes of oncoming tears. "I can't promise that I won't disappoint you sometimes. That's an unavoidable part of life. I'll make a million mistakes. But it's only bad if I don't learn from them. And I'm trying to learn." <@Ardweden> [Hideo nods and perhaps says something else, but Satoshi's eyes are heavy and his head is throbbing, and then he's falling down... or up... The world is spinning and he gasps, waking in the center of a five-pointed star, surrounded by long burned out candles. Pale morning light seeps through the windows in Bangor Reversed.] <@Ardweden> [End!]