triggerhappytraitor | Prisma Inbox/index

...no, it doesn't make it feel much better, to have been so thoroughly deceived. And he feels like an idiot for having not even considered that a human might plan such a thing. His frown deepens.

"Which two were left? Joker and who?" The fingers of his other hand drum on the table top, an unthinking mirror to Tachibana's own anxious fidgeting. He has... gotten snips and bits of what he'd missed after being sealed. The high points, in almost no detail. He'd like to fill in some blanks, now. "Waiting to be the last one to make a move is much less risky when no one is even aware that you exist to make that move. How clever of him to wait." He says that last bit flatly. It is not praise.

"Don't call him that name," Tachibana corrected, almost automatically before pausing, looking up sharply and blinking.

He had never referred to Hajime by that name while they had been there. It was a habit he had long since worked himself out of. That Isaka used the name of that existence...

"You... You knew?"

"It's the name he ought to have had at the time. I'll use it if I wish." But he catches Tachibana's blink, Tachibana's hesitation, and realizes just what the man is realizing. Now he finds it within himself to smile a little.

"I could guess. There were clues that something wasn't right. Chalice, wearing Human Undead's face? Very suspicious. Maybe he was just very uncreative?" He shrugs, he takes another drink of his coffee, lingers a moment to savor it. "...I suppose he wasn't."

Edited 2020-07-21 23:52 (UTC)

"Even back then, he didn't want that existence," Tachibana retorted, defensively. "Don't call him that name."

That defending of his friend done, he shifted in his seat, sitting back, arms crossing with a faint scowl. "That any of you had human faces is strange enough," he returned before reaching out to pick up his coffee again. Not that anyone at BOARD could have figured it out. Who the hell knew what Human Undead looked like? Only the Undead who had fought him, he was sure.

And why the hell hadn't Hajime been given a human appearance, like the rest of the royals? Was his existence so hated by the Sealing Stone that he wasn't even given that much?

Isaka is quiet for a moment, considering Tachibana's demand as though it were a polite request. "Fine." He shrugs it away as though it's of no consequence. "It's no longer specific enough, at any rate."

Tachibana continues to fume and scowl, and Isaka's expression remains that no-doubt infuriating mask of mild bemusement. "The ones of us that cared to have human faces picked them, as far as I'm aware." Ah, is this something that's never come up for him? How nice to have the shoe on the other foot for a change.

"..Picked them?" Tachibana repeated, blinking in confusion.

Tachibana's confusion only makes him smile more smugly. "How did you think we ended up with such functional disguises?" No, really, please tell him. He is very curious now. He'd really like to know.

"Like there was ever any time to think about things like that?" Tachibana returned, tone defensive once more before he yet again reached for his coffee. "You all were trying to kill us, the hell were we going to find out anything about why you could suddenly look like humans?"

He took a sip from his drink, eyes averted before continuing. "...always just assumed it was... some side effect of Human Undead's victory or something," he admitted.

"You've had years after to contemplate it! There were better things to think about while it was happening, I'll give you that much, but... you'd never wondered?" He's about ready to be offended by Tachibana's lack of curiosity, but ah. There's an answer of sorts.

"...not a bad starting point for speculation. But no. Though I will say it is not easy." He takes a moment to look away, himself, betraying some vulnerability. "I'd have a hard time changing it, even if I cared to."

"With every other damned question left unanswered, the hell would I waste any time thinking about something like that?" Tachibana returned, still not making eye contact.

"... Just the one chance to choose, huh?" he acknowledged. Wasn't that just how everything went, when the Fight was concerned?

"You're a scientist, aren't you? Isn't that what a scientist does? Ask impossible questions, and try to find the answers?" Was he misinformed? Did he not understand? He hates not understanding. And Tachibana seems to persist in being incomprehensible in the strangest of ways. Isaka lets out a grumbling sigh, and settles back into his seat.

"More or less. None of us are as... changeable as Joker, but there's some of it to all of us. The effort to do it and get it right is... considerable."

"The things about Undead I study are things like how you heal, how you stay living despite taking damage that would kill someone mortal. Things that could help someone. Wasting time on something like appearance..." Tachibana scowled slightly, feeling... honestly a touch insulted.

Still....

"...The flexibility in Joker's transformation is enhanced by the energy of the Undead that's being used," he pointed out. "Like how the Rider System works. And even that is just a temporary change. That yours seems to be permanent..." He trailed off, tilting his cup back and forth, feeling the weight of the coffee left inside move with it.

"That existence... was not given the same choice as the rest of you were."

"And the cellular processes behind how we alter form isn't of any interest?" If he feels insulted, then good. Isaka feels a little insulted in turn. He takes a longer drink of his coffee and lets Tachibana continue, though, lets him actually spin out a bit of theory. So he's not completely disinterested. Just... defensive. Hm.

"I wouldn't say permanent, but...." He frowns thoughtfully, glances to Tachibana's hands, and finds himself suddenly reminded of how much Chroma the both of them produced while under the influence of those singing dragons. And then he stops himself, and exhales sharply. "...Joker, you mean. Who can possibly be anything, but wants nothing? But that's not correct any more, is it. Hajime knows perfectly well what he wants to be, now."

See, see? He can be polite.

"He had wants. He wanted to understand. He wanted to be something more than just a tool or a pawn in a greater game he had no way to win."

Tachibana finally sets the cup down, letting out a deep breath.

"...sometimes I wonder if the fact that he had nothing of his own made it easier for him to change. Only by losing what little any of you had..." he trailed off again, leaning back in his chair before looking over.

"If you hadn't have wound up here, out of reach of the Sealing Stone... would you have wanted to change?"

It was a soft question, but not an idle one. An important one. In multiple ways.

"I knew him before you did. He didn't have those wants." Does he need to explain? He doesn't think that he needs to explain. What he needs is more coffee, because by the time Tachibana is done saying moody things and asking moody questions, he has drained his cup.

He hesitates, absently tipping the cup back and forth, as though to assure himself that it's actually empty. He knows his answer, and he is quite sure that Tachibana will not like it. And because he is changed from how he once was, that somehow matters.

"Likely not. Something else might have re-framed my way of thinking... but likely not." Why lie? He should be honest. There is still a part of him that aches to return to doing what he was made to do.

There's a difference between knowing of someone and actually knowing them, but Tachibana's not going to push that front.

Instead he simply listens, nodding slightly at Isaka's answer.

"Even though you had to know that the Sealing Stone wasn't acknowledging anyone's victories." Because Isaka had to realize that. That was likely why he had "recruited" a Rider in the first place.

"Yes. Even though." How much he knew and how much he didn't personally want to acknowledge at the time, he'd rather not consider. And here's Tachibana, making him consider that. He frowns deeply, crushes his coffee cup, and drops it to the table.

"A broken battle fight is something that could be understood. Or fixed. Something that requires new strategies. The absence of it entirely.... that's different." He feels resentful of it, all of a sudden. So much time had been spent being lost and confused that it had begun to become familiar. Now there's some space in him to be angry.

Tachibana paused, blinking a few times. "How the hell could you fix something like that?" he frowned before looking down at his cup a moment.

"...I would have thought being free of that sort of compulsion..." he trailed off. Was it really only Hajime and Shima who had wanted that...?

Having to come up with an answer for that question just makes him feel all the more irritated. His frown cannot possibly get any deeper at this point, and so he simply looks away. "...It was a goal. It was a purpose. It was what I was made for, and even if there's no compulsion left, it is what I know."

And what he knows never really existed past the first fight, did it? One of his hands drops to the table, balled tightly into a tense fist.

"...and without anything outside of that Fight..." Tachibana trailed off briefly, not looking up. "..It's hard to know where to even begin, when everything you've known is gone."

He at least had had the ashes of his former life to sit in, the ruins of BOARD to focus on. Isaka had... what, a few months of experience in the modern world?

Tachibana nails it, he does. And that he does seem to get it surprises him. Enough for it to show on his face, albeit subtly. His eyebrows lift over the rims of his glasses, his jaw untenses the slightest bit. And then he gives a half-hearted motion that isn't really a nod. His head moves. His shoulders shift.

"...if I keep coming back into your orbit, perhaps it's because there's nothing else with enough gravity to pull me in."

Tachibana nodded, haven't half seen enough of that shift in posture to understand the significance.

"...that's a lot of the reason Hajime and I became friends, I think," he admitted with a hint of a wry huff. "Just having someone there who knows what happened; someone you don't need to explain things to, because they were part of it."

He idly toyed with his mostly empty cup a bit more, testing it's balance as he lightly held it in place with barely one finger. In a way... Isaka knew more of a lot of things than Hajime did. Other than small snippets of memories when Hajime helped haul him out of the dungeon of his own mind... he hadn't spoken of what had happened to him when he was in Isaka's thrall to anyone. It wasn't something he had ever even wanted to think about, nevertheless let anyone else know of.

"Even if all we ever did during that time was fight," he continued, even as his mind wandered. Was he speaking about Hajime still? Or Isaka? Even he wasn't entirely sure.

Tachibana's explanation is enough to make him glance back over his way. It's... interesting. It is not a concept that he has considered before, the idea of the value of someone who has experienced the same thing, as a reason to stick together. That it's Hajime, though.... it still confuses him that anyone would be that idiot's close friend.

"And now you share an apartment." It is said quietly, so much so that he even surprises himself with how it came out, how the idea of it makes him feel. It ought to be an insult, something dismissive, but he feels... envious? He takes a moment to shake his head and shove the feeling away. "You mostly seem to tolerate each other, from what I've seen..."

"Mostly, yeah," Tachibana agreed. "Hajime wanted an apartment with a 'real' kitchen and couldn't afford it on his own," he explained. "And it means I don't have to spend as much on takeaway," he added with a faint smile.

"It's a compromise, of sorts. Pretty sure neither one of us makes a good roommate, but at least we more or less understand each other enough to make it work."

He paused a moment. "Most of the time," he amended, finally picking up his cup and draining the last little bit of it's contents.

Much of what he's witnessed in regards to Tachibana and Hajime seems to pivot around food. Though admittedly, he hasn't witnessed that much. It is still so, so strange for Joker to be doing things like that...

"You can tolerate each other long enough most of the time to combine forces. I see." Well, no, he's not sure that he really sees, but perhaps he's beginning to see.... one thing he does see is that they've both finished their coffees, and both seem to be in need of something else to occupy their hands with.

"...do you want another drink?"

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