pokebox | LOCKED TO blazingspirit

LOCKED TO blazingspirit

[He doesn't remember much about his execution.

Oh sure, he remembers the lead-up to it; he remembers how the others looked on as he was led away and sure, he remembers Ishimaru's screams. He doesn't remember the death cage nor does he remember the sudden pain before it was all over.

It made waking up here incredibly confusing.

"Here" must be some sort of afterlife, but Mondo hasn't been able to figure out what it is, exactly. It's obviously not heaven (he's killed two people, he doesn't belong in heaven), but it doesn't seem to be hell either. Things are monotonous, yes, but they're not bad.

That leaves the option of purgatory, which Mondo is more or less fine with. It's better than spending an eternity suffering. It's probably not right for him to stay here instead of moving on to hell, but he doesn't know how or when that will happen. He's content to leave it at that for the time being.

This place is a rather large city - half of it is full of native English speakers, whom Mondo tends to avoid (his English is atrocious, after all), the other half is full of Japanese speakers. The city itself doesn't seem to be anywhere Mondo has ever seen, but it's large and spread out, with plenty to explore and do. Mondo hasn't seen everything there is to see though; he's only been here for a few weeks, and he knew if he wanted to make ends meet, he'd need a job first. Exploring could wait.

It's convenient that there's a carpenter's shop just down the road from the apartment Mondo woke up in. It might not technically be his, but he's been staying there until he can afford to properly rent it out. No one has complained so far, so he figures it's fine for the time being. The carpenter works him to the bone and he's never been so exhausted in his life when he comes home, but it's a good kind of exhaustion that means he's doing something productive. He can't make up for what he's done in the past, but he can help out here.

He's off work for the day, lounging around in what serves as the living room of his apartment, flipping through the newspaper. The dates here are all screwed up - it's almost winter here and he knows he'll have to put some money away toward buying proper winter clothes. That's only a minor concern though, because he has much bigger things to worry about.

In a city this large, it's possible that he's just missed seeing the others. He hasn't been looking very hard, admittedly. He's not sure what to say to them when he does see them. "Sorry" simply won't cut it for Fujisaki. He doesn't really want to see Kuwata, Enoshima, or Maizono either. He's sure it's only a matter of time before one of them finds him, or before someone else shows up here.

All he can do is hope that it won't be Ishimaru.]

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...You sure? I mean, it's not like I care about you any less or anything! It's just... saying it is really awkward...

[Mnnnngh.]

I don't see why it should be.

W-Well it could come off as meaning more than that, y'know?

...Ah. Y-Yeah, I guess.

[He still doesn't get it and it's obvious, but he doesn't really feel like pushing, either.]

Look, we should probably sleep.

[He's frustrated that he can't properly explain it, but he's fine with letting the subject drop for the time being.]

Yeah. Busy day tomorrow and all.

[He can't help but wonder what Ishida's going to say to that girl...]

[In the end, Ishida doesn't say anything to her the next day; he waits until Mondo leaves for work, then calls into his own. He doesn't want to deal with Kirihara's damn eyes on him, wondering if he's made a decision or not yet, nor does he want to deal with Mondo immediately after being gone all day; doing this will ensure that he'll have the apartment to himself for a few hours, at least.

Of course, once he's done all that he's bored out of his skull within the first twenty minutes, but that's hardly the point. It's frustrating at first, but after a while he begins to relax a little; the longer he's left alone with his thoughts, the easier it is to regain some clarity and sort through them properly, and Mondo has given him a lot of thoughts to sort through.

Ishida has never been very good with his feelings, with identifying what they are and what they mean; even during that time he doesn't like thinking about, when he was still Ishimaru and before everything had gone to shit, his grasp on things like that had been...incredibly shaky. When it came to emotions then, he knew he had a lot of them but he didn't always get why, just that they were incredibly overwhelming; since the change, he's found himself defaulting to anger instead of properly dealing with everything, and while that's not very comfortable at the very least it's safe. But when it comes to the good things, that's not really an acceptable reaction; while he gets the urge to push back and get embarrassed when he gets too worked up, he can't really deny that what he has here with Mondo is definitely a good thing.

He also can't deny the fact that the night before, while he did like Kirihara a lot and was elated that she'd be interested in him, it'd crossed his mind that if it came down to being with her or leaving Mondo, he'd choose Mondo every time; it had hurt to think that he might not hear Mondo telling him that he loved him anymore, and there was also the part where while making Kirihara happy was a nice thing when it happened, he actively wanted to make Mondo happy.

It takes him a bit longer than it should to come to a conclusion; however, when he does it feels so right that he doesn't get how he didn't see it before.

There are other things to consider too, then - how he feels about certain things he is and isn't telling Mondo, whether he should explain them or not - and he has to take breaks from considering once in a while, to keep himself from getting too frustrated with the veritable Gordian Knot of feelings he's dealing with; in the end, though, he realizes that like all Gordian Knots, his problems are easily solvable - instead of tackling the knot itself, one just has to cut the string.

The only thing to do, then, is to wait until Mondo gets home; he's going to be anxious as hell until then, but he'll manage.

Somehow.]

[Work was the same as ever, not that Mondo expected things to be any different. He had wanted to go see Ishida during his lunch break, but things had gotten busy and he'd scarcely had time to duck out to grab a bite to eat before returning to work for the rest of the day. It's later on in the evening when he stops by the book store.

The girl informs him that Ishida didn't come into work today and immediately Mondo starts worrying. Is he sick? Did he just not make it into work? Did he get killed on the way to work somehow? He doesn't even notice how ridiculous his thoughts are becoming, instead he panics.

His first stop is the hospital, which is more than a bit confusing because he's not sure whether Ishida is his surname or his given name, but regardless, there aren't any "Ishida"s who were admitted today. That leaves the morgue, but he really doesn't want to go looking there yet. He's wrong about that, isn't he?

Mondo makes his way home then, hoping that he'll see Ishida when he opens that door.]

Ishida? You there?

[There's something in his voice that he can't quite place - fear? anxiety? - but he pushes it down as he enters the apartment.]

[While it takes Ishida a moment to physically show up, it's quickly obvious that someone's here and upstairs; he's never exactly had a light tread, and he's audible well before he shows up at the top of the stairs.

He's not sure what to make of that weird quality to Mondo's voice, though; he takes a couple of steps down before he stops, hand clutching the handrail, head tipped to the side a little before he realizes what he's doing and corrects it.]

Hey, kyoudai - you okay?

[Mondo breathes out a sigh of relief, the tension leaving him all at once.]

Shit, you had me worried! You didn't show up for work today; why the hell not?

[He approaches Ishida, but stops at the bottom of the stairs, as if he can't decide whether he wants to do anything or not.]

[He fidgets a bit at that, making himself move down the stairs a bit more; he's clearly trying to settle himself, but it's not working very well.]

Uh...yeah, about that - I need to talk to you about some shit, do you have a while?

[Uh oh, that doesn't sound good. Mondo tips his head a bit at the way Ishida's fidgeting, but he quickly nods once that question is out there.]

Yeah, 'course. You wanna talk down here?

[Well, he's already making his way over to the couch...]

Yeah, that'd be good.

[He's already moving to join Mondo by the time that little bit of verification is out there, so it seems they're on the same wavelength, at least.

He'll just sort of flop down next to Mondo, then, if that's fine with everyone (and let's be honest with ourselves, even if it's not fine with everyone he'll just do it anyway).]

Look, I...think I need to tell you some things, about the shit that happened in the school after you...yeah.

[He twitches again.]

But before that, I wanna verify something - what you told me yesterday, about how you...feel. And stuff. You really meant all that?

[Oh no, something about the school? That doesn't sound good. Maybe Ishida's finally going to tell him what happened? The question throws him though and Mondo ends up staring at Ishida blankly for a few moments, trying to figure out where that even came from.]

'Course I did. I wouldn't lie to you, 'specially not about that. What does that have to do with the fucking school though?

I'm getting to that, just wait a minute!

[...that's way more snappish than it should have been, and he flinches and backs off immediately.]

What do you...what would you want done? About...about that. The thing from last night.

[Mondo doesn't react to how snappish Ishida's words were, he instead lets Ishida continue and leaves it alone.]

Uh...

[Well...]

I guess ideally speaking we'd date or something? I dunno. I didn't really think that far ahead.

...okay.

[So much twitching, Mondo.]

Because I've been thinking about it a lot today, and I...look, I...

[...fuck it.]

I love you, you asshole!!

Yeah, I know, you don't need to get so worked... up... about...

[...Waaaaaait. He doesn't mean it like that, does he?]

You mean like...? Like you're interested? Really!?

[He'll just perk right up at that, grinning widely.]

Holy shit! I-I mean, I wasn't expecting that!

Yeah! Y-Yeah, that's what I mean!!

[Oh god orz]

But before we do anything about it, I think you should probably know about what...happened. That's why the school came up.

[Mondo settles, still looking incredibly pleased.]

Ah, yeah? Alright. Tell me what happened.

[He knows he's not going to like it, but it's about time they finally discussed this.]

...I'll start, I guess, by saying that the execution was really fucked up. Not just the part you remember - I mean, that was obviously fucked up, too, but it wasn't like Kuwata's execution, where Monobear just left the body there in front of us.

He...desecrated it. Really bad.

[...]

What was...left of it. I don't know what did it, whether it was the force or the electricity or both or what. But it wrecked most of your body and whatever was left was collected through the bottom of the cage and...

[He hesitates for a moment before forcing himself to continue.]

Butter, it was like butter. And he ate it in front of us. Put it on pancakes and ate it.

I-- What?

[Surely he misheard that. There's no way he could have possibly heard that right. Mondo shakes his head.]

Butter. Are you fucking serious?

[Of course Ishida is serious. That's a rhetorical question.]

I can't... He fucking-- Butter!?

[Well, at least now he sounds mad as opposed to disbelieving?]

Fuck that fucking bear and whoever was fucking controlling it!! What makes 'em think they can do shit like that to people!?

[Ishida flinches a bit at that initial outburst; it hadn't even occurred to him that he might not be believed when it came to some of the weirder stuff that had happened. He's almost relieved when the disbelief turns to anger; it riles him a little, yeah, but at least Mondo doesn't think he's bullshitting this somehow.]

Yeah, butter. That's why I can't handle eating it here; i-it makes me feel fucking sick just thinking about it.

[He cringes a little at that falter, but he pushes himself to keep continuing anyway, clearly trying to just power through it.]

It was really fucking brutal. Ishimaru just kept screaming and crying until he physically couldn't anymore. Then everyone went back upstairs, I guess; he doesn't remember it too well. Either way, he stopped talking to people. He didn't eat. Sleeping just caused a fuckload of nightmares, so after a while he stopped doing that, too. He stayed like that for...fuck if I know. Three days? Four? Something like that. We got another motive while he was like that; there was the usual screaming bullshit about how we'd never kill anyone for it, obviously that didn't last too fuckin' long.

And then Asahina said something at some point about how she'd seen a ghost. They didn't think Ishimaru was listening or anything, but he was; she said she'd seen Fujisaki's fuckin' ghost. I guess after a while he decided to do something about it; he went to talk to Naegi, so he could talk to Fujisaki.

And while he was doing that, that's when he talked to you.

...Can't say I blame you.

[He's going to throw out the butter as soon as they're done with this conversation.]

Shit, I'm so sorry. I'm... I'm so sorry...

[He wishes he could do more than apologize. There isn't anything he can do though, and that frustrates him. Ishimaru must have been in so much pain...]

You spoke to my ghost then?

[He's not sure how that's possible, since ghosts don't exist, but if that's what Ishida says happened...]

...I...sorta. There was a computer that let us talk to you. I don't know if it was...really you, or just something Fujisaki programmed the damn thing to do, but it looked and sounded just like you. Fujisaki, too - there was something that looked like Fujisaki. Ishimaru asked if he hated you. Then he asked if Fujisaki hated him, for not being able to stop you.

That's when it let him talk to you. It...you...

[...hang on, he's confused himself - ]

The thing told him that there'd be some time where he'd be hurting and he could take his time for regrets and shit, but he'd have to keep going - that he was the only one who could keep himself living, that he needed to make sure he did that. That people were made so that they could keep moving forward, no matter what.

And that's...that's why I'm here. But you don't remember any of that.

[Despite his wording, that last part is more of a question than anything.]

No I... I don't remember any of that.

[It certainly does sound like something he would say though, and that's kind of creepy. How did Fujisaki know him well enough to program something like that in there? Was that even possible? He frowns, not entirely sure.]

I guess that does explain where you came from. Sorta. What happened after that?

LOCKED TO blazingspirit

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