route_1065 | pooping in the woods with dignity

Entry tags:

pooping in the woods with dignity

Who: Byakuya Togami and Kyouko Kirigiri
Where: Routes 29, 30, and 31; Cherrygrove city
When: 8/20-8/28
Summary: A collection of ~~whatever Alex and I feel like being horrible with~~ the misadventures of Team Togiri in the woods.
Rating: PG-13 for mentions of dead classmates and other subject matter.

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For once, Togami was feeling a little grateful to be traveling in Kirigiri's company - after all, the alternative was Hagakure, and, well.

...Yeah, he was pretty glad for Kirigiri's quiet company.

But as he was thumbing through the Trainer's Guide again by the fireside, he noticed that she was more quiet than usual, even for her. He closed the book delicately around his index finger as a bookmark and settled his weight against his forearms, which were over his crossed legs.

"Kirigiri."

Traveling with Togami admittedly had its ups and downs; the obvious detriment was that it was, after all, long periods of time spent alone in the woods with no other company besides Byakuya Togami. But contrary to popular belief (that is, the belief of presumably anyone who had ever spoken with the guy for longer than ten seconds at a stretch), being out in the woods with him wasn't as bad as it arguably could have been. It wasn't so much that there were worse people to travel with, exactly; it was more that all things considered, she was probably the person best suited to be traveling with him, and at least with the two of them together, the likelihood that they'd both make it through the woods alive was slightly greater. It wasn't a matter of cooperation or team spirit so much as simple pragmatism, honestly. They were both in the same unfamiliar circumstances, and while both of them were probably competent enough to make the trip alone as individuals, there were certain advantages to traveling together.

Also, there was only one season deer. That had a lot to do with it.

But now, they were stopped for the night, and three of their classmates had just rolled in themselves, and one of those classmates happened to be Celestia Ludenberg. And while Hakagure and Kuwata were...certainly a thing to consider, all right, the presence of Celes had just hit Kirigiri completely, positively wrong.

Celes-san. The third trial. It wasn't even just the killing, the plan, the manipulation (though it was all of that, too). No, it was that Celes had willingly embraced the mastermind's plans for them, and gambled all their lives against her victory, and that...

That was just proving to be something that Kirigiri couldn't forgive.

And that was precisely what she'd been brooding about, right up until Togami's familiar and vaguely obnoxious voice cut through the silence of the evening.

"Togami-kun."

What enthusiastic conversations they had, the two of them.

One thing that also worked in Togami's credit was that, while he was predisposed to condescend at pretty much all times, usually his judgment was silent unless he was called upon or felt as if he was being called upon to speak. As a result, his and Kirigiri's overall quiet demeanors meshed rather well together - except for some tense moments when he tried to backseat drive the Calendeer, they most kept quiet and each to themselves. Togami treated others' emotions with flippant disdain - Kirigiri rarely showed enough emotion for him to target. As far as Togami was concerned, and particularly now that the other options had presented themselves, he had come out ahead in appearing at the same time as Kirigiri and subsequently traveling with her.

Togami now regarded her coolly with curious blue-green eyes.

"I admit I wasn't paying much attention when you were speaking with Celes - did something she say bother you?" The way he posed the question sounded like almost academic curiosity, the way one would ask whether it was supposed to rain tomorrow, or what brand of sweets to buy.

"Celes-san arrived in Goldenrod City," Kirigiri explained in a voice that proved to be considerably calmer and steadier than she really felt. But she was good at that, at masking emotion behind a face of stoic rationality. Regardless of what she felt about the facts, facts were facts. Facts were what she was in some way obliged to share with him; the rest of it was none of his business.

A beat passed, leaving her a moment to reflect, and then at last it seemed as though she'd come to the conclusion to say something else — a habit of hers that probably frequently proved obnoxious to the casual observer, but that simply came with the territory of dealing with Kirigiri, just as a certain amount of patience and thick skin was needed in dealing with Togami.

"If her testimony is true, she's from before we are. She hasn't seen the conclusion of the third class trial yet," she offered at last.

Togami absorbed the facts that he was given, processing them while she reflected. It was a little annoying ~~when Naegi wasn't there to fill in the silence with his own revelations~~, but this was no life or death situation, and Togami could get over it. The fact that Celes started in Goldenrod means something. He remembered some mention of a group called Team Rocket. Was it possible that some new arrivals began as part of that group, instead of starting their travels alone? And what sort of group was it? That much he hadn't caught.

The last offering of information comes as no real surprise to Togami - after all, Mondo hadn't seen the conclusion of the second trial, Ishimaru hadn't lived through his death. The only ones from their proper "place" in time were Kuwata and Fujisaki.

"Well," he said with an insufferable smirk, "it would be quite a twist indeed if she weren't from before we are." But joking aside, he added: "Has she been given the third motive?" Which was to say, had she orchestrated and/or carried out the deaths of Yamada and Ishimaru.

Edited 2013-08-25 05:35 (UTC)

"Yes."

The answer came simply; she knew exactly why he'd asked that particular question, and they both knew the implications of it. The fact that he took such apparent pleasure in casting these circumstances as one of his entertainments was predictable, and as such, she didn't let it bother her. Attempting to be insufferable at every available opportunity was simply part of Togami's character. She saw no reason to rise to the bait — particularly not when they also both knew that was precisely what he was aiming for when he did it.

"She's still confident of her own victory," she remarked quietly. "So five of us now have a vested interest in finding out for certain whether or not our memories of this place really are destroyed upon our departure."

The look she shot him then was as good as an addition of, "I'm sure you know why", but as far as she was concerned, the look was enough; no real reason to say it.

Togami set aside the Trainer's Guide in his hand, using a leaf as a bookmark and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose in thought. Of course he would cast their circumstances as entertainment - what part of 'one of the executed culprits has escaped execution by coming here' isn't funny, really?

"Because if she returns home with her memories intact, she can make sure to take the appropriate steps that she's never considered a suspect. As a result, we'll either convict you or Hagakure, and all of us will be executed." He folded his hands thoughtfully.

"Of course, the only way to test this is for someone to actually depart from here with knowledge that could vastly change the course of events when they return to the timeline they're from." The whole 'pathological liar' thing sort of prevents Celes being the prime candidate for this. However, there was someone who already possessed the information to drastically change both the second and third trials.

"Logically, Oowada-kun would be the obvious choice. His circumstances are what led to the original hypothesis of memory loss upon departure — Asahina-san confirmed that she and Naegi-kun have both told him about the events of the future, and Fujisaki-kun is present as well. It's evident that he has more than enough information to change the events of the timeline. He also has motive, both from the compelling interest in avoiding execution, but also given his reaction to Fujisaki-kun's death in the first place. If he precedes that event, he could avoid ever meeting Fujisaki-kun that night and thereby avoid the murder altogether."

She paused, flicking a deadpan look up at her companion. "Depriving you of a certain amount of entertainment in the process."

Because no, she hadn't forgotten that little incident, and no, he wasn't getting off the hook for it, either.

But then, as if she'd never paused for that brief aside, she resumed her train of thought right where she'd left off. "Though, if they were to successfully change that history as we remember it, would the effects of that shift extend even to this place? Or would we become, in a sense, refugees of a doomed timeline that ceased to exist, remembering events that once occurred but then were ultimately altered?"

Honestly, for all that she enjoyed her detective work, time travel stories and paradoxes were never one of her favorites. Too many variables, too difficult to establish given certainties. Kirigiri liked knowing that some things were given and constant no matter what, and the thought that death no longer existed as a reality in her current circumstances was difficult enough to adapt to. Casting even more uncertainty into things was...unpleasant.

He's going to ignore that little jab, not giving her the satisfaction of a response.

"Ishimaru has perhaps even more of an interest in changing the timeline. And his circumstances were what led to my original hypothesis of memory loss upon departure. After all, given his reaction to Oowada's execution," it's really hard for even Togami to forget the way that the sound of the motorcycle died out only to be replaced by the anguished crescendo of Ishimaru's screams, "and the fact that if he succeeds in changing the course of events he also can deny Celes of one of her victims, he has perhaps the most interest in changing events if he can. Not to mention, aside from Naegi, he's the most obvious one who would change events if he could."

As to your timeline question, he personally enjoys the mental hurdles of fictional time travel. "Perhaps for as long as we ourselves are here, without returning to our world in the interim, we'll remain as you said - refugees of a doomed timeline. If the mastermind keeping us here can't be bothered to erase memories when we leave, I can't imagine they would bother to update the memories of those who remain behind. But if we leave and return, events as we know them would probably seem like little more than a bad dream."

There was also the possibility that if only one of them goes back and starts going "HEY YOU GUYS THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IF WE DO THESE THINGS SO DON'T DO THOSE THINGS" the rest of them would just look at him or her like they were completely insane, do the things anyway, and the overall timeline would remain unchanged except for a creeping, sheepish sense of embarrassment and shame as each prophecy comes true.

"That sort of self-interest..."

Is that the sort of thing that would occur to Ishimaru-kun, she wondered? To preserve Oowada-kun's life, without a doubt — after all, he'd prevented that vote from being unanimous by voting for himself, apparently hoping that the lack of a unanimous verdict would do something to stall or disrupt the inevitable. And to save Fujisaki-kun, certainly, he would do that. And of course Ishimaru-kun was efficient and sought to maximize good, so there was support for the thought that if he could prevent everyone from dying by making that alteration, he would.

He was right, probably. Then where did the discrepancy lie? Something about that was bothering her, and she didn't know what it was. Not yet.

But she would.

Cast abruptly into a more meditative mood in response to his own theorizing, she returned her Gear to her backpack and settled in again — legs together, knees drawn up, tilted slightly away from Togami for reasons having nothing to do with her mood and everything to do with the practical considerations of her skirt.

"Togami-kun," she said at last, reflectively. "Which one affected you the most?"

The executions. She didn't expect that he'd actually tell her, honestly, but it was a question that seemed like it should be asked anyway.

It was less the assumption that he would take matters into his own hands to protect himself and more that, you know, he wouldn't be stupid enough to walk right into a trap that he knew was coming. Granted, that probably was asking a lot out of Ishimaru.

...Clearly the solution was to send them both back and that way they would be out of their hair. Win-win situation.

He watched her curiously as she settled in again, perhaps even more contemplative than before. But her question was not one that he was expecting at all, and as such it hit him full-force and he actually considered it.

"...Naegi's." The response was quiet, and not nearly as cocky as his tone usually was, and his own gaze fell to his hands quickly when he said it. He was pretty sure that he didn't have to say why. Sure, the others sometimes haunted his subconscious with the sounds of screaming, of bones breaking, of motorcycles revving, even of a fire engine siren, but... Wow had he never been more glad for an execution to be interrupted. He had to swallow before he looked up at her and asked, "What about you?"

"Mm," she answered, mildly intrigued that he'd actually bothered to answer — but then, the thought that he would had only been improbable, and not outright impossible. Making him fluster hadn't been her intent (though it was admittedly a side effect she wasn't going to complain about); however, she found the content of the admission...interesting. Why she'd expected it to be different, she wasn't precisely certain. Maybe she'd expected him to say that they'd all bothered him equally, and not very much at that.

Nevertheless.

"We're in agreement again," she observed, keeping her eyes forward so she didn't have to look at him. Having watched it unfold, even with the recognition that it was against the school rules, even with the realization that it had to mean the mastermind was backed into a corner...

...It was hard to shake the looming understanding of how close it had come to her being the one in the chair. Even with Alter-Ego's intervention...

Mn. None of them were pleasant to think about, but there was no denying that Detention was the one she cared to contemplate least.

There was no real point in lying and saying that none of the executions affected him when she was there as well at Naegi's execution, and had seen his reaction firsthand. The entire trial had just been wrong, for reasons he didn't know at the time but knew now, and having to convict someone, landing on Naegi only because the evidence wasn't in his favor, there was nothing conclusive about it and the slow execution ate at Togami as Naegi passed every inch down the conveyor belt.

He also felt maybe 10% guilty that he wouldn't have been affected nearly as strongly, if Kirigiri had been the one in that chair instead.

If anything, he was completely unsurprised that they were in agreement. He was pointedly not looking at her, as well. He also tactfully neglected to posit the assumption that their agreement was because it came close to being Kirigiri in the chair. Look at him, showing off his character development and shit.

"Are you surprised?" he asked, when the silence stretched out a little too far for comfort.

They could pretend, perhaps, that their respective fixations on aspects of their surroundings that pointedly weren't each other stemmed from a justification that wasn't the fact that they were both kind of unsettled at the prospect of talking about this. But of course, if they did, they'd be lying — and the truth, while not always optimistic, was still something worth striving for.

"If you'd said it was any of them, it would've been Naegi-kun's," she answered after an interval of silence of her own.

Unsettled at the prospect or not, it was a thing that happened, and nothing can actually change that fact, whatever their own individual reasons for wanting to avoid the subject were. There was no point in avoiding it if it came up, although it was Kirigiri's fault for bringing it up in the first place.

"There was no point to trying to feign indifference when you and the others were all there to see my reaction to it," he replied, instead of the real answer which was that he was taken off guard and answered with the truth instead of bullshitting as usual.

"If that's how it is," she said, not particularly believing him but likewise seeing no real benefit to pressing the issue. This wasn't an interrogation of Togami's beliefs and feelings, after all. This was simply...it was...

...

...freedom, maybe, catching up — and combining with the relative isolation of the forest...and despite the multitude of unanswered questions still waiting to be addressed, there was something about these circumstances that just felt...safer than the adrenaline-charged tension that had characterized the game they'd played in Hope's Peak. Here, it was quiet and still; birds and crickets supplied a complement to the background music that was gradually fading into white noise, but that silence didn't loom with anticipation of the worst.

The information said there was no death here, and it was strange to think of sleep without the possibility of waking up to discover that another of them was dead.

Maybe the mask could afford to drop for a little while — here, hidden away, when she was theoretically alone with one of the few people in the world who would inherently understand.

"If it's true that we're safe here. Is that something you can accept?" she asked.

When she gave that particular response, he huffed lightly and picked up the Trainer's Guide again, fully ready to move on from that particular topic s'il te plait. He didn't even mind being outside, particularly, which was something one might not expect from the Heir - but being under the sky felt good. After so long trapped inside...

He would even take the company of the little purple creature who refused to get back in her pokeball if it meant being outside of Hope's Peak, although that was a thought he kept to himself. He slipped the leaf out from between the pages, picking up where he left off.

And then she spoke again, and he glanced up at her over the top of his glasses.

"Will I stop expecting to be betrayed or stabbed in the back? Will I be able to stop wondering who will die next? I'm no psychologist, but I'd guess that will be a difficult test for any of us." He finally decided to put his book away, nestling it in the backpack at his feet and speaking as he looked down. "Or do you mean become complacent in this new environment and allow this place to make a puppet out of me?"

"We were supposed to be kept safe from the aftermath of that event. If this place proves to be as much of a prison as Hope's Peak was...even so, is that something you can accept?"

She paused a bit, reconsidering that elaboration, then seemed to think better of it and opted to try again.

"Whether you rebuild the Togami Conglomerate there or here. Is there anything about that world that compels the people like us to go back?" She drew a breath. "I'm wondering which we are this time. Prisoners again, or exiles in a safe haven. Could we leave behind that world permanently to stay in this one?"

She paused again, ducking her head to examine her knees. "To stay here...is it the same choice we already made, once?"

He had to consider that for a few minutes. It was true, he wasn't that much more disadvantaged here than he was back in the world they came from. At least here, he didn't have to also reestablish the economy as well as his family name. At least here, the threat of death, of despair-ridden retribution from desperate survivors among uncertain wreckage, of those who had been forbidden from calling him family again, none of these things hung over their heads.

"However much time passes here is not even a minute at home. Is that what you've heard? If we stay here weeks, months, years..." he trailed off thoughtfully. "Perhaps we are refugees here. Perhaps we are all safe. Does that not, then, make this place simply a broader, more palatable version of the protective haven that Hope's Peak was intended to be before Super High School Level Despair took over?"

If they could thrive here, would it not be making the original hope that the headmaster had for them, the reason why they had all agreed to stay locked in the school for as long as it took until the world was once again safe, come true?

"That was what...someone wanted for us," she answered a little too quietly, determined to move on before he had the opportunity to turn the conversation onto the topic of their former headmaster more fully. "Something that evidently we agreed to."

And then, at last, she risked a glance over at him, her expression once again as controlled and impassive as usual.

"Is that something you could embrace, Togami-kun?"

Yes, Kirigiri's daddy issues were pretty obvious by the time that the truth about the headmaster came out. He was hedging the topic to determine her willingness, and given that quiet response he wasn't going to push the matter.

He still had to travel with her, after all, and he would prefer the company to remain not miserable, if it was to be just the two of them.

"I can establish my family name here as easily as I can reestablish it back...there. The difference here is that we agreed to nothing. There were no terms laid out for us. We were all brought here at different times, from different times, and it's not just our classmates. That sort of power held over us is something I will neither enjoy nor get used to. But could I live here? Will I thrive here? You have no need to worry about that - I have no intention of losing this game."

"I agree," she said with a little more strength in her tone now, offering him a slight nod amid her steady, controlled expression. "There are too many unanswered questions, and it'd be foolish to grow complacent without making an effort to unravel them."

And what she didn't say, but what they both knew, is that in that respect, they were two of a kind — and possibly the two best suited to remember that implication at all times. Togami-kun's insistence on working the angles, demanding ulterior motives, seeking to understand the system so as to best manipulate it; her own tendency toward objectivity, toward seeing possibilities, toward demanding explanations from her surroundings and ferreting them out if none were forthcoming.

She wanted to be happy here, she mused. Deep down, beneath the stoic rationality that made her a world-class detective, that was something she wanted for herself and for her classmates. But like the mask of objectivity, other things had to come first. They had to question everything; they all knew all too well how believing what they were told could backfire spectacularly in the end.

The truth doesn't always breed hope.

And yet ignorance of it wasn't the answer, either.

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pooping in the woods with dignity

Evening of 8/20, after the introductions of Hagakure, Kuwata, and Celes

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