tabularasa_rp | open ✨ life can be harsh, it can be bitter.

[Anger had been simmering in Tifa for a long time. For years, long before she came to the Void, and before even Midgar, and it all comes boiling up again for Damien. Not at him, but at Blume, and at Shinra, both for being what they are.

Going after a man's family, beating another so much that he can't fight back... those are things that Shinra would do, too. She feels for Damien on some levels because they didn't deserve that kind of punishment, but at the same time, how is it so different from what they do? Guilt pangs in her chest, but she shoves it aside.]

I'm sorry that happened.

[What else is there to say to something like that?

A child, of all people, had to die so that the big bad corporation could exact revenge. Someone getting hurt has always been Tifa's biggest fear in being part of AVALANCHE, and she shudders to think about how many have been already, all because they wanted to frame them for the bombings.]

Wish I could say just take the high road. Forget about them and try to live your life, but I know that isn't easy, too. Especially after all that. Not exactly one to talk...

[ ... ]

And Aiden, he's still out there somewhere?

[Understanding begins to surface on Tifa's expression, although it doesn't unknot her frown in the least.]

So, these Personas are your power. Alright, I get that.

[Doesn't explain the change in outfit much, but... whatever. She'll take it for what it is—like those Magical Girl shows that Marlene likes to watch on TV in the mornings over breakfast, where they have to transform in order to use their abilities.

Yep. The Phantom Thieves are Magical Girls now.]

Still doesn't explain the talking cat, or the bus. Or is he a Persona, too?

Edited 2020-09-23 16:32 (UTC)

(his true self is usagi and we all know it now.)

If you want me to explain Morgana, you'll definitely need that seat.

(Ren gestures again, a little more serious this time because if the Metaverse wasn't enough to make her faint, maybe Mona is. He's trying to be as comprehensive as he can, as clear as possible but honestly? It's all so complicated he just wishes the other two were here to help put the pieces together.)

We told you that the Metaverse is made up of cognitive concepts. Japan has the widespread imaginary idea of a cat turning into a bus, so he can do that there. He is a cat, after all.

(The other question was... What was Mona, wasn't it?)

What he is, I can tell you another time. It's long. (And he's tired.)

Edited 2020-09-23 17:01 (UTC)

[Zack clenches his teeth for a moment before he turns to her and looks at her squarely. Ever since their last meeting, Zack's wondered what he could've done to change things and how he could've done right by her. So he figures the first thing he can do is be completely honest.]

Tifa... I saw the plate fall.

[And knowing that Tifa had called the Seventh Heaven her own it's safe to say that this memory probably hits Tifa particularly hard.]

Shinra let it go. You, Cloud and the Barret guy tried to stop it from happening. But it happened anyway.

[He doesn't look away from her.]

You guys did the best you could.

[She flopped over and laughed, looking towards the rock over their heads and panted out, looking like quite a mess when the napkins were handed over. Finally, she got to her feet and just shook her head.]

Those fucking things. We need repellant, don't we? I really hope my water clock at least keeps them away.

[She flopped into a seat and groaned, brushing some egg shell out of her head.]

Hey, at least I'm getting a show with dinner right?

[Nope, nothing to be jealous about here. Hah. They all looked stupid.]

[ Raihan only grins wider at Cloud's frustration - just as planned! and while Tifa has the right idea, Cloud's determination gets a genuine chuckle out of him. ]

Oh? I like your gusto, but I'll believe it when you can start breathing fire and shooting energy beams out of your eyes! [ which are just a couple of things that Dragon-type Pokémon can do, but that's an info dump for another day. ] But you're not actually far off. Some of the best workouts I get are out and about with my team.

[ a Pokémon and their Trainer have to be in sync in both body and mind, after all! it's a delicate balance that he wishes he could show, but poor Duraludon still can't use any of his moves. how are people going to know how cool they really are without that? ]

Hey, we don't know what kind of power is in those flabby bodies! If a Magikarp can become a terrifying dragon, I'm about ready to believe anything. [ but he's still laughing properly at it! the visual is amazing; thank you, Tifa. ] Anyway... if that's what you two are after, you'll have first dibs on the facility once I get it cleaned up. I guess there's nothing stopping me from making it a gym for people and Pokémon, right?

Kaiba? (Ren echoes, eyebrows shifting into a frown and he's incredulous. For someone who seems so individualistic, he can't quite imagine what made him start it. Ren'd like to help, so he makes a mental note.)

I'm not there all day. (To Cloud, because Tifa knows that herself.) I haven't heard much. I guess everyone is just trying to adapt the best they can.

Evidence suggests that any object may be safely consumed, regardless of suitability as foodstuff. The primary concern is not illness, but taste.

(They ate garbage, and that didn't make them sick.)

Hm. It's almost like ...

[He pauses briefly to glance towards the sky. The longer he's here the more the questions keep piling up without any answers in sight.]

This could be another realm of existence -- similar to the lifestream. But I doubt this is the promised land.

[Though her words do bring up something else.]

Though even without time being normal, do you not grow tired?

[Sephiroth himself does not really sleep anymore. He has no real need to. But as far he knows unless everyone here is somehow dead that shouldn't be the case for Tifa. This entire thing is nothing but frustrating.]

Not so much.

[it's doubly hard to forgive and forget, or at least just forget, when he wakes up to this, every morning -- when he's in pain, to at least some degree, almost constantly. he almost wishes there'd been more nerve damage in his legs. at least he'd have that]

[either way, he exhales another heavy breath, before nodding. yes, Aiden's still out there] Taking his pound of flesh out of Chicago.

[a pause follows, which becomes a moment of hesitation, which becomes a calculating silence. this persists for several long minutes, before at great lengths, he continues:] Including me. [a beat] You asked me before, if I got my justice. Aiden's -- [he's going to kill him, literally] -- well, he always blamed me for the Merlaut.

[never mind the fact that, as Tifa saw, that was Aiden's idea, not his. never mind the fact that it's infinitely more complicated than that. the Merlaut will and will always be the beginning of the end]

[Something's wrong if that whole country has such a widespread idea of cats turning into buses that it makes it happen... Tifa fears for their sanity, and her own as she takes a seat in the chair at last, slumping into it, tired.]

Not a normal cat, [she concludes. Betty's cats are normal cats. Wedge's cats are normal cats! They don't turn into vehicles based on some idea that the people of Gaia have concocted about them.]

Okay... so. Personas. Metaverse. Cat buses. Cognition...

[With her eyes on the ceiling, she heaves out a sigh before fixing Ren with them again. All this talk on cats, and she's forgotten one other important detail about the memory.]

What did you do with those powers? Besides the outfits turning your cat into a bus...

[Tifa, drop it!!]

[Her breath catches in her throat when he says it, and the words force the memory to play over again in her head. In that moment, it's like she's back, staring over the edge at her world, her home below, with sirens blaring in her ears and the support pillar crashing all around her. Her body wouldn't move, she refused to move, until she'd felt Cloud's hand pulling her away.

They lost to Shinra that night and remembering that brings all the hatred she feels for them back to the surface, and Tifa can hardly look him in the eye.]

It wasn't enough.

[If they had done the best they could, no one would have been hurt, or died because of what they did. Jessie, Biggs...]

They blamed that on us, you know. Said it was all AVALANCHE's fault, just like every other time. [But this one hit particularly close to home. Literally.] ... Shinra will get what's coming.

Not at all. (Even if it's strange, Ren thinks Tifa would like him a lot given enough time for the shock to diminish. It's funny to imagine Mona living in a world where he would be easily understood by all, though... How many people would be as shocked as his friend in front of him?)

So far, so good. (He confirms, but he leaves God out of the list for the time being. Too much too soon.)

Made criminals confess and repent for their crimes. (Sort of weird to be explaining the Phantom Thieves as a part of them so openly, but alas.)

[She shakes her head.]

Haven't slept since we got here. It'll come, I bet, just like hunger did.

[Just be thankful you missed that, Sephiroth. Some people had to eat rocks just to feel nourished after what could easily be months of not eating a single thing. Thankfully, Tifa still snacked every now and then, mostly out of boredom, but it helped when hunger struck this world like a violent storm out of nowhere.]

You'll end up just like the rest of us. [Which is probably a good thing.] Trying to find ways to pass the time, running out of things to do... Maybe you'll pick up some new hobbies while you're here.

[That aren't, you know, burning villages or trying to destroy the Planet.]

It's just easier to blame other people...

[Tifa has a feeling it's much more complicated than what she saw. More complicated than it just being Aiden's idea to hit the Merlaut, but all of that reminds her a little bit of herself. It's so much easier to say that it was Shinra's fault than it is to say that everything that led up to the plate collapsing was theirs. Hers.]

Doesn't sound like justice to me... Do you blame yourself at all?

[Whether or not it was Aiden's fault or Damien's, it doesn't really matter in the end. Everything that happened still happened and deciding who's to blame isn't going to change the fact that Damien still had to pay a hefty price. In her mind, it was Aiden's, and she chooses not to say as much out loud, but she's curious to hear his take on it.]

[Tifa swallows past the lump that's suddenly grown in her throat.

Making criminals confess and repent...? For their crimes? She doesn't understand a lot of things, but out of everything he's told her so far, this is the only thing that makes the most sense to her. Something she grasp onto with the hope that it will help make everything else clearer.]

How'd you do that? Most criminals just do what they do... refuse to accept that what they're doing is wrong. Or don't care...

[Shinra. Don Corneo. They're all the same in that regard, and none of them would ever confess to their wrongdoings. All they did was pin the blame on someone else.]

[it's not justice, that's the point. he doesn't get his justice because Aiden is literally going to kill him -- or the fixer that showed up, looking for them both is. either way]

[either way, he takes a moment to consider the question, before finally shaking his head] I don't know. [a beat] Before -- no. It was Aiden's idea. It was Aiden's inability to fucking trust me, that got us caught. He brought this down on us, not me.

[he shakes his head again] But now ... [he still blames Aiden, doesn't he? that's what that anger he was looking for, earlier, was all about, wasn't it? Aiden and his bullshit. but he could have said no the Merlaut. but he could have found some other way of getting to the Bellweather, after he figured out what spooked Blume and the Club so damn bad, about them being there in the first place. but he could have -- well, the list goes on. his obsessions lead to all of this, and that is his fault, isn't it?]

[in a few hours, a few minutes, in whatever passes for time here, he may change his mind and content himself in the fact that this was all Aiden's fucking fault, again, but right now. it's complicated, he's not entirely himself, and he's so damn tired]

I don't know.

They have distorted views of the world around them.

(Something he knows Tifa knows very much at this point, with all the stories and the horrors she has personally endured and witnessed. He probably doesn't know the half of it, does he?)

We steal their distortion. Without it, they realize what they've done and confess.

Definitely not. I thought they were just... something I'd never seen before, you know?

[It's not like he doesn't know there are things in other places that he's never seen before, after all.]

[The mention of fishing gets his attention, though.]

Uh... can you fish down there? Or is everything just going to, you know...

[Try to eat you first.]

[ He somehow still ends up working even when he's the one who suggested the break, huh? Well, as long as they're having fun, he might as well start making himself useful by preparing another sushi roll.

Slowly.

He doesn't want to ruin it...!! ]

What is this, a date? You don't have to order things for the other one.

[ Speaking of orders, a real professional would have served them up a drink first, but he clearly has no idea what he's doing. Rolling up this sushi is kind of stressful! ]

[ He knew that sushi was raw fish, but the rice and seaweed at least added some flavour, right? Without the extras, the raw fish somehow becomes a meal known as sashimi. Huh, the more you know! ~~He's not a good chef.~~ ]

Don't worry, our sushi-shi... simi... shimisu is all about the taste, that's our primary concern, too.

[ Shouldn't it be illness? Also he couldn't even get the name right. ]

Tifa, we got any mackerel around?

[ He just thought the same as Tifa, which is that the bar has more customers and therefore more chatter. Perhaps Blue or whoever else took over for Tifa might have more information... ]

Guess it doesn't help that the market decided to materialize here of all places.

[ It's very geographically inconvenient. ]

Can we really keep business going here?

[ Can Cloud breathe fire and shoot beams out of his eyes? No. Instead he turns to face the grill again, muttering to himself, and only to himself. ]

Can a Pokémon do fifty squats in a minute and a half? Didn't think so...

[ He doesn't mind the idea of a training facility of sorts, though. He knows that Tifa would especially appreciate it! If he could get some perks on her behalf, then their cooking adventures have been worth it. ]

You got yourself a deal. [ And to Tifa: ] See? Just making connections.

[ While Cloud is trying his hardest not to vomit, he can at least take some comfort in knowing that they're having fun. As for him, he'll be happy going without eating eggs for quite some time. ]

It's a one-time only show.

[ ...He hopes. ]

Those damn things... we gotta do something before they completely take over.

[ Can they even breed? They better not with how many eggs they're shooting. ]

[ The memory comes from nowhere at all: a sudden glimpse of the night sky, a water tower, a promise. It's not hers, but the sight of the young man in the white shirt is enough to tell Rinoa in whose mind it belongs. Aerith told her once that she only recently met Cloud and Tifa, so...

She's about to leave the apartment when there's a knock on the door, and Tifa's voice calling to her. Her brows lift in surprise, and she moves to pull the door open, a welcoming smile forming on her lips. ]

Tifa! I was just thinking about you. Come in, come in~!

[ She steps aside to let the other woman in, wondering what it means that the other is here. Could it be that one of her memories is misplaced? There don't seem to be any holes in her mind, but... ]

Is everything okay?

[ As she asks, she leads Tifa over to the sofa, now mostly dry and with both Felix and Angelo curled up sleeping at its foot, and gestures for her to sit. ]

open ✨ life can be harsh, it can be bitter.

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