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[heartofthestar]

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[heartofthestar]

[ Diverted? Well, mayhap. Venat understands his relationship with Akira less than she would like to offer her usual cut-through-Maruki's-mental-crap answers, so she needs to learn more and understand his thoughts better before she can really strike at those thoughts she knows are buzzing in his head. A tale is as good as any.]

You are asking me if I wish a tale? You are out of sorts.

[She smiles and squeezes his hand to make sure the words are light and airy, a gentle jest rather than anything he should truly take to heart.]

[placation]

I just like to hear you say yes!

[ He's laughing as he says it, swinging her hand. It's an ironclad, persistent truth about Maruki: He asks questions he already knows the answers to simply because he enjoys the reassurance of hearing what he knows to be true.

And anyway, it might be a long story.

A drawn breath, deep and steadying, nothing to do with the exertion of the hike at all. ]

I'm sure I've said before that the field I studied had to do with how our perception shapes reality. The broader applications of that were all theoretical, and I dedicated my life to proving that they existed. It was on the fringes of academia, to say the least...

But they were real. A vigilante justice group took it upon themselves to change the hearts of criminals. Their means are... something I'm still trying to understand, but the end result proved my theories correct. One could alter someone else's perception of reality by directly interacting with their cognition.

[ There is a profoundly nerdy joy to this explanation, but– well, Maruki's an intelligent man. It's tempered by what he says next. ]

Of course, that has drawbacks, and there are ways it could go terribly wrong. I wanted to keep a close eye on that group, so I started working at the school where the first changed criminal had been a teacher. You already know that I sought Kurusu out because of his ties to that teacher, so you can probably guess who the leader of that group was.

[heartofthestar]

[A vigilante justice group acting directly to alter the perceptions of criminals?]

[Well, then, that Maruki thinks highly of at least one of them, or else she might fear excessively. The opportunity for corruption, cruelty, and vice in such an uncontrolled and unrestrained act are immense.]

Had you heard of the sort of person he was prior to meeting him?

[placation]

[ Maruki shakes his head through another sip of coffee. ]

Only what the school had told me, and considering they had just turned a blind eye to a case of tremendous abuse from one of their faculty members, I knew better than to believe it.

[ A transfer student on probation for a crime of his own – Maruki didn't buy it for a second. He set it all aside, let Akira make his own first impression. ]

We became close, but I never let on that I knew he was one of them. Phantom Thieves, they were called. Very dramatic, but it suited them. Young, idealistic...

[ If he sounds impossibly fond about that, he is. Every Phantom Thief became dear to him, but none more so than Akira by a wide margin. ]

Meanwhile, as their notoriety grew, a certain famous young detective became their most outspoken detractor in the media. Before Somnius, I only ever knew Akechi through a television screen. Isn't that ridiculous?

[heartofthestar]

You must be jesting.

[No, it is indeed plausible. Unlikely in the extreme, but if she needed proof that people could build unexpectedly strong bonds, unexpectedly quick, the hand she still holds provides plenty.]

I'd thought for sure you two had history together.

[placation]

Not one bit.

[ It's insane to him too. Inextricably tangled up as they are now, it feels impossible that their lives in Tokyo were entirely separate, save for mutual associations with Akira and Shido. ]

He was quite famous, and I was a nobody. If we hadn't met here, I doubt we ever would have.

[heartofthestar]

'Not famous', perhaps. There is no world in which you could be called a nobody.

[Two sides to that coin. The first, of course, being Azathoth. How could someone with that power be considered insignificant? If Akechi's conjuring is powerful, Maruki must stand atop the mountain, or at least terribly close to that peak.]

[The other? He is Maruki, of course. To her he can never be a nobody.]

[placation]

[ Maruki ducks his head and grins as he shakes it, hair flopping this way and that. ]

You're too good to me...

[ He was a nobody, for better and for worse. He knows now that that was very likely the only thing keeping him alive. ]

Regardless of my status in our true reality, my point is that Kurusu and Akechi were rivals. I'm still working on figuring out exactly that entailed, but I can say with certainty that despite that, they're both important to one another. They aren't at each other's throats. It's...

[ He squints up at the trees, huffs a slight laugh. ]

Pretty amusing, actually. He reverts back to that kindly persona around Kurusu and will do anything to maintain it. I'm sure that will boil over at some point, as he's wont to do, but to your earlier point, friction doesn't seem to be an immediate issue. They seem to get along.

[heartofthestar]

Now, by what standards are you describing 'get along'? Standards I would recognize, or yours?

[She understands perfectly well that Akechi 'gets along' with other people in the way fire gets along with flesh. And perhaps more to the point, she perfectly well knows that 'kindly persona' still carries with it the same barbs and blades, merely cloaked in politeness and plausible deniability.]

[Of course, she asks this question with warmth and humor, because while she finds it all both puzzling and entirely too obvious all at once, she accepts it as the way of things.]

[placation]

[ He knows that teasing tone, and his offense is entirely put on. ]

What's wrong with my standards, Venat!

[heartofthestar]

[A look.]

[He knows that look.]

[Come on.]

[placation]

[ Read for filth with only a single glance...

Maruki swings their joined hands as he sighs, theatrical and dramatic, and then laughs. ]

You may have a point. But they really do get along! So far, anyway...

[ Oh, he's got a big storm coming. ]

Anyhow. Now that you know that dynamic's been added to my home, you wouldn't still consider living there, would you...?

[heartofthestar]

Have I yet to be bothered by it? I hardly can begin to understand it, but that will not prevent me from accepting it. It is not the strangest thing I have ever seen.

[Though it really ranks up there, which says something. But let's not just blurt that out.]

[placation]

Considering what I know about your reality, I would hope it's not the strangest!

[ With a relatively straightforward clearing ahead of them, he takes his eyes off the hiking trail and leans over to press a kiss to Venat's cheek, smiling and warm. ]

Let me help him get settled in and then we'll revisit that. I really did overload him with a lot as soon as he got here. I regret that...

[heartofthestar]

Perhaps, but I've no doubt that in doing so, you've conveyed the sincerity of your thoughts and feelings. That is something important that you'll not regret, I have every confidence.

we can wrap up this one too pre-event :3c CAN'T WAIT FOR AKIRA TO MEET HER. OH BOY

[placation]

I hope so. I hope that you're right.

[ A part of him will always worry that he started Akira off on the wrong foot in Visium, and that echoes of their first meeting will follow him throughout the rest of his time here. How disquieting, to be set up on at once by someone you don't recognize in a completely unfamiliar false reality. If he'd had a lick of sense about him, he wouldn't have, but...

Well. Leap first, look later. That's always been Maruki's fatal flaw. ]

[heartofthestar]

Have but half the faith in yourself that you have in others.

[Honestly advice for Maruki's Entire Life, not just this moment, but here and now it is needed. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze, turning her smile to him once more.]

It shall all be well.