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[ DON'T JUST FJDSLFJDSAL

not sure if faintly jealous or something else... ]

Hell no! [ that just embarrasses him, actually. ] I can walk, I just... need a minute.

You don't think that's going to take too long? Imagine getting back in twice the time. How could we do that to our MVP?

[ He asks but he still just

hoists Yosuke up over to his shoulder anyway. Hello! You can see and touch his back muscles now ig. ]

Alley-oop—!

I mean unless you're in a ru—

[ he doesn't even get to finish whatever he was saying before he is scooped up with an indignant and startled sound like an alarmed cat. honestly he's pretty skinny, if yu can pull him out of the garbage easily i suppose it's nothing. ALSO THANKS HE DOESN'T WANT THIS even if his response is to smack elysium's back. this is probably for the best anyway because he is currently boneless. ]

What are you doing?!

What does it look like I'm doing?

[ Pats Yosuke's side. He has the height advantage and the jock advantage… ]

Be good.

[ he has the height advantage and the jock advantage and yosuke is only human so he eventually slumps with a sulk. ]

It looks like you're being a pain. [ but even while he says that his tone sounds a little off, like he's half-asleep.

the ghostly voice of saki konishi helpfully pipes up in his head to call him weak and he frowns about that, but it's fine. nobody needs to know he's now hearing things. ]

You're sounding like a kid who doesn't want to take his medicine.

[ A light little laugh. Elysium had to bear the indignity of being bald, so Yosuke can live being seen like a sack of potatoes for the minutes it takes for them to get back to the manor. Falling asleep in this position is almost impressive. ]

There are good people here. Learn to rely on us like you have your friends back at home, buddy.

[ hits his shoulder again for good measure. also yeah, listen, his health is fine but magic really does tap him of his energy so it's hit and miss how alert he is.

unfortunately he's alert enough to hear that sentence and stay quiet for a moment. ]

I never said people here aren't good. [ he seems like he's deciding if he wants to say more on that, but chooses not to. ]

I never said you claimed otherwise. Just giving you a reminder. If nothing else, getting you this one time should've given me points. Best case is that nothing continues to happen to get more, but you know.

[ they forget how useless he was during his bald arc ]

What about me? I'll put you down if you promise to behave. Use me as a crutch.

[ yosuke forgot how useless elysium's bald arc was because he was too busy with his own maze effect of turbo-depression and anxiety so yeah, his opinion is skewed and he still thinks decently of this man. ]

You already have enough points. [ he grumbles, but then he looks out into the distance as if looking for more fog monsters. granted, for some reason, being up here makes it feel less like a struggle to breathe. whoa. who knew physical touch would help!! (this is not the right takeaway.) ]

... this is fine. Let's just get out of here and figure out what the hell we even saw just now.

[ please explain the tail on our monster, thank you. ]

[ HELP IS THAT WHY HE WAS SO MISERABLE. i'm so sorry yosuke we all needed help in the club that day ]

What the hell was what? I thought the señor explained it to you?

[ what's a lil scalie tail compared to tokinaga's apparent sleep paralysis demon's unhinging jaw ]

[ sometimes all of your positive emotions are literally sucked out of you and you're left like that :') thank you, maze. ]

I mean I kinda get it, but... Tokinaga-san has a point that that monster pulled memories of people from all four of us. And I understand its face and its... second... face [ in the stomach??? ], but what about the rest of it? Who were those people and what do the four of them have in common?

I didn't pick up your entire conversation with him, [ him and Dahut had important SOCK plans to make, ] but did he ever mention what his relationship was to his face in question?

Just seeing mine gives me a decent guess, but confirmation from the two of you would pretty much solidify it.

[ YES HE HEARD YOUR SOCK TALK, you weirdos... ]

Yeah, he's told me about Obikawa-san. It's someone who lives in his building and occupies a lot of his time, but there's a little more to it, too. Since Tokinaga-san works a lot, sometimes Obikawa-san's the only person around when he's not, it sounds like.

[ tokinaga can elaborate more, this is not his place. ]

[ WORRY NOT!! FOR YOU WERE A MEMBER OF THIS SQUAD TOO AND SHALL BE GIVEN SOCKS!!!!!

no man left behind…… matching socks for the entire gang… ]

It kind of feels like this place is rifling through the people in our lives and lobbing whatever it finds at us, hoping one of the hits sticks. For me, this was the first time it's been this… tangible. I was a little surprised. But the tail was meant to be my captain's, I think.

I say 'I think' when I absolutely know that was their intent. BUT! They mangled her resemblance so badly that if I let it slide, she'd probably find a way to reach through this purgatory and drag me into hers just to scold me for it——then send me back.

[ somehow says this all so fondly. ]

Was yours a close friend of yours too?

[ yay...

but he's paying attention and he kind of goes "wait are you a pirate, too" because he remembers thorns mentioning elysium and knows thorns is a pirate, but he doesn't actually ask because that's not important. regardless! he doesn't disagree that it's obvious this place is throwing whatever will hit. ]

Hm... anything to try and get a reaction, and since the thing attacked us right away it's like this place wants us to fumble it just because it looks like someone familiar. I mean four people put together made it kinda gross, but some things were more clear than others. [ why did it need to have saki's face actually. ] It sounds like your Captain knows you pretty well.

[ or at least has a good handle of who elysium is and how to get him to behave. that's something he's filing away for later, because then he asks that question and yosuke has to think of what to say. ]

... it's a little different. I told you before how we were originally just trying to solve the murders that were happening in town before everything else happened. Saki-senpai's is whose I was trying to solve. [ ... ] We were co-workers, and I don't know if she'd really consider us friends but I... she was important to me, yeah. I wanted to get to know her better. I wanted to see her be happy.

To an extent, this place has been pretty consistent about forcing us to be honest with ourselves and making us face the parts we'd rather avoid, right? I can see how someone less savvy might think that thing stole pieces from the real people it mimicked, so maybe that was the intent, too. Too bad they missed the small detail that my Captain's mute.

[ That isn't nearly as important as what Yosuke has to say, though, and he'll turn his attention to him even if he can't quite see it from his ridiculous positioning. ]

Mm. Did she look like she was struggling?

Including locking us up until we confess whatever secrets we have, yeah. [ he sounds so annoyed about that part specifically. ] I was talking to Tsukasa about this, how it'd be easy to throw us off and have us lost sight of what's happening if this place really dialed in on what might get under our skin. But it's good that you noticed a detail like that. Not that... it wasn't obvious with how it looked.

[ it's still important to him to know more about elysium in general, because the other thing he'd said to tsukasa was that the best thing they can all do is remind each other of important things that may be forgotten. but then there's saki. ]

She was good about brushing it off. I didn't know how much it bothered her back then, and even when I tried to defend her she never said anything. [ he decides maybe some context is important though. ] My family moved to Inaba because my dad became the manager of Junes. It's a really big department store, they're kinda everywhere. But Inaba's such a small town that bringing a Junes meant all of the town's business started going there and the shopping district lost it. Saki-senpai's family has owned a liquor store in the shopping district for generations, so when she came to work at Junes, people started talking.

... there's not a single person in that town who doesn't know who I am because of Junes. I heard a lot of things behind my back and even to my face about how we ruined everything when the store first opened. What can you do but shut up and deal with it? [ granted, that suppression led to his shadow but he's not getting into that. ] But people started saying the same kind of things to her, about how she was a traitor to her family and everything. She hated it... and she hated me, too, because of it. And I was too excited just to be talking to her to even notice how bad it was until it was too late. I was just a pain in her ass who was too enthusiastic to realize she was only being nice, but... I still wish I'd had more time. Maybe things would have been different then.

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[He will also finally pipe up here:]

There were parts of Monsieur Scien, too! [The pink hair and floral neck tattoo which he will just gesture to his own hair and floral thigh tattoo about.] So the theory that it was created using memories of people significant to us in some way or another is probably a good one. "To what end" is the next question.

[ lifts his head up from where he's faceplanted into elysium's shoulder like ??? ]

Your boss? [ THIS DESTROYS THE IMAGE HE HAD OF SCIEN, that's hilarious. but he watches dahut gesture to these parts and squints slightly. ]

It's totally possible it was just to try and freak us out, but what if it really is more than that?

Right, right! One and the same!

[HIS BASEMENT DWELLER SLOB BOSS WHO'S A WASTE OF A SET OF GOOD LOOKS...]

I think it probably is! If we're in a place like purgatory, the things happening to us probably aren't "just because", right?

[ continues to :tails: about this. ]

Feels like a ton of effort to go through "just because", yeah. So what is it trying to tell us?

[IT'S FINE...]

Good question, good question. Looking around a little more might be a good idea once everyone's recovered! Maybe we can make something useful with these, too.

[THEIR HARVESTED PARTS.]

[ we really did just dismantle a bunch of stuff before entering a boss fight. feels like home... ]

I think I'll leave the science stuff to you, Dahut. But it can't hurt.

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[ also funny how this implies dahut just trailed after them

He will greet Dahut with a quick wave (like he hadn't been with them this entire time), the other hand dutifully patting the potato sack currently masquerading as Yosuke. Waves for him too. ]

[THE WAY I MIXED MY THREADS UP AND DIDN'T SEE THIS WAS THE ONE WHERE THEY LEFT the dangers of tracking whole ass toplevels. i guess it's fine he does weird random shit like following people for sport. HE'S HERE NOW HI. MAKING SURE THEY DON'T GET KIDNAPPED AWAY WHILE THEY TRAVERSE THROUGH THE AREA. What will he do if they get kidnapped? GOOD QUESTION. Probably also get fucking kidnapped.

He will trot over helpfully though yes hello.]