[Daffodil Like Yourself] Chapter 6
Aug. 4th, 2019 04:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morphogenesisChapter Six
Aoi started his morning with a serenade of puke. It was impossible to ignore the retching, coughing, and then sick splash of vomit coming from the bathroom even through the closed door. Last night he’d rolled Light off of him and onto his right side, and tried to sleep in the other bed but between his nerves and need to make sure Light didn’t die in his sleep he barely rested. And his thanks was vomit and hungover, grouchy Light whose first words to him that morning were ‘Shut up’ as he bolted to the bathroom.
Aoi checked the stolen phone again and reread all the confirmations that his orders last night had been carried out. He nodded to himself and the pit in his stomach grew. Akane would never forgive him.
His worrying session was interrupted by the sound of the shower; thank God, he couldn’t handle traveling surrounded by stale alcohol and vomit smells. Light smelled like soap and regret when he exited and they didn’t speak as they traded places.
When Aoi returned, Light was sprawled out on a bed with his arm covering his eyes. “The doctors told me it was a blessing I retained my light sensitivity,” he moaned.
“They can go to Hell?”
“Absolutely.”
“You seemed like someone who could hold his liquor.”
“I am.”
“Liar.”
Light sat up and his face was pinched like he wanted to grab Aoi again. “We have better things to discuss.” He shook his head and squeezed his temples. “...Remind me again what you said last night.”
Aoi explained his plan again—something that was foolish but he hoped would keep the others safe, something that he had no clue if he could trust Light with but Aoi couldn’t get in touch with Crash Keys and he needed to act sooner rather than later. “You think you can handle that?” Aoi massaged his right hand which was still burning. He hoped as soon as he got this implant out of him those symptoms would go away.
“You don’t need to ask.” Light rolled his shoulders. Although I have a suggestion—no, a requirement."
"You really..." Aoi shook his head. He needed Light right now and humoring him was easier than bickering like children. Finally they were having conversations that weren’t a back-and-forth of barbs and slights. “Fine, what?”
"This venture is called 'Bluebird Management,' correct? I propose the official slogan be 'Lonesome No More!'"
Aoi laughed. "That's your biggest problem right now? It sounds..."
"Irreverent, yes. Because we can't, no matter how rightly, bid Hongou a flying fuck to the moon." Light gave a small half-smile that, if Aoi was thinking optimistically, was aimed at him.
He returned it because he had to admit Light’s suggestion was funny. "...I'll take it into consideration," Aoi said. "You ready?"
“If you are.” When he stood up he turned his back to Aoi and Aoi noticed a huge hematoma on the back of his neck, surrounding the sewn-up wound from last night. It was so dark it looked like they’d smeared dirt on Light’s skin. Light didn’t seem bothered or in any pain, outside of an occasional cringe in his shoulders when he turned his head.
“Hey wait,” Aoi said reluctantly, anticipating Light’s response in the negative. “Let me bandage that for real.”
Light looked at him like he was a strange new creature who’d wandered in. “I’m going to let you touch me,” he stated like it was ridiculous. Ass.
“Yes because you don’t want an infection and you made me play doctor last night, too.” Aoi folded his arms and glowered. “Grow up, I’m not your enemy.”
Light sighed. “I didn’t accuse you.”
Aoi stood up straight and his eyes widened. That was something he never expected to hear out of Light’s mouth, and moreover it made him the tiniest bit glad to hear. He was glad the other wasn’t being difficult, more like. “Then I’ll help you.”
Light acquiesced and Aoi carefully disinfected the stitches again and taped gauze over it as a temporary bandage. “...That’s polite,” was all Light said as thanks.
“You’re welcome.”
Outside the sun was warm but the air was still chilly as hell. Aoi missed his scarf collection and even his old, old arm warmers as they left the house in Federal Hill for its eponymous park, a quiet place where young kids played with their parents and raced each other up and down the hundred-step staircase entrance. Recovering fast, Light took the steps two at a time ahead of Aoi, something boyish and unexpected for him. Aoi couldn’t relax or engage in conversation as he was thinking ahead to their plan. Their imprisonment was the first step, after all, and he hoped he’d live long enough to see said plan through to the end.
Last night Aoi had messaged every single contact for Hongou's subsidiary that he knew, and every suspected SOIS spy in order to arrange a meeting. Junpei did such a good job gathering this info painstakingly for months. Was he alive? Aoi swallowed. Beside him Light touched his dressing and looked deep in thought. Aoi was growing better at reading him; he played with the longer ends of his hair when he was worrying over something he didn’t reveal to Aoi. Aoi wondered what unknown tells he had; he liked to think he knew himself but there was always something more to learn about another person.
They sat on the ground by an old cannon and waited in silence until Light broke it with, “I thought of my name.”
“You accepted you’re a Daffodil?”
“No, I’m Sulfur.” He seemed proud of it until Aoi quoted the relevant line about how ‘Three-quarters of all Sulfurs are female,’ to which Light, refusing to admit he’d erred, said, “I’m joking, of course.”
Aoi chuckled under his breath. It was cut short when he saw a man making his way towards them, in a dark sweater and looking like an innocuous everyman, but the way he focused on them wasn’t innocent. Aoi cleared his throat to get Light's attention. “Hongou chickened out; someone else is coming,” he said quietly.
“Coward,” Light muttered.
“I know.”
Aoi and the man made eye contact across the space between them, rapidly closing as the man approached. He noticed more people seem to melt out of their surroundings and he slowly raised his hands as they were encircled. Owners walked their dogs, tourists cooled their heels or took photos, kids shrieked, and they were being taken in plain sight while people wandered on by.
Aoi closed his eyes and said, “Hi,” to the first man in a casual tone.
**
They were walked out of the park to a vehicle and drugged. Light woke up confined but unrestrained in a room that rocked gently. He confirmed via touch it was a small room and he’d lain in a twin bed, and the almost nonexistent light suggested the windows were blacked out. When he felt them he confirmed it was true. The room was just cold enough to keep subjects uncomfortable; they all were no matter who’d kidnapped him.
Aoi dozed on the bed opposite his, snoring in a manner common with heavy sedation. He didn’t wake when Light shook him but he was breathing.
Light began what felt like a rote task after so much practice: searching for a way out of the room. After rifling through everything, finding no tools, tricks, or puzzles and wanting to pull out his hair, he had that prized flash of epiphany and tried the doorknob.
The door opened easily as his own apartment’s. He stood on the threshold, certain this must be a mistake and he should retreat, save this knowledge for later, but what if their captors locked it on their return? With a last whisper to Aoi, determined to sleep a while still, Light stood up straighter and left the room.
The hallway was long, judging by how far he could walk, and he could perceive it was dim. The carpet was thick under her feet and there was smooth wallpaper, suggesting it was a fine ship. He approached the door at the very end and felt for a knob. The voice on the other side of the door was muffled but recognizable. 'Fortune favors the bold,' he thought. His boldness was all he had right now.
Light opened the door and when Hongou noticed him he scoffed as if wondering what took him so long, not how he'd escaped. Light closed the door behind him and shut himself in with the source of so many of his problems.
Hongou drummed on something before asking, "Which one are you?" indifferently.
Only the cool hatred flowing into his chest opened his voice box: "Where are we?"
"Well," Hongou continued as if he hadn't spoken. "You can't see this, so that makes you Light." What was ‘this?’ "And predictably, your question is irrelevant. You'll both know what I want you to know."
Light took the risk and hunted with his hands and feet, looking for a weapon, and settled for a thick book on a table. When he raised it, a click got his attention. He froze under the watchful gun. Clover never liked gun training; she couldn’t adjust for recoil and her shots would ricochet way off the mark, but she still would’ve been useful right then. Did Hongou have the ricochet problem? Light hoped so.
"Put that down." Hongou spoke with the calm of someone in total control.
Light squeezed the book until his arms trembled. "No."
They stood at an impasse until Hongou chuckled, and told him to sit in a chair to his right. When Light refused Hongou sighed and boredly said, "You can go before or after Kurashiki. Your choice."
"What do you get out of killing us?" he protested, sounding angry rather than frightened, but he faltered when his tingling arms forced him to lower the book.
"The head and limbs are difficult targets—too small. But the torso has so many tender, vulnerable organs beneath the skin and muscle. Do you want to bet which one I would hit if I fired right now?" His voice was as casual as dinner table chatter. "It might be fun to see who's right."
Light re-raised the book in front of himself and slowly sat down in the chair. "...Do you want to play 20 Questions instead?" He heard Hongou move, hopefully putting the gun down. Judging by the volume and proximity of his voice they were across the room from each other. "Because I think I know how you accomplished this," he bluffed. Just one opening. He needed one.
No reaction. "And you think...?"
"That's why we'll play this game." He leaned back in the chair. "But you’ll think of the questions and I'll see if I can guess the correct answer."
Hongou seemed to consider it, and when he started to speak Light whipped the book at him with full force. The head wasn't such a small target when one’s projectile was larger than a bullet, and they were excellent at finding objects by sound. It connected solidly and Hongou groaned.
Light leapt from her chair and bolted—from the room, down the hall, through a fire door at the end of it he’d found earlier—and then a strong hand touched his back and shoved him easily as if they were putting a book back into place on a shelf. He went over the edge of the landing, covering his head with his arms but feeling every sharp bump, crack, and jolt on the way down. When he hit the next landing on his belly, all of his weight landed on his right elbow, and the grinding forceful wrench as it separated easily as a combination lock tore every sound from his throat, only a silent scream. Her nose bled over his lips and jaw and he curled around his injured arm as, step after step, Hongou descended.
"The escape at the bottom was locked," he said, and yanked Light up from under his arms, dragged him back to the confinement room, and dropped him on the floor before slamming the door.
"...Light?" Aoi was awake and let out a soft gasp. "What happened to you?" Light heard him slide off the bed and wobble his way over, kneel down, and notably didn't try to touch Light.
In shock, numb, Light shook his head, absently wiped his nose even though it felt like a hot coal in the center of his face. He heard fabric ripping and realized Aoi must’ve torn off a piece of his clothing; he handed it to Light and the blood from his nose soaked through. “Thank you.”
He heard fabric rustling and then Aoi was taking his overshirt and looping it over and around Light, gently putting his injured elbow in the cradle the torso made, and tying the sleeves behind his neck in a makeshift sling. Light was in too much pain and surprise to protest; Aoi did that like he’d done it before. “How does that feel?”
Admittedly, better. His body still screamed if he thought about moving, but he could breathe and now his arm was secured. “Fine. But how did we get to the point where you’re my personal nurse?”
“I’m not looking for a new career, but someone is determined to kill himself without me,” Aoi returned the gentle joke. “We’ve been in the shit lately. Are we cursed?”
Light considered it. “I have no idea, but I’ll have you know Hongou only got lucky with this. And I hit him in the face before he hurt me.”
“Nice. So you wanna make some assumptions and see where they take us?”
He did; they discussed the evidence Crash Keys had gathered and then ran with it:
“So SOIS had espers in their grasp, they had the perfect test subjects for a device that could control their access to their powers. And they had a desperate guy who was sitting on his experiment results from the morphic fieldset. It’s not hard to believe they struck a deal. But why would they want that?” Aoi said.
“Sometimes I wondered what they wanted with us,” Light admitted. “We were expected to participate in seemingly random experiments with no relation to our jobs. I know I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with it but nobody’s concerns were taken seriously.” He touched his throbbing elbow, hissing. “When Alice and Clover came back from their kidnapping, Clover told me what she’d been through in the future. She chose to report what she experienced to our superiors. We thought we could help if we could stop the experiment, but I thought they never found the site.”
“Why bother, I think we told them the rest,” Aoi scoffed. “After the Mars Test Site mission we had a security breach, but the only information they wanted pertained to that mission. We had it in writing Brother was an esper who could control minds, and he used his power to create Free the Soul.”
“They were scared that they couldn’t control people like him,” Light speculated.
“So maybe Hongou didn’t escape. They set him free in exchange for his cooperation with their experiment.”
“And maybe...he saw an opportunity to lure us back to him.” Light put his chin in his hand, deep in thought, before suggesting, “He could only know so much about your movements if he had someone in Crash Keys feeding him information.”
“I know. So if we’re right, we know what happened and why. But what matters is we ran in and then he tightened the snare until there was no way out of the city.”
Sober silence hung between them, both soaking in their mutual mistakes that lead to this point, before Light cradled his arm and winced. “Was it ever really about the other espers for him?”
“Oh, it was about his pride. I believe that. But he doesn’t care if they live or die—he cares about getting his hands on us. Taking the espers was a bid to get Crash Keys to come, and if he could get his hands on his property, all the better.”
“So he has everything. Now what?”
“We let him think he has everything,” Aoi said, “And then we look for an opening to take it all away.”
Aoi started his morning with a serenade of puke. It was impossible to ignore the retching, coughing, and then sick splash of vomit coming from the bathroom even through the closed door. Last night he’d rolled Light off of him and onto his right side, and tried to sleep in the other bed but between his nerves and need to make sure Light didn’t die in his sleep he barely rested. And his thanks was vomit and hungover, grouchy Light whose first words to him that morning were ‘Shut up’ as he bolted to the bathroom.
Aoi checked the stolen phone again and reread all the confirmations that his orders last night had been carried out. He nodded to himself and the pit in his stomach grew. Akane would never forgive him.
His worrying session was interrupted by the sound of the shower; thank God, he couldn’t handle traveling surrounded by stale alcohol and vomit smells. Light smelled like soap and regret when he exited and they didn’t speak as they traded places.
When Aoi returned, Light was sprawled out on a bed with his arm covering his eyes. “The doctors told me it was a blessing I retained my light sensitivity,” he moaned.
“They can go to Hell?”
“Absolutely.”
“You seemed like someone who could hold his liquor.”
“I am.”
“Liar.”
Light sat up and his face was pinched like he wanted to grab Aoi again. “We have better things to discuss.” He shook his head and squeezed his temples. “...Remind me again what you said last night.”
Aoi explained his plan again—something that was foolish but he hoped would keep the others safe, something that he had no clue if he could trust Light with but Aoi couldn’t get in touch with Crash Keys and he needed to act sooner rather than later. “You think you can handle that?” Aoi massaged his right hand which was still burning. He hoped as soon as he got this implant out of him those symptoms would go away.
“You don’t need to ask.” Light rolled his shoulders. Although I have a suggestion—no, a requirement."
"You really..." Aoi shook his head. He needed Light right now and humoring him was easier than bickering like children. Finally they were having conversations that weren’t a back-and-forth of barbs and slights. “Fine, what?”
"This venture is called 'Bluebird Management,' correct? I propose the official slogan be 'Lonesome No More!'"
Aoi laughed. "That's your biggest problem right now? It sounds..."
"Irreverent, yes. Because we can't, no matter how rightly, bid Hongou a flying fuck to the moon." Light gave a small half-smile that, if Aoi was thinking optimistically, was aimed at him.
He returned it because he had to admit Light’s suggestion was funny. "...I'll take it into consideration," Aoi said. "You ready?"
“If you are.” When he stood up he turned his back to Aoi and Aoi noticed a huge hematoma on the back of his neck, surrounding the sewn-up wound from last night. It was so dark it looked like they’d smeared dirt on Light’s skin. Light didn’t seem bothered or in any pain, outside of an occasional cringe in his shoulders when he turned his head.
“Hey wait,” Aoi said reluctantly, anticipating Light’s response in the negative. “Let me bandage that for real.”
Light looked at him like he was a strange new creature who’d wandered in. “I’m going to let you touch me,” he stated like it was ridiculous. Ass.
“Yes because you don’t want an infection and you made me play doctor last night, too.” Aoi folded his arms and glowered. “Grow up, I’m not your enemy.”
Light sighed. “I didn’t accuse you.”
Aoi stood up straight and his eyes widened. That was something he never expected to hear out of Light’s mouth, and moreover it made him the tiniest bit glad to hear. He was glad the other wasn’t being difficult, more like. “Then I’ll help you.”
Light acquiesced and Aoi carefully disinfected the stitches again and taped gauze over it as a temporary bandage. “...That’s polite,” was all Light said as thanks.
“You’re welcome.”
Outside the sun was warm but the air was still chilly as hell. Aoi missed his scarf collection and even his old, old arm warmers as they left the house in Federal Hill for its eponymous park, a quiet place where young kids played with their parents and raced each other up and down the hundred-step staircase entrance. Recovering fast, Light took the steps two at a time ahead of Aoi, something boyish and unexpected for him. Aoi couldn’t relax or engage in conversation as he was thinking ahead to their plan. Their imprisonment was the first step, after all, and he hoped he’d live long enough to see said plan through to the end.
Last night Aoi had messaged every single contact for Hongou's subsidiary that he knew, and every suspected SOIS spy in order to arrange a meeting. Junpei did such a good job gathering this info painstakingly for months. Was he alive? Aoi swallowed. Beside him Light touched his dressing and looked deep in thought. Aoi was growing better at reading him; he played with the longer ends of his hair when he was worrying over something he didn’t reveal to Aoi. Aoi wondered what unknown tells he had; he liked to think he knew himself but there was always something more to learn about another person.
They sat on the ground by an old cannon and waited in silence until Light broke it with, “I thought of my name.”
“You accepted you’re a Daffodil?”
“No, I’m Sulfur.” He seemed proud of it until Aoi quoted the relevant line about how ‘Three-quarters of all Sulfurs are female,’ to which Light, refusing to admit he’d erred, said, “I’m joking, of course.”
Aoi chuckled under his breath. It was cut short when he saw a man making his way towards them, in a dark sweater and looking like an innocuous everyman, but the way he focused on them wasn’t innocent. Aoi cleared his throat to get Light's attention. “Hongou chickened out; someone else is coming,” he said quietly.
“Coward,” Light muttered.
“I know.”
Aoi and the man made eye contact across the space between them, rapidly closing as the man approached. He noticed more people seem to melt out of their surroundings and he slowly raised his hands as they were encircled. Owners walked their dogs, tourists cooled their heels or took photos, kids shrieked, and they were being taken in plain sight while people wandered on by.
Aoi closed his eyes and said, “Hi,” to the first man in a casual tone.
**
They were walked out of the park to a vehicle and drugged. Light woke up confined but unrestrained in a room that rocked gently. He confirmed via touch it was a small room and he’d lain in a twin bed, and the almost nonexistent light suggested the windows were blacked out. When he felt them he confirmed it was true. The room was just cold enough to keep subjects uncomfortable; they all were no matter who’d kidnapped him.
Aoi dozed on the bed opposite his, snoring in a manner common with heavy sedation. He didn’t wake when Light shook him but he was breathing.
Light began what felt like a rote task after so much practice: searching for a way out of the room. After rifling through everything, finding no tools, tricks, or puzzles and wanting to pull out his hair, he had that prized flash of epiphany and tried the doorknob.
The door opened easily as his own apartment’s. He stood on the threshold, certain this must be a mistake and he should retreat, save this knowledge for later, but what if their captors locked it on their return? With a last whisper to Aoi, determined to sleep a while still, Light stood up straighter and left the room.
The hallway was long, judging by how far he could walk, and he could perceive it was dim. The carpet was thick under her feet and there was smooth wallpaper, suggesting it was a fine ship. He approached the door at the very end and felt for a knob. The voice on the other side of the door was muffled but recognizable. 'Fortune favors the bold,' he thought. His boldness was all he had right now.
Light opened the door and when Hongou noticed him he scoffed as if wondering what took him so long, not how he'd escaped. Light closed the door behind him and shut himself in with the source of so many of his problems.
Hongou drummed on something before asking, "Which one are you?" indifferently.
Only the cool hatred flowing into his chest opened his voice box: "Where are we?"
"Well," Hongou continued as if he hadn't spoken. "You can't see this, so that makes you Light." What was ‘this?’ "And predictably, your question is irrelevant. You'll both know what I want you to know."
Light took the risk and hunted with his hands and feet, looking for a weapon, and settled for a thick book on a table. When he raised it, a click got his attention. He froze under the watchful gun. Clover never liked gun training; she couldn’t adjust for recoil and her shots would ricochet way off the mark, but she still would’ve been useful right then. Did Hongou have the ricochet problem? Light hoped so.
"Put that down." Hongou spoke with the calm of someone in total control.
Light squeezed the book until his arms trembled. "No."
They stood at an impasse until Hongou chuckled, and told him to sit in a chair to his right. When Light refused Hongou sighed and boredly said, "You can go before or after Kurashiki. Your choice."
"What do you get out of killing us?" he protested, sounding angry rather than frightened, but he faltered when his tingling arms forced him to lower the book.
"The head and limbs are difficult targets—too small. But the torso has so many tender, vulnerable organs beneath the skin and muscle. Do you want to bet which one I would hit if I fired right now?" His voice was as casual as dinner table chatter. "It might be fun to see who's right."
Light re-raised the book in front of himself and slowly sat down in the chair. "...Do you want to play 20 Questions instead?" He heard Hongou move, hopefully putting the gun down. Judging by the volume and proximity of his voice they were across the room from each other. "Because I think I know how you accomplished this," he bluffed. Just one opening. He needed one.
No reaction. "And you think...?"
"That's why we'll play this game." He leaned back in the chair. "But you’ll think of the questions and I'll see if I can guess the correct answer."
Hongou seemed to consider it, and when he started to speak Light whipped the book at him with full force. The head wasn't such a small target when one’s projectile was larger than a bullet, and they were excellent at finding objects by sound. It connected solidly and Hongou groaned.
Light leapt from her chair and bolted—from the room, down the hall, through a fire door at the end of it he’d found earlier—and then a strong hand touched his back and shoved him easily as if they were putting a book back into place on a shelf. He went over the edge of the landing, covering his head with his arms but feeling every sharp bump, crack, and jolt on the way down. When he hit the next landing on his belly, all of his weight landed on his right elbow, and the grinding forceful wrench as it separated easily as a combination lock tore every sound from his throat, only a silent scream. Her nose bled over his lips and jaw and he curled around his injured arm as, step after step, Hongou descended.
"The escape at the bottom was locked," he said, and yanked Light up from under his arms, dragged him back to the confinement room, and dropped him on the floor before slamming the door.
"...Light?" Aoi was awake and let out a soft gasp. "What happened to you?" Light heard him slide off the bed and wobble his way over, kneel down, and notably didn't try to touch Light.
In shock, numb, Light shook his head, absently wiped his nose even though it felt like a hot coal in the center of his face. He heard fabric ripping and realized Aoi must’ve torn off a piece of his clothing; he handed it to Light and the blood from his nose soaked through. “Thank you.”
He heard fabric rustling and then Aoi was taking his overshirt and looping it over and around Light, gently putting his injured elbow in the cradle the torso made, and tying the sleeves behind his neck in a makeshift sling. Light was in too much pain and surprise to protest; Aoi did that like he’d done it before. “How does that feel?”
Admittedly, better. His body still screamed if he thought about moving, but he could breathe and now his arm was secured. “Fine. But how did we get to the point where you’re my personal nurse?”
“I’m not looking for a new career, but someone is determined to kill himself without me,” Aoi returned the gentle joke. “We’ve been in the shit lately. Are we cursed?”
Light considered it. “I have no idea, but I’ll have you know Hongou only got lucky with this. And I hit him in the face before he hurt me.”
“Nice. So you wanna make some assumptions and see where they take us?”
He did; they discussed the evidence Crash Keys had gathered and then ran with it:
“So SOIS had espers in their grasp, they had the perfect test subjects for a device that could control their access to their powers. And they had a desperate guy who was sitting on his experiment results from the morphic fieldset. It’s not hard to believe they struck a deal. But why would they want that?” Aoi said.
“Sometimes I wondered what they wanted with us,” Light admitted. “We were expected to participate in seemingly random experiments with no relation to our jobs. I know I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with it but nobody’s concerns were taken seriously.” He touched his throbbing elbow, hissing. “When Alice and Clover came back from their kidnapping, Clover told me what she’d been through in the future. She chose to report what she experienced to our superiors. We thought we could help if we could stop the experiment, but I thought they never found the site.”
“Why bother, I think we told them the rest,” Aoi scoffed. “After the Mars Test Site mission we had a security breach, but the only information they wanted pertained to that mission. We had it in writing Brother was an esper who could control minds, and he used his power to create Free the Soul.”
“They were scared that they couldn’t control people like him,” Light speculated.
“So maybe Hongou didn’t escape. They set him free in exchange for his cooperation with their experiment.”
“And maybe...he saw an opportunity to lure us back to him.” Light put his chin in his hand, deep in thought, before suggesting, “He could only know so much about your movements if he had someone in Crash Keys feeding him information.”
“I know. So if we’re right, we know what happened and why. But what matters is we ran in and then he tightened the snare until there was no way out of the city.”
Sober silence hung between them, both soaking in their mutual mistakes that lead to this point, before Light cradled his arm and winced. “Was it ever really about the other espers for him?”
“Oh, it was about his pride. I believe that. But he doesn’t care if they live or die—he cares about getting his hands on us. Taking the espers was a bid to get Crash Keys to come, and if he could get his hands on his property, all the better.”
“So he has everything. Now what?”
“We let him think he has everything,” Aoi said, “And then we look for an opening to take it all away.”
