meadowlark | @ren.amamiya

[ there’s a lot to think about it, between people who took Cassius' deal and those who didn't. for him, the issues are separate: there's Cassius, and there's the UNA. there are too many things that remain hidden for his comfort, even less so when the Displaced are fighting each other. ]

Alright--there’s a lot going on and a lot to say. I want to keep it brief, but I have an idea. We all got the message from Cassius.

1. Cassius offering a deal to find Judas.
2. Judas is at the UNA base in New Beijing.

There isn't a lot for us to go on, but I want to take this back from Cassius and the UNA. We know that Cassius said "free him," but it was vague. We could find Judas and capture him on our own terms. We'll know more when we're able to talk to him.

Forget about the favor. It feels like Cassius is trying to turn us against each other. I know everyone has their own reason for doing what they’re doing, and I'm not here to argue over what we should've done. The UNA already knows that we're coming. That means we're all in danger. I'm interested in what can be done now.

No one has to go. If you took the deal or not, if you're going or not, if you can help us find a way of capturing Judas--let's talk about what we can do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Do you remember what happened at the end of Zerzura?

Yeah. It'd be hard to forget.

This is going to sound strange.
When we saw the spear, what did it feel like to you?

I felt sad. Really, really sad. And I knew that the spear was responsible for everything that was wrong with Zerzura, which is why we had to remove it.

I felt that too.
More than that, it felt like the center of something.
Like a heart.

Riku and I talked about that too. Well, it was more wondering if the heart of the world was what had tricked us into believing in those fake lives.

There could be some corruption, but I haven't seen any Shadows.

[ there's no Metaverse. ]

Wait -- you have Heartless in your world??

[ well, "heartless" is a loaded term. ]

Shadows are manifestations of human psyche. They take physical form, and are usually found in Palaces. [ it's times like this he really misses Morgana. ] People can have their own Shadows, too.
When someone's heart gets distorted, a Palace is created.
Does that sound familiar?

Sort of, but not exactly.

Heartless are created when someone forcibly has their heart taken from them, or when their heart gets completely corrupted by darkness. I've never heard of Palaces, though, and Shadows are just one type of Heartless.

When I stole hearts, no one turned heartless.
The only way to stop the corruption is to find the treasure in the palace--their heart. As a Phantom Thief, it was up to me to find and take it. After it was stolen, the person confessed their distorted desires in the real world. They were arrested and charged.
It allowed their victims to take the situation back from them, and made sure they didn't hurt anyone again.

[ was this why he was so insistent on taking it from Cassius? maybe. he didn't like losing. ]

Edited 2019-11-17 01:38 (UTC)

So the Palace is kind of like... a place within their hearts? Or their souls? And if you find their heart within that place, you can expose the darkness in them?

[ he can't nod over the network but ]

Yeah.
We took the piece that corrupted them.
Then they confessed their crimes.

Was there any way of redeeming them after that?

They had to do that for themselves.

Yeah, I guess you're right.

How did you end up being the one to do all this? Were you chosen?

[ that's a question that he's not sure how to answer. in the simplest terms: no, he wasn't chosen, it was an accident finding Kamoshida's Palace; in the more complicated ones: yes, and he was strung along by the leash of fate until he decided to bite back. the MetaNav, Arsene, and the Velvet Room had all been concocted into an elaborate game where he was a moving piece.

it goes deep, and it gets complicated. ]

A teacher at our school was hurting students. The adults were letting it happen.
A friend of mine and I stumbled on his Palace.
We decided we needed to do something.

You seem to know a lot about this.