[Heart Game - Ed, Maya, Roxy]

[carptricks]

[It's dark. You're trying to move forward, but it feels like your limbs are weighed down by chains and shackles. Still, you push. You push and you pull and those chains are pulled taut and strained until suddenly--]

[Something snaps]

[You tumble forward, wind blowing past your face, until you lose awareness of anything around you. . .]

((another run ran concurrent to this one here))

Comments

[carptricks]

. . .

[stuffs his hands into his pockets and glances around]

No. This place is safe. You can take a look around, if you really want to. Now that you're here.

[fuhrinkaed]

[Then I guess we'll study the drawers.]

I'd question why a morgue is safe in your heart, but for all I know mine's even weirder.

[carptricks]

[Each of the drawers is labeled with a different name. There are. . . a ton of them, honestly]

[Aoko. Diamond. Clover. Toichi. Jack Connery. Trick. Toshiya Hamano. Delriza. The robot. The mad scientist. Dahlia. And every team in Kyriakos]

[Kaito just shrugs]

[fuhrinkaed]

So this is a sort of informational room? [Probably? Maybe?]

[Lets see if I can find my name.]

[soulping]

[yep, there's an Ed drawer too]

[fuhrinkaed]

[Rule two: snooping on yourself is ok. LETS PEEKING.]

[soulping]

[there's a mirror shard inside]

[looks an awful lot like the one you shoved into your mirror the other day]

[fuhrinkaed]

[....]

[>TOUCH SHARD.]

[soulping]

[OKAY SO]

[remember when you almost got your soul blown up]

[remember when Kaito fussed at your bedside afterwards]

[this is that memory, only from Kaito's point of view]

[. . . you feel a lot of terror at the thought of losing someone you consider such a close friend-- no, not just a friend, a brother-- when the memory fades]

[fuhrinkaed]

...

So this room is about us dying or getting ourselves hurt.

I guess it's no help if I say I knew what I was doing again, huh.

[carptricks]

. . .

[glances away and shrugs again]

When you lose your old man at such a young age, like I did, that fear kinda. . . sticks with you.

[fuhrinkaed]

...I guess it would.

I wouldn't really... know. Y'know? What with the not knowing mine until well after the fact.

[carptricks]

. . .

But you know what it felt with-- your sister. Right? And how d'you think it'd feel if it were me?

[fuhrinkaed]

...yeah.

I can kinda' understand it. Which is why I don't do things I can't recover from some way or another.

[carptricks]

You just saying that doesn't help that fear in here.

[lifts a hand and clutches at his shirt, right over his heart]

Things can go wrong. Something unexpected can happen. You can lose control over a situation and things can spiral fast.

[he nods at Toichi's drawer]

. . . I've seen it happen.

[fuhrinkaed]

I've made it happen, for someone a heck of a lot smarter than me. [He scratches at his hair looking away.]

I know. But I'm a lot more durable and a lot less impulsive than a lot of people.

[carptricks]

[. . . he laughs, a bit wry]

You seem a lot more impulsive than most people to me. Or. . . [a pause]

Maybe not impulsive. Confident in your conclusions? Yeah, that's more accurate.

[looking back at Ed again]

But you're not invincible. No one is.

[fuhrinkaed]

That much is really obvious.

Honestly, there was a 1-2 percent chance that my whole mirror frame would have blown up from this. Another, higher chance of some kind of mind control of varying levels of shakeoffability, and a pretty real one that I'd go crazy from it, too.

I accounted for all of that before I went ahead with the shard.

It just so happened that my plan for what actually happened was 'suck it up, you've had worse.' When I. Don't exactly know if I have.

[carptricks]

Your calculations were a little off.

[tilts his head up a bit]

You're not invincible, and you're not all-knowing, either. You can calculate for everything that might go wrong, pull out all the stops to make sure you compensate for mistakes. And yet. . .

[and this time, his gaze flickers towards the drawer labeled "Jack Connery."]

You can still be wrong.

[fuhrinkaed]

[...That's a hint that I should look at that one, huh.]

[Opening it I guess.]

[soulping]

[a broken strange harlequin mask sits inside]

[fuhrinkaed]

[Well then. I guess we're touching it.]

[soulping]

[a memory]

[. . . guilt and failure lingers afterwards. that kid is going to grow up without a dad, and it's your fault]

[fuhrinkaed]

[...]

It... could have been worse.

[carptricks]

[. . . HOW INSENSITIVE CAN YOU GET]

Are you serious, Ed.