Left-Behind Trace [Open]

[standalonehuman]

WHO: Togusa and people!
WHERE: The hospital, oops.
WHEN: January 7th and onwards.
WHAT: Togusa got shot, he's in the hospital, and finally knows how his Other got shot.
WARNINGS: Discussion of violence, medical treatment, and the like.

The news probably didn't take long to reach a lot of people. Togusa got brought to the hospital with a gunshot wound. Togusa's official story is that he got shot stopping an opportunistic mugger trying to steal things in the chaos of the fire. So what actually happened?

Comments

[standalonehuman]

If it was literally anyone other than Malik sitting across from him, Togusa would be trying to find a bright side. But that glare, the way Malik is going back to carefully crafting his words, Togusa knows he has crept up on a nerve. And so any assurances that Togusa can't back up right now are going to only make him angry.

"So far I've been coming at this assuming that there is some truth to it. That the Retrospec leadership knows some truth that we can't see yet, and that their hiding away would seem justified if we could find that truth."

"If it's just a lie, just a ploy to keep control of the people they have? Then what do we do? Take them out, either way, I've never wavered on that idea. They need to be stopped. But does it change our focus if it turns out they're lying to their own people?"

[godcards]

"They are lying. Whatever it is they do or don't know, the less information they give to the lower members, the easier it is to keep them in line."

Malik is trying to reign in his temper - after all, Togusa doesn't know quite everything, and unleashing his emotions would give him a platform to ask. Either that or he'll be escorted out by security, and that would just be embarrassing.

"It might be lying by omission, or maybe they're really that misguided and thinking that they're doing some good. But their version of the truth is going to be twisted in some way. Or else it wouldn't be a cult, and they would let people leave. There's a reason they aren't... and if it was really a noble cause, they wouldn't need to be so isolated. You're trying too hard to justify their actions. There's going to be people who don't see the problem with the hierarchy they've set up... Some people like to feel useful, but that doesn't change the power imbalance from the leader downwards. It doesn't change the fact that the whole system is rotten."