recolle | I Thought What I'd Do Was... [Open]

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I Thought What I'd Do Was... [Open]

When: 2/10 and onwards, night time.
Where: Togusa's office or apartment.

Togusa has been, for lack of a better term, jumpy. Not only is he suffering from the dual-sided effects of whatever this new effect is? But now, he is trying to avoid people. Difficult when he is being driven to be as helpful as possible. But every time he looks up at someone, he will flinch, at first, looking at their face, before he can focus on them.

It's driving him to be even more reclusive at night time, picking his office most often to hole up with his notes. Or sometimes going home to spread out across his coffee table. The extra copy of Catcher In The Rye is always open, nearby, to a specific page.

Part 25: "Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

He needs to talk to James. And to Mariko. But how does he bring this up to Mariko so late? She has her own problems to deal with right now.

Whenever he stops paying attention, a certain image keeps getting doodled onto whatever piece of paper is nearby.

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Togusa supposes there's no knowing the difference now that he's a plainclothes officer, but he hopes he doesn't look official. If anything, he looks tired. The sun is almost all the way down, and he knows that he is going to get that unnatural burst of energy soon.

Togusa has been keeping his head low, looking at the ground, but he turns and looks directly at James when his name gets called, and- there it is again. He doesn't know what expression he gets, but he is too tired to hide the flinch, the surprise.

Wait. But it's James.

"James." Suddenly focused as if he had just found someone he had been looking for. He is averting his eyes, looking lower to catch James in his peripheral vision instead. "Do you have a minute? Can we talk?"

James raises an eyebrow curiously. Something is off. He's acting weird...and won't even look at James. Or not his face, anyway.

"Sure. Here, we can go to the cafeteria." He starts waving Togusa in the direction of the cafeteria as he starts walking. Sure, he's supposed to be making some rounds right now, but this technically counts, right? And even if it doesn't, screw it. Something's going on.

Togusa turns back around, and he looks at the front of the hospital, and the man actually balks for a second. Like a wave of dizziness or something hit him. He resolutely aims his gaze at the back of James' shoes, and he can follow.

He is keeping behind James, not looking up at anyone as they pass. Strange enough behavior for anyone, let alone someone as social as Togusa. When they get to the cafeteria, he flicks his eyes up cautiously to glance around the room, before he reaches past James to point to a long empty table, the fewest people around it.

James notices exactly which table he picked, and based on how Togusa's behaving so far, he can guess why. He leads them to the table and then takes the seat facing the rest of the cafeteria, so that Togusa can take the seat facing the corner where the only person in sight is him.

As soon as they're sat down, he opens his mouth.

"Seriously, Togusa. What's going on?" Where he sounded inquisitive before, now he's more serious and demanding.

Togusa relaxes only a little when he can sit down, but he is still staring at James' hands, the top of the table, not looking him in the eye. His own hands come over the top, clasping each other tightly.

"I think Vanderweele got to me, next." Togusa gets right to the point.

His eyes glance up to James, as if verifying that he's still seeing it. He matches his gaze for just an instant before looking away again.

"I'm seeing things."

"Shit." He pounds his fist on the table, perhaps a little too strongly.

"What are you seeing?"

Togusa can't hold back his slight startled jump before his body knots itself back into a form of tension.

"It's-" Here. The man always has a notepad on him, and he draws a very small version of the logo. He writes the text underneath, muttering along as he does so.

"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." One last jab of the pen, and he turns it around so James can see. "It's like- a mask. I look you in the eye, and it's right there, hovering over your face."

He stares at the logo and tries to imagine it superimposed over his face. Honestly, it sounds kind of funny to him.

"Like an AR filter? This is different...like you can at least tell on sight this isn't real." Unlike James, who spent several days thinking there genuinely was blood smeared all over the walls. He's not sure why Vanderweele would bother with such different illusions, though.

"What's that phrase from, anyway? It sounds familiar."

"Is it?" Togusa drops his head into his hands. "The other Togusa, he's seen this before. Exactly this, there's someone I try and try to think of, and this is all I come up with for their face."

A deep breath. "The quote, you've probably heard it from me before. Catcher in the Rye, Part 25. It's one of those things the other guy is obsessed with. And I can't figure out why it's so important."

"God, Catcher in the Rye. They made me read that in school a few years ago." James hadn't really paid attention to it. No wonder he didn't quite recognize the quote. "What's your deal with it? Or Vanderweele's, I guess, if he's the one putting it on your weird AR filter.

"And I can't get why it's so weird and different for everyone. For me it just looked like a real part of the world, not some digital overlay. And I talked to someone else who said they just went blind for a few days from some weird effect. I don't know what this is."

Good, yes, please. James is the last person who needs to be latching on to the ideas espoused in Catcher. Togusa can't stop a small smile from coming up, just for a second.

"That whole emblem with the quote is the symbol of a criminal from the other Togusa's world. Someone that Togusa and all of his team are going after. I don't entirely know all the details, but that thing is like his calling card or something."

But the idea that people are seeing different things gets Togusa's head tilting. "All illusions. If Vanderweele has gotten track of Retrospec's records, then he knows exactly what to do to each of us."

"So more stuff from the past. Of course." It tracks with what's happened with him so far, at least, and what he's heard from others. Of course it's based on something from other-Togusa. "God, you would have a criminal who's obsessed with some high school English class book."

Then he shakes his head. "It's not just illusions, it's--" He snaps his mouth shut. He doesn't know if Togusa wants (or needs) to hear this. It was messed up enough when it happened to him, and if Togusa's already freaking out about having his vision messed with, and is afraid of getting his brain hacked...finding out about some of the other effects lately might hurt more than help.

"...there's some other stuff too. Not illusions. I don't know if Vanderweele's got control over other things like that too."

Togusa's eyebrows raise and eyes widen in a look of 'yeah, I know' as he nods along with the first part. He has a lot he could say about what little he's figured about in regards to the Laughing Man. Why is he ~~also~~ such a nerd?

But he hesitates when James cuts himself off, fixing him with a cautious look. "It's..what?"

Shit. Togusa immediately regrets asking. He pulls a sharp breath in, and his body language lights up again, putting him back on edge like he was when James first brought him in here. "What else.. is going on?" He knows he has to ask, but he very much doesn't want to.

He sighs. Well, Togusa asked.

"It's behavior, too. A little while ago, there was a week where I just did whatever anyone told me to do. I didn't even have the ability to think about whether I wanted to do it or not, I just did it." James is trying to look and sound calm about this, but it still comes across in his tone that he's very uncomfortable with this. It edges too close to too many bad memories.

"It wasn't even that bad--the worst anyone told me to do that week was like, 'go clean the toilets.' But if Vanderweele's got control over something like that too, then we're in even bigger trouble."

Togusa's first instinct, when presented with something he doesn't understand, is to dig deeper, to learn, to do everything he can to understand. Most of the time, this serves Togusa well, and he is happy with what he learns.

Then there are times where he hates that instinct.

His eyes widen further, with a harsh breath out and he can't formulate a response for several seconds. This is absolutely his worst nightmare in regards to what could happen with his cyberbrain. What if it really is a hack? But he can't have hacked James in that same way. But he probably can easily hack Togusa that way.

Togusa's mouth finally shuts, and he swallows with a click of his throat. "Any one of us. Could become dangerous. If that happened."

James nods. "Yeah.

"I think it has something to do with the memories, though, not just us getting randomly messed with. That only happened to me after I remembered something...pretty close to that. So maybe it can only happen if it's something you remember. Like Vanderweele needs a trigger before he can mess with us like this. If it didn't happen to you before, then you're safe. Especially if Vanderweele can't control what we remember and when, either."

Which means that most people, probably, are safe from something like this. Assuming James's theory is true, anyway. But it must be cold comfort to Togusa, and James knows it. Because what he's just said amounts to you better hope other-you never got hacked.

~~HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ABOUT THAT~~

For the first second, Togusa only gets more uncomfortable, thinking over the possibilities of himself or his Other being hacked. But then he hits on what James just admitted there, and his expression turns to one of greater caution.

"Something.. close to that? How does that happen without a system to hack?" He's already asked if James has a neural interface like him, and nope. His cyber-arm doesn't work that way.

The instant after that question is out of his mouth, he realizes how dumb it is, but whoops, too late.

He gives Togusa a look like he's dumb. "You don't need one. I was brainwashed for about 60 years, and that was before hacking even existed at all. You can do it with a regular human brain just fine if you overwhelm it enough and throw enough mind games at it."

But that's not terribly new--he'd mentioned that to Togusa already, more or less. It's not the incident that sparked...whatever this was. "This time, it was about something else. A guy I'd trained went rogue and had it out for me. He...held someone hostage to make me let him brainwash me into doing whatever he wanted. So I did. As soon as I remembered that, that's when I couldn't help but do whatever people told me to."

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I Thought What I'd Do Was... [Open]

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