retrospec | Point of Order

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Point of Order

Hitori Togusa shared a photo.
5/11 near Recolle Police Station

So. A few things.
First. Dave! I want my membership card! Talking robot spider tank with a grenade launcher. Apologies to Koutarou for stealing some of his modeling clay to make my toy up there. I still remembered nothing about myself, though, so the betting pool is still open. Anyone who wants in on the 'What Is Togusa Repressing' pool, let me know. I think the odds on 'samurai' just got a lot longer, though.

The second thing is a little more important. A few of us made it into the subway, which is supposed to be shut down, the lines were damaged. The trains sure aren't running, but either it's shut down intentionally, or someone has taken advantage of it. Throughout the line connecting Enprise to Tisse, there are these QR codes all along the floor. They're those things you can scan with your phone to see a picture or other information. Scanning them didn't get any data, though.

The other area I went through, I don't even know how to explain what I saw. Try going to the middle of town. Next time, I ought to bring a camera with me.

I know that as soon as I post this up, Retrospec will probably try to lock it all down even tighter than they already have. But seeing as how I was assuming that's how they were getting things through the city without us noticing? If we can make them stop using it, I'll call that a victory.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I am not really the high society type myself, so I have to agree. One of my friends is much more accustomed to that sort of thing, but she is part of a very wealthy family, so it is to be expected." When you were an heiress, these were just things you went to, she assumed.

"Who surprised you, if I may ask?"

"Dante Rantanen," even the way Togusa says his name is like he's surprised. He props his head up on his hand. "This kid has been raising absolute hell all over the boards, in the best ways," he holds out a hand. "It's been hilarious to watch, it's just typical teenage trolling, but he's so good at making people angry."

"And then he's there at the party and schmoozing and rubbing elbows like he belongs there. Pretty big contrast to how he'd been behaving before."

"..."

She turned more fully to face him and the look of surprise was apparent on her face. One eyebrow raised and she smirked. "Ok, I admit, I didn't notice him there as I was busy, but that name is a bit surprising. He is not what I would expect to be within a mile of that event." She was trying to suppress laughter at the same time.

"I know, right!?" Togusa gives in to the urge to laugh. "The last guy you'd think. I'd expect Dave to be behaving himself before Dante. And Dave is still just my imaginary friend."

Togusa leans back in his seat, almost bringing the front two legs up off the ground. "Dante and I have really been getting along, it's uncanny."

She kept chuckling as he mentioned Dave. Yeah, even Dave was better behaved than Dante seemed from their few conversations. "Your imaginary friend? Whatever do you mean by that?" She cocked her head. "And you never know. Sometimes people just have a knack for getting along, even when you did not expect it, no?"

"Okay, if you have seen Dave in real life, if you have some kind of evidence that he actually exists? Do not give it to me." Togusa shakes his head and waves his hand back and forth. "I don't want this to get ruined intentionally. One day, we're going to run into one another and the game will be up. But for right now, Dave and I have no real contact with the other one, and it's turned into a joke that he's an imaginary friend. One of my best contacts! With some of the most interesting theories about what's going on. But yes, imaginary." This is all a joke, but sometimes they need some joking in order to cope with everything else that's been going on.

She laughed and shook her head. "The games we play. Very well, I will not. You have to keep your mind fresh, I am sure," she said, grinning at Togusa. "I will leave it up to you when you find out the truth. Games like these... they almost feel normal for us now, don't they?"

Wait until that imaginary friend started to really use those time powers.

"They do. You'd almost think we'd have enough games going on in our lives, but sometimes it's nice to be playing one that we made the choice to play." Togusa tilts up his coffee cup and drains the rest of it.

"You've already seen what I was up to. What's your next step from here?" Because Togusa knows better than to think that Chloe is going to sit idle and wait for Retrospec's next move.

"It is the fact that you have made the choice. That is what I think truly changes it." Honestly, that really did feel like the most likely thing to distinguish one game from another. "My next step?"

She paused for a moment before reaching up to scratch her chin. "I want to see if I can find someone who knows blueprints. An engineer if I could find one, but anyone that knows how to read them, preferably someone discrete. I'm patient, but I want to find it." Why? Well, that was totally illegal. But she could pretend to some extent.

Cue Togusa's eyebrows shooting straight up. "Blueprints?" Oh. Never mind. "Somebody's on this angle again? Good, I didn't get the time to look into it."

Hmm. "Instinct would be to send you to Ardyn Izunia, but he's just a lawyer." He scratches the back of his head. "I don't think I know anybody in construction or contracting. And those things aren't easy to read, I know I wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of it."

"Yes, Blueprints," she said, nodding when he asked that question. "What angle is that? I didn't know if there was an approach someone might be making."

She considered Ardyn and tapped her lips. "Ardyn might have to ask someone off of the network, and I am not sure that this is going to be productive. So I might need to look around a little."

To Togusa, the direction from here seems obvious. "You're interested in the blueprints of the Retrospec building. Which, if you can even find those documents, I'd be impressed, and I'd owe you a coffee back." Togusa has a bad feeling about what they're going to find.

"On that note, I'd be impressed if someone off the network can even see the prints. I don't even remember construction happening there."

She frowned. "If I managed to find those blueprints, would you agree not to ask me anymore about them, Officer, other than helping me find someone who could read them for us?" She glanced to the side, looking decidedly nervous as she said it. But, at the end of the day, she had to trust people, even people that you wouldn't normally.

And Togusa was smart enough to put two and two together. He'd figure it out eventually.

Oh. So not that building. Togusa hesitates, and looks at Chloe in a slightly different light. What is she up to?

"There are a lot of things that I've had to choose not to ask people further about. So, I'll just say the same thing to you that I would to any of them. Can you assure me that you're not going to put anybody in danger with this? Including yourself." Emphasis on that last part.

That was good enough. She nodded and reached into her satchel before pulling out a photocopied page and setting it down upside down, making sure her phone was nowhere in sight. "Mmmm, well, I can't promise there wasn't a little risk, but nobody was hurt at all, and nobody is in any more danger than Retrospec has put us every day."

She slid the page over. If Togusa were to turn it over, he'd find a copy of what looked like the corner of a blueprint. It showed a portion of a building, with a few designations, but the edges were clearly torn, almost like someone had hastily removed it and left a piece. In the corner was the familiar log of Retrospec.

"I am fairly sure it is the building that we all know and love, but I don't know how to read these." Nope, not saying that she swiped this out of the backroom of the mayor's office, nope nope. "I don't plan to put anyone at risk, but ... I don't think any of us can promise us, not if they shrunk us at a whim."

Togusa's eyebrows go straight up, and he stares at the paper. Oh dear. No no, she already has it. He stares at the page and then looks back up at Chloe in surprise.

"I can- try to send people your way." It's the best that he can do. "But, I don't think it was a whim that made Retrospec shrink us. Either it was an accident, or it was specifically to show us the cracks happening in reality."

He shakes his head carefully. "But you're right to worry about retribution. I'm not sure what else I can do to protect people if they're capable of changing so much at once."

If only she'd gotten the whole thing, but alas it had been removed a long time ago apparently, and in quite a haste. "I doubt it was completely a whim. Maybe they were trying to show us something like that. Or maybe something was wrong, like the last time strange things happened," she said, frowning. "I only know that this? Where I found it, it was clear that someone with an actual hand tore it out because they were in a hurry. Their hold isn't absolute." That told her more than the blueprint fragment itself would.

"But this makes me want to ask you something. What... exactly did you see down in the tunnels? In the center?"

Oh. Togusa hesitates, and he props up his elbow on the table, leaning his head on his hand. "It was. This is going to sound absolutely crazy, even in the scope of what we've been seeing so far."

"But it was me and, ah, Mrs. Yata." There are few people he would reveal his partner in crime to, but Chloe has proven to be very trustworthy. "We started out at the stop in Tribunal Terrace, right by the police station. Made our way south, like we were trying to get beneath the center of town. At first, it was just like the regular subway tracks. We saw nothing strange, but also no signs that there was active construction on that section." Togusa keeps going back to that point, it seems important.

"But then," Togusa shakes his head. "It started getting light out. Like we were heading outside. The tracks go all the way to the edge of the city, but at our size? It would have taken us days to get that far. We had to be beneath the middle of town. But it was almost...daylight, like the tunnel was turning into a path outside."

Togusa's head turns in his hand. "And then it was like we took a step too far and blinked, and we were right back where we started."

The response that she gave him when he said this was only possible because Naoto repeatedly hammered at her with the idea that they might not be real, or that this might all be some simulation. Her lips quivered into a frown and she let out a growl. "It is almost as if there were no way out of the city, or as if the paths within the city were not working properly, almost like the strange building itself."

She narrowed her eyes and looked across at him. "Officer, have you ever tried to leave town, since January?" Because this was starting to feel increasingly important to her. "I cannot remember anyone who actually has done so, and I am starting to wonder if we can... not that the world does not exist, but what if the city is affected like the building, and we can only go where they allow us? Considering that they shrunk us down, it does not seem out of the realm of possibility."

She was going to expressly avoid the 'matrix' explanation for now. There were other options, albeit more fantastical ones.

"What? No," Togusa is quick to wave the idea off. "I went out through the woods on a drive with Daisuke only a couple of weeks ago. It's outside the edge of the city, there's definitely nothing keeping us here. You said yourself their control isn't absolute."

"Don't let yourself get that paranoid." Togusa points with one finger. "It's too easy to wrap it all up in the idea that it's all out of our control. We can't fix one thing, so it must all be too big for us to fix, so we don't do anything."

"We'll get them. At the end of the chain, there's still going to be a person behind it all, and they can be brought to justice. If the people who have been leaving the city can be turned back to normal? Then so can we. There's a way to fix it all, and someone knows it."

She blinked and then breathed an audible sigh of relief, relaxing visibly and settling more into the chair. No version of the 'matrix' idea that Naoto had presented would make sense if they could leave the city. That version of events only really fit if the outside world of the city didn't really exist, because Retrospec was so focused and localized here, almost like they didn't have the means to really tackle the outside world.

Smiling some, she then nodded. "Ok, so instead, it is like some strange labyrinth below the city that leads back to the city. That... is a relief. You're right, though. It's easy to get locked into the thought that something impossible is going on, even beyond what we already think of as impossible. It's good to know that it is not that bad."

"Perhaps." Togusa relaxes, as well, falling into an easier manner. "That is actually the one that I'd recommend people go and experience for themselves. If I've just alerted Retrospec that they need to tighten security down there? Then, sorry. But, otherwise? See for yourself. Don't count on my limited point of view."

"Agreed, though I would need to break into the sewers first. I don't know that I can do that so easily as we could while we were small. It was... how do you say, a narrow window of opportunity?" And she tapped the paper between them once. Yes, there'd been a reason she'd been able to sneak that out of ... somewhere.

"Of course, getting into the sewers isn't illegal, is it? Just ill advised."

Togusa points to correct, "Luckily, subways, not sewers." He pulls a face and then bursts out laughing. "Can you imagine it? We wouldn't have been able to get Ardyn fucking Izunia down into the sewers for a million dollars. A billion. The face he would have been making the whole time!" Hang on, this is the greatest fantasy, and Togusa needs to indulge it for a second.

"He'd be using his scarf to try to cover the smell, and then realize he was getting his scarf dirty, and nobody would tell him that we would never be able to tell the difference."

She had to snicker at his response too. Yes, subways, but the mental image was strong even if she didn't know Ardyn exceptionally well. Smiling back for a moment, she shook her head. "Never know. Might be something down there too... but subways are better."

She sighed. "Oh, but is his scarf really that dirty?" she asked curiously.

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