Chapter Text
36.21°: Stables of Augeas I
"Hey, Tsugi?" Sir Tosai walked alongside her as they continued up the street towards Cat Street. Nagi lagged slightly behind, allowing her comrades-in-arms to take formation ahead of her in an inverse spearhead. "Uh, I know you said that you want to talk about it when we hit the RG."
"That's right."
"But mind if I ask something?" He held up his forefinger and thumb with such little distance between them that Nagi had to squint into spectacles to see that he weren't pinching them together. "Just a li'l itty bitty Q?"
Lady Tsugumi inclined her head. "Go ahead, Fret. I'll let you know if you're going down a track that I can't follow."
"Nah, it's nothing that serious. Or maybe it is. So like, the whole Reaper-Angel stuff, and how totally screwed it is?" Sir Tosai scratched his cheek. "Say, do you think that there's a way to fix it? Like you don't think it's so bad that we just need to throw away the whole UG into the garbage right? The UG is kinda—well, you know—"
"I can really only speak from the perspective of one carriage over," Lady Tsugumi answered mildly, "but after extensive discussion...Coco doesn't see a problem with the Reaper hierarchy itself. She focuses on the problem related to the Angels, and...I don't agree with all of the methods she thinks are okay, but I can see why she's focusing on the Angels. But I think it goes past the Angels. The Reaper hierarchy, the Games..."
"Yeah, yeah, I hear you! There's bad stuff with how the Reapers get used and stuff. Shokie's told me all about that too. But like, the UG overall? There's good stuff in that, too. Like Nagi and I have been able to really help some people out with some good ol' Remind and Dives since then!"
Nagi could not see Lady Tsugumi's expression through the back of her head, but she could sense a kind of gentle winding of tension in how her walking changed, a slightly quickened pace. "Fret, I hear what answer you want me to say."
"Kweh? Just trying to understand what you're saying. That's all." He took a deep breath; Nagi could hear the candour in his timbre. "I mean that. You know I like being in the UG. But when I ask you what you're thinking, I'm asking 'cause I want to know what you're thinking. Pinky promise."
That brought a laugh out of Lady Tsugumi. "I'll try to keep that in mind. But...I haven't thought about the UG overall. I don't know what the final destination of the UG is if we derailed the hierarchy. I don't think that we need to collapse everything into the RG necessarily...and I think that that would be a trainwreck. But I think, to your question, that there's something really important for us to remember that if something does a little bit of good, but also significant harm, it's not the kind of thing that we should load onto our freight."
Sir Tosai said nothing, his tiny wings flapping slowly up and down, in and out, the spines flexing akin to the gills of a fish. Nagi wavered on whether or not to move forward, but she trusted his own emotional abilities.
"I don't think that you're causing anyone harm in the UG with what you and Nagi have been doing! It sounds like you two are really doing it to help people out. I find that a worthy, noble goal."
"Uh, thanks."
"...yet if you're asking me whether you working in the UG somehow makes up for everything that I said..."
He made a time-out gesture with both hands, his right palm bouncing off of his left fingers. "Kweh? Hold on! I wasn't trying to say that we shouldn't do something about the hierarchy! Rah, rah, down with the hierarchy." His arms lowered to his sides. "No, but seriously, Mr. Minami's talked to me a bunch about how screwed up our feathered friends are. And actually, I've talked a little bit with Uzuki about how she's been trying to change things for the Reapers. And, you know, Mr. Minami's got his own plan for the Game and stuff, so..."
"That makes sense." Lady Tsugumi hmmed. "Are you asking me if I had the choice to just do away with the UG, if I think that would be better?"
"I guess? Kinda? Maybe I don't know what I was trying to ask."
"If I had a button right now that I could push that would get rid of the UG and higher planes, and move all of the Reapers into the RG instead of doing away with them somehow, I would press it."
Nagi raised her head at the same time that Sir Tosai squawked out a sound that seemed adjacent to her own sentiments on the subject. Her fingers dug into the fabric of the Reaper's hoodie, the tumours on her back twitching with each pulsation. Every time her heartbeat became more rapid, even for a moment, the same beats would throb into the spines of those tumours. They'd grown heavier than her itabag by now—perchance not grown, but merely from the amount of time she had spent here.
How long had she spent here?
"You'd just make all of it go poof?" Sir Tosai was saying, incredulity on his tongue. "Why?"
"I'd only 'make it go poof' if I knew that no one would perish. Just have everyone return to the RG. I know that that would be challenging, to suddenly reappear in the RG, so I would prefer a track with a less...radical and abrupt solution. But if that's the only track, because narrow is the strait, then it's the only track." Lady Tsugumi breathed out, her wings still quiet and still. "Thankfully it's not the only track."
He shook his head. "Wait, wait, you can't just dump everyone into the RG. Not even talking about the whole sudden memory rewriting thing. Plenty of people can't make it in the RG! Like Mr. Minami. Whaddaya think he'd do? Didn't he, uh..." Sir Tosai's gaze dropped. Nagi hovered a step closer to him, but he resumed. "There's some people who end up in the UG and then come back and they're kinda okay 'cause they got people to look after 'em, like Shokie and stuff. But I think if Mr. Minami came back to the RG, things wouldn't really go over so well."
Lady Tsugumi's gait lengthened. "The UG isn't kind to its inhabitants either. It's not a safe place to escape to. Only some people can pull into that station. Those with high Imaginations..."
"Yeah, but if the RG and UG both exist, that's still welcoming more kindsa people than just the folks who can make it in the RG! What about 'em? You're just gonna tell them to try living in the RG when the RG's just...not the sorta place that they can, you know, be themselves. There's all sortsa expectations that not every—" As though catching himself, he abruptly shifted his timbre. "Anyway, uh, you see what I mean? If you bounce everyone into the RG, then the people who got bounced outta the RG in the first place aren't gonna magically know how to bounce back, y'know what I'm saying?"
She laughed into the back of her hand. "I don't think I followed that track from start to finish, but I do think I see what you mean. But I don't think the approach is to decide that the UG to stay. Shouldn't it be to fix the RG?"
"Easier than done! Changing the RG? You can change up the whole UG just by being great with pins. The RG's a ballgame so, uh, ball-y and game-y that you'll strike out if you try just changing it."
"Hmmm."
He laughed nervously. "Well, anyway, good thing you don't have a blow-up-the-UG button."
"Mmm. Well, I don't have such a button, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to try to rerail the UG and the hierarchy somehow. Without destroying the UG, if I can manage it."
"How are you gonna do it?" Sir Tosai puffed out his chest; Nagi found herself smiling to see it. "'Cause, if I can offer anything, I'm pretty dang good with UG stuff, you know! The great Sir Fret, comrade-in-arms to Her Ladyship Nagi the Divereth, at your service."
He gave her an exaggerated bow. Nagi loosened her hands from clenching the fabric at his words, her smile broadening.
Lady Tsugumi giggled. "Well, thank you, Sir Fret. But..." Her voice grew solemn. Musing. "...I don't have a plan as of yet. I'm only identifying the failed tracks, the broken rails. Why the engine doesn't fire. Actually engineering a solution will take more time." Lady Tsugumi opened her hand, palm towards the heavens. "I know that Minamimoto and Coco are working to protect Shibuya and have offered to extend it to Shinjuku. But...doing it in such a piecemeal way...I feel like there has to be a better way. Something that doesn't involve hurting the Angels, either...oh."
Lady Tsugumi stopped at the corner. Sir Tosai walked on another few steps before he turned towards her with a kweh? on his lips. Another doppelgänger, no doubt. Nagi shuffled more closely towards them until a man in a red shirt came into view at the mouth of Cat Street. The plaid button-up he wore and the blocky black glasses resting on his nose, the partly shaved head with a dark haircut that waved over the top of his head like an odd emulation of a flowing stream, or at least an extremely muddy, clumped one. The button-up pressed so crimply and crisply on his scrawny torso that Nagi had the distinct impression that he had ironed the cloth whilst on his body.
"Ms. Usui!" the man called out, pushing his glasses up on his face. "So we meet again. Up the creek without a paddle—unless you answer my quiz bowl questions, that is!"
"Hrkgk!?"
Sir Tosai peeked back at Nagi, blinking, but Lady Tsugumi only flinched back. "Ya know this guy, Boss?"
Nagi eyed the plaid-shirted man from head to toe. Surely the pseudo-parallel world had not gasped its last gasp of relevant personages in the dramatis personae of her livelihood. Sirs Rindo and Beat, and Ladies Rhyme and Shoka, certainly represented some of the most prominent allies in her counsel, but they hardly constituted all of the 5☆ units to which she had access, much less all of the units. "Erm..."
"All righty, then here's the first question on your pop quiz! Whoooo am I?"
With a shake of her head, Lady Tsugumi walked forward into the street. "Let's get back on tr—" Something prompted her to backpedal rapidly. Nagi ogled the scene before her: a pin flashing in the redshirt's hand.
"Ah-ah-ah, my eager salmon! Answer my quiz questions correctly, and I'll let you go in peace. Try to run off behind me, and either you or I will end up in pieces. Resistance is futile." The redshirt spun the pin in his palm. "I figure you won't have any problems with that, but maybe your companions don't want to see a fellow sleeping with the fishes. But I've been wrong before." He winked at Nagi with the last phrase. She stiffened.
Lady Tsugumi resumed standing by Nagi's left side. "...fine." Her voice had nearly imperceptibly hardened. Nearly. "
"Listen, I know that my time here is short, and this is the last shot I got to make this impression. You know, for all the mes in all those parallel worlds who missed their shot." Nagi stared openly at the redshirt, who swept his fingers dramatically through his hair. "So, whooo am I?"
Pinching the brim of her spectacles, Nagi exchanged a bewildered glance with Sir Tosai. He rubbed the back of his head. "Looks like you've got about as much insight as I do. He kinda looks familiar though, doesn't he?"
"I appear to have nigh amnesia. Nary a breath of recollection, albeit I do have some inkling of precognition. Mayhaps in a past life...?" As Nagi spoke, her voice lighthearted, she peered in Lady Tsugumi's direction. Tactfully she merely stepped closer and gestured, not intending to inquire of why Lady Tsugumi had initially flinched if she preferred not to provide.
The redshirt folded his arms over his chest. "I know your names. Furesawa Fret, Usui Nagi. And you...you're that killer machine. You really live up to the Ruinbringers' name, miss! You've brought ruin to more teams than I could splash at. Making waves, here."
Sir Tosai snapped his fingers. "Wait, you're talking like one of those ner—"
Lady Tsugumi cleared her throat. "You're...a member of the Deep Rivers Society."
"Bingo!" The redshirt put his hands on his hips. "But which member? There might be many drops of water in a river, but each one is its very own drop!" He frowned. "...so don't you forget the dead."