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She walks back to the piano room silently.
The disc is held carefully between unfamiliar fingers; ones that feel strange to own.
It wasn't hard to sneak back into the prison, no, even through the male side instead of the female one this time, but it was difficult coming to terms with what really happened.
It was so easy to kill faceless people. Prisoners and the like who didn't matter, at least, not to her. To them . Whatever it is now. Before Jolyne told them to stop and it got all complicated.
Jolyne was instantly sent back to solitary, obviously. Or whatever is replacing solitary now that the building's been destroyed. She knew she wouldn't be able to escape, so she was left alone.
They feel sorry for her.
Jolyne shouldn't have to be alone. Especially not now.
Walking on shoes that they can just barely balance in, they finally make it to the crack on the stairwell. It looks lower on the wall than before, and they're not really sure if that's because of the heeled shoes or the otherwise added height.
It doesn't matter. Probably.
Hair falls into their eyes as they reach for the crack, almost hesitant to touch it.
They shouldn’t be scared. They’re not scared. That’s not something that they feel. Ever.
They push the hair away (long now! Not like before) and finally step into the room.
The atmosphere is cold. Weather’s doing. He lounges sideways in the piano; something that they now know he’s done frequently for years.
(It’s surprisingly comfortable, apparently.)
However, the first one who finds their eyes is the room’s other occupant, Emporio, who sits on the ground in the corner, computer set before him. He stops typing when they enter, fingers poised above the keys.
The boy begins speaking for a quick second, then purses his lips uncomfortably. Like he already knows. Like the pupils that met his were a little too blown-out to be real.
“Hey,” he whispers.
Before they can muster a response, the long hair (theirs now!) that they just pushed out of their eyes is suddenly blown behind them towards the crack in a large gust of wind, and they know this is Weather's disapproval.
Their hat (it doesn’t feel like theirs, but they guess it is now) falls to the floor.
“What do you want?”
His tone is crisp through the whisper. Crisp and mean.
“Listen, I-” they begin, in a voice they've only heard from the outside before. It sounds weirder from inside. Deeper, maybe? “It's Foo Fighters.”
It's Foo Fighters who awkwardly shifts now in Narciso Anasui's body.
It’s weird, feeling the tight fishnets all over the body where there used to only be loose overalls. F.F. wonders if he has any other clothes.
"Anasui. . . he’s dead?" Emporio asks quietly.
“Yeah.”
There's a silence.
It’s a little strange; F.F. hasn’t had to see someone that they’ve spoken to so extensively die before.
Why does it feel like this?
They extend the hand with the disk.
"I got this. Jotaro’s disc."
They're thinking about dropping the disc here and then going back to see if there are any pieces of Etro left. Maybe they can still put her back together if they find enough.
Though, they know that prison guards probably already took her away. There's probably nothing left of their nice little home.
They're like a snail, they realize. Like a snail who wears a body instead of a shell.
Wait. That's more like a hermit crab, isn't it? Snails don’t switch shells.
F.F. is a hermit crab now.
Well, they were always a hermit crab. They’ve just been kicked out of the home they liked.
F.F. did really like Etro's body. It was warm and cozy and soft-- and fit perfectly in Jolyne's arms, too!
(They'll never be able to get over the sheer malleability of busts. They're so comfy! And for what? Hermes laughed when F.F. suggested they're for laying on, so what is it really?)
Plus, they could modify it how they wanted, no consequence! It was the crux of all their practice before her, when they tried mixing and matching pieces of various prisoners they killed. Nobody cared what happened to Etro, or whether or not she looked a little different from day to day. She didn't matter beforehand.
Anasui has none of that.
He's big and solid and people are attached to him. F.F. feels like they’ll be crossing some social boundary if they do anything to the body. They’re afraid to even take the boots off or touch the tips of the eyelashes too hard for fear something will suddenly shatter and everyone will come for them.
(They personally aren’t attached to him. In fact, they quite disliked the man in the single day that they spoke to him for his stupid Jolyne-adoring antics. However, they do admire his. . . dedication. Impulsivity, maybe?)
His memories and knowledge speak too much. How he spent multiple years before F.F. was even born in the prison. How he met Weather and Emporio. How (though Anasui himself may not have noticed) they care for him. How in his last moments, all he could think of was Jolyne.
F.F. wishes they could see Jolyne.
But they're sure she won't hug them like she used to anymore.
She looked so. . . uncomfortable when she first saw them in Anasui's body. She was grateful, of course, that at least one of her friends made it out alive, but there was something complicated about her expression that F.F. doesn't quite understand.
F.F. doesn't like not understanding things.
Human emotions are too complicated. They shouldn't be feeling things. It's not something they're used to.
They don’t like the shift in expression on Emporio’s face as he tentatively grabs the disc from their hand.
“Thanks,” he mutters.
“Sure,” F.F. responds, that unfamiliar voice still ringing in their ears.
Weather says nothing.
They should. . . probably leave now. Go see if any of Etro is still in the van.
The purely intelligent part of them says that she definitely won’t still be around, but it’s still worth it to try.
“I’m going,” they announce. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” Emporio replies.
They don’t pick the hat up as they leave.
F.F. liked being "her."
It was like their pass into the human world; their ticket that read 'Hey! I'm somebody! I'm real and I'm human and Jolyne thinks so too!'
They hated being “it,” but it’s almost too easy to just be F.F, y’know? “Her" has expectations. "Her" has feelings.
Now all Emporio and Weather do is call F.F. by their name again. Or don’t refer to them at all.
There's no "her." There's no nothing.
Just Foo Fighters.
Maybe they got too used to being somebody.
Maybe they got too used to their precious memories being exclusively good ones.
Ones where Jolyne and Emporio and Hermes all laugh and Weather is. . . there and Anasui is on the sidelines, not behind the camera. Silly little memories that they’d definitely cherish over living unthinking in a swamp.
Speaking of Jolyne, she hasn’t returned since the incident. She’s back in some kind of solitary, F.F. assumes. Wherever people go when they’re the only survivor of a huge prison incident.
On the other hand, it’s a little while after the break when they see Hermes again.
The day she returns is about a week after the max security ward break, and no one has seen her since the guards took her to the infirmary after her fight with Sports Maxx. F.F. is sitting in the piano room with Emporio and Weather, which they still do now, but it’s become less of a familiar gathering and more of a required meeting where no words are spoken.
The woman enters the piano room in a hurry, bandages still around her head from the injuries she received.
The first thing she does is look at F.F. and say, “You look like shit.”
Oh.
Hermes is normal.
The second thing she does is look at Emporio, mouth slightly ajar, then third she looks back at F.F.
“And who are you again?” she asks. “I don’t want to be insulting someone right to their face that I don’t even know the name of.”
Ouch.
F.F. shouldn’t be feeling so. . . empty.
Hermes just didn’t know Anasui that well, that’s all. None of them did.
It’s not her fault. It’s not their fault. They didn’t have to take the body. They didn’t have to take the body.
“It’s me. Foo Fighters. Inside. He. . . he is— was Anasui.”
Hermes blinks. “Oh. Fuck. Sorry. Hi, F.F.”
She sits an uncomfortably far distance from them. Closer to Weather and Emporio now when it used to be closer to Jolyne and F.F. To Jolyne and Etro.
They need to find Jolyne.
They need to get out of here.
Not just out of Anasui. Out of the prison. Or wherever the priest is going now that he has the child.
They’re going to bite the hand that made them.
They’re going to kill him and take his body as a prize.
Amd they're going to fuck it up beyond recognition.