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Who is Veritas Ratio?
He is a scholar, set to eradicate Foolishness. To guide the people out of the cave of idiocy and show them the truth. People call him a Genius, yet he refuses to call himself that. A mundinite, he says, yet some foolish people do not listen.
Who is Veritas Ratio?
A man who finished high school at a very young age and studied at Veritas Prime. A man who went on to gain 8 PhD’S and a multitude of degrees and awards for his brilliance. He joined the Intelligentsia Guild and became part of the council of Mundinites.
Is that all there is to him?
Award after award, newspaper after newspaper detailing of what a Genius he is?
Pity that he never managed to get into the Genius Society with all that brilliance, they say. What a shame.
….What a shame.
Sometimes (always) Veritas wondered why he never gained THEIR gaze. It used to plague him, back when he was studying for all those degrees. All of his achievements, all that he had ever done, was to gain THEIR gaze.
You know how it goes.
He never did get what he truly wanted.
Instead, he gained a seat at the Intelligentsia Guild, a Guild tied to the IPC, and well….
Veritas accepted that he'd never enter the Genius Society, never have a seat at their table, side by side along with the other Geniuses. He'd never be a true Genius. Just a mundinite.
A simple human being.
Nothing special.
Veritas believed this was the life he had, he was sure of it, of course. Why wouldn't he be?
All these choices, his thoughts, his feelings, his mannerisms, they were all his. The actions that led to where he was today, for example Penacony, all of these choices were his. Everything that he had ever done over the course of his own life was made by him and influenced by his briliance.
Ratio had been at his office at the Intelligentsia Guild, stacking research papers neatly on a pile. His desk was quite messy today, papers haphazardly scattered about, a mug of cold coffee perched besides his keyboard, and his glitter pens all over the floor and table.
He was crouched on the floor, picking the silly pens and placing them back in their respective place, when a flourish of notifications attacked his poor phone.
Ah. It has seemed he had forgotten to put Do Not Disturb.
He abandoned the task of picking up his pens, and instead picked up his phone, sitting on his comfy swivel chair. Ratio scrolled through the messages, his expression souring further when he saw that the majority of messages were either IPC spam emails or some imprudent professor demanding something from him.
He discarded nearly all of them, stopping when he noticed one of the messages was from Aventurine, asking if he wanted to hang out some time this month.
“I don't see why not,” Ratio mused, texting the other man that he wouldn't mind the occasion.
Aventurine replied with a happy pom pom sticker, plus the address where some fancy restaurant was. It had some nice salads there.
Very funny.
The only other message that piqued his interest was a long text from an unknown number, in summary telling him to keep quiet about whatever plan Madam Herta was cooking up. Ratio re-read it several times, getting more confused by the minute.
He rubbed his temples with his free hand, and was albeit a bit curious as to what this was all about.
He knew about Amphoreus, and about how some Aeon War was being prepared for in some sort of the matter. Ratio even was there helping some of the researchers above the space station in case something happened.
He wondered if the message had to do with anything about this. Ratio screenshotted the text he had received, sent it to Screwllum, along with a message asking the Intelliron if he knew anything about what this could mean.
It took a moment for Screwllum to reply, as he was busy, so Ratio continued to clean up his desk and make it neat and tidy.
A while after he had finished cleaning his desk, and was busying himself with reciting as many digits of pi that he could remember, Ratio received a response.
…………
What.
He was not overthinking about this.
He was fine.
Veritas Ratio promptly, after an all nighter of reading information about Zandar One Kuwabara and everything that he could find that related to his fragments and such, had spiraled into an Identity Crisis.
A deep, dark pit in his stomach began to form, squeezing his stomach and making him feel nauseous and light headed.
…
He was already a Genius then, wasn't he? He already had a metaphorical seat at the table of Geniuses.
All of that work, all of those questions he had about why he never gained the Gaze of THEM, all those thoughts and problems he had, were answered.
At what cost, though?
Who is Veritas Ratio?
Veritas's thoughts spiraled as he entered the bathroom, nearly stumbling into the wall. He stripped himself from his clothes as the water ran, filling up the bathtub. He automatically checked if the temperature was just right, added some essential oils, and slowly sunk himself inside.
The bath was warm, just right to his liking, like usual, but his body felt cold and clammy.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
4
3
2
1
In.
1
2
3
4
Out.
He reached out to grab his book, but his fingers felt nothing but cool porcelain and a dry towel.
Ah.
Unfortunately, in his haste, he had forgotten to bring a book along with him to read, which meant Ratio was left alone with his own thoughts.
His own thoughts, or of Zandar’s?
All of the things Veritas Ratio had been doing throughout his life, his missions, his accomplishments, his thoughts, his worries, trying to cure the malady that was idiocy, were those driven by his own consciousness, or by Zandar?
Was all the brilliance from Zandar himself, or him?
Are all of these feelings that he has felt before and right now, are they from his clothes consciousness or from another person?
Is he a vessel?
Some soulless husk, whose only purpose is to house a dead Genius's brain, to keep him eternally pulsing?
Who even is Veritas Ratio?
A placeholder?
An intimidation of a now fallen Genius's mind?
A fake?
A …fraud?
A piece of someone long gone?
Was all of this not from his own volition? At all?
Ratio can't breathe.
The breathing exercises aren't working. There isn't enough air entering into his lungs, and his throat hurts and oh- was he crying?! Oh that's stupid- quite ridiculous in fact- STOP CRYING!
Is Veritas Ratio even real..?
…..A….nobody?
A NOBODY?!
A NOBODY THAT'S WHAT!
HE'S NOTHING!!
AN EMPTY SHELL MEANT TO HOUSE A DIFFERENT MAN, SO MUCH BETTER THAN "HE'LL” EVER TRULY EVER BE!
WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THE THINGS HE HAD EVER DONE IN LIFE, IF THEY WERENT EVEN HIS?!
I CAN'T BREATHE.
I-
I-I CAN'T BREATHE
I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHEI CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE I CAN'T BREATHE
Veritas Ratio took a week off from work. He said he had fallen ill.
Ridiculous.
Whenever he looked in the mirror, or any reflective surface for that matter, he couldn't really see himself. Only Zandar. Looking at himself on his phone's camera or the reflective screen makes his heart sink and bile rise up his throat like a snake crawling up a tree.
Or maybe he's just hallucinating, his mind making things up from the thoughts in his head.
Is he going insane?
Veritas's reflection looked the same, really. It was just the fact that he didn't even know if this was even his real face, or if it was Zandar’s, that had scared him. He inspected his “own” face once more, looking at his eyes and pupils and how his unruly bedhead hair framed his face.
He seemed paler.
He shrugged it off, seeing as there was nothing he could really do about it at the moment, and took a couple painkillers to starve off the incoming migraine.
Who is Veritas Ratio?
He had brushed his hair until it was neat, took a quick shower instead of a bath, and added moisturizer to his face. Ratio opened his closet door, biting his lip in thought as he wondered what would be appropriate for hanging out with a friend of yours.
Ratio decided on something fancy yet simple, pinned the laurel hair clip into place, made sure he looked “normal”, and not like he was in the middle of an Identity Crisis. He picked up his phone.
A barrage of messages were left by Aventurine, ranging from dumb memes that he embarrassingly understood their meaning, to him asking when he'd be at the restaurant.
When he arrived there, he was immediately hit with a barrage of different smells and a bunch of chatter. This was a fancy restaurant after all, with food worth more than his entire salary for the month.
The kind of place Aventurine loves to hang out at.
He sat down, and the two of them talked and talked like they knew each other since they were little kids. They complained about work, about other work colleagues, gossiped a bit, even though Ratio wasn't really interested in the ridiculous workplace stories that happened where Aventurine worked.
They chatted, all the while Ratio felt a deep and anxious pit at the bottom of his stomach. He ignored it, just like he always did.
When they had received their food and were halfway through demolishing a fancy platter of garlic breadsticks, Aventurine, like usual, snapped a photo of the two of them.
Ratio paused eating and promptly snatched the phone from the other man's grasp, deleting the silly image, while Aventurine tried and failed to get his phone back.
They argued over why Ratio had done that, and Aventurine relented after a bit, saying about how he wouldn't take another dumb photo of the two of them if he didn't want to see himself on camera.
He then proceeded to take a dumb perspective image of Ratio’s nose, and once again, Ratio didn't let that slide. The two of them ended up eating in silence after that, and after Aventurine paid the bill, Ratio had asked the other man who he thought he really was.
Aventurine was confused, and as they walked back to Ratio’s apartment, began listing some qualities about Ratio, about how smart he was, strict, caring etc.
Veritas Ratio is a man who truly has so much care and passion for humanity, a man always ready to give a helping hand to aid them on their own journey.
Ratio nodded along, and reluctantly agreed that yes, maybe that's who he truly was.
They walked together through the streets of Pier Point in comfortable silence.
Who is Veritas Ratio?
THE END.