IC Contact Post

[pale_blue_arrow]

This is Brendan Frye. If it's urgent, you might have a better chance o' tracking me down on foot. If I'm not answering, chances are I've gotten in over my head with something, not that I'm refusin' to give you the time of day. So leave me some words and I'll get back to you as soon as I don't have a fire to put out.

Comments

[pale_blue_arrow]

can do, but i'll need some leads. i was out of it for most of this whole clone saga. personal problems + i didn't want to make things worse. i'm assuming you've got some intel for me on this?

[lempereur]

Ken Kaneki's intel. Describing Heaven Scent and their connection to OTO.

The Constellation dug this up. Power worship, intent to turn us into weapons, ect.

Files dug up by one 'Alibaba'. Manipulating our powers to create biological weapons of some kind.

[pale_blue_arrow]

ugh. i don't trust constellation. anytime someone's that hard against one group's agenda, they've got their own. but the intel is solid and worrying. and there's definitely connections to be made between these things.

gonna be harder to do investigations with the whole therapy, psuedo-dad figure thing, and boyfriend-i-am-attempting-to-be-good-to stuff i've got going on, but i'll make time. that said, keeping all those balls in the air may slow this investigation down a bit, so i can't promise overnight results.

[lempereur]

Good. You shouldn't trust them. But when you skip past the rabble-rousing, the facts check out.

Worry about yourself first. I would like tl fill in the gaps, but I have plenty to go on as is. If you are preoccupied keeping your life together, then I should probably follow your example.

A boyfriend? Is he cute?

[pale_blue_arrow]

that rabble rousing is obnoxiously transparent. but intel is intel, regardless of sources. if you vouch for it i assume you looked into it yourself at least a little?

it's more like i'm preoccupied figuring out how to do life. normal life, i mean. i never had people notice or care before what i did or if i was around or not. it's really nice, even if it's new and i don't think i'm doing it right. but i can do work and normal life. or at the very least i'll try.

yeah, he is. cute, and really kind, and willing to put up with my... everything. i actually knew him before i met you, i just assumed i was way below his league. i don't really have great self-image, according to my therapist. but even if we're still working on boundaries and stuff, it's really going well. he makes me feel more human and less unbalanced. what he sees in me, i have no idea.

[lempereur]

Transparent how?

I have. There are some documents I could send you, but you wouldn't have gotten them from me.

I can relate to that. I don't know if my life will ever be normal, but I am trying. Results are mixed, so far. I have a lot to learn.

I'm happy for you. I think you deserve it. If he ever stops treating you well, remember that you have a friend that will put him on ice.

[pale_blue_arrow]

they're playing the 'we imPorts deserve better' card too often, making it too much about 'us' as a collective, implying that people who are imPorts are automatically their concern. never trust someone who says us and we that often, especially in a context where it's us versus them. that's always manipulative.

send me whatever you're comfortable with. if it all goes south, i know how to make it look like i sourced this all my myself. god, it's like running an op back in san clemente, except no one's dead this time around. except the clones, but i think everybody's ignoring their potential personhood.

normal is hard. normal doesn't make sense to me, not yet. i keep messing it up. you just gotta keep trying, yusuke. it gets less hard, bit by bit. i'm not sure if i'll ever be normal either, but working on it has made things a lot better, honestly.

that's a sweet threat and i appreciate the thought but we all know i'm more likely to wreck my own relationships than anyone i'm dating. let's not kid ourselves.

[lempereur]

I agree with you. I am glad you can see through it.

[ Yusuke isn't proud of it. It isn't the worst he's done as part of this foolish and increasingly dangerous infiltration, but it's the most public. ]

Give me some time to get it all together.

Mine was a monster. It sounds cruel, but I am happy knowing that it is dead. You were not the only person it hurt.

Maybe, maybe not. Hopefully neither of you mess it up.

[pale_blue_arrow]

i was raised in a pretty paranoid town. i can see bullshit from a mile away. the question now is what i can do about this.

i know. but it doesn't sound cruel. it's a pretty human thing to be relieved someone who hurt other people can't do that anymore. don't feel guilty for having normal human reactions to stuff, yusuke. you've got enough guilt over unreasonable shit as it is.

well he's asexual but not aromantic and i've been having sex since i was eleven so i already kind of messed up. the idea of loving and being loved and not owing someone sex is taking awhile to sink in. but it's good, too. it doesn't feel as intense all the time as my old relationships did.

you get any dates while we were being silent at each other? or did the clone kill your love life?

[lempereur]

I watched my clone get eaten on CCTV footage. It was objectively horrifying, but I found it more surreal, than traumatizing. Futaba took it harder than I did.

It's good, that it isn't so intense. If he can help you to tone it down, he should be good for you. 🍛

My love life is going surprisingly well, if unconventional. It's about the only thing I haven't ruined. But my friends from home are upset with me over it, so perhaps that is my trade-off.

[pale_blue_arrow]

why did you watch that. why would you do that to yourself. jfc yusuke that is not healthy mentally and when the bipolar-depressive guy is telling you that, that's REALLY saying something.

being on meds and getting therapy is also helping me be less intense. although i still don't get what he sees in me or why he hangs around. i'm a bit much. he could do better. and i keep crossing boundaries with the whole touch thing because i just have different ideas of what's normal. why does anyone date me? that's more mysterious than the superpowers we all get, at this point.

wait, why aren't your friends happy? unconventional how? is this one of those things where your friends are worrying about you getting hurt, or has there been some misunderstanding...? bc i've only met futaba but she seems like she'd want you to be happy so i don't get this.

[lempereur]

To track down the monster that ate him, and make sure it didn't kill any real people.

Who isn't a bit much? I am sure he has plenty of reasons to like you. I could name a few.

Unconventional, in my case, means that I am dating two people. The three of us are together, as a unit. We all thought about it and discussed it at length, together. It is working perfectly fine, so far, happy and consensual, with no jealousy.

Of my team from home, one thinks I am vapid and frivolous for a number of reasons, one doesn't agree with it on principle, and one is feeling rejected.

So if you want to judge me, get it out of the way now.

[pale_blue_arrow]

valid. but never watch it again. i don't want to see you get obsessed over this.

that's it? so long as everyone involved knows about it, dating two people isn't a bad thing. hell, marrying them wouldn't be bad so long as you're all on the same page.

that can't be it. there's gotta be an ACTUAL reason they don't like who you've hooked up with.

[lempereur]

Once was enough. I don't plan to.

It isn't that that they don't like them. It's that I am distracted when I can't afford to be, and made some important choices without them, and chose poorly, and it's easy for them to twist it so that Yuri and Otabek are just another careless, stupid thing.

Because I, supposedly, am completely out of control.

Maybe I am.

He won't explain what he meant, he won't talk to me at all.

[pale_blue_arrow]

okay, i admit, you could have compromised judgment because you're in love. but that was going to happen no matter who you fell for, yusuke, that's part of being a person. it's no one's fault.

i don't know enough details of what happened to say why you're getting the silent treatment but. if YOU feel like you're out of control, get a therapist, but don't let someone else dictate that kind of thing to you. you sit down and think about if you feel in control of your life or not and make that choice and work it out. without the people who won't support you, if you have to.

i am the master of clinging to toxic friendships back home so let me be the first to tell you that sometimes, the correct response to someone walking away is to let them do it instead of chasing after them. give him time to process and give yourself some time to figure your own shit out.

whatever happens, for whatever my opinion's worth after all i've done, i don't think you being in love with two guys is a bad thing. it may be tricky to get the relationship to work, but 1. they always are and 2. it's worth it.

[lempereur]

My judgement was compromised from the moment I got here. It wasn't because of them. Maybe falling in love with Yuri complicated things further, but I will not apologize for it.

Otabek is newer. It's too early to say love, but it could be, in time. I feel excited, and vulnerable at the same time. I am serious about him, even if it isn't as deep yet. They're keeping me from spiralling.

But I am out of control. He's right. He was cruel about it, but he was right. A couple days before my clone attacked you, something happened, and I thought I was over it because I can leave the house and go to work and plan elaborate dates but I'm not.

It's

It's a lot to unload on you. I'm sorry.

[pale_blue_arrow]

what happened? i was too selfish to ask at the time but yeah, you sounded like a wreck. yusuke, if you need me to recc you a therapist i will go combing through the people i know for the best one for you. pretty sure futaba could help you out there, too.

i doubt you being in love and being in the falling-in-love stage of proceedings with yuri and otabek are the cause of whatever's wrong, but they'll be affected by it. you owe it to them to figure yourself out. and more than that, you owe it to yourself. you deserve to be okay. everyone does, and if people here can help unfuck up a fuck up like me, you should be able to find help, too.

vent away. i wanna help if i can. even if it's just hearing you out and encouraging you from afar. i never stopped caring about you, you know. i doubt i could. you really are a good guy, under the le artiste shtick.

[lempereur]

I don't know what you mean by shtick, but I care about you too.

I

Hurt someone. Not my clone or my Persona, it was all me. And I hurt him very badly. I didn't know what I was doing, I let it get out of hand and he nearly died. I could make a lot of excuses. I had to, to protect other people. My hand was forced. I couldn't ask for help because I NEVER can and I thought i was being watched and didn't want them to be next in the torture line. Or he asked me to be as brutal and evil as possible so I did.

It doesn't matter what reasons I had because I did it, and that's that. The person I hurt says it's fine, but it isn't fine. I can't recognize myself sometimes. I can't sleep without spending hours drawing out a power to force me to sleep, or without Yuri there. I can't look at this man without feeling his blood pulse through my fingers.

There is nothing fine about it. But you are right, I need to be fine, for them, and for myself, and for my friends from home. One more just got here, and she was not happy about any of this.

So I'm pretending, but I'm a bad liar, they all know it, and I keep slipping up. That's why my best friend in any world won't talk to me, the personal jabs were just to twist the knife.

[pale_blue_arrow]

i'm not gonna lie. you fucked up. but it doesn't sound like you were in control. it sounds like you're mentally ill - and i am too so please don't take that as another knife or a shot being fired, it isn't. i don't think you should blame yourself for something you did while ill and untreated, especially since you've been under a lot of pressure ever since you got here.

i think you need help. i will comb through the therapists i know to find you it if you need it. i'll pull my limited resources here. i'll even go with you and sit in the waiting room for the first session. but you can't go on like this without getting some help, yusuke. one, you risk doing this again if you don't, and two, you risk hurting yourself if you don't.

i don't know what's wrong or how to fix it. but i can get you to people who can figure both those things out. and if money's an issue i'll help pay. you're gonna be okay, yusuke. i promise, this shit can get better.

[lempereur]

It isn't an illness. I didn't want to do it, not at any point. I was told.

I could have run, but that would have only made things worse. If I didn't do it, someone else would have, and they would not have bothered to make sure he survived after the fact.

I fell in line because it was the only option I could see.

[pale_blue_arrow]

someone's blackmailing you.

and you're not coming clean with anyone. so i'm guessing it'd have to be someone with a lot of power, to put you in that kind of a fix. you said they. so it's a group blackmailing you for their own purposes.

constellation.

[lempereur]

[ ...thank you, Brendan, for not making him say it. ]

Yes.

But it wasn't blackmail.

I am a member. Me, and the person I hurt, we've infiltrated, to topple them from inside. He was caught talking about it with people, and since he recruited me, I was made to force him to talk. We put on a show to get the names out of him, or I get tied up and stabbed repeatedly right next to him.

[pale_blue_arrow]

dear sweet santa margarita y las flores, you're in deep.

i'm gonna get you out. somehow. i don't know how. but this is probably going to get worse before it gets better. have you told either of your boyfriends about this shit? you should. i speak as a guy whose girlfriend was killed whilst in a gang i didn't know she was is, you SHOULD. if nothing else it gives the gang in question less incentive to murder/torture you because they don't want to raise any red flags with anyone.

if i thought i could make it work for you i'd say recruit me but it's too late now if they're halfway onto you. shit.

[lempereur]

They know. My friends from home all know. Yuri's family even knows. It was someone from my own world that roped me into doing this with him at all.

Which is my fault.

I am in contact with the leader. Frequently. He isn't onto me. My violent outburst was very convincing. I play nice with his wild animal of a general, for combat training. I stockpile cards, spread his exaggerated propaganda, and help organize his Swear-Out protest.

If I was under suspicion I'd have been attacked by now, as careless as I've been.

[pale_blue_arrow]

THAT is not your fault. i love slinging shit and talking shit as much as the next guy so you know i'd tell you if i thought this was your fuck up, but this really isn't.

was that last network post yours? it seemed pretty rank-and-file but it was more stylized than the old ones. more human while still professional. if you're at the level of trust where they're letting you do that plus talk to the leader... well, if it were me and no one gave a shit i'd strap a bomb to myself and give the leader a big hug but you have people who give a shit, we're not going that route. besides, it might just pour gasoline onto the fire instead of snuffing it out.

any possible way to create distrust among the people within the org? that's what i did on my last op. destabilized the group from within by planting doubts in the head honcho's head about his second in command, kept the third in command on my side and convinced i didn't have it out for anyone. waited for that power-complex to turn people on each other.

it worked. it also got me killed, possibly. i was Ported in before my heart stopped beating. but it worked.