[Ryunosuke glances around the garden nervously for a moment. Is there any kind of excuse he can make to get van Zieks to change his mind??
Damn. He really can't think of anything besides bashfulness, and that's certainly not going to cut it. Besides, he's invaded his head plenty of times before... He can remember that much.
After a moment of fretting and swishing his long tail about anxiously, he nods his head in affirmation.]
Alright. But... I'm going to try open them all as quickly as possible! So that we can try to catch up with her as soon as possible...
[So in other words, please try to hold your questions until the end of the tour, sir.
Thus begins the great jar hunt. Each memory unleashed, even the good ones, leaves Ryunosuke looking battered and dizzy... But they also draw him further back into himself, and further away from the ridiculous mind-controlled state he'd been in earlier.
There's a wide variety of scenes that the two of them will be whipped up in, some of them pre-Reverein, some of them post. They clearly don't happen in chronological order, or with any particular rhyme or reason... But they'll give Barok a much broader glimpse of a man who, for someone who's so nosy, rarely ever seems to talk about his personal life.
There's a glimpse of early childhood, with a small Ryunosuke no older than 5 years old playing on crutches and injuring himself in the process. Ryunosuke at the Halloween Carnival in Reverein, transformed into a tiny toy mouse and being chewed on by a giant corgi. A teenaged Ryunosuke, joking around with a few other boys his age as they wander past the stalls of a summer festival. A tiny eastern style dragon sporting Ryunosuke's eyebrows, trying to desperately communicate with an even tinier Susato within a fae generated dreamscape. Ryunosuke watching Kazuma bomb the Yumei speech competition, going on to win it himself, and being cornered by that man after the fact. Ryunosuke confronting a recalcitrant Hyde outside of Barok's bar, getting spooked into turning into a fish before being stuffed in a barrel. Raising a glass with everyone in good cheer at the Wild Harvest.
The final jar they open whips out a memory of Ryunosuke standing in a western-style restaurant. He's spotted something on the floor... Something that's largely strange and unfamiliar to him.
It's a discarded handgun. Baffled, Ryunosuke leans down to pick the weapon up and examine it. As he rises, a gunshot rings out, startling him badly. What just happened?
Chaos erupts. A certain man lays limp in his chair, clearly dead. The restaurant's waiter rushes out to investigate, eventually rounds on Ryunosuke, and bundles him into a pantry.
The memory ends with the pantry door plunging them into a cloud of darkness, and the echoing sound of a key turning in a lock.
The real Ryunosuke is standing there and grimacing wearily when it ends, in a way that is very much undeniably and authentically him. His eyes dart nervously towards van Zieks, and he groans:]
no subject
[Ryunosuke glances around the garden nervously for a moment. Is there any kind of excuse he can make to get van Zieks to change his mind??
Damn. He really can't think of anything besides bashfulness, and that's certainly not going to cut it. Besides, he's invaded his head plenty of times before... He can remember that much.
After a moment of fretting and swishing his long tail about anxiously, he nods his head in affirmation.]
Alright. But... I'm going to try open them all as quickly as possible! So that we can try to catch up with her as soon as possible...
[So in other words, please try to hold your questions until the end of the tour, sir.
Thus begins the great jar hunt. Each memory unleashed, even the good ones, leaves Ryunosuke looking battered and dizzy... But they also draw him further back into himself, and further away from the ridiculous mind-controlled state he'd been in earlier.
There's a wide variety of scenes that the two of them will be whipped up in, some of them pre-Reverein, some of them post. They clearly don't happen in chronological order, or with any particular rhyme or reason... But they'll give Barok a much broader glimpse of a man who, for someone who's so nosy, rarely ever seems to talk about his personal life.
There's a glimpse of early childhood, with a small Ryunosuke no older than 5 years old playing on crutches and injuring himself in the process. Ryunosuke at the Halloween Carnival in Reverein, transformed into a tiny toy mouse and being chewed on by a giant corgi. A teenaged Ryunosuke, joking around with a few other boys his age as they wander past the stalls of a summer festival. A tiny eastern style dragon sporting Ryunosuke's eyebrows, trying to desperately communicate with an even tinier Susato within a fae generated dreamscape. Ryunosuke watching Kazuma bomb the Yumei speech competition, going on to win it himself, and being cornered by that man after the fact. Ryunosuke confronting a recalcitrant Hyde outside of Barok's bar, getting spooked into turning into a fish before being stuffed in a barrel. Raising a glass with everyone in good cheer at the Wild Harvest.
The final jar they open whips out a memory of Ryunosuke standing in a western-style restaurant. He's spotted something on the floor... Something that's largely strange and unfamiliar to him.
It's a discarded handgun. Baffled, Ryunosuke leans down to pick the weapon up and examine it. As he rises, a gunshot rings out, startling him badly. What just happened?
Chaos erupts. A certain man lays limp in his chair, clearly dead. The restaurant's waiter rushes out to investigate, eventually rounds on Ryunosuke, and bundles him into a pantry.
The memory ends with the pantry door plunging them into a cloud of darkness, and the echoing sound of a key turning in a lock.
The real Ryunosuke is standing there and grimacing wearily when it ends, in a way that is very much undeniably and authentically him. His eyes dart nervously towards van Zieks, and he groans:]
...Can we please leave now?