08: [Action]

[truthsnomiracle]

[All over Prospero for the next couple of days, though primarily near the courthouse, Prosecutor's Office, and Bay View Hotel, you may encounter Miles Edgeworth looking amiss in a couple of ways.

First off, he's not wearing his usual suit. Instead, he's wearing a stiff (and lightly armored) burgundy trenchcoat over a dark grey bulletproof vest that fully covers his torso, shoulders, and neck (though the latter is less obvious since his cravat's tied around it), which in turn is over a plain white shirt. Plain burgundy pants and heavy-duty dark grey knee pads (and matching elbow pads, to judge by the way the coat is hanging) complete the ensemble.

Second, he's clearly extraordinarily fatigued, yawning with bags under his eyes and sluggish in his movements... if he hasn't already fainted, or isn't collapsing before your very eyes. There's likely a paper or styrofoam cup full of tea involved, whether he's awake and holding it in his hand or asleep and its contents have spilled nearby.

Miles Edgeworth may not be under the Devil Arcana's direct influence yet, but being one of the few sane people left on the island is taking its toll nonetheless.]

[[OOC: This post is the fun-for-all-ages stage of things! The scary parts come later.]]

Comments

[truthsnomiracle]

...Once more, your world manages to deeply disturb me. (I'm beginning to wonder if some people there regard the concept of human rights to be an antiquated notion.)

Given how vastly different Albedo and Gaignun are in personality, was only the former forced into the program?

[want_a_vacation]

It is pretty disturbing, yeah. And... *He hesitates for a moment. He prefers being truthful, but he doesn't want to spread his friend's secret around...but in the end, he decides Edgeworth seems trustworthy enough.*

...No, they were both born the same way. Their powers were pretty different, though. I'm not entirely sure what Gaignun could do, but Albedo's always been immortal. He was actually pretty harmless as a kid, actually pretty timid, even, as long as you didn't make him angry, but...finding out his brothers were mortal traumatized him. And then he was contaminated by U-DO, and contact with that can make even a normally stable person's mind break down.

[truthsnomiracle]

(So the situation involved not merely child abuse and enhancement, but human experimentation... after all, I see no reason why only one soldier would be made immortal deliberately.)

So it's highly likely that... [...yawn...] ...that Albedo is among the more dangerous kidnappees here, even under normal circumstances. However, if he and Gaignun were both raised under such conditions, explaining Albedo's instability would seem to tell only half the story.

[want_a_vacation]

Albedo's actually the exception. Both of his brothers are good people, but their situation wasn't entirely the same. For one, they didn't have reason to think they would live to see everyone the loved died. For another, they weren't exposed to U-DO like that. I'm not saying they don't have problems of their own, but they weren't pushed over the edge like Albedo was.

[truthsnomiracle]

I merely find it hard to believe that breeding and raising people for such purposes is an act that those with a sense of respect for sapient beings would partake in -- which, in turn, suggests a childhood that would appear unlikely to yield someone of Gaignun's nature. Furthermore, in war, intellect is valued primarily for strategic and tactical skill -- what need would a soldier have for the sort of education and mental skills he displays? Ergo, something is clearly missing from Gaignun's story.

[want_a_vacation]

Considering their father...I can't argue with that first part. I don't think he has a sense of respect for anything but himself. As for Gaignun...he was actually pretty different as a kid. He was quiet and mostly serious when I saw him. But they weren't soldiers their whole lives, they were rescued when they were about twelve. Well...sort of, anyway. After that, Gaignun was probably raised at least a bit more normally, so he could manage outside of war.

[truthsnomiracle]

HOLD IT!

If you're acquainted with Gaignun and not with Albedo, then how is it that you're far more confident in your ability to recount the latter's background?

[want_a_vacation]

*He jumps at the sudden exclamation, but calms down pretty quickly. Honestly, Edgeworth, give a half asleep guy a little warning before you make loud noises.*

...I got my information from watching an Encephalon Dive. That's basically translating someone's subconscious to a sort of inner world that other people can visit mentally, but if someone involved in the Dive spent a lot of time with the subject, it'll cause relevant memories to play back. Gaignun and Albedo's older brother was part of the Dive, and the person whose subconscious they were visiting had a strong connection to all three of them. Albedo broke into the Dive from outside, so his memories got caught up in it too, but they only synchronized up to a certain point.

*He sounds annoyed and maybe a bit offended when admitting that Albedo broke into the Dive.*

I know a lot about what happened to them at the Institute, but I don't really know much between then and when I actually met them.

[truthsnomiracle]

[Shouting like that is completely normal in his original life, OK?]

Speaking as a professional when it comes to the verification of information, that alone doesn't strike me as a particularly reliable source. That being said, what he believes to have happened may be at least as pertinent to the question being examined as what actually did happen.

[want_a_vacation]

*That doesn't change the fact that he's too sleepy to deal with sudden loud noises right now.*

I've already talked to Gaignun about what I saw, so unless all three of them remember it wrong in the same way, even on a subconscious level, I can't think of any reason why the Dive would have shown anything that didn't really happen.

[truthsnomiracle]

That does lend additional credence to whatever parts he could verify, yes.

[want_a_vacation]

Not to mention the odds of them forgetting on that deep a level...a Dive like that can show even memories that have been deliberately or reflexively suppressed. Someone would have had to have tampered with both Jr. and Albedo's memories for that to happen, and even then I'm not sure it wouldn't have come up.

[truthsnomiracle]

(Given the nature of the culture he's described thus far, I cannot help but imagine that these "Dives" have replaced testimony...)

Memory can still be a subjective thing at times. One's impressions can override the facts of a matter, even in a suppressed memory.

[Given his fatigue, Edgeworth doesn't manage to hold back his discomfort at remembering how he knows this so well.]

[want_a_vacation]

I'm...guessing you're pretty familiar with an example?

*Edgeworth isn't the only one that's uncomfortable, since he's having trouble not remembering watching a nine year old version of his girlfriend witnessing her mother's gruesome death in one of those Dives. But Allen's used to both short sleep and ignoring discomfort, so he's not exactly squirming.*

[truthsnomiracle]

Intimately so.

[want_a_vacation]

(It's probably best not to press...)

I'm...pretty familiar with an example of how true a Dive is to your original memories, though. No matter how much you don't want to believe what really happened or how long you've been convinced it happened some other way, you're still going to see exactly what you experienced.

[truthsnomiracle]

That sounds too miraculous to be completely true.

[want_a_vacation]

That's probably not the word someone who's been through it would use.

*This is something of a bitter smile. It's obvious by now that what he's talking about really bothered him, especially since even that quickly fades into a grimmace.*

When you Dive into someone's subconscious, you visit the deepest levels of their mind. Imagine...imagine if something so horrible that it affected the entire universe and is still endangering people fifteen years later happened because of something you did after being traumatized, and for those fifteen years everyone was utterly convinced that it was someone else's fault. It's not my place to mention any names here, but I saw a visit to someone's subconscious domain drag that memory to the surface. And what happened after that pretty much confirmed that it was the truth.

*He's incredibly tense by now and can't even look at Edgeworth. He manages to keep his voice from trembling, but it's still clear that what happened deeply bothered him.*

[truthsnomiracle]

[The basic idea of a trauma-induced mistake having an effect for fifteen years specifically is enough to further unrattle Edgeworth, but the content...]

(Once more, a tale of trauma from another world dwarfs my own with its outlandishness, yet is told too earnestly not to be what the speaker honestly believes.)

I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply...

[want_a_vacation]

*He seems to deflate a bit at Edgeworth's apology, as if he'd let slip something he thinks he shouldn't have and is trying to act as if the impact on him is much less than what it actually was.*

No, don't...I'm the one who should be apologizing. You don't need to hear about this...and it's not your fault, either. I've just had that whole thing on my mind a lot these past few days.

[truthsnomiracle]

My apology is for seeming to belittle your experiences.

(The weight of a universe... I can scarcely imagine what that must be like. The weight of Prospero alone is...)

[want_a_vacation]

Ah, it wasn't mine...it was a...a very close friend of mine. That's why I said it wasn't my place to mention any names. Especially since I'm still not sure if she's forgiven herself for it or not.

[truthsnomiracle]

Regardless, the recreation seems to have affected you, if presumably not to the same degree.

[want_a_vacation]

I'll be fine, I...just need to calm down a bit. I think the stress of everything going all to hell like this is getting to me.

[truthsnomiracle]

If it's any consolation, remember that you aren't the one having to prosecute in these conditions.

[That... didn't come out sounding particularly consoling, but being soothing never was Edgeworth's strong suit.]