Walking To Clear The Mind (Takashi Agera)
| Walking To Clear The Mind (Takashi Agera) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 16 October 2025 |
| Location: | The Dusk Zone |
| Synopsis: | When you're mad a good walk should clear your mind, right? |
| Cast of Characters: | Takashi Agera |
Takashi had ripped back into his lab in Obsidian Tower from the Dusk Zone with the same sort of furious rage he'd left the Forbidden District in, destroying some expensive magitech equipment in its wake. Since this his anger had been palpable, but quietly simmering, as he repaired the damage done to Axion by the forcible ripping free of the gem that had once belong to Beryl.
Once that was done, though, and Axion was back on him, normally helping him mitigate the energy flow... he could still feel it, the anger, coiling within him, bubbling, burnning like a stew left too long and too hot on a stove in too small a pot with a lid - like the feeling and emotions were just leaking out. Occasional surges of Dark Energy would crackle like lightning across part of his body, or drip down from fingertips or strands of hair, inky oil that evaporated before hitting the ground. And he was still so mad. He'd broken several tools during Axion's repair by just gripping them so hard they shattered.
It took him a little bit to focus himself and get back into the Dusk Zone. Not because going there was hard, not for years, he'd found it so easy to step between worlds - but because going there without leaving a gash was hard. Going there elegantly was hard. The simple act of stepping between worlds instead of tearing through them like a destuctive force.
Once in the Dusk Zone, though, he began to walk and wander. He didn't know where he was going, but the Dusk Zone had always felt as much home as Earth... and now, it felt strangely more so. The alien shapes and funhouse reflections of the world he'd just left felt better. So he walked. And thought. Walked. And stewed on things. Walked. And considered that maybe he'd just lost not only Mamoru but Hotaru had been there and he'd gone off in front of both of them. Nephrite, too, had never seen him lose it like that. But it wasn't his fault, they'd pushed and pushed and finally gotten what they'd wanted.
And it wasn't that he'd lost - he'd lost fights before, but he'd always come away with something. Knowledge, data, information, hypothesis, ideas tried and dispatched. But here he'd come away with nothing. Just anger, rage, an injured device, the loss of the gem. A realization that Mamoru was never on his side, not like Takashi wanted; and that he'd probably driven off Hotaru and Nephrite from supporting him, and through them likely many more. And his oldest friend couldn't see what he was trying to accomplish. Had never seen. Had just been holding it all to dump on him at once, to attack him with - or so the feelings in his heart told him.
The denizens of the Dusk Zone mostly avoided him in the front, but at the same point they were following him, drawn by this ever increasing beacon of Dark Energy.
Eventually, he came to a section of the Dusk Zone that in some ways was like a section of Tokyo - if the buildings grew and twisted into a euclidian space. Takashi continued walking... until he came to a building that reminded him in some way or the orphanage where the two of them grew up. And his hands balled into fists and the aura of Dark Energy ripped around him ferociously as he yelled out and let all of his rage out, blasting the false city block with withering surge after shuddering blast of Dark Energy - mostly at the building in question, but as time went on he just destroyed. He attacked and destroyed and raged. He was angrier than he could ever remember. And now he was stronger than he could ever remember, the blasts of energy carving great holes in the world, in the landscape, ripping through anything they touched.
By the time it was done huge sections of the false, mirrored city in the wild duskzone was reduced to rubble. And in the center of it stood Takashi, waves of Dark Energy still emanating off him.
"They don't understand your greatness. You've always kept your power hidden, leashed your ambition to their approval. And so the world is inferior to what it could be." came a voice, which was really more like a chorus of voices of different types, speaking together, all around. "Your rage comes from that... from the loss of what could have been for the sake of those who cannot appreciate it..."
