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[Accelerator looks the same as before - jeans, t-shirt he may or may not have slept in, hair kind of missed but in way where it's hard to tell if it's deliberate or if he just woke up like that. The only difference is he's substituted the entire grocery bag of canned coffee for a single one he's currently sipping.]

Let's go.

[He turns and heads outside, intending on walking to their first destination the old fashioned way.]

[ Asuka is pretty sure he just wakes up like this, because she can't imagine him putting in the effort to look artfully scuffed. ]

Where we headed first?

[ She follows, hands clasped behind her back. She looks like a teenager - just an everyday one - when she's out like this. But there's more to her, of course. ]

[He points in the direction of Ramsey Farm, to the west of the apartments and hospital.]

That way. We'll do a loop around and end up back here. Should be easy enough.

If you say so. You're still kinda hobbling.

[ But he always is, at least while he has his necklace on low power mode. Right? ]

This is normal. Think of it as a lower power mode to conserve the battery.

[So yes, wobbling and needing a crutch. It could be worse, right?]

Got it, got it. Where's your power cord? Can I plug you into the wall?

[ She's... teasing. A little. ]

[He just sighs.]

The day I become a cyborg you'll be the first to know.

Oh, great, glad you're willing to keep me informed.

[ Her response is a drawl. ]

You sure seem to wanna come and find me, though.

[ She's... quietly pleased about that. Even if she also feels a touch offended by it, too. ]

What's with that?

[His shoulders stiffen very slightly, and his response is immediate as he's hit with a wall of aversion towards his own feelings.]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[That's a blatant lie if there ever was one. The labyrinth was awful and he was worried about her.

They're approaching the farm and he takes that chance to further avoid the subject by hitting the switch on his choker for a few seconds, looking around.]

I'm not getting anything unusual. Let's keep going.

[ She rolls her eyes at him but opts to drop it for now. Instead she walks in silence as they approach the farm and waits for him to do his weird choker thing. ]

You can sense weird stuff, too? Not just throw people around and make them explode?

[He is quite content to drop the subject, thank you. Not that talking about his power is great, but it's better than feelings.]

Yes. My esper ability is the power to manipulate vectors, so I can sense them if they exist. To control them I only need to do the right equations in my head.

[Math powers! He gives a little scowl at the farm before turning towards their next destination, some big building that looks like a lab.]

Are you just doing physics calculations in your head to explode people? Is that what you do?

[ ...that's kinda cool, but she's not gonna say it out loud. ]

[He sighs a little. She's really not going to get over the blood redirection thing, is she? At least he's fairly sure he doesn't need to explain what a vector is to her.]

Essentially. Where I'm from, espers are people who've become disassociated from normal reality and replace it with their own Personal Reality. By doing the right equations, I can forcibly influence normal reality using my Personal Reality, by way of quantum mechanics.

...got it. My degree didn't get too much into the whole quantum mechanics thing, but... yeah, that sounds right.

[ She wrinkles her nose. ]

I wonder how similar it is to the AT field?

I'm not sure. [He'd like to find out though, so he continues, launching into a whole nerdy explanation of AIM Diffusion fields. Exciting stuff!] AIM Diffusion fields are basically just energy our bodies give off as a byproduct of being an esper. It'll manifest differently depending on what your ability is. If you're an electromagnetic esper you radiate an EM field, if you're a pyrokinetic you give off heat.

[There's more to it, like how a congregation of AIM fields can create angels, or the Sisters' neural network, but those are the basics.]

Some technology can mess with it, and some espers have abilities that utilize it in some way, but most of us don't use it.

...different, then. Kinda similar I guess.

[ She trails off. ]

Everything has an AT field. Even humans. It's -"Absolute Terror" field. And if it's powerful enough you can use it as a shield or as a weapon. For most humans I guess it just lets us maintain our separate selves. Without it, we slide back towards being... one.

[ She shudders. ]

[A weapon, huh? On top of maintaining one's sense of self?]

By 'one' do you mean one merged consciousness? Sounds very existential.

[He's digging around in his brain for all the classes he took on philosophy. It sounds relevant.]

Basically. No more barriers between bodies or minds or egos. It's all... mixed together.

[ She shudders. ]

I hated it.

[Ergh, no one should be able to look at his mind. No one deserves that. And the thought of not being his own separate individual, it's.... it's really weird. He's spent most of his life with people being unable to physically get near him, so even a normal level of intimacy with other people is mostly beyond him. Going one step further sounds horrific.

He grimaces.]

That's what you have to go home to?

...if you have the will you can revert to your own form. Keep everyone out. That's what I did. But the world's empty and dead.

[ She sounds a little flat. ]

I don't give a shit about them anymore. I don't care if they decide to prune it or whatever.

[Understandable. Who wants to go back to an empty world where everyone is ~~tang~~ one gross collective consciousness that you want no part in? He certainly wouldn't.]

Have you talked to Aurora about that?

Kinda.

[ She kicks a rock, sending it skittering off into the grass. ]

She said she'd find a spot for me if I didn't want to go back.

That's a better option, right?

[Still not great, since she could end up who-knows-where, but anywhere has to be better than a dead world.]

Probably.

[ She shoves her hands into her pockets. ]

Doesn't matter anyway. I'm glad they're all fucking gone.

[ It's venomous and hateful and full of anger - and maybe genuine but maybe it's the only way she knows how to cope with it. If she aggressively doesn't care, if she's happy about it, then she doesn't have to think about it all really means. ]

......

[He's quiet, not sure if she really means that. After all, he knows that it's a hell of a lot easier to respond with anger. Reject the world if it's going to reject you. That kind of thing.

After a moment he turns, switching his choker on again. He's getting some different vectors compared to the farm - EM fields and whatnot - so this might be a place whose interior is worth checking out sometime.

For now though, he turns.]

Come on, we're going south next.

I'LL KILL YOU I'll kill you!	I HATE THIS I hate everyone.
THOUGH I hate myself the most.	I DON'T WANT TO DIE I don't want to die.

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