Togami Byakuya - 十神白夜 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shslasshat) wrote2013-08-17 10:36 pm
shslasshat) wrote2013-08-17 10:36 pm
Route 29 app
Player
Name: Ri
Personal Journal:resplendentri
E-mail: cheetah1090@yahoo.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: JoyBringer5002
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: Shaun Mars
Character
Name: Byakuya Togami
Series: Dangan Ronpa
Timeline: after defeating the mastermind
Canon Resource Links: DR Wiki
Personality: First and foremost, Togami is intelligent. It is perhaps not a stretch to say (despite his being the second tallest of the boys) that his brain is his greatest asset. He is a competent investigator throughout all of the investigations into the murders in each chapter, as well as helping Naegi gather important clues (from confidential files in the library, for instance, first on Genocider Syo in chapter 2 and then on Fenrir – which Naegi couldn't read because it was written in French – in Chapter 5). He spends most of chapter 2 onward holed up in the library reading, gathering information and waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Whatever else you may say about him, he does deserve credit for his mind and his strategizing.
Being the Super High School Level Heir, he is also a stuck-up little shit, to the point where he shows a blatant disregard for the feelings of his fellow students, something that gets him nearly punched in the face in chapter 2 and then actually punched in the face in chapter 4. No one has ever, in the history of DR fandom, (unless he has insane, woobifying fans that I have never had the displeasure of encountering – which, considering how similar he is to Light Yagami and how many fans Light has, I wouldn't actually be surprised by) argued that he did not deserve to be punched. He has a very punchable face, which has probably contributed to the popularity of the fan-nickname "SHSL Asshat".
Still, he is not completely irredeemable. If you spend enough Free Time events with him, Naegi can start to whittle him down with the power of friendship, a process which is about as completed as it's going to get by the end of the game, after they've found out about the memories that they lost, and the Mastermind is dead, and they're free to leave the school. There's a very slight change that occurs in Togami's character between the end of episode 4 and the end of episode 6, and one which shows promise that he can grow up. He's learned something at murder school, after all, and that is that while it's not a good idea to trust all the people all of the time, it's okay to trust some people some of the time. He doesn't even tell Fukawa to fuck off when she says she'll follow him to the edge of the earth – and this is knowing that he perfectly fits the profile to become Syo's next victim, now that they're free from the rules and constraints of the school trials. Like it or not, his fellow murder school survivors have wormed their way into his tiny, black little heart, and – if he wasn't being dragged to Johto – he would carry at least the memory of their shared ordeal with him, as they all did their parts to rebuild the despair-stricken world.
He is returning to Johto after spending time here before, and during the months that he was here and not in murder school he did take a few baby steps toward becoming a decent human being, with perhaps the most impressive of these being him putting into practice the lessons in empathy that he learned late in the Killing Game with those classmates who were already dead by the time that he learned them. Admittedly, this is because he shared a bathroom with most of them for far too long to be considered safe, let alone normal, but while he still considers everyone beneath him he has also come to tentatively grasp the fact that his classmates are all human beings with emotions who perhaps didn't deserve the gruesome demises visited on them as much as he originally thought at the time of their passing (if you think you're getting an apology for his prickery anytime soon, you are sorely, sorely mistaken).
He is a cutthroat strategist, as is evidenced by the fact that he, the youngest of 15 candidates in his generation of the Togami family, managed to usurp all 14 of his half-siblings to obtain the honour of being named the Heir to the Togami Conglomerate. His family name means everything to him – he throws it around, even in situations where he knows that he won't get any special consideration for it, because he thinks that he should. The fact that he had to do so much and work so hard, effectively committing fratricide fourteen times over in the process, makes him cling to his family name because he has earned it, and he is the first Togami heir who was the baby of their generation. When the Mastermind tells him what became of his family, he shuts down. He refuses to believe it. The Togami family is not so weak that they could ever be brought down. And if they have been...what does that mean for him? It's rather telling about his character that the news of his family name being brought to ruin is what threatens to plunge him into despair, and that the hope that brings him out of it is the conviction to raise it up again himself and make the Togami name even greater than it was before.
In a place like Johto, as well as in the post-Despair apocalypse that he would have gone into were his canon point allowed to continue, where his family name means a whole crap ton of nothing anymore and he's starting off with even less, the determination to make himself known will be paramount. He will be determined to show that he is born from greatness, particularly since the only people who know of the former greatness of his name are his classmates, and to make the Togami name as known in Johto as it was in the pre-Despair world. This will mean that he'll be the insufferable lovechild of Gary Oak and Draco Malfoy, and for that I apologize profusely in advance. Now that he's been forced to start over from the beginning, he's going to be even more irritating for a while right out of the gate because he has to recover lost ground and make up for lost time.
Togami is fiercely competitive, as well as competent and intelligent, which is a dangerous combination tempered only by the fact that he's not as good at understanding people's motivations as he would like to believe. When the rules of the murder school are laid out, he immediately distances himself from his classmates and tells them in basically as many words that if the School Life of Mutual Killing is a game, then it is a game that he is going to win. While conjecture, it is well-founded conjecture that he applied the same strategy when the rules were laid out to the "game" that determined who would become the heir to the Togami family, and as a result the exact same attitude and strategy will also apply upon arrival in Johto, once he realizes that he is in yet another game.
Tl;dr: He's gonna be the very best. Like no one ever was. Because he's Togami Byakuya, and he'll make sure you don't forget it, pleb.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+Competent – from the second chapter forward, Togami steps into a role as the foil and counterpoint to Kirigiri, also guiding Naegi's investigations and actions. While not to Kirigiri's level, (which is an unfair comparison given her SHSL title) Togami does gather his own fair share of important evidence, as well as helping Naegi over the course of the latter's investigations. He takes charge of the investigations in his own way, such as in chapter 3, when he splits the group to pursue the mysterious Justice Robo.
+Intelligent – Aside from everything above, Togami also is well-educated. He speaks and reads French fluently (and probably English, as well), and has had access to the Togami family's extensive library, containing tomes both confidential and highly dangerous. His intelligence makes him genre-savvy, although usually he ends up being wrong genre-savvy. Throughout the first three chapters, he constantly reminds the others not to let their own personal view of the motives make them complacent and off their guard – just because they wouldn't kill to find out the secret behind the videotape, or keep their secret from being revealed, or gain the monetary prize, doesn't mean someone else wouldn't. Of course, the game itself is about trusting your friends, so he's wrong, but it's also a case of Strawman has a point – which is usually the case when he offers a dissenting opinion.
+Adaptable – all things considered, Togami takes to the school life of mutual killing rather well. He immediately holes himself up in the library as soon as it is made available, and he begins devouring the literature and documents within to inspire him. That said, he is perhaps the most surprising out of the surviving final six (Syo notwithstanding), given that he also manages to not become a victim, nor ever actually attempts to kill someone. When the Mastermind tells him what has become of the Togami Conglomerate, and Naegi bolsters his hope, he rallies with the thought that even if the Mastermind was telling the truth, he can and will pull the Togami name out from the wreckage of the apocalypse and restore it to its former glory – even greater, in fact, than it was before.
+/-Cunning/Cutthroat – Togami backstabbed his 14 older siblings to become the sole heir to the Togami family – a feat that no youngest sibling had accomplished in the history of this rather unorthodox alternative to primogeniture. He also has played the stock market to the point where he has a personal (not an inherited/family) fund of 400 billion yen. From the beginning of the murder school game, he unabashedly tells his classmates that if only one of them can graduate, then it will be him. Not only does he believe that he destined for greatness, by virtue of his name alone, but he is willing to back it up.
+/-Emotional manipulativeness – While technically considered one of his strengths, since it is something that he's good at, it's not a good thing, so it goes in both categories. Togami knows how to play people. This is most obvious with Fukawa/Syo, who trails behind him like a well-trained pet, despite how much abuse he heaps on her. Sometimes, however, this backfires, such as when he incites Asahina into slugging him in the face Hermione-style.
-Lack of empathy – Hoo boy, this is a big one. While definitely not (always) to sociopathic levels, Togami shows a profound inability to relate to others. He can cerebrally say that it's impossible to know what will set someone off, but then he does and says things that get him punched in the face, or just outright fails to understand why someone would rather commit suicide than watch her friends continue fighting. There's also the corpse-manhandling. The reason I say that this isn't entirely sociopathic, is because it's less something inherent and more something as a result of his breeding. He earned his position as the heir to the Togami family by fighting his 14 older siblings out of the picture. He outright says that they were exiled from the family, although he considers them dead since it's basically the same thing. If he had been empathetic, he would never have been able to cut out his own siblings like that – but, at the same time, as the end of the game shows, he's starting to learn.
-Egotistical/Condescending – boy howdy is he. He talks down to all of the characters who he considers "beneath him" (spoiler, that's everyone), but especially Naegi, who doesn't even have a SHSL talent to recommend him. One of the main ways that his overall attitude is shown in the original Japanese is that, unlike some of the other characters, Togami doesn't use honorifics when referring to other students, male or female, by name. There's also the fact that at one point, he goes as far as to say to Naegi's face that sometimes he wonders what it feels like to have been born with absolutely no prospects or chances of bettering himself – and then, just to clarify, adds that Naegi is one such individual.
-Self-centered/Selfish – He manhandles the corpse of a fellow student and fingerpaints in their blood so that he wouldn't be bored during the trial of course he is selfish. He rarely enters into any arrangement or agrees to any condition (such as the Night Time rule) that he doesn't feel has an immediate benefit to himself. He agrees to turn on the Mastermind in the end of chapter 4 not because of the Power of Friendshipmaybe a little because of the power of friendship – i-it's not like he likes you guys or anything but because as the number of plebs around him dwindles, it would be unwise to be the only one still playing the game by the rules. This behaviour keeps him emotionally distant from his classmates, because getting close to people in a murder school is generally a bad idea why doesn't anyone realize that.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Sableye (Sho – dropped back down to level 30)
Password: Caramel Popcorn
Samples
First Person Sample:
[The boy on the 'Gear hasn't been seen in a couple of months now, but he still remembers how to use it. He also seems to have developed an unrelated tic beneath his left eye. Despite this, he looks as well put together as always, with a grinning Sableye butting her head up against the underside of his chin every so often, clearly the mark of a pokemon who missed her trainer greatly. For his part, he's ignoring her affections, which is relatively unsurprising to those who know him.
The scenery behind him is New Bark Town, and he does not seem happy to be there.]
Whoever is in possession of the rest of my pokemon has one hour to return them to me. There are five altogether. Four of them, two Persians, a Dragonite, and a Milotic, should have "Byakuya Togami" as their Original Trainer. The fifth is a Rapidash who answers to Vampa.
Don't waste my time by asking idiotic questions or attempting to hold them for ransom, I don't respond kindly to threats and blackmail. If I see that they have been well taken care of, I will consider a small reimbursement.
[He pauses, and it's then that it becomes noticeable that he seems visibly unsettled, however curt his tone.]
If Naegi or Kirigiri is still here, it would behove them to respond with haste as well. That is all.
[Without so much as a 'thank you for your time,' the irritated young man cuts off the feed.]
Third Person Sample: (immediately follows the network sample)
Togami stood up abruptly, depositing Sho on the ground as he began pacing back and forth, running his fingernails across his lips and resisting the urge to bite them. It was a childhood bad habit that came through as an unconscious gesture when he was under duress, and when he was stressed enough to actually press his index finger against his bottom row of teeth, sometimes he could still taste and smell the turpentine.
He had spent months, months in this place before, in this disgustingly saccharine Saturday morning utopia, and had somehow returned to the exact same moment that he remembered leaving, as if he had never been in this place at all. In the blinding white light of the Outside, as the iron door opened in front of them, before he could open his eyes and see what awaited them...
He woke up back in this place, with the memories of the months that he'd spent here before. And if the calendar on the Pokegear was to be trusted (which it was, he was fairly sure, given that it had always been trustworthy before), then he had been gone a little over a month. A little over a month had passed, in what he had experienced as less than a second.
He was going insane. He had to be. That was the only explanation for this. He would say he had dreamt it, but if that were the case then he had woken up to having been robbed. After all, when he had last been here, he had fallen asleep in his bed in Goldenrod, with all six of his team within arm's reach. He woke up with a nearly empty bank account, back where he started, and Sho's levels had been cut by more than half.
"Saaaab?" Sho hissed from her spot gliding along in the shadow at his heel. Her shadowy claws dug into his pantleg, but left no mark. He flinched anyway, and looked down at her with an icy blue stare, hand falling from his mouth and balling into a fist at his side.
The near breaking point came when he saw what looked like concern flash across her gemstone eyes, opaque and reflecting back at him how she saw him. The eyes were the mirrors to the soul, and in his case his starter's eyes were mirrors into his own soul, not hers. Cerebrally, he knew that he posed no threat to her whatsoever. She phased in and out of his shadow happily enough that he knew that even if he was base enough to strike her, it would have no effect.
But the image that he saw reflected back at him from her mirror-like diamond eyes made him realize that he was allowing his emotions to get the better of him. He looked like a skyscraper in silhouette, towering over her, his fringe casting his face in shadow to hide his expression. He forced himself to inhale and exhale, relaxing his tensed shoulders all the way down to his fingers, before he tipped his chin up and looked down at her over the bridge of his nose.
"We have a lot of training to do to catch up, Sho. We may as well start there, while we wait for the others." He kept his tone cold and imperious, but when he addressed her she brightened anyway.
"Sable!" Sho exclaimed cheerfully, slipping into Togami's shadow and popping up in a patch of grass a few yards ahead of him. "Sableye!" He shook his head fondly and strode forward to meet her, fighting to keep a smile off of his lips.
"Show me that you haven't forgotten anything, since it seems that you haven't changed a bit while I was away."
Name: Ri
Personal Journal:
resplendentriE-mail: cheetah1090@yahoo.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: JoyBringer5002
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: Shaun Mars
Character
Name: Byakuya Togami
Series: Dangan Ronpa
Timeline: after defeating the mastermind
Canon Resource Links: DR Wiki
Personality: First and foremost, Togami is intelligent. It is perhaps not a stretch to say (despite his being the second tallest of the boys) that his brain is his greatest asset. He is a competent investigator throughout all of the investigations into the murders in each chapter, as well as helping Naegi gather important clues (from confidential files in the library, for instance, first on Genocider Syo in chapter 2 and then on Fenrir – which Naegi couldn't read because it was written in French – in Chapter 5). He spends most of chapter 2 onward holed up in the library reading, gathering information and waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Whatever else you may say about him, he does deserve credit for his mind and his strategizing.
Being the Super High School Level Heir, he is also a stuck-up little shit, to the point where he shows a blatant disregard for the feelings of his fellow students, something that gets him nearly punched in the face in chapter 2 and then actually punched in the face in chapter 4. No one has ever, in the history of DR fandom, (unless he has insane, woobifying fans that I have never had the displeasure of encountering – which, considering how similar he is to Light Yagami and how many fans Light has, I wouldn't actually be surprised by) argued that he did not deserve to be punched. He has a very punchable face, which has probably contributed to the popularity of the fan-nickname "SHSL Asshat".
Still, he is not completely irredeemable. If you spend enough Free Time events with him, Naegi can start to whittle him down with the power of friendship, a process which is about as completed as it's going to get by the end of the game, after they've found out about the memories that they lost, and the Mastermind is dead, and they're free to leave the school. There's a very slight change that occurs in Togami's character between the end of episode 4 and the end of episode 6, and one which shows promise that he can grow up. He's learned something at murder school, after all, and that is that while it's not a good idea to trust all the people all of the time, it's okay to trust some people some of the time. He doesn't even tell Fukawa to fuck off when she says she'll follow him to the edge of the earth – and this is knowing that he perfectly fits the profile to become Syo's next victim, now that they're free from the rules and constraints of the school trials. Like it or not, his fellow murder school survivors have wormed their way into his tiny, black little heart, and – if he wasn't being dragged to Johto – he would carry at least the memory of their shared ordeal with him, as they all did their parts to rebuild the despair-stricken world.
He is returning to Johto after spending time here before, and during the months that he was here and not in murder school he did take a few baby steps toward becoming a decent human being, with perhaps the most impressive of these being him putting into practice the lessons in empathy that he learned late in the Killing Game with those classmates who were already dead by the time that he learned them. Admittedly, this is because he shared a bathroom with most of them for far too long to be considered safe, let alone normal, but while he still considers everyone beneath him he has also come to tentatively grasp the fact that his classmates are all human beings with emotions who perhaps didn't deserve the gruesome demises visited on them as much as he originally thought at the time of their passing (if you think you're getting an apology for his prickery anytime soon, you are sorely, sorely mistaken).
He is a cutthroat strategist, as is evidenced by the fact that he, the youngest of 15 candidates in his generation of the Togami family, managed to usurp all 14 of his half-siblings to obtain the honour of being named the Heir to the Togami Conglomerate. His family name means everything to him – he throws it around, even in situations where he knows that he won't get any special consideration for it, because he thinks that he should. The fact that he had to do so much and work so hard, effectively committing fratricide fourteen times over in the process, makes him cling to his family name because he has earned it, and he is the first Togami heir who was the baby of their generation. When the Mastermind tells him what became of his family, he shuts down. He refuses to believe it. The Togami family is not so weak that they could ever be brought down. And if they have been...what does that mean for him? It's rather telling about his character that the news of his family name being brought to ruin is what threatens to plunge him into despair, and that the hope that brings him out of it is the conviction to raise it up again himself and make the Togami name even greater than it was before.
In a place like Johto, as well as in the post-Despair apocalypse that he would have gone into were his canon point allowed to continue, where his family name means a whole crap ton of nothing anymore and he's starting off with even less, the determination to make himself known will be paramount. He will be determined to show that he is born from greatness, particularly since the only people who know of the former greatness of his name are his classmates, and to make the Togami name as known in Johto as it was in the pre-Despair world. This will mean that he'll be the insufferable lovechild of Gary Oak and Draco Malfoy, and for that I apologize profusely in advance. Now that he's been forced to start over from the beginning, he's going to be even more irritating for a while right out of the gate because he has to recover lost ground and make up for lost time.
Togami is fiercely competitive, as well as competent and intelligent, which is a dangerous combination tempered only by the fact that he's not as good at understanding people's motivations as he would like to believe. When the rules of the murder school are laid out, he immediately distances himself from his classmates and tells them in basically as many words that if the School Life of Mutual Killing is a game, then it is a game that he is going to win. While conjecture, it is well-founded conjecture that he applied the same strategy when the rules were laid out to the "game" that determined who would become the heir to the Togami family, and as a result the exact same attitude and strategy will also apply upon arrival in Johto, once he realizes that he is in yet another game.
Tl;dr: He's gonna be the very best. Like no one ever was. Because he's Togami Byakuya, and he'll make sure you don't forget it, pleb.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+Competent – from the second chapter forward, Togami steps into a role as the foil and counterpoint to Kirigiri, also guiding Naegi's investigations and actions. While not to Kirigiri's level, (which is an unfair comparison given her SHSL title) Togami does gather his own fair share of important evidence, as well as helping Naegi over the course of the latter's investigations. He takes charge of the investigations in his own way, such as in chapter 3, when he splits the group to pursue the mysterious Justice Robo.
+Intelligent – Aside from everything above, Togami also is well-educated. He speaks and reads French fluently (and probably English, as well), and has had access to the Togami family's extensive library, containing tomes both confidential and highly dangerous. His intelligence makes him genre-savvy, although usually he ends up being wrong genre-savvy. Throughout the first three chapters, he constantly reminds the others not to let their own personal view of the motives make them complacent and off their guard – just because they wouldn't kill to find out the secret behind the videotape, or keep their secret from being revealed, or gain the monetary prize, doesn't mean someone else wouldn't. Of course, the game itself is about trusting your friends, so he's wrong, but it's also a case of Strawman has a point – which is usually the case when he offers a dissenting opinion.
+Adaptable – all things considered, Togami takes to the school life of mutual killing rather well. He immediately holes himself up in the library as soon as it is made available, and he begins devouring the literature and documents within to inspire him. That said, he is perhaps the most surprising out of the surviving final six (Syo notwithstanding), given that he also manages to not become a victim, nor ever actually attempts to kill someone. When the Mastermind tells him what has become of the Togami Conglomerate, and Naegi bolsters his hope, he rallies with the thought that even if the Mastermind was telling the truth, he can and will pull the Togami name out from the wreckage of the apocalypse and restore it to its former glory – even greater, in fact, than it was before.
+/-Cunning/Cutthroat – Togami backstabbed his 14 older siblings to become the sole heir to the Togami family – a feat that no youngest sibling had accomplished in the history of this rather unorthodox alternative to primogeniture. He also has played the stock market to the point where he has a personal (not an inherited/family) fund of 400 billion yen. From the beginning of the murder school game, he unabashedly tells his classmates that if only one of them can graduate, then it will be him. Not only does he believe that he destined for greatness, by virtue of his name alone, but he is willing to back it up.
+/-Emotional manipulativeness – While technically considered one of his strengths, since it is something that he's good at, it's not a good thing, so it goes in both categories. Togami knows how to play people. This is most obvious with Fukawa/Syo, who trails behind him like a well-trained pet, despite how much abuse he heaps on her. Sometimes, however, this backfires, such as when he incites Asahina into slugging him in the face Hermione-style.
-Lack of empathy – Hoo boy, this is a big one. While definitely not (always) to sociopathic levels, Togami shows a profound inability to relate to others. He can cerebrally say that it's impossible to know what will set someone off, but then he does and says things that get him punched in the face, or just outright fails to understand why someone would rather commit suicide than watch her friends continue fighting. There's also the corpse-manhandling. The reason I say that this isn't entirely sociopathic, is because it's less something inherent and more something as a result of his breeding. He earned his position as the heir to the Togami family by fighting his 14 older siblings out of the picture. He outright says that they were exiled from the family, although he considers them dead since it's basically the same thing. If he had been empathetic, he would never have been able to cut out his own siblings like that – but, at the same time, as the end of the game shows, he's starting to learn.
-Egotistical/Condescending – boy howdy is he. He talks down to all of the characters who he considers "beneath him" (spoiler, that's everyone), but especially Naegi, who doesn't even have a SHSL talent to recommend him. One of the main ways that his overall attitude is shown in the original Japanese is that, unlike some of the other characters, Togami doesn't use honorifics when referring to other students, male or female, by name. There's also the fact that at one point, he goes as far as to say to Naegi's face that sometimes he wonders what it feels like to have been born with absolutely no prospects or chances of bettering himself – and then, just to clarify, adds that Naegi is one such individual.
-Self-centered/Selfish – He manhandles the corpse of a fellow student and fingerpaints in their blood so that he wouldn't be bored during the trial of course he is selfish. He rarely enters into any arrangement or agrees to any condition (such as the Night Time rule) that he doesn't feel has an immediate benefit to himself. He agrees to turn on the Mastermind in the end of chapter 4 not because of the Power of Friendship
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Sableye (Sho – dropped back down to level 30)
Password: Caramel Popcorn
Samples
First Person Sample:
[The boy on the 'Gear hasn't been seen in a couple of months now, but he still remembers how to use it. He also seems to have developed an unrelated tic beneath his left eye. Despite this, he looks as well put together as always, with a grinning Sableye butting her head up against the underside of his chin every so often, clearly the mark of a pokemon who missed her trainer greatly. For his part, he's ignoring her affections, which is relatively unsurprising to those who know him.
The scenery behind him is New Bark Town, and he does not seem happy to be there.]
Whoever is in possession of the rest of my pokemon has one hour to return them to me. There are five altogether. Four of them, two Persians, a Dragonite, and a Milotic, should have "Byakuya Togami" as their Original Trainer. The fifth is a Rapidash who answers to Vampa.
Don't waste my time by asking idiotic questions or attempting to hold them for ransom, I don't respond kindly to threats and blackmail. If I see that they have been well taken care of, I will consider a small reimbursement.
[He pauses, and it's then that it becomes noticeable that he seems visibly unsettled, however curt his tone.]
If Naegi or Kirigiri is still here, it would behove them to respond with haste as well. That is all.
[Without so much as a 'thank you for your time,' the irritated young man cuts off the feed.]
Third Person Sample: (immediately follows the network sample)
Togami stood up abruptly, depositing Sho on the ground as he began pacing back and forth, running his fingernails across his lips and resisting the urge to bite them. It was a childhood bad habit that came through as an unconscious gesture when he was under duress, and when he was stressed enough to actually press his index finger against his bottom row of teeth, sometimes he could still taste and smell the turpentine.
He had spent months, months in this place before, in this disgustingly saccharine Saturday morning utopia, and had somehow returned to the exact same moment that he remembered leaving, as if he had never been in this place at all. In the blinding white light of the Outside, as the iron door opened in front of them, before he could open his eyes and see what awaited them...
He woke up back in this place, with the memories of the months that he'd spent here before. And if the calendar on the Pokegear was to be trusted (which it was, he was fairly sure, given that it had always been trustworthy before), then he had been gone a little over a month. A little over a month had passed, in what he had experienced as less than a second.
He was going insane. He had to be. That was the only explanation for this. He would say he had dreamt it, but if that were the case then he had woken up to having been robbed. After all, when he had last been here, he had fallen asleep in his bed in Goldenrod, with all six of his team within arm's reach. He woke up with a nearly empty bank account, back where he started, and Sho's levels had been cut by more than half.
"Saaaab?" Sho hissed from her spot gliding along in the shadow at his heel. Her shadowy claws dug into his pantleg, but left no mark. He flinched anyway, and looked down at her with an icy blue stare, hand falling from his mouth and balling into a fist at his side.
The near breaking point came when he saw what looked like concern flash across her gemstone eyes, opaque and reflecting back at him how she saw him. The eyes were the mirrors to the soul, and in his case his starter's eyes were mirrors into his own soul, not hers. Cerebrally, he knew that he posed no threat to her whatsoever. She phased in and out of his shadow happily enough that he knew that even if he was base enough to strike her, it would have no effect.
But the image that he saw reflected back at him from her mirror-like diamond eyes made him realize that he was allowing his emotions to get the better of him. He looked like a skyscraper in silhouette, towering over her, his fringe casting his face in shadow to hide his expression. He forced himself to inhale and exhale, relaxing his tensed shoulders all the way down to his fingers, before he tipped his chin up and looked down at her over the bridge of his nose.
"We have a lot of training to do to catch up, Sho. We may as well start there, while we wait for the others." He kept his tone cold and imperious, but when he addressed her she brightened anyway.
"Sable!" Sho exclaimed cheerfully, slipping into Togami's shadow and popping up in a patch of grass a few yards ahead of him. "Sableye!" He shook his head fondly and strode forward to meet her, fighting to keep a smile off of his lips.
"Show me that you haven't forgotten anything, since it seems that you haven't changed a bit while I was away."