raisetheearth | Entry #A-3: "Ask" [Video] [Shepherd's Haven]

[It's getting easier to tell Ryuzaki and Lazarus apart; the latter looks significantly thinner and more unhealthy than the former, and instead of breaking into easy smirks, his face is placid and serious. The two share a Number, but little else.]

Regarding recent events, Saretha has given these aspects thought and is asking you to do the same. Please pay attention to what she has to say, whether or not you've missed these events in real time. It's all important.

I'm one of the people who was contacted by the informant from Thunder Corp, and I know of some others, but there's a question I'm very interested in at this time. I want to know if anyone was both contacted by this informant and approached by a representative from the company, and if there are any Numbered currently active on the Network who experienced neither of these things.

If you're not comfortable sharing this information on the Network, especially considering that I have a particularly destructive and untrustworthy doppelganger who can see even my private network messages and just took a job with someone I have a very bad feeling about, I can meet with you in person to discuss this regardless of your location, or speak with you on a private line. If you've agreed to help Thunder Corp, I'm not not here to judge harshly... at this point, I just want the data I've specified, and your answer one way or the other is something you're welcome to keep to yourself.

To reiterate: Were you contacted by Thunder Corp's rogue informant, or a recruiter? Were you contacted by both? Were you contacted by neither?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The question of whether he's made the right decision or not is going to plague Nathan for a while. Whether he should have argued harder against Tony's plan . . . In the end, it had come down to the idea that if he argued too much, Tony might try to avoid him and cut off the only potential lifeline he has if things go bad.]

I've looked into it since Ryuzaki has made himself known. [Because don't go thinking he didn't get paranoid about that.] I have not found anything either way, so I suppose I cannot say anything one hundred percent definitive. He theoretically has the skills to stay under the radar, but from what I observed of him, he hardly has such an inclination.

[He'd never so much as spoken to his double, but he'd observed him on the network. All signs point to him being very social, and frankly rather dimwitted. Skilled in areas that Nathan is skilled in, but lacking his patience and caution. Even if he hasn't shown up on the network, Nathan likes to think his research would have turned up something on him.]

He does seem to take a great deal of pride in such a thing. [Hence Nathan's decision to only observe, not engage. If given the proper opportunity, he has little doubt that Ryuzaki would be absolutely horrible to him.]

[Lazarus cringes visibly at the use of the name. He knows it from his own echoes, and is well aware that Ryuzaki's only using it to mock him.]

Do you think he's dead? That's probably the only way to be 100% safe from him, if he has the same sabotaging behavior as... Ryuzaki. Hopefully he's not motivated to do so, but...

[Hope seems foolish these days. At least naive.]

It's a good thing that you never talk to him when he posts about our misfortunes. You could probably stand up for yourself if you needed to, but... I wouldn't want you to have to. It's not pleasant. I wish I could say that he was probably all talk and wouldn't actually hurt anyone, but he drugged me and tried to smother me once, and that was after he hired Tony's doppelganger to lock me in a closet for two days and seduce the person I was seeing at the time. He's all about real damage.

[He'd used the name both because Lazarus had used it earlier in the conversation, and because it is more concise. But seeing that reaction, Nathan makes a mental note to not do it again.]

He was piloting one of the mobile suits during the invasion. The last reports we got before fleeing indicated they were all still on the field. After that, we did not have the resources to track things as well as we had at Willow Ridge . . . [A soft sigh, remembering that. It had been a terrifying time. And he finds himself rather uncomfortable at the thought of someone with his appearance and even his Echoes being dead. Just a half a moment of equation, of putting himself in that place.]

As to his behaviour . . . while he showed no disapproval toward yours, and wound up causing confusion at the beginning, nothing indicated any inclination toward deliberate sabotage. [Didn't care if anyone got hurt, but also never set out to hurt anyone, essentially.

[He resists the urge to wind his fingers back into his hair, hearing that. Some of it he'd known already -- the bit about being locked in the closet by Tony's double -- but the rest is new to him, and very unsettling.] I did speak to him briefly when he first reappeared, but I ended that quickly. I have no desire to know what unpleasant things he has to say to me. So long as I do not have to engage him, I will not.

[The problem comes if Nathan ever has business outside of Shepherd's Haven and encounters him in person.]

[Concise it is, but that doesn't for a moment mean that it's any more comfortable. Lazarus hates thinking about his doppelganger creeping into aspects of his Other and wearing them like a skinned victim, partly in parody and partly to slyly insist that he's just better at being L than Lazarus ever could be.]

It's true. Our resources were downgraded significantly and we were at a disadvantage when it came to keeping track of certain people.

[He seems somewhat reassured at the seeming apathy Nathan's doppel had toward others, but... still.]

He's currently "dating" someone he's clearly just toying with, and his new employer doesn't seem to much care what he does with his free time. That alone raises a ton of red flags. Clearly he's not just been hired for data entry.

[Yes, he'd seen some of that on the network, with that poor naive boy. Nathan just frankly has no idea what to even do with that. How does one approach such a problem?]

It does. And that is without factoring in that I doubt he would be content doing a job that even I found boring. [That had actually been his job when he'd first become Numbered.]

[One approaches it delicately, with a sensitive touch and an ability to understand human emotion with boundless empathy. In other words, it's something neither Lazarus or Nathan should really mess with expecting good results.]

It is not a job known for being tremendously stimulating, and stimulation is something that he craves in excess.

[Which is why for as bad as he feels for that boy, Nathan has done nothing to intervene. He simply cannot envision managing anything else than failing spectacularly and probably making things worse somehow.]

When did you lean of this . . . employment opportunity of his? The post that marked his re-emergence?

[Lazarus pinches the bridge of his nose.]

That's the one, at the end of August. I could see the initial contact but they took it to truly private means very quickly. I tried to step in and speak with the would-be employer myself, but that didn't go well.

Entry #A-3: "Ask" [Video] [Shepherd's Haven]

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