maskormenacelogs | [Open] We'll murder them amid laughter and merriment

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[Open] We'll murder them amid laughter and merriment

WHO: Dr. Crane and YOU.
WHERE: ImPort Clinic, Nonah.
WHEN: March 1st till March 6th.
WHAT: Crane's available to talk to about all your problems. He might be probing and prodding, and trying to perceive your fears at the same time. Or maybe you're just housewarming?
WARNINGS: Psychological discussions of a personal note.

It wasn't the most personal office Crane was sitting in, but it was one he knew people'd come to visit nonetheless. He'd deliberately chosen the decorations of his abode in as little time as possible. Clean and traditional, the office was sterile with few home comforts; there wasn't a single telling thing that could reveal something about himself.

The walls were charcoal grey, like the floor, which Crane had attempted to desharpen by having workers lay a muted cream carpet with a black border. He'd unceremoniously placed a yucca tree in the corner, next to a tanned suede couch. He'd had his chair moved opposite, in which he was currently reclining, with a green-upholstered antique footstool in the middle. The old table on his right had nothing on its surface - another hint at his drab nature. Or his fastidious cleanliness. His even older desk was shoved up against the far wall and supported just a lamp, a password-locked laptop and some notebooks. There was a single shelf of books compared to the wall-to-wall library back at his residence - with only a thin copy of The Murders in the Rue Morgue nestled deliberately between the spines. An eagle-eyed visitor would notice the discreprency, and in turn give him an opening into their psyche.

It was an uncomfortable place to be blocked in, with only Crane's blue eyes watching. He didn't particularily care - it was a place to learn and talk. Making it his home was illogical.

Someone rapping his door pricked his ears. He stopped reading and set his book on the table before rising to answer and lead his visitor in. The light from the ceiling-to-wall bay window was flooding the room and making it feel larger than the box it was.

"Thank you for coming."

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Crane nods to himself, and there's another hint of agreement when he sits straight and his knees press together. He adjusts his pad and pencil. He flicks through his notes. The noise is deliberately loud - but if she thinks it is, he makes no sign of knowing it.

He looks up, over his journal. What's interesting, and more than a little fascinating, is that the stories are consistent from world to world. His eyes flicker about in thought. Huge monsters - archetypes and forces - that cannot be stopped. Spreading fear, spreading panic, ending lives. Every day brings a piece of evidence that lends to the theory of unified consciousness.

There's a tiny hint of a smile that he can't hide. He keeps silent again for as long as possible. Just to play with the thought of the sudden, loud breaking of that emptiness when he begins to talk.

"There's something about monsters being unstoppable forces of nature, I suppose. Older civilizations used to blame them for earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. They were scared. They didn't know the cause, and thus ascrived divine rather than natural causes." He taps his pen on his journal. "Something your friend might or might not understand. What's her name?"

Natural disasters she had never quite understood or heard of properly until she arrived in this world. It sounds a bit odd, but stories like that were supposed to be cautionary if her memory serves her right.

Her brows pull close together, recalling one of the titans so-called "origin" stories from home.

"Annabeth Chase," she answers, her eyes falling to her knees. Then she carefully shakes her good arm to slide it out of her jacket's sleeve, gently wriggling out of it as to not aggravate the broken arm. She lets the dark-coloured jacket flop to the side. "There was a story back home about 'why' the titans appeared. They say humans used to fight with each other over a hundred years ago, but when the titans appeared, they put aside their differences because they had a common enemy."

But it's just a story. Humans are still fighting with one another and she's been thrown in the middle of it along with her friends. Jean and Armin have made it explicitly clear one day she may have to take someone's life in all this.

She looks back up at Crane with a sheepish smile.

"But the truth is, we don't really know a lot about titans."

Fascinating.

It's a thought Crane's been having often, since this young lady had engaged him in conversation. This world, its people, were giving him more knowledge and ideas than he could ever have thought possible. It was information to be cultivated; to be harvested. There were nuggets already inside people's minds and he was very interested in using the network to unearth their psychological secrets.

Maybe even sow a little panic. But that's for later.

"Yes. I suppose you know about monsters, though." He leans forward slightly, like he's taking a close look. "Nietzsche once said, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

He doesn't lean away, and continues gazing back.

"War is a perpetually constant and regular state of being. We fight for something that we love, love only what we can own, and covet to own our neighbor's resources. It's in human nature to go to war with ourselves. We're all rather petty creatures. Perhaps you know little about titans because you know little of monsters, Ms. Blouse."

Much of that goes past her head, abundantly clear by the confusion in her eyes. Still, Sasha struggles to understand those words, Crane once again striking a part of her that's been gnawed at for days since she was admitted to the hospital in Cocoa Beach.

"But human beings aren't monsters," she protests quietly. Then she takes a deep breath. "Is that what you're saying?"

She's seen humanity's ugly and twisted side. She saw it at the Citrus Tower bombing, the dead and charred bodies, when that Soviet spy trained his gun on her without hesitation, and when she and a large number of camp goers had been kidnapped and forced to fight for their survival, even against one another.

Each one, by someone else's perception, could be a testament to how monstrous humans can be. Not to Sasha... not yet, perhaps. She's seen too much good in this world and hers to believe something like that so easily.

"Maybe I don't know a lot about monsters... but I know about good."

Crane crosses a leg and steeples his fingers.

"Do you? Are you sure?"

It's a rebuke - a sharp, probing rebuke that's cutting but also helpful in its metaphysical point. Are humans as a species innately benevolent and kind? This is a question that is complex and still under debate. The answer certainly isn't known only to the teenage girl sitting in this clinic's therapy room.

He releases his cluster of thoughts and ideas, and fascination with her arrogance, by opening his journal and drawing them into form.

She isn't sure what it is about his question that forces her to shrink back momentarily. Maybe it's the tone or its phrasing that gets her, or maybe it's her realizing suddenly the room feels so much smaller than it really is.

"People who put their lives on the line for others, isn't that good?" she asks, but sounds certain enough in knowing the answer to that. "People could live their whole lives never looking out for one another, but many do. Like here," she quickly adds. "I've had my life saved plenty of times by people I didn't know, or people who did nice things because they could."

Her gaze trails to the window for a second.

"That should count, I think."

Crane adjusts his glasses; they reflect the light as he tips his head tips ever so slightly. His mind is filling with ideas about where to start picking her argument apart. There's something dangerous about believing in the kindness of strangers. Or perhaps everyone's looking out for themselves. He leans forward like he's about to give her a life-changing lesson.

"Hmm. Do you believe that?"

He firmly believed sometimes less was more. It was the most appropriate approach, sometimes. He couldn't miss how her gaze had shifted to the window. Classic avoidance. It was something directly challenged - noticed, even - by such a question.

This is starting to grow a tad awkward... and off the main subject. She doesn't want to discuss what feels to her to be personal matters, but now that it's come up she is somewhat curious to know why he's asking her that.

Sasha cants her head so she can look at Crane again, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards into a forced and sheepish smile.

"Um..." an airy laugh follows. "Of course! I don't know if I'd be here right now if it weren't for the goodness in people's hearts."

The forced smile. The minor embarrassment. Crane knows fake bravado when he sees it. He returns the smile, but it's returned with all his years of experience. He doesn't discount her effort totally - he was used to doing it at her age, in fact.

But it makes him question what she's seen to discover the need to learn such acting. He crosses his right leg and leans back, enjoying her company.

Clearly.

"I suppose that's the truth, for you. For me, the truth is you're here to discuss titans. Let's return to that, shall we?"

And clearly he had taken her airy laugh as her attempt at humour. His wasn't as airy as it was dry.

It's increasingly tempting to ask him a question in return, such as why he challenged her belief in the first place. She wonders if he believes mankind is inherently bad and what's driven him to that conclusion in the first place, or if he's a cynic by nature. It's not as if she hasn't met people like that before, but Crane and Sasha come from very different worlds; he hasn't grown up in a secluded culture where people half-expected to be eaten by a giant humanoid creature someday.

However, she bites back her tongue and nods. She'd much rather discuss titans than philosophy, mainly due to the fact Crane is unnervingly good at prodding her in ways she finds uncomfortable. She doesn't think it's intentional, oddly enough.

"Yes... um..." she squints, trying to remember where they left off. "Oh, well... aha, as I said, titans a mystery because it's difficult to study them. Their bodies disintegrate once you kill them."

Crane's emotions are still, mostly because he's had years of practice of hiding his excitement, his curiosity and... his need to explore the origins of fear. The designations of good and bad apply to other people, but they don't apply to him. He believes in logic and doesn't act senselessly. He believes mankind is created by fear - and it's fear that makes them tick. It's fear that makes people bad. It's fear that makes people what they are.

He waits a long time before replying, breathing in, letting it out, denoting something in his journal, using the silence to prod her in other ways than words. He thinks its a good tool to test patience - it's also a good way to keep people on their toes.

"I suppose that makes it difficult to learn anything to improve your situation," he says simply - finally breaking that silence. "Have you ever killed one? Personally"

She deflates a bit, her cheeks faintly red in colour now.

"Not... really." Which is embarrassing to admit, though it's the truth. She failed in Trost to take down one of the titans and needed Mikasa (and Annie) to rescue her.

Dauper had been different. She doesn't feel ashamed of that incident.

"If you don't strike their napes deep enough, they'll just regenerate." She makes a gesture to her own neck, sliding a finger across the back to indicate this particular method. "It has to be the nape."

It wasn't as detailed an answer as Crane was hoping to get. It was a small end of string that needed pulling, and he wanted the discovery he would make at its end worth the effort. He tilts his head a little.

"Fascinating," he says, repeating his earlier words. It was fascinating, really. If these titans served so many parallels with creatures of myth and fear, what was the force linking them together?

"That method severs the connection to the brain. But even if you cut the head off a living creature, there is still a reflex action. A creature may still bite and open its mouth."

She lowers her hand, shaking her head firmly.

"Not with titans. Once you strike the nape deep enough, they die instantly. They're not like animals in the forest." She knows what he means, having seen her prey in forests make reflexive actions when she had thought they were dead.

It's her turn to fall silent now, debating with herself whether or not she should bring up the existence of the titan shifters. Crane seems smart; he'll find out eventually, won't he? Or who knows, Annie may end up speaking with him. She's a lot more social here than she had been back home, which works to Sasha, Jean and Armin's disadvantage. Perhaps Sasha's been too quiet on the subject.

"There's different classifications of titans," she finally adds, a bit abrupt. "They vary from size, but there's other types... like the aberrant. I'm not sure why, but they don't really focus on eating humans. They just damage other things."

The relationship between Sasha's concept of titans and the myths of his world was fascinating, but Crane was feeling the urge to roll his sleeves up and get deeper into things. All it would take was some gentle encouragement and subtle probing.

He usually noticed when all it would take for someone to reveal themselves was simple information. And here it was, being offered on a plate. Knowledge. All for him. The thrill of discovery. It made him tilt his head, curiously.

"Such as?"

For now, he decided, he was going to take things slow and gentle.

Her brows furrow and she stops playing with her hand in her lap. Finally, there's a visible trace of irritation and disappointment in Sasha's features. It's fleeting, but it's there for a few seconds.

"There's probably a lot of other kinds of titans we don't know about. The walls back home are fifty meters and for one hundred years it kept the titans out of the cities. Then one day a titan big enough to look over it appeared."

Bertholdt, she's half-tempted to say.

"All space seems important in your world. Then along comes a monster like that, towering over everything," Crane says softly. He's jotting down again, and his gaze lifts briefly to meet Sasha's over the pad's edge. He lays down what he's doing - closes it in his lap before she can peek - and rests his hands atop.

Funny, it was. How Sasha's world seemed terrified of mythological figures dozens of meters tall - more, even! - and how he in turn was towered over by the Batman. It was almost fascinating, but there were some core differences. He reveled in fear. Delighted in it. The constant threat Batman posed thrilled him to his bones and made him feel alive.

These people seemed to want theirs to end. They lived in a state of constant chance - but as he saw it they were rejecting a chance for enlightenment. And maybe he just wanted to see them suffer for that ignorance.

"There's something terrifying about being reminded how big the world is. Is that the only one of such size?"

It's instinct to try and take a quick peek at whatever he's been scribbling into his notepad. She arches her neck, trying to be subtle about it, though the second he closes puts it down Sasha resumes proper seating as if she hadn't been nosing around seconds earlier.

"I hope so," she says quietly, but firmly. None of them could get close enough to its body to land a single strike. The heat alone was almost unbearable. Even now, she can still recall how harrowing the brief encounter had been.

She had never felt so small and powerless before.

"It's... it's not the only one of its kind, though." The emphasis on kind is deliberate. She looks at her arm, wrapped up tightly in its sling. "There's a human being inside it."

Crane's fingers itch to draw in his book once more. His mind keeps them still, flattens them, soothes them to rest on the journal as though he didn't feel that irritation at all. He raises them into a steeple and watches Sasha with calm interest.

If she could peek into his notepad, she would see a giant figure towering over a small one. It would be titan-sized and similar to what she'd described - but roughly drawn in ink with frantic, anxious energy. And the titan itself? Would have ink linking its arms to its sides, giving it the appearance of wings. Like a demon, perhaps - or perhaps just some sort of beast. It's described in the masculine, 'HIM' scrawled above it in sharp letters.

"Really?" It's a short word that leaves silence, he knows. But there's an honest curiosity in his voice - marred by the gravity of the fact a person was, technically, a living monster. "But then that's..."

It's a curious thing, his reaction. Of course, Sasha hasn't been so forthcoming with this information in months despite the fact Annie, Reiner, and Bertholdt outed themselves to the network. Not too long ago, someone had again, leaked information on Annie being a shifter and the deaths she was responsible for. Most of the other imPorts don't seem to take it seriously. She doesn't know why and it actually is beginning to frustrate her.

She isn't sure why she inadvertently protected them this way. A part of her believed at one point they could get along well enough in this world, far removed from the situation back home.

Her broken arm says otherwise.

"Titan shifter," she clarifies slowly. "I don't... understand really how that power works. All I do know is that there are people who can transform into titans with incredible power."

"Incredible, terrifying power," Crane says heavily. It's like he's repeating what he's thinking. The thought still intrigues him; he links it to the slip on the network, recalls he's talked to one of the shifters in question, and questions whether to contact that person in the future... Annie, was it?

"I can only imagine how that places you in a difficult position."

He's quite serious. Then again, he always takes his research seriously.

"Difficult?" she repeats slowly, surprised at first. The longer she mulls over it, the more Sasha realizes she hasn't quite figured out if it's the correct word for it at all. She ends up lazily rolling a shoulder, trying to shrug off the individual focus.

Because really, it isn't just her problem. It's her world's and perhaps if they're not cautious enough, it will be this world's problem next.

"It's just... complicated. I don't know why they would side with the titans when they've killed so many humans and taken our lands." She rubs her neck. "Or whatever their goal is. Ah... sorry, Doctor. I guess this is more confusing than informative."

Right now, Crane was ready to denote Sasha's final piece of information - the part that shifters, like those revealed on the network, had sided with the monsters and killed their fellow man. It was exactly the kind of secret he was looking for. The sort that could get inside someone's head. The sort that could push them to their limits. The sort that he could share.

He gives the book a final close - and makes a point of having it give a loud whoomf. He expels the rest of the silence by clearing his throat.

"No. I'm quite clear on what you attempted to say. Would you like to come another day? You could always contact me privately over the network, rather than come all this way."

"Oh! Um..."

As surprised as she is at Crane wrapping up their discussion, a wave of relief passes over her; she was beginning to feel somewhat cramped up in his office. She gets to her feet, a small fist pressed against her chest.

"Is that alright?" she asks, bending over quickly to snatch up her jacket. She slips one arm into the sleeve and then begins her most recent and daily struggle to get the other half of the jacket around the other shoulder. "I don't want to trouble you."

Crane waved his hand dismissively - not of Sasha's presence, but her worry he was anxious and unsettled. It's a gentle gesture deliberately choosen to expel her fear. Oh, the fear of offense was a wonderful thing - he'd be encouraging it in certain patients, those of whom he was certain and had spent a longer time with.

He does remain seated as she gatheres her things. Even enjoys her struggle a little, on the inside. He leans a little into the side of his chair to feel a bit more comfortable. His head shakes gently and he does seem to give a small, pleasant smile.

"Go on. Go," he says, taken on quite a paternal and pleasant tone of voice. "It's fine. Otherwise I wouldn't have chosen to make that offer, don't you think?"

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