[Barnaby takes the glass bead cautiously, like he's sceptical of whatever it's about to show him. Nonetheless, he looks.
He sees Sternbild, the three-level city with its towering skyscrapers, and the huge statues of mythical beasts that dominate the skyline for each of the major corporations. The statue of the Goddess of Justice stands atop the tallest skyscraper in the centre of them all, a benevolent smile on her face. When he homes in, people are just going about their daily lives. No disasters, no world ending, none of the heroes needing to scramble to save them all before it's too late. It's peaceful.
He realises in that moment he doesn't have anyone close to him left alive he can check on, and he feels vaguely pathetic. It had made his world so easy to leave behind, to accept that it was gone.
But a spiteful part of him remembers Maverick had tried to isolate him. Then the Regent had done the same, by taking away his memories, to strip away his will to save anyone at all. He remembers the weight of the pendant around his neck, and decides to check on the children at the orphanage on the outskirts of the city. They're playing together and running in the sunshine without a care in the world, some even carrying toys he remembers giving them months ago. (An eternity ago, it feels like.)
He steels himself next and moves onto Justice Tower, to his old coworkers. Everything's normal there too, everyone in the training facilities: Fire Emblem doing stretches with Blue Rose and Dragon Kid, Sky High on the treadmill, Rock Bison on weights. And one man in a green and white shirt, stopping to take a drink and talking to Origami Cyclone. He's an older man, and he has, to put it impolitely, the dumbest beard Barnaby's ever seen, which probably makes him the person Gen had talked about.
Barnaby's trying to look at the hero posters on the wall of the training room for some confirmation of what he's seeing, hoping it might jog some kind of memory, but the light fades in the bead before he can. He curses under his breath in frustration and looks up at Cyrus.]
no subject
He sees Sternbild, the three-level city with its towering skyscrapers, and the huge statues of mythical beasts that dominate the skyline for each of the major corporations. The statue of the Goddess of Justice stands atop the tallest skyscraper in the centre of them all, a benevolent smile on her face. When he homes in, people are just going about their daily lives. No disasters, no world ending, none of the heroes needing to scramble to save them all before it's too late. It's peaceful.
He realises in that moment he doesn't have anyone close to him left alive he can check on, and he feels vaguely pathetic. It had made his world so easy to leave behind, to accept that it was gone.
But a spiteful part of him remembers Maverick had tried to isolate him. Then the Regent had done the same, by taking away his memories, to strip away his will to save anyone at all. He remembers the weight of the pendant around his neck, and decides to check on the children at the orphanage on the outskirts of the city. They're playing together and running in the sunshine without a care in the world, some even carrying toys he remembers giving them months ago. (An eternity ago, it feels like.)
He steels himself next and moves onto Justice Tower, to his old coworkers. Everything's normal there too, everyone in the training facilities: Fire Emblem doing stretches with Blue Rose and Dragon Kid, Sky High on the treadmill, Rock Bison on weights. And one man in a green and white shirt, stopping to take a drink and talking to Origami Cyclone. He's an older man, and he has, to put it impolitely, the dumbest beard Barnaby's ever seen, which probably makes him the person Gen had talked about.
Barnaby's trying to look at the hero posters on the wall of the training room for some confirmation of what he's seeing, hoping it might jog some kind of memory, but the light fades in the bead before he can. He curses under his breath in frustration and looks up at Cyrus.]
Can you make it go back to what I was seeing?