April-May 2025 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

April-May 2025 TDM

Introduction

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This Test Drive meme is open to all.
Welcome to Folkmore's monthly Test Drive Meme! Please feel free to test drive any and all characters regardless of your intent to apply or whether you have an invite or not.

All TDMs are game canon and work like "mini-events". For new players and characters, you can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Current players are also allowed to have in-game characters post to the TDM so long as they mark their top levels ‘Current Character.’

TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.

Playing and interacting with the TDMs will allow characters to immediately obtain a canon item from home, especially weapons or other things they may have had on their person when they were pulled from their worlds! There will always be a prompt that provides some sort of "reward" to characters who complete certain tasks.

Current players are always encouraged to tag new people on the TDM!


🦊 New Star Children meet the Fox still in their worlds, and she brings them into the new realm of Folkmore. As you follow her, your body begins to change and new characteristics emerge. These may stay for a while, or perhaps they will hide away after. And during all of this, the Fox explains to you where you will be going: to Folkmore.

and then... you fall like a shooting star, falling to the land in a burst of starlight.


🦊 Experienced Star Children are already familiar with this time of the month. There are shooting stars all across the sky, and some fall to the land, which means the Fox has brought new arrivals. These newly arrived Star Children will face some tests, but Thirteen wants the more seasoned residents to participate as well.

Perhaps you follow the falling stars on your own, or perhaps the Fox simply teleports you there, but it appears you too will be part of this.

[ Prompt One ★ Prompt Two]

A Math-magical Season . ★

Content Warnings: Potential Monsters

With the onset of spring, even icy Wintermute is showing signs of new life. Dragons have been spotted in the mountains, the spirits will tell any Star Children who listen. Dragons have returned, and there's something very strange going on in a new tunnel that opened up on the slopes of the tallest peak… Just in time for new arrivals to shower down from the sky. Most of the newcomers land–smack!--in pillowy snow not far from the tunnel’s mouth, close enough to feel the warmer breezes that waft from it. It's as if the land itself is tendering an invitation for all to come and see a fantastical new sight.

And fantastical it is. Star Children who enter the tunnel quickly find themselves in a warm and breathing darkness that extends for a half-mile into mountain stone. The ceiling is low enough that very tall individuals might come perilously close to a bumped head, but otherwise the tunnel is wide and inviting, the floor smooth of all obstructions. Luminescent moss scrolls along the walls in patterns of sine waves and complex equations, leading on and on into the dark.

Then, abruptly, the tunnel opens into a cave so vast one might think they’ve stepped back outside, under a starry sky – except it's warmer by far than anywhere else in Wintermute and the stars overhead are arranged in oddly regular patterns. A thriving mathematical forest spreads out across the cavern’s floor, populated by strange and winsome spirits. There are decision trees with mysterious choices written at every branching, and outcomes glowing on each leaf. There are fractal flowers and vines with square roots. There are spirits shaped like Platonic solids and spirits whose proportions follow the golden ratio and spirits of every number or lemma or theorem one could imagine.

There are, also, dragons: large and little, colorful and drab, but every one of them friendly and every one of them deeply enthusiastic about mathematics. They have their own dragon convention centered in the heart of a great grove of perfectly symmetric trees. There they compare their hoards – of theorems, unsolvable problems, mathematical manuscripts, court mathematicians – and compete to make students of the arriving Star Children. Ever wanted to learn calculus from a giant fire-breathing lizard? Now you can! Or maybe you really can buy sixteen apples from one dragon and eat twelve before giving the remaining four to the one that posed the word problem in the first place – not normal behavior in the outside world, but in math it is.

Then there's the race course. An enterprising pair of dragons who gather differential equations (the short, fat one with a scarlet crest) and train-based word problems (the long skinny River Spirit) have set up a racing track in the sky, to show off practical uses for the math of time and distance. For the very low price of listening to a safety lecture, Star Children can run the course to their hearts’ content – using their own wings, or magic that turns THEM into dragons for the duration of the race. Racers will find any number of aerial obstacles, speed and altitude boosts, and strange but harmless phenomena to fly through as they compete with each other for copies of a cute (non-magical) dragon plush. His name is Euclid. He has a slide rule.

Like any self-respecting conference, this one also has MORE swag for the dedicated to collect. Star Children who stay to solve problems or listen to lectures might receive any manner of neat dragon-branded trinkets: Tiny solar calculators in dragon shapes, Penrose tile sets made of dragon scale, dice carved from shed horns. None of them are magical but they're awfully neat and might look so cool on a mantle or desk back home.

No more than once, when getting a reward for winning a race or picking up gewgaws from a dragon presenter, Star Children will receive a mysterious package of papery shed dragonskin. Inside is an item from home – one that might be far larger than its wrappings.

Star Children of a less mathematical bent might wander the forest instead to see the sights: A river with standing waves, a giant chess knight making a tour, strange attractors that draw in tiny spirits. And of course, at the furthest edges of the cavern, there are monsters – though whether these strange half-imaginary beasts mean to eat Star Children or make them suffer through algebra homework is up to the luck of the draw.

• Wintermute now has a crazy math cavern!
• All the scenery, spirits, and monsters in it are based on different mathematical concepts and constructs – trees with square roots, three-dimensional-polygon spirits, and so on.
• The dragons have returned and they're holding a mathematical conference inside the math cavern.
• Star Children who stick around to listen to lectures and solve problems can get neat dragon conference trinkets.
• They can also have weirdly mathematical experiences right out of word problems: Buying seventeen cookies and eating eight, anyone?
• Or they can try the flying race course – either using their own wings or turning into a dragon.
• (Dragon transformation available only while participating in a race – sorry dragon fans.)
• There are also math monsters to fight – or get assigned homework by – around the edges of the cavern. Scary!

Seek Hardship, Teach Mercy . ★

Content Warnings: Forced Participation, Forced Relocation, Other dangers of your choice

Not all of Wintermute’s changes are so light-hearted as a mathematical cavern.

It happens, suddenly, to Star Children new and old – there’s a moment like a too-long blink as they’re stepping through a door, or a moment of drowsy inattention in a class. A moment of dislocation, a hypnagogic jerk, and suddenly they’re in another place – maybe a strange one, or one that’s strangely familiar.

One group of Star Children, the choosers, will find themselves brought up to a mountain high up in Wintermute – so high it seems they can see all the world of Folkmore right before their eyes, wherever they turn. The air is cold and crisp and clean, and the mountaintop so near the sky you might catch the faintest strains of the Fox’s voice as she escorts new Star Children across it. Each pair (or more) of Star Children who find themselves on this strange mountain are given a little time to talk before a voice interrupts:

“Do you think the Trials are wrong?”

The voice is crisp as the air, androgynous and sourceless. It waits for Star Children to answer, then continues:

“Your responses are noted. Trials are necessary to provide opposition needed for growth.

“The following experiments are meant to reveal Star Child ethical preferences. Please make your choices quickly and explain your reasoning for each. Data recorded during your session will be used for improvement purposes.”

The “following experiments” are a series of binary choices, on the fates of different groups of victims. Victims might be Star Children or spirits or a combination of the two. The choices come in several flavors:

• One large group of victims will suffer an inevitable Trial unless the Star Children agree to inflict the Trial on a smaller group.
• Star Children may choose between two different Trials to inflict upon the same group of victims.
• Or they may choose between two different groups of victims to inflict the same Trial upon.
• Sometimes, the above scenarios might be combined: different Trials for different victims, but all inevitable. Someone has to suffer.

Is it better that one Star Child be forced to blurt out her darkest secret before her best friend, or three spirits lose their homes? That four Star Children suffer a violent, painful – but temporary – death by monster, or one Star Child spends what feels like weeks (but is only hours) slowly drowning in regret? Five spirits be stepped on by Cat Bus through inaction, or one by deliberate action?

Choosers are presented with their choice, a crystal-clear vision of their victims, and a glowing timer in the air before their eyes. They have until the timer reaches zero to agree on which victims to afflict with a Trial – and if they cannot agree, or refuse to make a choice, their view goes ominously dark and the voice simply proceeds to the next experiment. (Did all the victims get it? Did none?) In choosing, they are permitted to watch their victims’ fates play out, and asked to explain why they chose as they did.

Victims get much less of an explanation of what’s happening to them. They simply appear in a location suitable for whatever Trial or doom is about to be inflicted on them. If they're going to be lost to Encantado’s enchantment, a gleaming facsimile of the river appears, not much bigger than a large room in dimensions. Slated to die in bed? They’ll be in a mock-up of their own room. Crushed by a trolley? They appear, pre-tied, on tracks that come from nothing and go to nothing, beneath a cloudless blue sky. “You have been chosen to participate in an important ethical experiment,” is all the voice says – and then they are left to their Trials, to succumb or fight as they will. Though there is a strong – but not irresistible – compulsion to simply give in…

While the experiments have all the trappings of a scientific exercise, Star Children who try might argue the experimenter into changing the experiment. Heroic Legends may ask to suffer a Trial in the place of the victims. Cruel Myths might suggest ways to make things worse. (Or vice versa.) Sound reasoning is more likely to get through than arguments from emotion, though there is sometimes merit to a winsome appeal.

Remarkably, Thoth herself is sometimes there with the choosers – a gleam of light off lenses in a shadow, a thin and thoughtful smile for a choice made or declined. “This isn't me,” is all she’ll explain, if asked.

“But it's fascinating, isn't it?”

• Star Children are swept up suddenly to Wintermute to participate in a series of “ethical experiments” meant to make the Trials “better”.
• Star Children who are choosers get to pick, trolley-problem-style, which group of victims suffers a Trial.
• They have limited time to pick and must agree on what happens to their victims.
• Penalties for failure to agree or choose are left ominously mysterious.
• They are encouraged to explain their reasoning.
• The experimenter can be argued into inflicting a Trial on a chooser instead, making the Trials worse, or otherwise changing the parameters of the experiment to be kinder/crueler.
• Star Children who are victims get random Trials inflicted on them. Fun!
• Star Children may be picked multiple times as choosers or victims. They can be picked for a different experimental role each time.
• Inflicted Trials may range from actually fun to merely embarrassing to horrifyingly fatal. A list of options pulled from past Trials and weather events is available here:

  1. Hunted as prey by an inescapable power that will trap and kill you if it finds you.
  2. Fighting a monster.
  3. Involuntary memshare.
  4. Environmental death: drowning, burning, sucked into a black hole.
  5. Must tell painful/uncomfortable truths to others. The closer the relationship, the more dire the revealed truth.
  6. Tied to train tracks.
  7. Followed by mood weather.

• Players are encouraged to work with each other as choosers and victims – while the mysterious experimenter will not condone or enable communication between choosers and their victims, it's also not disabling the Relics or any other form of long-distance communication… Or you might just want to have fun inflicting woe on your close CR. No judgment!

Comments

[antimetabole]

Tempting as it might be to draw comparisons to Dante or Nero, it really is not quite the same thing. For all that Dante and Nero's eyes look like Vergil's physically, their spark remains something different and unique to them. Looking into V's eyes, it's unmistakably himself that he sees looking back even if the color is wrong.

"You've despaired that much," Vergil says flatly, as though he doesn't already know that. V did not give up. He continued forward. But he knew he was running out of time once he was in this state. Vergil glances away from V at the memory. No doubt V would share in the bluster, the claim that they were final words whether he succeeded or failed, but that was not it. The probability of failure was greater than it had been yet. V parted with so much to Nero because he believed them to be his dying words, not the last things that he might say that would ever matter. Perhaps some part of him still hoped he could plant a seed of...something. Some kind of affection or empathy in the boy he assumed to be his nephew rather than his son even if only to protect the life he'd fought so hard to piece together again. But it was a deathbed confession still even in spite of that. The final act of a desperate, dying fool.

"I do not know what I find more disappointing." Vergil raises his sharp gaze from the nearby flowers to V once more as he says, "That the fox spirit would take advantage of such vulnerability, or that you would allow for it. Were I not already aware of the outcome..."

This meeting would be of a very different nature. Vergil's fingers curl tight around the Yamato as his jaw likewise briefly tightens.

"What is it that you plan to do?"

[synchysis]

All too often, words have been all V has. Say the right thing to the right person and push others toward action, toward solving the problem. When pressed into a corner, not by an enemy but one of those people, words again. Words that must be enough but are inevitably inadequate, grasping for straws and life and resolution. No absolution for him and what he's done, he can live (or die) with that, but to solve it, to fix it. That's enough.

Enough, a funny thought when he has more time than ever before. Hours to do as he wants. More.

V meets Vergil's gaze without shying away. There's no hiding from himself, nor will he give Vergil the satisfaction. Vulnerability is another word for weakness, so Vergil is disappointed yet again in V's weakness. It repulses him too. The memory all too recent and sharp. V only regained his Familiars, and he had no energy to fight Malphas and not enough energy to flee. Death either way. Death if those remained the only options. Vergil demonstrates the outcome isn't his death, however, so something else happened. Someone happened. Someone intervened. That crackles in his mind and through his body.

"If you were not already aware of the outcome, you would not exist to be disappointed," V says, "You, before, would not recognize me for what I am." Vergil remains there as tense and uneasy as V. The movements are small, but V sees the tightness in his own jaw reflected at him. Vergil wouldn't recognize someone so weak and pathetic as V as being part of himself, save he remembers V, no matter the similarities in how they look and move and speak. He was too busy covering it up and not acknowledging its existence.

What does V plan to do? He wanted to live. He didn't want to die. As terrible as the condition of his body is, it hasn't gotten worse in the time he's been in this strange place. He truly has infinity for as long as he's here. Infinity without the qliphoth tree threatening the city, threatening the whole world. Infinity without a problem to solve beyond his own meager existence. It's an enormous question that could swallow him whole. It could crush him to oblivion. Instead, he straightens his spine ever so slightly. What he plans to do is no one's business but his own, but Vergil, it feels, is a part of that.

"What we've always done. Survive. Live."

[antimetabole]

In pride and an instinctive defensiveness towards his independence, Vergil lifts his chin at the use of the word "we've." He manages to stop himself, however, before he can spit any particular venom about the contributions of his humanity upon his survival until recently. Although unkind, it would not be an inaccurate or unfair thing to say. It just serves no real purpose to speak it aloud, and Vergil hates to waste his breath even upon himself. Vergil's superior look does not exactly soften, but he does scrutinize V. Fragmented and thus weaker than the whole, it seems to Vergil an odd decision to still possess a will to live.

"Even as a shade of your true self," he says, faintly. Truly, it is curiouser and curiouser. Then again, was it not the same will that the Yamato answered the call for all those years ago? Was it not the reason why he refused to yield the will of Mundus until he was broken to be barely a shell of himself? Did that same will not drive him to find the Yamato and conserve his strength enough that he might take it back? Vergil frowns, pacing over the pile of things V has already accumulated since arriving this garden. As he crouches down to inspect the items a little closer, he says, "I will not claim you cannot find a life worth living in this place, but neither will I claim to see the point in it for you."

He picks up one of the dice with his free hand, turning it over between his fingers. Vergil is quiet for a moment as he seemingly contemplates the die. In truth, he weighs out his options silently.

"Then again, I used to never see the point in you at all until a year ago." He closes his hand around the die and looks at V. "I won't try to deny your right to do as you will. You would not likely yield to me anyway. But allow me to be abundantly clear that I owe you nothing. You served your purpose and saved my life, but it is my life to live.

"Just as yours shall be your own."

[synchysis]

All his time as his own self, as a shade of his true self as that self puts it, V has scraped to survive, to live. When death's cold hand reached for weakness, strength found life. That life, if it were to continue for any length, always meant fusing himself with his other half to create a whole. With the whole before him, a possibility V never considered, he feels all the lesser, weaker, and separate, so that his future, his success, is another form of death. His death, as he's come to know himself. Under those terms, there is no future in which he lives, yet he would take this whole, even now, over dying and condemning his other half to his eventual demise as well. Better to smash himself to pieces to become whole and wholly someone else.

He gets what he wants, he knows it now, and he wants more. What a greedy creature he is.

V waits and looks again at the flower he holds while Vergil quiets with heavy thoughts. The flower looks wholly different, pieces spiraling together, whole but apart. It would take but a small tap, it feels, to flood the ground with petals until nothing is left. Would each petal prefer to be free in the wind or nestled in the comfortable bed of its neighbors and self? V feels aloft, ungrounded, and shaky. He sits still and doesn't move, but he cannot answer what point there is in finding a life save that he wants one. Does anyone need more? Does he need more than others, for what he is?

He smiles, ever so slightly, at Vergil's recognition in seeing his humanity as pointless until, he assumes, Vergil became whole. A year ago. A whole year. What is it like, Vergil, to live a year? V doesn't ask. He is but a thing, a man at most, who Vergil has no more use for and, it seems, no interest in. V is curious about Vergil's life and what he's done, whether he's had the opportunity to get to know Dante or Nero better, whether he's made other connections, and how he's faced his fears and weaknesses. All unanswered and unlikely to be answered.

Neither of them will yield, so they each have rights only to themselves and nothing of the other. He never dreamed to know what would come of his future. It's only crueler to remain ignorant when it's before him. Vergil need not ask anything of V, knowing it all already, so that card remains in Vergil's favor. He inclines his head in recognition.

"Glad as I am to know I succeed, I'm not here to sit on your shoulder and tell you what to do," V says, "You wouldn't listen, and I wouldn't be living."

They have their separate lives, Vergil whatever he has, V whatever he makes. They no longer walk the same path, yet V does not want to push Vergil wholly away. He's embraced himself too much for that. "You have your life. I have mine. Yet I would not be strangers, if you ever see a reason to accept that."

Not today, not tomorrow, but if Vergil wants to find him, knowing he's here, V is sure he can.

[antimetabole]

Vergil holds back a quip regarding the initial fate of Talking Cricket when it comes to offering unsolicited guidance when V makes mention of avoiding such a role in Vergil's life. And it feels odd to have held it back. It's the sort of thing he would not typically say aloud given most people do not have his fondness for literature enough to understand the reference. But it feels odd to enjoy it privately in this circumstance. Perhaps it feels odd because he is with the only person who could be guaranteed to appreciate it. Regardless, Vergil opts not to dwell upon it and considers V's offer instead.

"Hear the voice of the bard who present, past, and future sees," he says, opening his hand and allowing the die to fall back down amongst the rest of its set.

Even if it were Vergil's true desire to entirely avoid V, Vergil does not believe it would be possible. Regardless of what sort of life V leads either by choice or circumstance, their fates are intertwined with one another. There is no escaping that. And given how often it appears Thirteen enjoys toying with Vergil, it seems inevitable that their paths would cross amid some trial sooner rather than later. What joy it must bring to a fox spirit to know that she has the means to poke and prod at him with an aspect of himself. No doubt she'll think herself clever, or some aspect of her think he might have newfound understanding for her because of it.

Vergil rises back to his feet.

"You should know Dante and Nero are here. As is Trish."

[synchysis]

Vergil quotes Blake, and V wonders what holy word they have heard, that they might offer anyone, even each other. Yet they are the present and future, or past and present. Might a third show up to complete their holy trinity? Not Urizen, for he would do nothing but try to conquer the land, to whatever his ability, and V does not want to merge with him in this world, this land, when he already shall in theirs. There is no third. Whatever little he knows that this Vergil has done, he certainly understands the mistake he made and will not make it again, will not give forth another like V. It is for the best. Once is enough understanding.

Yet the quote is promising. It suggests there might be something there for them, and neither V's desire, nor his open palm, horrified Vergil so greatly to turn away from the guarded request. A presence, however light, in each other's lives. "Night is worn, and the morn rises from the slumberous mass."

V eyes what small treasures he's amassed, knowing likely none of them to interest Vergil. Certainly not the dice. Yet one overture made successfully is better than pushing himself too far. He knows that too well, so they stay littered around him, losing a little of their luster. The conversation nears its end, and as his life does not depend on it, V refrains from asking Vergil to stay, to share in some food that this cavern offers. A light touch.

His head tilts up at the names. Dante. Nero. Trish. His heart beats faster, though V expects little good to come of any of it. Trish has made herself quite clear, and neither Dante nor Nero knows— or knew? They must know now, if they know Vergil. That makes an awkward situation ever more delicate. V approached Dante, and Nero, as a stranger with a job, a request. Not as family or friend. V jerks a nod. "Thank you for letting me know."

He can plan accordingly, with both his anxiety and longing. Perhaps he should move to a more hidden portion of the park, where they are less likely to come across him by chance. So he can consider the best way to make himself known to them and to head off any tempers. Oh, not from Trish, but Dante and Nero he expects more reaction from. Already the wheels turn.

"I have no location upon which to call, but I may... acquire one." Even Dante had one, if one without power before V paid the broker. Surely he should too, should anyone wish to find him.

[antimetabole]

"If you possess the strength to travel beyond this cavern," Vergil says. There is nothing inherently mocking, nor judgmental in his tone, but there is not exactly an extension of help that follows beyond information. "I would recommend you choose another region than this. Nowhere in Folkmore is remotely as hostile as the Underworld or the wreckage caused by the Qliphoth, but Wintermute is hardly a place for those who cannot stand on their own."

Between the isolation and climate, Vergil cannot imagine V lasting particularly long in this region of Folkmore. He offers no suggestion for alternatives, however. Vergil knows his own preferences, but he still would not claim he knows what would be satisfactory to V. Or to what degree V may be willing to compromise on those preferences to what he pragmatically needs.

"I will make them aware of your presence to avoid misunderstandings." Not that Vergil thinks Dante and Nero would necessarily suspect Vergil of having done anything. Or, well, he hopes they wouldn't conclude such a thing. He is not in that place of desperation he had been in when he made the decision the first time. Vergil would like to believe the conclusion would be one of concern that something has happened to him rather than a choice he made. "What you do from there shall be between you and them as far as I'm concerned. I've no interest in interfering or mediating."

There's a small beat of silence before he looks at V again.

"Although there is one circumstance concerning the boy in which I will intervene. Nero's heart is too great and arguably too forgiving for his own good. He understands the reasons behind my actions and has forgiven me for my transgressions, including your own. I am certain you will find he is no more angry with you for your manipulation than he is with me for maiming him." Nero does not even appear to view what V did as particularly manipulative. He had his own reasons for wanting to involve himself even before the truth of his heritage was revealed, and that seems to be enough that Nero's only ever seen it as mutually scratching one another's backs. So, on that count, there was nothing to exactly forgive from Nero's perspective. But Vergil does not offer that level of absolution. That is a conversation for Nero and V to have, if they should ever have it in the first place. It also undermines the point he is making right now to call V's choices anything less than what they were intended to be regardless of Nero's perception of them. "However, if I should discover that you are using my child to your own ends again, I will make you reconsider the value of existence. Is that understood?"

That day Nero chose to forgive Vergil for the harm he caused, Vergil made a promise to his son that he would never harm Nero again for any reason, not even as a desperate act of self-preservation. It's a promise that Vergil has maintained since it was made even when placed in a circumstance where its violation would have been to his direct benefit. While he does not believe Nero would hold him accountable to choices V makes, Vergil still will not abide by any aspect of himself inflicting harm upon his dear child for any reason. As far as he's concerned, V is beholden to the same promise whether he likes it or not.

[synchysis]

When V went to Fortuna, he traveled in Morrison's helicopter each way. So far as travel went, it required extremely little of him. Yet when Dante failed and V forced Nero to leave, he stayed in Red Grave City rather than traveling with Nero back to Fortuna. Traveling to and fro exhausts him, and he needed every ounce of his energy. He likely cut it as close as he could without failing, without dying alone and apart. The point is, Vergil is right to doubt his ability to leave this region of his own accord. There was no mode of transportation where he landed. He walked to this cavern, and he's walked little of it since arriving, and still, he's exhausted. However, V is not alone. Even without Vergil's help, there are many many people in this cavern, and he only needs one of them to agree to help him. With so large a number, one will be the nit that carries him where he needs to go. Someone more easily swayed than he is. Where that is shall get looked into. So he remains confident that he will not die or wilt away stuck in this cavern until it buries him under the earth.

He expects that to be that, a parting of ways, the thematically appropriate continued separation of selves. Vergil lingers longer, and V waits for whatever he will say, not some overture between them but some line in the sand, some further boundary or threat. It is the only reason he would linger with someone of no more use to him—to prevent the expenditure of further unnecessary effort. Many fools would not understand, would not heed a warning from Vergil (far less likely from him), but as they know themselves and thus each other, V understands before Vergil says anything that whatever comes will be absolute, without forgiveness or margin for error. He's never liked excuses.

The conversation turns to Nero, and it's reasonable that Vergil is fond of the boy. Perhaps it even makes sense that he would be more protective of Nero than his own brother because capabilities aside, Dante is his brother and made his own way through the world same as Vergil, and Nero he would rather not face what he did, nor what Dante did. Had it not been necessary, V wouldn't have involved the boy. Dante proved V right, and V will not apologize to Vergil for involving Nero. Vergil's the one who tore off the boy's arm. V only used him to fix a problem Nero wanted to fix with minimal urging. So while he expects the threat to come, he's ready. He will never do such a thing without weighing Vergil's response against it. All well and good.

All that stands, yet V freezes when Vergil makes his threat. He jerks his head upward to stare at Vergil's face and read the truth across it that he hears in his voice. My child, Vergil says, and it says loud and clear that he speaks not as an uncle but as a father. What was it Griffon had said, that since Nero was clearly family, he came from either Dante or Vergil. The answer seemed obvious at the time. Dante— but it isn't Dante. It's Vergil. It's him. Either that memory was lost with Phantom or he didn't know. He didn't know. He wanted to tell Nero about him, there was no point in holding back when he was dying and Nero deserved that much truth, but Nero deserved more than V could have told him. To think, he might, he might have from Vergil's perspective, come clean while avoiding the most potent subject of all, for surely a child wished to know of his parents.

He feels the world slip around him, rearranging itself more strangely than the qliphoth tree. Yet that rearrangement is his, not Vergil's, nor does Vergil care to help him with it. He need V only to understand his meaning, less a threat than a reality. V says, "Sweet moans, dovelike sighs, chase not slumber from thy eyes."

Poetry may not please Vergil, but other words fail him and leave V only to borrow another's. As it is, only Vergil could get away with promises of violence and receive a positive response. After all that happened with Mundus, when that was not enough to change his mind, what harm remained that could mean anything to him? Should it happen, Vergil will move the heavens and the earth to find the answer, whatever it might be. There's no words to be said in between. V has no relationship with Nero to stand upon, and Vergil no reason ever to maim the boy again. V has no one for which to take such a stand. A problem of his own making and one he will not use Nero to solve. Fortunately, it does not call for a demon hunter.

He smiles, ever so slightly, that Vergil living his life goes so far as to stand as a bulwark between Nero and those who would use him in ways the boy cannot see. V made the right choice, and he can trust Vergil with his own life.

[antimetabole]

It almost touches upon something uncanny in hearing V use Blake's words instead of his own as his answer. It is something most would likely take to be facetious. Most likely they would be frustrated with such a response, especially after such promises of misery and violence should the promise Vergil made be violated in any measurable way. But Vergil knows that impulse well, knows that to some degree, the opposite would be true instead, and were they not such borrowed pretty words, it's unlikely V would be treating it with the importance it deserves. It's recognition of that impulse that feels almost unnerving to Vergil, in how quickly and easy it is to see himself in V. It seems a strange wonder to him in retrospect that Dante failed to piece together given how poor V's attempts ultimately were in hiding his identity. Then again, Dante had been too blinded by the mention of his name to likely attend all that much to V from that point forward. And it had been so long. Whatever idiosyncrasies of his brother he remembered, Dante likely couldn't recall as easily under those circumstances.

Vergil gives a slight nod of acknowledgment that V shall uphold at least that much of Vergil's promises to Nero. The rest... Well, Vergil doesn't know if V would be capable of it. There is a physical aspect to consider, of course, but Vergil's willingness to sacrifice it all for the sake of his child is a paternal love that V never came to experience for himself. Whatever affection developed for Nero was likely rooted in being allies in the same battles. It's not nearly the same. Especially when one considers the risks V was willing to take at the time were calculated to further his self-serving goals of reforming the half-devil that stands before him now. For the majority of it, Nero's survival was only as good as far as it served that purpose. Beyond that... Well, there was no ill-intent, but it was not V's responsibility then. And Vergil does not intend to make it his responsibility now. That is something Vergil has taken on for himself and himself alone. He will not speak for V on that matter.

The smile from V is slight, but Vergil does not know what to make of it. Tempted as he is to scrutinize or ask, he merely looks away again.

"You'll find us in Epiphany," he says, turning from V completely. "Nearly to Willow. Should you make it beyond this cavern and seek us out."

[synchysis]

A conversation unwanted but forces takes so much time to die, yet with nothing else to say plummets. V expects Vergil to walk away, whatever seeds V planted to sprout another day or die in the hard ground. He gets something, a small bounty in a few words. The Sparda family centered together, not Dante in Red Grave City and Nero in Fortuna, not Vergil apart from them, but all together. Trish he suspects comes and goes as she pleases. She is not, after all, their mommy but Dante's friend. They live together, and V can seek them out, even Vergil. Including himself in that, it's as open invitation as V will ever get.

He nods, his emotions held within even with Vergil facing away, and picks up the die Vergil examined and tossed. It's nothing, a mere thread between them. "I'll remember that, and I won't stay here forever."

The cavern. Possibly this land. What would kill him in an hour might take a week, a month, or even a blessedly long year in this place. No matter the words given, V doubts it will be a true eternity, a life as long as anyone might expect, tragedy and poor luck aside. Even if he remains the one on the far side of the window and simply sees what life they all live, there's worse fates. There's other people. Other lives. Their host promised a life where he could achieve his potential, not a family.

A long exhale. He should find the means to leave the cavern. There's more wonder outside it than within.

[antimetabole]

Much as Vergil feels the urge to be dismissive of that notion that V won't remain in the cavern, he keeps whatever comment he might make to himself. For one, it would be just senseless lashing out at one that bears no real responsibility for his presence in Folkmore beyond his consent. For another, would that not just be a form of self-doubt in the end? For as much as Vergil finds V's current state to be disgraceful if not outright repulsive, Vergil is never one to doubt himself. He's exerted his own will far beyond limits for him to so readily doubt V. Especially when he knows it was this exact crumbling flesh that ultimately saved him.

So, while Vergil cannot claim to predict when their paths should cross again, or if V will ever make an appearance at his home in Epiphany, he cannot say with confidence this is the last they will see of one another or that V will never leave the cavern.

Vergil glances over his shoulder at V. There is probably a degree to which Vergil should take responsibility for V, and he ought to be the one to offer to help V out of the cavern to the world beyond it. He made the decision, after all, to no longer banish and exile those parts of himself he once viewed as weak and useless. Why should that only apply on a more philosophical level when those parts are integrated with him and not in a tangible form with this living, breathing form? Vergil's frown deepens. There's much the two of them perhaps ought to discuss even now at this juncture. But Vergil, frankly, does not possess the patience for it now. This meeting alone has been agitating enough.

"Do not disappoint me."

He provides no clarification what he means by that statement. To do so would be a waste of time and breath when the one he's speaking to knows his mind as well as he does. V will either understand it immediately and implicitly, or with enough reflection gather the meaning. So, Vergil merely leaves it there before looking ahead and stepping away from V.

[synchysis]

It's foolish how immediately V feels the need to step up to those words. Not to disappoint Vergil, a more powerful and complete version of himself. V knows what Urizen thinks of him, that Vergil does not hold entirely the same opinion, but undoubtedly Vergil has higher standards than V does. He understands and values his weakness more, but he has not had to grovel and depend on others the way V has been forced to, not since he became whole. V will live and find something for himself. He was already resolved, but his will clasps ironclad.

That is why he packs up the belongings he's gathered in the cavern, what little of them, using the jacket as a bag to hold the rest. It slings over his shoulder, and V considers the people around him. One of them will help him, he's certain of it. The dragons are too distracted by math. They'd only rope him in. It's the people he'll use. To leave the cavern. To leave Wintermute. To make it another day.