Hey.

Uh.

Sorry.

About this.

I just.

Uh.

Do you mind if we.

Uh.

Zoom out?

A little bit?

Here.

I'll set the scene for you.

You should.

Uh.

Trust me.

We don't.

Uh.

Want to get.

Mm.

Any closer.

Than this.

This is.

Uh.

Awkward.

Why do I get stuck with all the hard jobs?

'Cuz I'm Erika Fullbright, genius detective.

Obvs.

But that's not.

Ok look.

Never mind.

Are we past it yet?

Ok.

Right. Well. Anyway. What I need for you to understand. That is, like, what I'm here to try and explain is...

'Cuz Eclair can't right now. She is completely shut off, ok? As far as you and I are concerned she basically doesn't exist right now, except as an inert shell that'll reboot after she's had enough time to cool some of her mental systems down from Screaming Fire. Not that she'll be [i]well[/i], I shouldn't imagine. The farthest thing from it, really. But she'll exist and she'll be able to tell you how she's feeling again. 

It'll suck.

I'm here to save you from that. 

Well, a bit.

Oh, I called her 'inert' just now, didn't I? Well that's not really accurate. I mean mentally it is, there are no thoughts inside that beautiful head of hers. None that you'd recognize, at least. But she is, um. Moving? As a point of fact she is actively thrashing in the grip of one Yuki Edogawa, and I will be very surprised if the heroine of Crevas doesn't get punched in the face several times in the process of holding the so-called "Hero of Vespergift" down. 

Which, it's very important that she does that! Vitally important, really. Eclair will stand up under her own power if anyone lets her. See, she's not... ok let's just wind back to my original point. It isn't the smoke that's doing this. Sensory overload and blah blah blah. She reacts very negatively to it, right? You'd think that'd mean it's disabling, right? But you'd be wrong. It's really a lot sadder than. 

Uh.

Than that.

Mm. Well. Unexpected noises, scents, all that delightful [i]information[/i] that filters in too fast to make sense of without proper tools... what it does is it. Hm. What's the polite way to put this? Let's just go ahead and say it "occupies" her higher functions. If you could read her thoughts, and if you could make anything out through all the [i]noise[/i] you'd pick out, you'd notice a lot of very rapid observational points about everything around her. Absolutely everything, down to the last grain of dust (sorry little Edogawa, for a first-time Maid you did great!).

But when all of that is tied up in processing without any, like, direction to it? She becomes ruled by all of her lower functions. Her very freaked out lower functions that see a world full of threats and just want to get the hell out. So if she stands up, that's the end. Everybody here will find out what the true form of her heartblade looks like and they'll have a lot of time to talk about how cool it was while they're recovering from having the snot beaten out of them by an Avel who is at the absolute worst a top five combatant across the whole of Thellamie. 

So it's not rebuke of her arrogance that brought her here, either. But anyway, just yeah. She needs to be held onto right now. Do that and she'll writhe (and punch!) and she'll howl (and punch!) and she might even use a word or six, and yes they will be some of the most hateful and hurtful things a body can say, but they're not [i]real[/i]. They don't come from inside her, 'cuz like I already said she doesn't exist right now. 

But yeah, arrogance.

Or rather.

Uh.

Not. Yeah. How about I just cut to the chase while you lot deal with... all of... [i]this.[/i] I'm really sorry, by the way. If the shoe was on the other foot I promise I'd be a lot sweeter about it than she is. The killer point here is that Eclair made a mistake. Several of them, in a row. She rushed her assumptions against the insistence of her own processes and went for the kill because, I dunno, I guess she thought she could just hands diff her way out of needing to be a detective? 

So she got out-thought. And out-planned. And of course she did? She didn't think! She didn't plan! She rushed into a trap knowing that it was one and didn't even prepare a method of information gathering to come out ahead in the long term! Eclair just [i]lost[/i]. And she is [i]not[/i] a humble person, ok? She can't handle that at aaaaallllll. 

It's a dereliction of duty, is what it is. She'll blame all kinds of things and people, when she wakes up. Yuki, for one. Mayzie, for another. The Order, the Civils, maybe she'll wrap this back around to hating Vespergift again, I couldn't tell you from here. But what's really going to kill her after that venom dissipates is that she can't hack it anymore. Timtam wants this more than she does. And what does that even mean for the 'Investigative Knight of the Aurora'?

...Ok. Ok ok ok ok, I feel really super bad about sticking my nose in here like this and then dumping all of this depressing nonsense at your feet. It's not like I'm going to help you clean it up, is it? I'm a detective. I find things, that's my job. Cleaning them is someone else's responsibility. And that's really the problem Eclair is going to have to solve in the end, don't you think? But no, I feel just awful leaving it all like this. So I'm going to tell you [i]ooooooonnne[/i] secret. 

There's a word I'd like you to remember, when it all looks bleak and [Hopeless]. It's an almost uselessly specific word, which I think is kind of nice because the meaning of it is basically to clear up or shed a light on something obscure. Something that isn't easily understood, you see. I don't think anyone in Thellamie has ever been more perfectly named in the history of existence. And this is your hint, ok? Or your Hope maybe, if you prefer to think of it like that. If you say it out loud, it goes like this: 

[i]Éclaircissement.[/i]