( thinking about it critically... venera is really their only option. achamoth and greentruth are obviously out (if makoto even knows about greentruth, perhaps in name and rumor but not in detail), and though godsblood is technically more neutral ground, it would be far too uneven given that makoto has no familiarity with the place and it's all too likely that abel (and all manner of other members of the Pleroma) would have advantageous familiarity of it. it's not as though any of the shrines had bars, and he didn't know enough about any of the other smaller towns scattered about horos to feel them valid enough for suggestion.

and so... back to the scene of the crime, it seems. he can't decide if it's tasteless or ideal in its irony. both, perhaps. )

Venera, then. Could you make it there by tomorrow evening?

( with Inoseri passed and the contagion gone with it, the city should be on the slow road to recovery — given what they had all gone through, it seems almost a necessity that the bars would have their doors open. makoto sends abel the impression of a location; a modest and out-of-the-way tavern he had noticed in the brief window of time that he had been investigating, before the illness had started attacking the Aions in earnest. )

So long as you swear to me here and now that this is only a meeting between the two of us — that we will speak, and that's the end of it.

( were he still leashed to hell, both empowered and shackled by its laws, he would have demanded it in writing — a contract that would shatter abel body and soul if it was broken. without that ability, though... he has to bet on his gut instinct that the priest is unwilling to so brazenly lie. )