florida man, displaced

Okaaaaayyy my everything hurts after working until around 2am to finish colouring but lets talk about these bozos

immediately after the last page the two are interrogating getting to know each other while verso is taking them to the manor (i'm wanting to make a small comic about them at the manor and the curator's reaction) but neither of them trusts the other.

verso is still trying to understand how gustave even exists and who made him and most importantly, to what end? did aline paint him because she already revived her dead son, why not her favourite dead apprentice right? did renoir paint him to be spiteful and petty while trapped under the monolith? neither of those make sense to be true, so what is he? does gustave know what he is, what the original knew about his original?

meanwhile, gustave had been working under the suspicion that verso is lying about not working with renoir anymore, especially so since he was basically kidnapping maelle (he thinks verso was going to "forcefully expel" her from the canvas). considering one of the core tenets he was literally made with was "protect alicia" this man was ready to throw down even though he would lose. i don't think that clea entirely believes that painted verso stepped away from painted renoirs mission cuz of her general disdain of the painted people of the canvas and I wouldn't be surprised if that sentiment bled into gustave when she made him, so he also has that going against him.

these two idiots are about to try and do 5d chess because they don't trust the other's true intentions, not realizing they are in fact wanting the same end goal lmao