2025-10-11: Mysteries
- Log: 2025-10-11 Mysteries
- Cast: Sadakazu Mori, Yanagi Nagisa
- Where: Moonlight Bridge, Tatsumi Port Island
- OOC Date: October 11, 2025
- IC Date: July 24, 2012
- Summary: While taking in the sights of Tartarus, Yanagi and Sadakazu cross paths on the Moonlight Bridge during the Dark Hour. They discuss the tower as well as the hour, mulling over their mysteries and making new realizations.
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
Moonlight, on the whole, always sounds so nice and pleasant - and right up until the Dark Hour comes around, it absolutely is.
The change finds Sadakazu already on the eponymous bridge when it happens. The clear lunar shine shifts to green like a lens was suddenly swapped on a projector. He can almost hear the click-clack of the celestial slide-change, can imagine the display going from a photo of a distant orb to the colossal, oppressive shape that dominates the sky. He doesn't really have to imagine it, but it's a bit of a distant comparison to what he actually sees. Maybe even the extraordinary needs a little change now and again, to the jaded mind of a teenage boy.
Sadakazu blinks a few times; looks up, then away. He immediately glances this way and that, and reaches into a jacket pocket and checking the pistol-shaped weight that rests comfortably within reach. After, he puts his back to a pedestrian railing, and turns to face the other thing floating in the sky...
"What are you," he wonders aloud. "What *are* you," he repeats, this time in English, then sucks on his teeth like he's comparing the taste of the syllables. He has eyes only for Tartarus, competing with the altered moon for defining feature of the skyline, and, uninterrupted, he'd stay there and contemplate it for as long as the Hour really stretched.
This isn't really the time or place for sightseeing, though, is it?
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
It's quiet during the Dark Hour. Shadows /can/ appear outside of Tartarus--it's frequent enough to merit staying inside, or at least staying on one's guard--but it's not the frequent occurrence it is in Tartarus, so if one's foolish and/or fearless enough, one can justify going out to see what the world's like in green light.
Twenty-year-old Yanagi is what's known as a Navigator, so she has the advantage of being able to tell where Shadows are and therefore how to avoid them. It's a nice trade-off for her frail, failing body. She lives in Tokyo, but Port Island is where the Tower of Ruin is, so she comes by every so often to observe it at midnight. There hasn't been a sign yet of one of those massive Shadows that have appeared here the past few months, but it's happened enough that it's worth it to her to keep an eye out.
She thus stands there on the walking path on the Moonlight Bridge, leaning on the railing with one hand and her walking cane with the other, to observe the outline of Tartarus knifing through the sky. To an onlooker, she might be a strange sight: a woman with long, wavy sunset-pink hair, a magical girl-esque dress with a skirt short in front and long in back, and reinforced thigh-high boots. Her Persona, Giselle hovers at her back, slowly spinning on one needle leg as tiny origami angels appear and vanish around her, bringing back information to disseminate to Yanagi before her.
"Nothing extraordinary tonight," she muses, head tilting to one side.
So then she chooses to focus on the boy nearby, who, like her, did not enter a coffin in the instant that the Dark Hour began. He at least wasn't swamped in blue fire for a Transmutation, though for Yanagi, that's perfectly natural; it's simply how she summons her Persona. She watches him watch Tartarus for a moment--hears him talk to himself, first in Japanese, then in English (not that she understands English)--and then smiles.
"Hello!" she calls to him, one hand rising in a friendly wave. "Would you like to come watch it together?" She turns back to face Tartarus. "It might be better to observe it from up close, but it's important to get different angles, too."
She doesn't explain what she means by that.
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
For somebody who is supposed to be ready for anything, Sadakazu really has a tendency to get stuck in his own head.
The boy on the bridge double-takes at a voice that isn't his own. His right hand vanishes underneath his jacket, and he half-turns, a nearly reflexive effort of will triggering his own summoning with the same reassuring ease with which he always does it. Visually, it's a mirrored motion to the sudden turn he made, but writ large: a section of his shadow, cast by green light, steps out of his silhouette and partially out of his body. One leg of a phantasmal soldier intersects with his body, where it fades to mist; above and on the other side, the tattered and foreign uniform and its enshrouding great coat gently ripples as its wearer hefts a truly over-engineered weapon only vaguely adjacent to a modern human's idea of a rifle.
Sadakazu stares at the odd woman sharing the bridge and the Hour with him. Freischutz gives the impression of sizing up Giselle, but shoulders the elaborate weapon, clutched in a skeletal grip. In the moment that passes, there's an unpleasant sensation that rolls out from the spot he stands. Did somebody just walk on Yanagi's grave? Did they go back for a second pass, even? A Navigator's senses don't tend to appreciate whatever that was.
Then it's gone. Huh.
"Uh -" Sadakazu is suddenly struck by the repeated warning from TV ads not to talk to strangers, but this time, place, and person all kind of add up to a stranger that wraps all the way back around to kind of non-threatening. "- yeah. Sure. Okay."
He starts down the path towards her. His Persona drifts a little behind him, following his eyes back up to the strange tower. "Do you know what it is?"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
That's a bad trait to have, especially during the Dark Hour--but it is him, and Yanagi does not criticize him for it. She simply continues to watch Sadakazu as he startles at her and summons his Persona. She then watches Freischutz with a perhaps unnatural calm, even when he hefts a massive rifle-esque weapon. Giselle, for her part, continues to spin in place like the ballerina princess she more or less is.
Each of them stand and look; then Sadakazu's Persona stands down, leaving only a momentary, deeply unpleasant sensation in his wake. Yanagi clutches her chest for a moment, face going pale--though that might be hard to tell with the lighting as it is. She sways, remaining upright thanks to the polished cane in her left hand, but soon all is well again. More or less.
"Hmmm," she murmurs, green eyes flicked down. Then she smiles over at Sadakazu as he and his Persona approach.
"An anomaly," she replies. "A place where Shadows gather--including unusually, especially powerful ones. Beyond that, no. I don't know how or why it came to be, either." She glances back at him. While her eyes remain on his face, a little origami angel materializes at his hip, right where he's keeping his airsoft gun in his jacket pocket--along with the SEES armband that's padding it in place. Then, twirling in place, it vanishes.
Her head tilts. "You're with SEES?" she wonders.
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
He isn't dead or apathetic yet. Maybe he'll live long enough to iron out some of those bad habits. That's the idea with teenagers, right? But given this kind of power...
Sadakazu gives her a slightly puzzled look, slowing in his step for just the one as she sways. Maybe it's something to do with the Dark Hour here, he thinks. Isn't it rude to ask? He's mulling over if he should even approach the subject. He looks back at her from the looming tower, dark eyes meeting her bright, and his puzzlement comes back for a completely different reason.
"Yeah, that's right." His eyes flick towards his pocket and his hand. That litttle thing that was there - "- magic eyes?" he asks, vaguely. After the fact, he pulls out the armband and adjusts the pocketed pistol, totally unlike any of the Evokers that the rest of SEES carries around. His looks like your average black semi-automatic from any show with cops that need to draw on criminals. An Evoker is a much more distinct.
He stops, a short distance away, and secures the band to his arm. It's a spot of color against a monochrome jacket. Sadakazu nods shortly, as if confirming to himself he's not skipping a step. "It's definitely full of Shadows," he confirms. "I keep thinking that maybe they missed something. That you need, uh -" He looks away, searchingly, and then hesitantly adds, "- perspective."
"You know SEES, but you're not..." He trails off. There's a lot of ways Sadakazu could end that sentence.
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Having a Persona theoretically means a greater self-awareness than most--it is another you, after all. But... how much does that apply to someone who had such a power yanked out of them without that process of self-actualization?
"Something like that," Yanagi says amiably, of magic eyes. At its core, it's true, after all. She looks from him to the pistol in his pocket. She's seen Evokers before, and this looks completely unlike them--more like an actual gun than a symbolic one. She tilts her head the other way, but doesn't move as he pulls the armband around his arm. It only makes sense that it isn't an Evoker; he didn't use it to summon his Persona, after all, unlike the others she's seen who have them.
She nods once when he muses on perspective. "Yes, that's why I'm here. I've been trying to look it over from different positions. Today is here." Her regard turns thoughtful. "And you wanted to see it by yourself? You don't feel like you have Navigational abilities." No, his Resonance speaks to something rather more... ominous. Whatever that might be.
She smiles. There are indeed a lot of ways he could end that sentence. She thus prompts, "Not what?"
The obvious conclusion is Not a member, but surely that's too obvious to mention. Unless... "Are you very new? You seem, hmmm... a little too out of sorts. But then, I suppose I don't know how SEES does things. We have only a brief acquaintance." Reiya hasn't gotten back to her yet.
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
Sadakazu will have all kinds of opinions on the differences in levels of awareness or degrees of self-actualization once he's got a better grasp of his own circumstances. There are layers of obfuscation at play that would lead to the imposition of a Dark Hour buddy system if anyone else even knew to ask about his... quirks.
"... a student," he finishes, a touch belatedly, a touch guardedly. Truly, he wasn't sure where he was going with that either. It seemed obvious, after he started it. "Everyone else I've met with a -" A quick look up, behind her; then, towards his shoulder. "- Persona - has been."
His eyes snap back to hers. He stares at her for a couple more seconds, then nods a little hesitantly. "I only moved back here a couple weeks ago. We went into the tower, and killed Shadows. But the Dark Hour was in the morning where I was, before. It being the middle of the night - and the tower - they're... very strange." Sadakazu's grasp of the language being slightly tenuous in places might explain why he keeps starting and stopping.
He looks back at Tartarus. "I think I'm strange," he tells her frankly. "But not like that." A Navigator? No. Ominous is a terrific word, though. His Persona keeps watch, and has a sense of tension to it. Periodically, the shadowed face, hidden under some kind of brimmed cap, twitches as if to look over its shoulder. Like it was being pursued.
"So I thought, maybe it would mean something, from out here," he finishes. "It's just a maze, inside, and nobody can tell me why."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Yanagi laughs, warm and friendly despite Sadakazu's guardedness. Yes, that was a more interesting answer. "You're right; I'm not! I'm twenty years old. An adult!" she declares with pride. A moment later, she tilts her head and amends, "Well, I suppose twenty isn't so old I couldn't be a student? I almost forgot that college students exist." She shuts her eyes and smiles anew. "But no! I am indeed not an adult. Certainly not a high school student. That was what you meant, right?"
After all, he looks to be about that age--and so too did just about everyone that night who wore a SEES armband. They had Gekkoukan uniforms on, at that...
But he says everyone else he's met with a Persona has been a student. Yanagi nods as she looks at him thoughtfully. "You've had limited experience, then," she notes. "That's okay. So have many of us." That's not even unique to SEES members--though if he's new to SEES too, that makes sense.
He talks about having moved 'back' here--and that the Dark Hour was in a different time where he was before. "Oh my!" She turns to face him fully. "Is that so? Where were you before? I had no idea it could be at a different time!" She nods vigorously. "Yes, they most certainly are. But from my perspective, the Dark Hour not being at midnight is what's strange. We're both strange to each other, aren't we? But that's exciting! That means we're both something new to the other!"
He agrees with his own strangeness, but that he's a different kind of strange. Yanagi laughs at that too. "I like that," she declares. "We should all be our own unique blend of strangeness." Maybe it would mean something from out here... She nods in thoughtful agreement. "I can't either, so I understand your curiosity. Sometimes things are the way they are and we never understand why, but that doesn't mean we must be content with ignorance."
She pauses to watch Sadakazu's Persona along with her own for a moment. It twitches, and there's a sense like... "Are you all right?" she wonders. "If you're concerned about Shadows, don't worry--there aren't any near us right now."
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
"I forgot college students exist, too," Sadakazu admits, after a second.
Then he laughs, after a second more. A measure of tension disappears. Sadakazu sticks his hands in his jacket pockets, nodding. "I didn't even know that anyone but me had a Persona, before I got on the plane," he admits. "It has been a relief. I was starting to think that maybe I was going crazy. Green lights and coffins in the streets nobody else could see -"
(Well, he's having a chat with a magical girl on an eerie bridge, so that's not off the table just yet, either.)
She turns, and he follows suit, blinking a little. Sadakazu lifts his left hand to brush a platinum bang more or less back into place. "Virginia," he says. "In the United States. It happened at 11 o'clock in the morning, every morning, ever since I realized I could do... this." He gestures with his free hand over his shoulder at the wary silhouette. "Mostly I used it as a break from class, or testing. The tower is only here, too; it's not over there."
"But new is nice," he agrees. "New and strange." There's a thoughtful pause. "Good strange," he decides, and might mean Yanagi, but is just nonspecific enough to make it tricky to tell. "I'm Sadakazu," he finally adds, and then, catching himself, appends, "Sadakazu Mori."
There's a beat. He exchanges what looks like a meaningful look with his Persona, which is a little unnecessary when it's also him. "You can tell? Well -" The figure shoulders its rifle again. Gearworks affixed alongside go click-clack tick-tack-tock a few times as it seems to more seriously take its ease. "- I'm fine. I just feel like - something is watching me, in here. At this hour. You know?"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
College is easy to forget about, when you exist as someone who never had any reasonable expectation of it happening. It's something adjacent to a miracle that Yanagi remembered at all. She and Sadakazu laugh together, and when he expects himself, she listens. She can see how it would be a relief, if he didn't know of anyone else who had a Persona.
'Virginia' means nothing to her, and if he hadn't added that it's in the United States, she would have asked where that country is. Even now, she assumes it's the name of a city rather than a state. What matters to her is that his Dark Hour took place on almost the exact opposite of the day. "How curious! I wonder why that is... And there wasn't a tower, either?" She looks back towards Tartarus. "It's unique here too, as far as I know. At least, there's nothing like it in Tokyo, Sumaru, or Mikage-cho. I wonder why here..."
She smiles either way when he agrees that new is nice and strange is good. Whether he means her or not, she doesn't mind--she takes it as a compliment. "I'm Yanagi Nagisa," she replies. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sadakazu."
That's also strange for a Japanese person--to skip straight to first name, no suffix. Given that Sadakazu is from the States, where that's typical, he may or may not notice.
"Hmmm... That is usual for this time," Yanagi muses. "Maybe you're even sensing me watching you from another angle." Even though both she and her Persona are right in front of him... but those little origami angels that disappear and reappear do so in all directions, at fairly significant distance--she wouldn't be able to observe Tartarus well otherwise.
"I don't mean you any harm," she adds, smiling, and adds again, "at the moment. But I think it's unlikely I'll mean you harm in the immediate future, either." She gestures at Tartarus. "Would you like to move to a new vantage point?"
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
No reasonable expectaton of it happening. A shared sentiment, but for very different reasons. But maybe this time, huh?
"Shadows, yes. Tower, no. I was going to go look elsewhere, in Tokyo, but if you say it's only here, well..." Sadakazu's eyes track back to the frustratingly mysterious shape in the distance for a moment. "...there must be something about this place."
He doesn't notice the name thing immediately, but it feels a little strange even still. After so many days of surnames and suffixes and trying not to trip over one or the other (with only a little wiggle room, given his situation), it actually feels strange to go back to what has long been the norm to him. It certainly serves to put him more at ease, though. He grins. "Likewise - Yanagi."
Sadakazu takes a half-step back - more like a long lean - and then cranes his head to look around, apparently for the origami angels. "Is that a... 'Navigational ability'? That's pretty cool. I just get ammo." He pulls his right hand out of his pocket for a second. What looks like a genuine silver bullet, gleaming unnaturally brightly in the green moonlight, sits between his fingers. He tosses it into the air and catches it, almost idly.
"I don't think there's any reason to mean any harm to anybody else with a Persona," he says, giving the air a bit of a funny look while he tries to puzzle out if he heard her specific wording wrong. "We're not Shadows, right?" A beat. Then, a nod. "Sure; let's go together."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"You don't need to take my word for it, of course. If you want to check for yourself, please do as you will," Yanagi insists gently. "But I agree. It's possible a tower like this does exist somewhere in the world neither you nor I have seen, but something about this feels, hmmm... special?" She rests a hand on her chin as she shuts her eyes. "I wonder even more what it means that the Dark Hour changes depending on where you are..."
She opens her eyes again a moment later when he addresses her similarly, just in time to catch his grin. She smiles back, then follows his gaze. "Of sorts. It's not a unique ability so much as it is how my abilities manifest," Yanagi explains. "Different Navigators perceive the world differently. Sight or sound or taste or touch... All of them are possible. It depends on the person and the Persona. If you want to hear more about it, there are several in SEES; you should ask them about it too. I'm curious about that myself!"
She giggles a bit. "Of course we aren't Shadows! They're rather more incomplete than we are." She pauses in thought, then adds, "Well--most of them." Sadakazu agrees to go with her, and she turns to walk along the bridge's foot path, cane tapping on the concrete as they go. Giselle vanishes in her wake; she can re-summon her later. "So what brought you to this country, Sadakazu? It sounds like you had a rather lonely existence before..." At least in terms of being around Persona Users.
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
"Well - if you've already gone to the trouble, that is, it isn't as important to confirm it just yet. There are other things to do besides that." Life doesn't have to just be a series of supernatural recon missions, even if that would be markedly simpler in some ways.
Sadakazu quirks a brow and frowns slightly in thought. "Isn't it just time-zones? Like trying to watch overseas soccer? If it was always midnight, everywhere, then you could fly on a plane, and always catch it. One hour out, one hour in, over and over again. Until you crashed, I guess... but then, planes have to stay 'up' during the Dark Hour, even if phones and things don't work, or..." He trails off, humming lightly. He's become more talkative, and certainly less guarded. Even the strange becomes familiar in a hurry when you're in such an unfamiliar place.
Navigators - he'll have to ask one of them. Come to think of it, he thinks there are a couple of his peers that fit the bill that he'd seen at work in Tartarus. Maybe... well, that's for later. For now, his hands go back in his pockets, the gleaming shell vanishing, and he walks along a step behind and beside her. Freischutz lingers in his wake still, though that sense of wariness isn't nearly as ever-present.
"Oh, I - was born here," he says. "Mom died in an accident when I was a little kid, so I went to live with my father in America. He decided I should come back here instead of being alone back home, I guess." It's all very matter-of-fact for him, like it happened to somebody else. Sadakazu shifts his shoulders, one at a time, kinda-sorta shrugging. "I only had a Persona for a couple weeks before that, I think, so not knowing anyone wasn't - that strange. And sometimes it's... nice, being lonely."
He looks over the side of the bridge for a moment, then back at her. "What about you, Yanagi? Did you come far by yourself, just to look?"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"True. I'm glad you're a sensible person," Yanagi replies. It's not like she's lying to him, either, but he of course has no way of knowing that. If he really wants to confirm it on his own, he can do it on his own time, as he says.
He brings up time zones. Yanagi of course knows what they are and that they exist, but as someone who has never traveled outside her native time zone, she stops and stares at him for a moment. After a moment, she leans back on her heels, nodding once in wonder. "Ohhhh," she breathes. "That never occurred to me!" Her eyebrows furrow. "How do airplanes stay up during the Dark Hour...? There are some special electronics that stay on, but those are extremely rare... Hm!"
She hums with him, unbothered by his increased openness. (If Yanagi were the type of person who minded that sort of thing, she would not skip straight to yobisute upon meeting someone new.) Then she shrugs and smiles brightly, taking a moment to watch him toss that silvery bullet around and then re-pocket it, then resumes walking with him. It seems to her like special equipment, and the logical place he'd get that from is SEES, so she doesn't ask about it. If she's wrong about that... well, she'll just have to learn about it another night.
He shares his circumstances as they go, including that he's only been awakened for about a month total. She nods once, unfazed to hear his mother is dead. So many loved ones die all the time; in the same way, his matter-of-factness doesn't strike her as odd or off-putting like it might some others. (Birds of a feather...)
"When I awoke, it was in the company of several others," she replies. "I've also witnessed the awakenings of a few others, and naturally, by definition, that was in company too. I suppose it isn't strange; it's just outside my experience. If you liked it like that, then I'm happy for you." She smiles again. "And now you get to have--and share--a different experience!"
Whether that's better or worse, is naturally up to Sadakazu to determine. Yanagi clearly thinks it's a good thing, though.
"Not that far. Just from Tokyo," she replies. "I've come here a few times, sometimes by myself, sometimes with friends. Occasionally, very powerful Shadows appear in this city, so I've been keeping an eye on it. You've probably heard of that too, since SEES appears to be fighting them. And if you haven't, now you get to learn!"
<Pose Tracker> Sadakazu Mori has posed.
Sadakazu doesn't think this random brightly-colored stranger would just up and lie to him about something so easily proven. He finds it less stressful to take people at face value, and then let them prove to be something else later. It isn't the best survival strategy in a high-stakes realm of supernatural intrigue, but... well, in his defense, he's completely new.
He stops a step past Yanagi and looks back, cracking another smile when the time zone thing clicks. He taps his temple a couple times with a couple fingers. "I wonder...? Do birds turn into coffins in the Dark Hour, too? If one was awake, and flying, I mean. Do they just stay up there?" He shrugs, still smiling. Lots of things to think about. He seems to like it that way.
They walk. His circumstances are laid out, and she tells him that she's seen others 'awaken,' a word where the specific usage makes complete sense to him once he hears it in this context. "I woke up in bed late on a Saturday morning," he tells her, "and I felt like I'd run a marathon the day before. But mostly I couldn't figure out why the sky was green. When I saw my first Shadow, I just knew what to do. But I didn't know - how to talk about it. I think maybe I still don't, really. Maybe if I'd seen it happen to someone else...?" But that means he gets to have and share a different experience, she says. He exhales, a quiet sort of, "Huh," and nods slowly, tentative but thoughtful.
"That isn't so far," Sadakazu agrees, thinking more about driving over rather than taking any commuter system. She's an adult, right? To the American, that means she's clearly got a car somewhere. "-yes. I've heard about some of those, a little. Not to wander around on certain nights, mostly. But there are some like that on the inside of the tower - but I don't know if they're as big. We beat one," he adds. "A big..." He tries gesturing in front of him, but it's not terribly helpful. "...horse person, made of armor. Close fight. Glad I got to fight it, though." He's smiling again, at the thought.
"Do big Shadows appear anywhere else, you think? It can't be just here..." But there's Tartarus again. So maybe it could be.
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"That's a good question. I haven't ever thought to look," Yanagi muses, of birds and coffins. "I'll have to check for that sometime." Right now, she's here to observe the Tower of Ruin. Birds can come later, pretty much at any time. At least Sadakazu seems to enjoy the thought experiment!
She hums thoughtfully when he describes how he first encountered the Dark Hour. He encountered a Shadow and 'knew what to do'... In other words, he awoke at that time. It does remind her of when she first woke up during the Dark Hour, though she wouldn't actually awaken to a Persona until much, much later. "Maybe it's more common than I thought," she muses. Then she smiles at him. "Well, you're part of a large team now. I expect you'll see quite a bit more going forward!"
Yanagi does not have a car, but she doesn't realize Sadakazu is making that assumption and so doesn't know to correct him. To her mind, used to public transit, he's right: it isn't that far. Just about an hour or two away.
"A horse person made of armor? ...That does sound like a Shadow," Yanagi says thoughtfully. "I haven't gone very far inside the Tower of Ruin--I'd like to explore more at some point, but I'd rather go with my friends." She smiles again. Yanagi smiles often. "It sounds like it was a thrilling fight! I'll have to encourage us all to go sometime. Thank you for letting me know, Sadakazu!"
As for if big Shadows appear anywhere else... Yanagi can only shrug. "They might. But I expect they're much more common around Tartarus. That's how it is in," she sweeps her arm around them, "this general area. The closer you are..." She lowers her arm. "But that's something else we can look for while we observe! So let's focus on that as we go~"
And so, until the two part ways, they'll continue to make the rounds around Tartarus and search for Shadows. Yanagi won't find any outside Tartarus, at least for tonight--but it'll be an enlightening experience for them both. At the end, Yanagi will wave goodbye to Sadakazu, then tap-tap off into the night.