2025-10-29: An Ogre's Request
- Log: An Ogre's Request
- Cast: Ichika Kawase, Yusuke Kitagawa
- Where: Mementos Entrance, Shibuya, Tokyo
- OOC Date: October 29, 2025
- IC Date: August 02, 2012
- Summary: The Ogre reaches out to the Phantom Thieves--with something to ask.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
The Ogre passed out another message to the Phan Site; she wanted to meet again. That she had a different request, this time. So, there was the usual dance; a note at Mementos indicating a time to meet, and now... the meeting.
Shibuya Station is as crowded as ever, and Mementos is as not-crowded as ever out here at the station; the Shadows are all a little further in. The bloody walls and blinking monitors are as eerie as ever.
A girl in an Ogre mask stands by the escalators down, arms crossed. She is in her usual thorn-wound armor, with roses spray-painted on, high-tech shoes, and spiked fingerless gloves. Her long, bleached hair is hanging loose.
And she's wiating. She happened to get here first, after all.
Whoever she's meeting, they're due about now.
Yua Ooshiro has arrived from The Rooster Inn.
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
When Ogre's message appeared on the Phan-site, there was a small scuffle in the Phantom Thieves group chat as the team tried to figure out who would be available to meet her.
Eventually, Yusuke volunteered.
And thus: white motorcycle boots descend the stairs into Mementos, as Fox arrives. Adjusting his ice-blue gloves, he looks around the foyer of the cognitive space, and nods as he recognises the other party waiting there.
"Ogre. Good to see you again."
Yusuke Kitagawa
Tall and graceful, 'Fox' takes to battle garbed in a black, high-collared jumpsuit with puffed sleeves and a popped collar, a white fox tail with red markings attached to it by a hook, to match the kitsune upper half-mask worn over his face, around which flickers of cognitive flame course. Accessorising with bright blue gloves and white motorcycle boots, a red-lacquered saya completes his look - a striking, rebellious ninja, eager to bring justice to the Shadows of the world.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Fox," Ogre answers as she turns towards him. She looks him over, noting his general condition; no fights yet, but... he's also alone.
"Just you?" she asks. "So I guess you are a Phantom Thief..."
"Well, suits me fine," Ogre answers with an expansive shrug. "I like you. You're cool."
She then frowns, and her mouth thins to a line. "...I had a request," she says, "But I wnated to make it in person. It's fine if you can't answer yourself, since you'll need to talk to the others..."
"But I know what you guys get up to. I've seen your Changes of Heart take effect over time. You got that jackass Kamoshida... That artist old man, the plagiarist, Madarame. ...And the crime boss, Kaneshiro."
"Right? So it's something you can do, and something you're good at."
"...I want to request you change someone's Heart. And that you take me with you, when you do it."
"I'll explain, but--before I do. Are you willing to hear me out? ...I'll make my case."
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
Fox inclines his head as Ogre asks if he's alone. "Regrettably, the demands of the mundane have imposed themselves upon my comrades."
This is a very poetic way of saying 'everyone else is doing their own stuff' but it sounds appropriately dramatic for a Phantom Thief.
His lips quirk in a smile as Ogre calls him cool and he nods again.
Ogre then turns to the topic of the Thieves' past deeds, and he tilts his head slightly, folding his arms. If she's bringing up the Changes of Heart they've wrought, then... yes. She has a similar request to make of them.
He gestures for her to continue. "Please, go ahead. I'm listening."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Oh, so they had shit to do? Guess that's fair. It's vacation season and all."
Ogre speaks more roughly and with less flowery language than Fox, but she doesn't seem to have any trouble parsing him. Instead, she spots the smile--and then, good. He's willing to hear her out.
"OK. So... This is pretty heavy-duty stuff. It's going to be really dangerous. He has a Palace, see--and I've been there, and I don't know about you guys, but I wasn't strong enough to make more than a dent in the Shadows there."
"But..."
Arms still crossed, she looks away. "His name's Eiji Kamiya. He's a third-year at Seven Sisters High School. Popular guy. Knows a lot of people."
Pause. "He's a murderer and a rapist. And from what we found in his Palace, he seems to be disappearing people, now. Human trafficking, I guess."
"But..."
"There's... a complication. I'm gonna have to ask you to keep it a secret from everybody except the other Thieves, and I'm not gonna tell you at all if you don't think it's at least possible that you'll agree."
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
"For someone so young to have a Palace," Fox points out as Ogre names her target, "his desires must be particularly twisted."
After all, so far the Phantoms have challenged older men primarily - Mementos incidents notwithstanding, of course, but then again, Mementos individuals do not have the strength of distortion to manifest a Palace yet.
Ogre continues, and Fox's expression becomes particularly stern under his mask. "I see." The temperature of those words has plummeted compared to his usual speech.
"We have a rule that we operate unanimously - all for one, or not at all - when it comes to Changes of Heart, but from what I've heard so far, he sounds dangerous enough that I do not expect anyone to be against at least investigating."
She can probably tell he's bracing himself for whatever the complication turns out to be.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Does it work like that?" Ogre wonders. "...Yeah. They're pretty twisted. Or at least, the way he goes about getting them is."
Expressions shift; at least Fox seems sympathetic to her plight here. A guy like that... It's messed up.
"I see," Ogre answers. "OK. Well, if you guys decide against it, I'll find another way. I'm just... I'm not strong enough to handle it myself--I tried to charge in, to find him and find some evidence, but... It didn't work. And I don't want him dead. Despite everything... I don't want that."
She hesitates, and then, "...The complication is... it's personal. The one he's obsessed with, whose picture shows up all over his Palace, is..."
"...Is a girl named Ichika Kawase."
She sighs, and reaches up to take off her mask.
"Is me."
"You can tell them who I am. You can tell them why I want this done."
"...He's after me," Ichika says quietly. "He wants me back. And he's willing to disappear my best friend to make it happen."
"i can't," she says, and her voice is thicker than it was, thick with emotion and not a little panic that she's pushing back down. "...I can't."
"So that's why. He hasn't given me a timetable or anything, but..."
"But I know what he's capable of. It's just a matter of time."
"And it's why if you do it, you have to take me with you. If I ask someone else to 'save' me, and I don't do anything myself..."
"It's the same as admitting he was right about me."
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
"It seems to," Fox allows, and then falls silent for Ogre to explain. Kamiya's obsession is...
- Ogre removes her mask -
... oh.
He can hear the stress and panic in Ichika's voice as she explains not only that the boy wants her but is threatening Tsubasa, and can see the darkness of Mementos almost closing in around her.
Competing impulses war in his heart, and that's why the mask seems to cling to his face for a moment, before he focuses and pulls it up to rest on his head.
Yusuke Kitagawa steps forwards, sharing Ichika's vulnerability and trust, to awkwardly place a hand on her shoulder.
"I'll vouch for you," he says, quietly.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Mm." She doesn't really know the mechanics of Palaces or how they form, or anything along those lines; she just knows that they exist, and that the Shadows in them are bad news. But she can't explain without getting emotional, despite herself. But she certainly doesn't expect Fox to remove his own mask.
"You--"
"...You," she reflects, remembering him from that day. "...'how things should be', instead of 'how things are'," she remembers.
She bites her lip and does her level best not to cry, which... is good enough that her eyes only look liquid for the moment, instead of actually shedding it.
"Thank you," she says. "...I don't... know what else to do. My friends at the Cardboard Dragon were willing to help, but all I did was lead them into danger. I think... I think a 'thief' is what I have to be, to do this."
"...Um..."
"...You should also also that at least some of the police are on his side. And..."
She falters in her explanation, until she moves to put back on her mask, and reclaim a little of her composure.
"...Thanks."
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
Yusuke nods as Ichika recalls the thing he said when they met before - which is now apparent in retrospect to merely have been the first of many times their paths crossed. "Someone like this should not be allowed to inflict his distorted desires on others to his whim."
He doesn't comment on how Ichika handled palace excursions with the Cardboard Dragon team - after all, the Phantoms have mostly survived theirs on instinct and improvisation so far.
"I'll let them know," he says with a nod.
Ichika steps back and dons her mask, and likewise, Yusuke pulls his own back down, and Fox waits for Ogre to recover her composure.
"Not at all," he says with a shake of his head. "It felt like the least I could do."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
Ichika found that Yusuke's words made a big impression on her. She still remembers that sentiment--and as for him, "....Yeah," Ichika agrees about how he shouldn't be allowed to do as he wishes. "Somehow it seems like he's got even worse than he was before. ...Maybe what he did to me made him feel bolder. Maybe he was always like that, and I just never wanted to see it. I don't know."
"...But I loved him, once."
She shakes her head. "All right." He'll let them know.
"...That's it," she says. "That's all I wanted to say. Unless you had some questions, or something. Something you think they'll want to know."
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
"Sometimes when we're close to someone twisted... we're merely inside the eye of the storm," Fox says, thoughtfully. He knows that all too well, after all.
He nods as Ogre says she loved Eiji, once. "I understand. I assume his Palace is in Sumaru?" That's going to impact the logistics of the Phantoms tackling it... but it is vacation season, after all. They can figure something out.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"You've been there too, huh?" Ogre wonders of Fox. She doesn't really know his story. But the way he talks... He really does seem to understand.
So Ogre nods. "No," she says. "He goes to school in Sumaru, but his Palace is in Iwatodai."
"We lived together in Yumezaki for a little while, but..."
She shakes her head.
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
Fox nods, considering. "... Madarame," he says, after a moment. "The details are different, but..." He falls silent. "... We can talk about it another time."
Oh, not Sumaru? Iwatodai... "Ah." He nods. "That is going to be a little easier to investigate, at least."
... They lived together.
He's not great at reading between the lines, but there's a lot of space between those lines in this case.
"You needn't say anything more," he says, getting out in front of it. "As I said - I will speak to the other Thieves, and vouch for you. I sincerely doubt there will be objections."
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"Oh. So he was personal, too." Madarame. Ogre heard about him, of course--she didn't hear the whole story, wasn't really paying attention to young artists or the art world in general. "OK," she says. "Another time."
"Cool," Ogre says of 'easier'. And then... Well, there's a lot to be said.
"Thanks," Ogre says. "I do want to explain. If you help me, I owe it to you to get you ready for what you see."
"...But I'd rather only explain the once," she admits. "It's hard to talk about."
A nod. "OK. ...Thanks. I'll..."
"I'm gonna stay here a few, in case someone followed us, and... because I need a minute before I can see people again."
Pause. "Not that I'd usually say it like that. I'm a lot tougher than this, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Yusuke Kitagawa has posed.
Fox nods, as Ogre concludes that he had a personal experience too, and as she says she'd rather only explain the situation once. "Entirely reasonable," he agrees.
She says she'll stay in Mementos a little longer, and he nods again. "In that case... until next time, Ogre." He offers her a languid wave, before turning and walking back up the stairs to the outside world.
The way he says her sobriquet sounds different, now.
<Pose Tracker> Ichika Kawase has posed.
"See you... Fox." She knew he was a capable ally; now he's... something else, too. A different kind of ally.
So when he waves, she nods back, and then tilts her head back, leaning on the wall heavily. A slow, long exhalation of a sigh sees her close her eyes for a few moments.
"...Guess that's started," she murmurs. "Just have to wait and see."