2025-12-21: Marked Future
- Log: Marked Future
- Cast: Yua Ooshiro, Miho Ijuuin, Tatsuya Sudou
- Where: Narumi Ward - Offices
- OOC Date: 2025-12-21
- IC Date: Tue Aug 28 2012
- Summary: Yua and Miho need to issue some correction to a fellow man of the NWO; they (must) use the cover of the Fireworks Festival to complete it. But when their mission is complete, another man with the Mark reveals himself to them -- and it's someone Miho has been waiting for. They have much to discuss...
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
The evening is a strange time, in the business world; men working a nine to five ought to be out of the office, by now, but the ones staying behind are the ones lauded as heroes. So it is with Mayumu Koremoto: the last man in his office block, staying late to try and finish a project...
... as far as he's told his superiors.
He thinks they do not know the way he is accessing confidential files, after everyone else goes home -- trying to find some hint as to his wife, held somewhere to keep his skills on-task. He has been quite compliant, until now; the picture of the dutiful salaryman pulling overtime. He thinks that his skills with computers have successfully doctored the surveillance footage.
This much might even be forgivable... if his sabotage hadn't ruined another man's climb to the top.
He spoke to Rokuro Nishiyama; Rokuro issued orders to Miho.
And it fell to Miho to ask Yua, as if she were not telling her.
Yua knows not to make her clarify.
The Bride pulls the tourniquet tight; the Mark Suppressant floods deep into her veins. Still, it is violence against her flesh, in a way the Mark's activation oughtn't be: when she coughs, it is not only garnet lipstick staining her lips. A streak of red smears against the filing cabinet of the storage room she's hidden herself in, as she grasps it, pulls herself shakily standing...
... pulls her eyepatch back, and lets her wedding veils fall over it, exposed.
When this building crosses over into the supernatural, it is not a klaxon-loud thing; more a creeping up the spine, biting into metal foil, the feeling of something lodged at the back of the throat. Unsettling, out of place, yet not ever unmistakable.
"Gretchen," she fires her Evoker into her eye.
It is not her Mark which causes the walls here to grow decrepit and wasting; that the office grows impossible to navigate, all unfamiliar turns and hallways too frightening to tread, is the effect of her Persona given time to prepare its arena. Yet it is inarguably her Mark which allows her to do this now, before even Koremoto has gone home and the Dark Hour sets in.
He is terrified, as he realises the familiarity of his surroundings has grown stark.
And their business with him concludes swiftly.
Even so... Yumi's profaned Mark is quiet, not silent.
It is not impossible for outside parties to detect.
"Uh," Yumi -- the doomed Bride -- grunts, as she grasps the Groom's arm with a bloodied hand. What is left of Koremoto is left behind; he will live. (If they permitted him to die, Miho would have been sufficient on her own.) Yumi coughs, again; blood splatters at her veils, too direct to be a metaphor any more. "Three fifty five, three fifty six, three fifty seven, three fifty eight... three fifty nine, nnh... there, the cycle completed? Set me to the waterfall, to scour... have we yet reached the base?"
She's trying to ask whether their mission is over. ... she's trying.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
As missions go, there have been worse, and there have been better. Miho--the Groom--is here now, and the office is unfamiliar turns and hallways of fright, but ti does not stop Miho from navigating with Yua. There indeed are others who could detect this...
And Miho listens. he will live, of course. But here--
"We are on our way out," Miho confirms for Yua. "But not out yet."
"...Something remains."
But what? That, she doesn't know.
<Pose Tracker> Tatsuya Sudou has posed.
There was normal resonance and then there was the resonance that only one who has been inked by the tattooist from the other side gives off as they make use of the mark. Of course having such an unique flavor of resonance, draws unique pest that others don't have to deal with.
So what remains, one wonders. It would be the BFF of that tattooist who steps from around an office plant as if that office plant had a room behind it. Paper bag and all as he drags his sword shaped object across the ground, making an irritating scraping sound. The paper bag man whistles as he looks at the work done on the poor salaryman, " You know for a moment I thought I was working over here and I hadn't realized that is what I was doing. However this is definitely not my work. " The Joker Killer says as he examines the guy and even pokes him for a moment. "Then I thought that maybe it would be my little sister, taking her elder brother's advice. However this isn't her work, to few cuts. " Is he talking to anyone around him? Is he talking to himself? Like always it is hard to say.
Finally he looks around at the world where he stands, "I appreciate the attempts but you guys have the money. Hire contractors for this, doing it in house is beneath ...whoever yall are."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
Yumi grasps at Miyu as if she cannot stand alone; and perhaps it is true. "Something..." She murmurs, holding close to her. "These things, you see, I cannot see..."
Because of her Groom's warning, the Bride knows to straighten, to fire on herself again; to summon that great woman, white in dress and rich in jewels, jail bars driven through her arms as she curls them about to trap Yumi in her cage.
"Something..."
Sccccrrrrraaaapppppee...
"Something's coming...!"
Scrrrraaaaaaaaapeeeee...
"Ah... Miyu...!"
Scrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaapeeeeee.
Yumi staggers back, to grasp -- to grasp! -- at the skirts of her own Persona, though somehow the blood at her hands never manages to stain the pure white innocence of Gretchen's frock. She wears gloves; perhaps it would hide that tattoo work. "From nothing comes he, to nothing he returns! Whence this feeling?! Am I thrown to the pyre?! Sir, your mask!"
... she's probably not going to calm down on her own.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Something indeed is coming. Miho senses it first, despite Yua's prodigious talent. She understands it. Because...
She, too, received a Mark that was not Gozen's.
"You weren't," Miho says when the Joker Killer emerges, and places her hand on Yua's arm. "It is all right," she tells the Bride. "It's fine. ...I had wanted to speak with him. We can extend our mission a little longer here..."
"For things they in their towers need not know."
"I am the Groom," Miho says to Tatsuya Sudou. "And we may share something."
"...an understanding of Time. Of that which should be... and that which isn't."
"You know it, don't you?" Miho says, and there is a hunger in her voice for it as she grasps Yua's hand.
"The True World. The Other Side."
<Pose Tracker> Tatsuya Sudou has posed.
Sudou looks over at the bride and he wags his finger at her, "Uh uh uh, I happen to know that I don't disappear into nothing. I don't even disappear until I lose my eye so I have been collecting extra to make sure I have spares. " A cackle is given before he adds, "Sides, I was thought disappeared before and yet here I am. Whats to say that I won't go around the bend again ."
Looking towards the Groom the paper bag tilts, "Shit, is this ... a wedding?" Frantically he pats his trench coat before he finds a half drank bottle of sake. He looks at it for a moment before he places it on the office printer. " I present to you my gift. I guarantee that at least half of it was not poison. Well no more than normal. A blessing on your house."
Suddenly though people are talking about time and the truth and that gets the attention of Joker Killer, "Oh my oh my. Still but a groom but already whispering those sweet nothings to masked strangers." The smile on the paper bag grows bigger and has fangs, "So what do you know about that which is and that which shouldn't be? "
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
Oh, Yua's Mark came from Gozen; only, it was planted in ill soil.
Only, it was profaned.
"This peace... you seek, Miyu...?" Yumi asks, and after a moment's hesitation, throws herself against Miho's side instead. "Help us, Gretchen!" She cries, as the woman behind them spreads her jail-bar arms, and an obscuring Shroud falls over the office.
... the groaning man with not quite enough cuts is left outside it, though Sudou and the bridal party are all trapped within.
Gretchen's skirts sway, behind them; yet, massive arms spread open, they are invitingly available.
"... and I, her Bride," Yumi says, in turn, as she grasps Miyu's arm. (Miho's arm. They do so try to obscure themselves, out here.)
"Your eye, sir... your eye... to curl around, and around... ah!"
They do so try to obscure themselves, and yet...
Yumi lifts her free hand -- bloodied -- to the half-dozen veils and fascinators across her face. Slowly she lifts them, lets them fall back across her loose hair. Her chin is bloodied, her nose, and yet the most striking thing about her pallid, ashen face...
... it's the eyepatch, pulled back to reveal an Eye.
An Eye with three pupils, in the same arrangement as Sudou's tattoo, grasping darkness creeping out over the edges of her eyesocket in bands of black.
"This," she says, "the wedding that should have been, our phantom-play the truth laid across this stage. Ah... thank you," she adds, with rattling gasp, to look upon his sake. "My Groom shall grasp this... I am furnace and kiln."
Even when she's Yumi, she still can't drink alcohol, after all.
It's bad for the baby.
... don't ask whether activating her Mark is bad for the baby, too.
"We seek the truth," she says, still grasped tight. "A world... where we can be happy." And she takes all confusion from her confusing speech, as she manages to unveil: "Together."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Profaned. But the Shroud comes, and now no one will invade their privacy. Miho--the Groom--smiles beneath her mask. "...You should tend those bleeds," Miho says gently to Yua, as she takes off her own mask, revealing green hair and honeyed eyes.
The three pupils are stranger than Miho's look, but Miho's eyes have almost a mania to them. The wedding that should have been...
"Thank you," Miho says of the gift, though... Seriously. The printer might've made a better gift.
"We accept your blessing."
A beat, and she has his attention. "I know much," Miho says.
"I see a Lion, not a Duke but a King, underneath the master of masks."
Miho intones, "'As the flames of expiation light the heavens The lion's roar echoes far and wide.'" Text from a book that was never written on This Side: In Lak'ech, the prophecy followed by the Masked Circle.
"And I know, now, that you also see what I see in my dreams. What I do not know is why. What I do not know is where that places us, in relation to one another."
"...But I know that the Order's 'world without sin' is not the True World."
She gently keeps hold of Yua's arm by her own.
<Pose Tracker> Tatsuya Sudou has posed.
Sudou watches the shroud but doesn't react, it's not like these two are the same bunch of annoying teenagers who have kicked his ass across the playground, multiple times. To the point that his BFF is a bit miffed at him.
Sudou watches Yua's eye and smiles as he sees it, he definitely feels like he has found his people for once. It is a shame this bride is taken, she even already speaks her own dialect of Sudou. If he had known that such an eye was behind the teacher at the time, man well he almost can't blame that teacher for trying to have his wedding cake and eat it too. The mention of the furnace and kiln does make Sudou look off away from the duo to an unseen person and nods, "Got a bun in the oven. No worries. My friend says all is well, and he should know, he ate a doctor a few weeks back."
The mention of things that he thought only one other knew about does catch Sudou's attention. " Yes the masked circle, not that fake group of thieves trying to change heart. They even have their own damn fake joker." Sudou's grip tightens on his sword as just thinking about it angers him. Then a sigh, " I miss my old crew." How he can miss something that he never had well that is between Sudou and his emotions. "You are right though, this world is far from the true world, and all I am trying to do is set things right. Unfortunately the game is more difficult this time, so many of the players have changed. "
Looking at the groom, "So tell me about this order, and their world without sin? Sounds boring if you ask me."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
"Yes..." Yumi -- no, veils parted, isn't this Yua? -- hums, as she fumbles for the pockets at her tactical vest's belt. (A Bride wearing armour over her dress... what an image that is.) She grasps a pen injector -- not quite the same design as the Persona Suppressants Sudou would be familiar with, thanks to the kids he's running with -- and presses it to her arm. Chunk -- prick.
She breathes easier, when her Mark's suppressed a little more. The injector she places back in that pouch, but the handkerchief she takes is handed over by her Groom, as she pats the blood from her face, from her hands.
... this, too, she tucks away. Even with her mind in a hundred places, she remembers what Miyu told her about leaving evidence. She does not realise the effort her Groom has to take regarding the blood she leaves in the environment, though...
"We am well," she confirms, with a small smile, though she leans against the Groom still. ('We' must include the little one.) "Gretchen protects me... and my Groom will allow no harm to come to us."
She looks to Miyu -- to Miho, her own mask shed -- rapt, as she speaks Truths this world has never known; her admiration is plain. "I... do not See as my Groom Sees," she starts, her thoughts slow to come together but at least more coherent as she looks to Sudou again. "The Order thrust these gifts upon me... my eyes are not so clear."
Her fingers curl, around Miho's arm. "Yet, that beautiful place she Saw for us... I truly believe in it."
She doesn't know how Sudou can miss something he's never known... but she doesn't need to know to know it's true. "Surely... one day, you will embrace them again," she says, with all the caring she's shoring up as a mother-to-be. "There must be a path to that place... there must be!"
But of the Order, she leave Miho to speak... outside of her own apparent misfortune.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Yua, yes. Miho glances her way, to see her use that medicine, and hands over a handkerchief. Then she looks to Sudou again. "That is correct," Miho says. "I will protect them."
The Truths..
"I know little of these Phantom Thieves," Miho admits. "But the Masked Circle... yes, these I know. These I see in my dreams." Yua offers hope; there is a way there, and he will see them again.
"It is hard to set right what those in power wish to keep wrong. They did not hold this power, in the True World."
But his friend? Hmmm. "I wonder," she says, "If you have an ally as I do. But I see mine only in dreams; never in the waking world."
She's not as mysterious as Yua; she just apparently talks like this normally.
"It's a foolish, impossible idea. 'Sin' is the nature of man." She speaks authoritatively. "...In this world, the Order has power over government and private enterprise both; they pursue their World with fervor. At least, some of them do; others are more concerned with this world."
"Regardless, they do not understand. Some of them have power like mine, or yours; I am not sure why."
"But at the moment, I require what they can offer me. If you happen to see a path to the True World, though..."
"I do hope you'll share it. If not... we can confer."
She smiles, then, to Yua. "My bride always supports me in this. She knows what I have Seen."
<Pose Tracker> Tatsuya Sudou has posed.
Sudou tilts his head at the mention of the gift being forced. It brings to memory something else he had heard recently by one who probably wished Sudou had offered her sake. "For the thrusting of the gift, did they drag you onto a boat?" Sudou is sure there were other details but he can't be bothered to remember such minor things.
A glance from Bride to Groom and back to bride's belly, which is surely something that one must be use to by now. "I am sure that between the seen and the unseen that child will have all the protection it ever needs." Of course said child might be the only human child ever born with a mark that cover their entire body, but only time will tell on that one.
Regarding the one who speaks of better times, "Well I've looked for a path to the other side. I've pleaded and begged to go there, but our mutual acquaintance just gives me a grin and tells me if I did my job better it would all be fixed. Still I have looked and tried thing. Once I took a running leap at the oldest grandfather clock in tokyo, sadly it only left me waking up thinking it was the previous Thursday when it was the next Tuesday, and for the next week I would ding on the hour." Sudou says with a chuckle before his voice takes on a more serious note. "No I think if we wanted to go there we would need something truly shattering. A gathering storm concentrated all in one place or something." The Joker killer shrugs, "Beyond little ole me at least."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
The Phantom Thieves... Yua wonders, about them. Feigned echoes of this Masked Circle...?
"I have no such assistance," Yua adds, when Miho speaks to her ally, and she thinks she speaks true.
Perhaps it is only when Yua gets so much closer to revelation, in these Supernatural spaces, using those sick powers of hers... that she is able to grasp what comes so intuitively to Miho. Perhaps that is why her speech varies so much, while Miho seems always a touch disconnected from the here and now.
She dips her head in a nod, as Miho speaks to the nature of 'Sin'; Miho's authority is a thing Yua carries through.
Still... Sudou asks about the boat.
"They stole me away, chthonic," she says, and leans against Miho a little more heavily. "Warped me, changed me... changed my eye. When I surfaced, I screamed," she says, and her grief is carried through the tension in her words. "Too much, too all at once, too heavy, too horrid! But they were determined to take me above... they covered the wound they'd gouged in me, and brought me there."
"Nichirinmaru."
"... though I knew not then its name." Yua takes a breath. "I was too frightened to go on, but they assured me that if only I entered by my own will, I'd see my Groom again...! They'd kept me from her for so long... so long, oh..." She hides her face against the Groom's armour, for a moment, before she looks back to Sudou. "I wished to see her... I wished to see her, so I chose to open the door. There I found such awful things... but when I tried to use that power to crush them, my own body betrayed me. So has it always been..." She lifts that bloodied handkerchief, demonstratively. "... when I call these gifts to me, my body is wracked with grief and injury, and ever has my liminal space been silent. No demon has aided me, sir. Not a one."
She shakes her head, sadly. "I can offer no storm... only subterfuge."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
A boat! "The idol, Gozen," Miho supplements the explanation.
"Yes," Miho says. "I am certain that He will protect him, as I will." 'He'? She doesn't elaborate for now. Quite the opposite, the Joker Killer seems to have a lot to say about what to do. Their mutual acquaintance...
"So you've made the effort," she says. "I have also sought methods; mystical opportunities, strange curses and spells. So far, none have borne fruit. I believe that we require 'power' in order to bridge that gap."
But a storm... Hmmm... To 'go there'.
"Time does not wait," she agrees.
But then, she reaches out to hold Yua's hand. "Your subterfuge allows us to gather what we must," she says. "Do not discount it." Miho holds Yua close. "It is all right," she says. "We will make it so."
Then, she looks to the Joker Killer again. "Then alone, we cannot."
"But together..."
"Where shall I find you?" she asks. "You must have allies. This is what I have heard."
"I believe..."
"That we can use the power of this Order against them, if given time. I must simply find a way."
"But with you, the method may be approaching."
"Is that why the killings?" she wonders then. "Is this some sort of blood ritual to bring about a return to the True World?"
<Pose Tracker> Tatsuya Sudou has posed.
Sudou shakes his head at the Bride, "Oh don't fret. I just heard that you were a powerful storm in your own right, those you faced simply prepared to weathered you. This storm though, no one would weather. Like a pane of glass everything would shatter. " Sudou smiles still the Bride's story reminds him of... "Yes, Gozen! The creepy mummy head!"
Sudou nods his head as if everything Akabane-chan told him. " Yes my littler sister told me that the boat was owned by a Mr. Sudou. I must pay him a visit sometime. Looking at the sword, the smile on the paper bag licks it's lips , "Yes very soon. " His head raises to look back to the Groom. " Power you want, power our friend has. The only question is how do we let him use his power. Those touched by him can be used, but only so much a mortal can do. What if we all gathered though. I always wandered." The Joker Killer chuckles as he steps to the tree he entered from.
"I mean you can always call me and give me a name." The killer answers in regards on how to reach him, "I also keep my ear close to those who whisper in the shadows. Rumors travel, especially from a demon's mouth." He reaches behind the plant and his arm disappears and some rumaging around like he is in a fridge is heard. Finally he pulls out a small bottle of ramune, grape flavor. " As for the killings, that is not the point. Death is never the point when it involves him. Sure it fills their belly, but the point is the fear, the anger, the chaos it all causes. The more chaos the more he can do. Also it keeps the butterflies away."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
"I could not ask for a safer child," Yua smiles, though she knows precious little of 'Him'. Even so -- she is frightened, to hear Gozen's name spoken, to hear his visage described. "Oh!" She gasps, and perhaps -- even now -- she remembers.
"My Groom is a ferocious storm," Yua smiles, to Sudou. "But I... I am not so fierce." Miho grasps her hand, though; Yua slips hers into hers, with a deep and loving sigh as she speaks to what she can do. She leans against her, closing her eyes, for a moment. "I am with you," she promises, softly. "Whatever you need."
Those touched by him... can let him use his power?
Yua bites her lip, as she considers the point, as Sudou speaks it. "... they... do not send me to kill," she says, after a moment to think. "If they wish a man dead, my Groom is far more efficient... when they bid me to punish those they deem unworthy, so often they wish for this terror. They were... pleased to realise the shape of my power. Of strength, I've little, but... warping a place, making it seem far more treacherous than it ought to be, forcing anxiety into men's hearts... in this I have mastery. Could they be thinking of something... much like what you've said?"
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
The creepy mummy head. "Quite," Miho says, and then looks to her Bride again. "Ferocity is not your gift," Miho says to Yua gently, and back to Sudou as he mentions his little sister. Mr. Sudou...
"To use his power... Hm. Yes," she says. "But why is he lending that power to them?" Miho wonders. "That is what I don't know. But you say chaos, fear empowers Him..."
It's not the thing that originally drew her to the Visions, of course. She knows the other side is beautiful. But if that is what it takes to bring it about...
She looks to Yua. "You could be right," she says. "You very well could..."
A look back to the Joker.
"Very well. I will think on what you have said. I consort often enough with demons... Though I have no intentions of using your Curse."
A pause. "I can kill my own enemies."
"Chaos is change," she reflects. "Perhaps in order to restore perfect order, we must first break the current..."
<Pose Tracker> Tatsuya Sudou has posed.
Sudou chuckles, " I hang with some kids and they all doubt themselves sometimes. What if my grenades don't go off, what if the blood clashes with my glitter lip gloss? I will tell you what I tell them, Mrs. Bride. When the time comes all your worries won't matter. You will be able to do whatever you need to do even if you have blood on your lip gloss...or something like that ." The Joker Killer shrugs, sometimes teenagers have much easier problems to solve.
Looking over at the Groom, "Well don't leave me out on any fun against your bosses. Especially if that person owns a particular boat. For now I must be off, I have jobs to see to." The Joker Killer tips his hat as he steps behind the office plant disappearing to wherever he goes.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ooshiro has posed.
Yua smiles, to Miho. "I know... my gifts, you use well." She looks back to Sudou, though, as he chuckles. "Would that I had the mettle of half the teenagers I've faced," she sighs, though, she's still smiling. "They are worthy foes... but I am happy you believe in me. When the time comes, I'll be able to do whatever I need to do... it's a very encouraging thought. You must be so good with the children..."
Alas, Sudou, this Bride's taken. (And stolen thus.) ... she's also too gay to have gone for it. But she clearly admires the effort!
Yua shakes her head, when Miho wonders; she doesn't know why he's empowering them, either. But...
"I have no stomach for death," Yua admits, "... though I've stomach for very little, right now. In this, as all things, I rely on my Groom... but please be well, sir. And thank you," she adds, her voice rising just so, "for the gift!"
Yua will make sure that Miho remembers to take that bottle of sake, as they leave; scrounged as it was, it's the thought that counts.
Like the thought... that chaos may precede perfect order.
The unnerving nature around the office block will soon fade...
... and Mayumu Koremoto will remember his place.