2025-12-23: Diplomate, Do Not Negotiate
- Log: Diplomate, No Not Negotiate
- Cast: Kurou Ryouhara, Katsuya Suou, Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Kasugayama High, Hirasaka
- OOC Date: 2025-12-23
- IC Date: Aug 29 2012
- Summary: Innocent Kurou is fetched, with extreme diplomacy.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Luckily, it's at least -something- approaching after hours.
Kasugayama is not a particularly well-funded school. That means that most of the clubs and activities attached to the school's after-hours resources are more popularly entirely student-led and operated, oft by the roughest gangs. Consequently, 'organization' is, to wit, not something that normally enters into the day-to-day of most students, who are by and large left to fend for themselves where the law of the Bosses doesn't extend.
All of this to say that a massive explosion occurring in the school's south wing in the school off-season is likely to be the subject of hot rumor far, far more than direct supervision.
'A ghost blew in the wall!!' someone will say.
'Seen it with my own two eyes!' another will lie.
Well. Someone -did- see. One or two students do, in fact, spot the grey-haired older boy ('is he an upperclassman? some new boss?') as he steps through the smouldering wreckage of a three foot-by-six foot hole cut straight into the south halls of the school, scaring the daylights out of at least one or two students unlucky enough to have been consigned to summer school or meetups for the infamous Lunch Club (you see, Yamazaki-san started it for people who liked to have more than one lunch and..) and sending them scampering down the aisles.
No, it's not really every day one sees some weird samurai-looking person in a -ghost white haori- cave in the wall to your school like it was nothing.
You know, there are easier ways to do this sort of thing... not that it matters, not to him. Not at this moment. Who? Well..
"....he should be close to here," Shiryuu mulls absently to himself.
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Kurou Ryouhara /is/ close to here.
He is exceptionally close to here.
Behind that silver haired ghost, who has just splattered rubble across the halls with a new hole in the building, is a different sort of corpse-boy with a darker head of hair. Kurou stares, unblinking, and it is unclear if he was here when it happened, unflinching, or arrived to greet it, equally unfazed.
No, not unfazed. That is a blatant misrepresentation. Kurou is pinned to the earth, for the cries of 'ghost' are for once a grim truth that haunt him with the worst kind of curse... hope.
He dares venture a step forward toward the ghostly demolitionist, and in his shock, he is sloppy enough for his toe to brush against a bit of rubble and audible roll it across the floor in a careful, tumbling set of soft clicks.
Despite every emotion he remembers having seizing hold of his heart, Kurou's lips remain uncurved in either direction. It is his voice that threatens to let anything through the grave dirt caking his heart: a thing so quiet it nearly breaks, not like glass, but like gently ripped paper.
"...Shirogarasu?"
<Pose Tracker> Katsuya Suou has posed.
The good news is, school isn't back in session until the following Monday, so not very many students were in the building (summer school as always claims its victims).
The bad news is, school isn't in session until the following Monday and it's currently /Wednesday/. And now there's a been an explosion right on the property.
More than likely, emergency services are on their way. Katsuya Suou, however, is a lot closer. Asking some of the passersby including some very excited students who are likely hoping for a return-to-classes date to be postponed gives him some information, but not very much. A 'ghost'?
Someone else tells him they saw someone skirting around the hole blown in the building, though, and that's much more useful information than any suspicion he might have had about one of the local demons that take over the place after hours getting up to some /appreciable/ mischief.
Getting inside the building under these circumstances is a lot easier than the last time had been. He doesn't even have to go through a window. From there (he does have to flash his badge at the custodian who is trying to usher out a few lingering boys who want to investigate) it's a matter of heading to the south side and--
Here, Katsuya stops. He knows this young man's face.
In fact, he realizes, as he glances over at Kurou, he knows both their faces.
Shiryuu gets the bulk of his attention.
"You are... that young man from the beach."
The one who had tried to kill him and Umie.
And, he now recalls, the one that Umie had warned him about.
Ah.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Hmm. It seems I owe the world a lashing for every day that went awry in my absence..."
Three leaves in the wind is the only ymbol that can be seen through the smoke. The boy who stepped through hell is intense and calm, his voice never rising above a smooth tenor. It doesn't take very long for his situational awareness to overcome the sense of vertigo that encompasses his entry, the one absent all reason or restraint. He doesn't seem terribly concerned about the scattered stragglers running off.
Let them talk. He'll come back to kill the ghost or whatever supralunar fallout is inevitably spawned by the dark imaginations following his arrival.
"Aa," he confirms for the only one brave enough to stay standing. "Let every black soul who said that I passed into the next world be thrown to a hell of tigers," Shiryuu replies.
"I've come to gather you."
The boy is wearing a distinctly -different- color of haori than he usually does, the white hood of his jacket bunched back at his shoulders. His nigh-omnipresent knapsack is missing, and a green bag has replaced the bright red one that held his sword, which is now tucked into his belt on the wrong side. New Nike sneakers give way to calf wraps and cargo 3/4s. The three-leaf symbol of the Ryouhara clan is clear to see before the young man turns on a heel. Ah, but his off-hand is not actually in the sleeve of his haori, instead suspended over his waist from his neck. A little bracket holds it in place, though it doesn't seem to actually -be- in a cast. Interesting.
"....." Shiryuu's eyes half-lid as he looks at Kurou. For a time, the young man is quiet, his mouth going from that carefully-storeid neutral mirror of Kurou's own, to the lightest tinge of annoyance.
".... I don't recall sanctioning police with supralunar power to breathe my cherished subordinate's air," he replies, the words flicking right over Kurou's shoulder like a shuriken.
His eyes lower, slightly.
"....you're still walking." He seems disappointed about that.
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
None of Kurou's attention turns toward Katsuya Suou's initial arrival, as if he were the true ghost in this situation, speaking words to be lost on the wind. Perhaps it is Kurou that has died? Or perhaps, that dangerous kindling of the fragile thing called hope, is not so delirious after all...?
But this ghost speaks.
And he denies death.
Kurou's eyes widen a fraction. There is a glimmer there, sparkling in the light that seeps through the hole Shiryuu's torn into the school building. Is it the brightness of alacrity to receive new instruction, or is that dangerous luster the result of something even more terrible brimming in Kurou's eyes?
Fortunately, no tear falls.
Ah, how foolish he was to ever fear for it. Shiryuu has survived death before and walked away. Why not again?
Kurou breathes in deep, then immediately drops into a boy, "Understood," he says, as if he were planning to become a tiger and start chucking bodies into hell himself. As he rises, he senses Shiryuu's annoyance, and only /then/ does Kurou turn around and finally see...
Oh. It is Suou. Who is, as Shiryuu notes, still walking.
"My apologies. I elected to prioritize your highest instructions during your absence. Allow me to rectify the situation."
Kurou clears his throat and addresses Katsuya.
"Please inform me which leg is your least favorite."
<Pose Tracker> Katsuya Suou has posed.
It's a strange thing. At first, neither appear to acknowledge his presence at all until that moment he speaks up. It's as if he were in the presence of ghosts -- the 'real' thing, that is, and not the supernatural entities that also wander these halls. ...In theory, th
ere should be no difference between the two categories. In practice, however, Katsuya would argue that there very much in fact /is/ a difference.
He stands there long enough to gather together scraps of what passes between the two of them and stitch together something approaching a truth. The elder boy had died, nearly. Been injured, as Katsuya's sweep of Shiryuu's person with his gaze reports. But where, and when? He doesn't have the information to determine if the accident were mundane or not, and then there's suddenly no room to wonder at all.
He addresses them, after all, and their eyes fall upon him.
He's still walking, Shiryuu notes. His subordinate, Kurou, apologizes for this.
"Wait--" Katsuya starts to say, glancing again between the two of them, "Your continued presence... were you 'shadowing' me?"
Kurou has a very different sort of question for him.
Which leg is his least favorite?
"What...? What sort of question--" Katsuya starts, stops, then shakes his head. "Absolutely not. If you think that I will permit you to," he starts to say, the fingers of his right hand twitching, then easing. No. He's getting ahead of himself. Persona -- Personas? -- or not, he cannot afford to jump to violence so quickly as an officer of the law.
"No," he says, centering himself. "I came here to investigate. I heard an explosion." He glances over at the hole in the wall, then back at the two of them. "What is the meaning of this? Did you cause this?" he says, of the hole.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It's usually rather hard to place what the shihaisha is feeling at any given time. No such impediment exists in this circumstance, and the air is different the moment the cool-headed officer shows his face.
It definitely feels like there's cutting to do in this direction...
Shiryuu is jostled out of his thought the moment Kurou interjects. Lips that were formerly screwed into an intense frown part lightly as the younger shinobi steps towards Suou to handle the situation. It would almost be enough to let it go there, but there's something that that boy said that distracts Shiryuu from the arrow of judgment.
".....iya."
The stay is issued with all of the weight of thought that it demanded. Temptation is a heady drug, but... "I've taken control of the health record," he tells Kurou idly, as he steps forward. "I've seen what there is to be seen."
"You've performed meritoriously, taking care of the...things that are most important to me. We have other matters to attend to. From this point, I will handle the scoundrel diplomatically."
Slowly, the onmitsu steps past Kurou, his sleeves drifting in his passage. It is very clear he doesn't mean any harm. Yet. "I did," he explains when Katsuya asks after who made the hole, simply. "The boy isn't to be considered at fault." He's fairly specific about that.
"Don't misunderstand... you're merely in the way," the young man explains further, as he approaches to close that distance slowly. "If we were to follow you, there'd be no way you'd know."
"Suou Katsuya," the boy replies. "It isn't my interest to deal with you right now. I'll give you the opportunity to leave, and in recognition of your good sense, I will act as absolute guarantor of all available safety to you and every student and staff dutiful enough to be here today."
"But..."
The onmitsu contractor stops in the median, squaring stance and putting his body between Kurou and Katsuya. His mouth is a thin, pressed line.
"... even now, even here ... if you test my resolve, my thousand blades of 'ninkougakujutsu' will scatter your scraped bones across the halls of Kasugayama to dry in the moonlight, and educate the next season's students in the anatomy of a fool."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
"It is an important question, detective-san," Kurou protests mildly, and disturbingly politely given the context. He does not understand why Katsuya doesn't wish to answer it. The consequences of not answering it could lead to his /favorite/ leg being broken. Even if Katsuya considers himself skilled enough to avoid such a fate, doesn't it make more sense to hedge his bets?
Unless... Oh. He does not trust Kurou to keep his word? Kurou glances down.
It would not be inaccurate to liken his demeanor to that of a kicked puppy.
But all it takes is for Shiryuu to utter one syllable, and Kurou straightens back up again, glancing back with a single, slight nod. But praised so, just a little bit of that glimmer hits Kurou's eyes again.
It takes gathering up all his trained self discipline not to protest when Shiryuu steps ahead of him. Shiryuu is alive. Shiryuu survived. Kurou does not need to reach out and stop him, the way he wondered if he should have back in Mementos.
It will not be a fight. It will be diplomacy.
... So this is how diplomacy works, Kurou realizes. He silently reaches for his spiral notebook. Even the strokes of his pencil are expertly without sound. This does not stop Katsuya from being able to /see/ him taking notes on how to speak to an officer of the law.
It's fine.
Yet when Kurou looks up at that verbal pause, he sees Shiryuu standing between him like a barrier. Now that glimmer in his eye becomes a threatening /waver/. It may not be how a shihaisha should act for a subordination... but how can Kurou not be touched by such kind words?
<Pose Tracker> Katsuya Suou has posed.
It is, really, an important question. If he has to have one leg broken, is there one he'd rather have done? To be honest, Katsuya wouldn't be able to answer it even if he spent a time thinking it over. Is there one he prefers more than the other? It would be an easier answer if it came down to arms, but--
If he can try to change his fate, he'd honestly like to keep both of his legs functional. It's hard to be a detective with a broken leg.
And then Kurou manages to pull an expression that would be better at home on the face of a kicked puppy or sad kitten, and Katsuya, for some reason, ends up feeling a little bad.
In spite of the fact that it would have been /his leg/!!
But, for better or worse, there's to be none of that now. Rather than violence, the next moment will be diplomacy.
That is, if Katsuya behaves himself.
Shiryuu is the one who broke his way in.
"Property damage, illegal entry," Katsuya murmurs, if mostly to himself: he's already marked how Shiryuu is armed and knows already of what he's capable. Surely the other boy can ascend similar levels, if they're master and protege. The law is the law, but... there's too much at stack locally for him to be wounded or even killed, even if it's in pursuit of a crime.
He shakes his head. "I'm not leaving just yet. What is your intention here? The students have been evacuated, and emergency services are already on their way. That must mean you're after something in the building, and that you already know where it is." But what in the world could be in a high school that someone like him -- or both of them -- would want?
He takes one half-step back, as if to signal as best as he can that he's not about to attempt anything foolish. And it would be foolish. Bravery is all well and good, but... not here. Not over this.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"You are toying with the patience of dragons and kitsune, Suou," Shiryuu states evenly. "I did not sanction your interrogation. This much, in addition to your original sins of being a reprobate and scoundrel would, on its own, be enough."
He does -not- like being asked questions by the police, and especially not by Katsuya, of all people. The boy steps forward, leading with one of those impressively maintained sneakers, as if the very idea of it is enough to rile him. His mouth presses. There is a flash of teeth.
..he looks back, to Kurou. An instant. A moment. His subordinate is taking notes.
A sword-long sigh escapes the young man, as two fingertips lift from his sleeve, a hand draped to the knuckles in silk. He touches strands tickling at his brow, to brush wisps of grey hair out of his eyes so he is not quite so overstimulated. Katsuya can notice just as they were before -- his eyes are two slightly different shades of brown, one lighter than the other. And they're currently focused on the step back the police officer takes. That's when Suou can catch a glimpse of the steel in Shiryuu's hand.
"...I am here for..."
He breathes.
"...the living legacy of the clan Ryouhara."
His right hand drops from his head, the sleeve swallowing even the two fingertips. Suou might realize then that Shiryuu has been holding a knife for the last minute, nigh impossible to see in that voluminous outfit, where his sleeves easily overdrape his hand by inches.
"Kurou," Shiryuu says, flicking his glance to the side. "The existing order stands. However, until such time as our affairs are concluded or until he decides to become a problem, we will give the unsanctioned scoundrel Katsuya Suou our grace. From this point forward, please be prepared, and continue gathering information as you have."
Yes, apparently Suou had some kind of hit put out on him without his knowledge.
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
There is much to learn about diplomacy here. Kurou writes out the important gist of it in clean handwriting. So far, the key tenets seem to be:
- state proposal clearly
- appeal to listener's selfhood
- illustrate consequences
And, now:
- diplomate, do not negotiate
(That isn't the verb you think it is, Kurou...!)
Kurou nods to his little notebook slowly. It is difficult to capture such broad subjects briefly, but he trusts himself to recall this moment and meditate on this wisdom. One would have to watch him closely -- while there are far more important and dangerous things to be watching -- for it not to seem his notebook simply disappears with how swiftly and gracefully it finds itself back in Kurou's pocket.
This leaves him prepared to receive Shiryuu's words. Kurou bows swiftly and deeply, rising from the pride he feels swelling in his chest alone.
The future and legacy of Ryouhara... the anxiety Kurou had felt in the past days for its fates fades. He knows where his steel belongs, and what path it shall help carve.
"Understood," he affirms. He then turns to Katsuya for another bow. "In light of this, please do not stress about your answer. But I do look forward to hearing it at a future time."
<Pose Tracker> Katsuya Suou has posed.
Dragons and... kitsune? And... the way the younger boy is talking to him. It sounds almost as if he's taken a turn somewhere and landed in some made-for-TV 'historical' drama of some extraction. Except, he's still in modern day Japan.
Please excuse Suou if he turns his head ever so slightly to confirm that the city outside the hole in the wall is still the city he'd expect to see!
But even that can fall to one side. "'Reprobate'? What in the world are you talking about?" Katsuya wonders, standing up that much straighter as he trains his gaze on Shiryuu. "I am an officer of the law, as you are aware--"
But if Katsuya tenses, it's because of the 'almosts' in the room. Shiryuu takes one step as if to prepare for a run on Katsuya's person. Katsuya's fingers barely move, a betrayal of what he himself is thinking. In a place like this, Helios' presence is weighty, begging to be pulled forth into the world with but a thought.
Almost, these are things that happen, but--
Nothing, in the end, is what happpens. Katsuya doesn't go for his gun or summon his Persona, and in kind, he doesn't take a knife to his gut or some other less auspicious place.
Oh yes. Shiryuu has a knife. It's almost certainly illegal. In spite of himself, perhaps feeling the weight of 'almost' in this space, Katsuya doesn't comment. The direction of his gaze will do it for him.
His lifts his gaze from that few inches of steel and meets Shiryuu's eyes. Heterochromia, he has to wonder in private.
"Clan Ryouhara?" Katsuya voices at last, breaking the silence he hadn't known he'd maintained. The living legacy.
His gaze falls on Kurou. Him? He's here for the boy? Is this an abduction--
But that impulse is quelled with the information of the last few minutes. Kurou answers to Shiryuu. More than likely, this is... ...
"The existing order? Wait, you don't mean..."
Umie had warned him about something like this, too. He hadn't thought...
"'Unsanctioned... scoundrel'?"
Is that the point that sticks with him?
He gets a moment to consider that. Then, Kurou tells him he needn't worry about an answer now. After all, he can collect an answer later. "About..." It takes Katsuya a few seconds to put two and two together here.
Four /is/ death. Or in this case, a broken leg.
"Now, wait a moment..."
But what, precisely, is there that he can do right now except put himself in a lot of danger for no gain?
In the close distance, there are sirens. The him of a few months ago would have been grateful for backup. Now, he's left to wonder about what happens now. If the lives of other people become involved, then there's no question about it, he'll have to do something dangerous.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The blade is tucked away, almost as quickly as it was flashed. It doesn't at all seem to check Shiryuu's imperiousness, only serving as the same sign that Katsuya's half-step was -- the onmitsu is less overtly aggressive.
Apparently there is a part of the boy that really, really wants to put a stop to Katsuya right here and now.
Luckily, the shihaisha has priorities. He spares only the slightest glance to Kurou the moment he politely excuses him, giving him an amount of grace that Shiryuu is almost uncomfortable with. Luckily, the shihaisha is aloof enough for both of them.
"Be still," he says, holding up that hand as Katsuya starts to object, reminding him that he's an officer of the law.
"You know, as much as anyone should... how little that title means."
Shiryuu is perfectly content to leave Katsuya to put together the pieces of what's been said, and the smallest -- a scintilla of concession -- rises as he hears the sound of sirens in the distance.
It's hard to be an absolute guarantor of the safety of everyone present if you need to level a team of first responders in a staredown with a hated enemy. As much as he hates to admit it, Suou has the advantage of time here, so forcing him to leave is out of the question. Shiryuu makes a small, annoyed sound in the back of his throat, turning but never taking his eyes off Suou. He has a gun, after all. It would be a mistake to think Shiryuu is by the slightest stretch of the word dense.
And yet, still the imperious shihaisha.
"Che. Just hope that you behave yourself as well the next time we meet. Don't force me to forget myself. There is an entire mountain of Ryouhara justice awaiting you, Suou..."
One thing about those boys: They move fast.
One hole in the wall, and they're simply gone in the breath between this moment and that.