2025-12-28: Yumi's Loss
- Log: Yumi's Loss
- Cast: Yua Ooshiro and her boss's boss, Rokuro Nishiyama
- Where: A Dark Car
- OOC Date: 2025-12-28 (Backdated!)
- IC Date: Sat, Sept 01 2012
- Summary: Rokuro retrieves Yua, after her disastrous mission to dissuade Sojiro and Ayame. He tortures her for her failings, only to find that said torture makes her less able to report the mission. He's very stressed about this particular failure, for some reason...
- Content warning: Torture
Anyone who does follow Yumi, as she flees the side-streets, will trace her only as far as the nearest street wide enough to host a car. It is black, unmarked, and the door opens for her; a hand reaches past her, as she collapses into it, to close the door.
As she drives away, the dark, foreboding nature of the Marked zone recedes. The lights of Yumezaki pierce the darkness anew. The walls reveal they were never blackened, not with soot nor with blood. The fear that drove the civilians from the alleyways is no more, the disorientating nature of the place only a distant memory. These are the same streets many have grown up in; these same streets are home.
And in the car --
"aaaaaaaaHHHHHH!!!"
A woman who was sped away from her Supernatural space too quickly grasps her face, as she seizes against the seat of the car, screaming, incoherent. The man seated beside her -- Rokuro Nishiyama, a man in a suit -- looks deeply aggravated, as he turns in his seat to pin her to the back of hers by her forehead. His other hand shoves her veils aside, and he pretends he sees salvation in those moments he looks into the three pupils of her eye before he wrenches that eyepatch closed.
There's a latch, at the corner, to make sure nothing escapes.
And nothing gets in.
"haaa... haaa..." Yumi gasps -- no, that must be Yua, as Rokuro rips her veils from her head. Her hands flap beside her, as she hums, in a desperate attempt to find her missing centre after too much too deep too all at once, gutted by some unknown force by something as simple as her own carelessness.
Her stimming is interrupted, though -- as Rokuro grasps her wrist, summoning her desperate gaze to him again.
"A housewife," he issues, displeased, "and an old man without a Persona. Any of our assets would regard it as a milk run -- and you did not even have to kill them. You're telling me you failed?"
"Mm," Yua hums, not quite verbal, but clearly quite terrified.
He releases her wrist, though, and for a moment she can think she is safe -- until he pulls a small, brass bell from a hard case. Yua gasps, and then screams anew as he rings it, bringing forth a distinctive sound -- and it is no magic bell. Its magic is Pavlovian, as she grasps her right hand and wails. "Ahhhhhh...!! Stop! Stop, please!!"
Her memory leaves no present mark upon her.
His equipment is undamaged, when he heeds her plea.
"Please... put it away..." The words drag through molasses; she has to build them piece by piece, in a sensory universe which is all maximum volume.
"You'll explain," he issues, simply. Blessedly, he does lay that bell back into its case, where it can do no more harm.
"T--there were many others," she stammers out, still clutching her hand to her chest, chin tucked to her knuckles. "Stronger than the children... and he took it. He took my Evoker from me! He has a Persona... that's why I couldn't defeat them, you see? I would have summoned her again, I swear I would! Oh," she sobs, "they took Gretchen from me!"
"Focus," Rokuro insists. "Did you achieve a single damnable thing?"
"Y...you wanted them scared," Yua says, and she is quailing. "And fear I gave them! They were as frightened by my condition as by the conditions I enforced on them... yet scared they were still. The only reason he took my Evoker, it was because he feared what I would do to those people, you see? And they would not kill me... it was all they could do. They... they surely will think twice, before they act again, and... and we can listen to her, we'll know!"
"Tch... did you learn anything about his Persona, at least?"
And Yua shakes her head, her throat too tight to offer more than a hum. It's a lie -- but not much of one. She can't piece together what happened into a coherent picture, after the torture he's issued her. Electricity? Cunning? Did Sojiro's Persona fear the earth, or was it ice that troubled his old bones...? Finding the facts feels impossible, scared as she is... and she has been given no positive incentive to try.
"So the only news you bring to me," Rokuro scowls, "is that things are now more complicated for my clients?"
Yua shakes her head. "More predictable!" She insists, plaintively. "Persona, Persona -- we know when those people move. The channels through which they operate. And at once we isolate him from the normative frameworks he used. Who will believe what he has seen today? He will need to start from nothing. He will be bound to attend to the issues of his new allies. And he knows that he will suffer, if he goes on as he has. I--isn't that fine? I, I don't even know what his crime was, so, I..."
"You don't need to know," he cuts her off, sharply. That he doesn't know isn't something she needs to be privy to, either. "Pray that your so-called solution carries any merit at all... or you'll suffer worse than light and memories. If nothing else, the game has changed. But you've failed a very important man, today," and he knows that is true, though he knows not who it is -- indeed, he knows in large part because he has no clue who issued him these demands. "More importantly -- you've embarrassed me."
"I'm sorry," Yua says, her voice small and dull. "Working alone is hard for me..."
"A housewife and a powerless old man!" Rokuro's voice raises in his frustration, as she flinches back. "Anyone could do it! Had they given me a ring for this task, I could have shot them myself, a minute from midnight! Isn't terror your speciality?! You'll drive me to an early grave with your unreliability! I thought that man mad when he demanded he had a right to you -- but all the better if he wants a broken ornament! Perhaps now all your faults won't fall squarely on my neck!"
"Don't y-yell at me," Yua whimpers. "I--I'll tell Mimi..."
"Oh, give me another headache," Rokuro sighs, sinking back in his seat. "Don't you ever get sick of making her clean up after you? I've asked nothing of you which you couldn't reasonably do. Ugh... but you're useless as anything but a furnace, right now, aren't you? Be sure to visit the doctor before you settle in for the night."
"Yes, Nishiyama-san," she murmurs, without looking at him. The car pulls up; she looks to him, under strain.
"You're home," he informs her, curt. "Get changed... get cleaned up. See to yourself. We'll be in contact."
"But, Gretchen --" Yua starts, grief crossing her gaze again.
"We'll be in contact," he hisses, and her eyes widen, her fear overriding her loneliness as she opens the door and hurries up the elevator without a word of farewell.
... and a short time later, she is made a liar in one respect: the bug tracking Ayame's phone conversations goes dead.