2026-01-12: Kindred Spirits
- Log: Kindred Spirits
- Cast: Hyousuke Suzuki, Shinjiro Aragaki
- Where: Tartarus - Entrance Hall
- OOC Date: 2026-01-12
- IC Date: Sun Sep 09
- Summary: Hyousuke's ill-advised attempt at scouting Tartarus is intercepted by Shinjiro. The mission quickly takes a back seat when both realise they are alike in a worrying number of ways.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Cloaked in the night's pitch black, lit only when he deigned to pass beneath a lamp or when the moon's pale glow caught against him, Hyousuke stalked the streets. He made no attempt at stealth - he knew far too well that it was not his forte. As graceful as a sledgehammer, and capable of displaying just as much delicacy, attempting to keep to the shadows any more than appeared natural was an exercise in futility. But walking like he belonged? Balancing a vaguely standoffish expression with a neutral posture, so that he might look as though he belonged? That much, he could handle. He only hoped that no cops with little better to do than harass a midnight wanderer stumbled upon him before the appointed hour.
Said time was, of course, the Dark Hour. In a stunning display of forethought not usually exhibited by someone as dense as he, Hyousuke had actually managed to time his arrival at Gekkoukan High School perfectly. He'd not aimed to be there during its active hours, however, nor did he aim to arrive right as the last of the clubs were closing out. He had chosen exactly the right train, and marched at exactly the correct speed, to reach the gates a mere handful of heartbeats before that fateful ticking of the clock.
The air was cool that night. Not cold enough to turn his breath to fog - autumn had not set in properly yet, after all. But it was still enough to stand as a stark difference to the daytime. However, he felt as though his breath had turned to ice when the world entered that unholy hour. The strange colours that tinged the sky, the coffins that were scattered about the place like jacks, the Shadows that had no doubt crawled from whatever pit spawned them in order to wreak their nightly havoc... He never did manage to get used to it. There was always that teeth-itching *wrongness* to it, and a chill that shot through his spine like frozen lightning.
He could not focus on it, however. There was work to do. It was a scouting mission, he reminded himself, not another of his nightly brawls. Though he was dressed in his costume of rich purples and golden yellows, and though he remained ready to bring Achilles to the fore at a moment's notice, he restrained his desire to fight. He was there to verify that Tamaki's information - which he had scrawled onto a now-crumpled sheet of notepad paper - was correct, and to perhaps get a feel for Tartarus itself if time permitted.
Should he have contacted Ririka? Perhaps. An escort - or, at the very least, insider information - would have been useful. But it was too late for second thoughts. He had already entered the premises and made his way to the indicated location by the time the thought had occurred to him.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
The view of Tartarus never changes. Everytime Shinjiro sees it, the pits of his stomach sink. If only it was gone, forever, the world would be a better place.
As he goes on his walkpatrol, Evoker in his pocket and a massive gilded piggy bank hammer against his shoulder, he's approaching the tower. He sees someone there, and instinctively, he resonates - a feeling chilly on the first brush, yet warm and comforting if you look deeper into it.
If he gets a taste of Hyousuke's resonance, he approaches, still in that casual walk in his red winter coat and beanie, identity plainly clear.
"Yo. Nice costume."
A pause, as he looks up to the tower that was once his school. "I wouldn't poke around Tartarus alone. It's a death trap."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke's resonance is a far less comforting thing. Still minor, and still able to be brushed off with even the barest modicum of effort, but that slight ache in the muscles - the kind that settles in as one's strength begins to wane, or lingers in the body even long after a rest - is no more pleasant for it. He does not let it out at first, instead tensing and drawing his arms up in readiness for a fight, but his posture began to relax once he realised that he knew the person before him.
"Nice hammer." Hyousuke said in response, his comment a little offhanded, though still genuine. It was quite a nice piece, as far as hammers went. That was about all he cared to give when it came to pleasantries, however. It seemed that each recognised the other, and that both recognised the other meant no harm - at least, he hoped that was the case. He shrugged at Shinjiro's remark about Tartarus being a death trap, and though his mask obscured his expression, his tone betrayed a nonchalance bordering on dismissiveness. "I'll be fine. I'm just scouting, and I know how to take a hit."
If Shinjiro could see underneath the costume, he'd know there was a sad truth to that statement.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro doesn't take a combat stance back, letting the Resonance do its job. He's just waiting for Hyousuke to relax, before...
"Thanks. Got it from a yakuza boss's Palace."
He looks over Hyousuke, taking him in. He frowns at Hyousuke's nonchalant reply, sighing.
"Taking a hit is all well and good, but a footnote of a casualty isn't something I'd recommend being." He says it with a personal tinge of tone, like it's something he thinks about a lot. "I can walk with you."
If Hyousuke takes him up on it, he glances to the tower, before back to Hyousuke. "Do you have any allies? I'd bring them before you go inside."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"It's fine, I don't need to call them." Hyousuke insisted, again dismissing Shinjiro's worries. His tone was relaxed, and he spoke as easily as he breathed, but that did not change the fact that he had effectively told Shinjiro he'd come there with the express purpose of wandering in alone. "Besides, they've all got better things to do than keeping my ass from getting killed." His mask shifted a little from the smile he forced at his own joke. His humour might have been a little grim, but it was there nonetheless. "But if you want in, you're welcome to come with.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro's frown deepens, but he's not going to push just yet. "I'm coming with," he says, letting Hyousuke lead the way. He barely knows this guy... but he can't just let him go get himself killed. Besides, he's a good guide for Tartarus.
"This life kills those who wander off on their own," he says perhaps strangely, since he came on his own as well.
Perhaps he doesn't much care if he dies alone, either. It doesn't seem entirely like cockiness, at lesat.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
There was something familiar about the way Shinjiro spoke. Hyousuke couldn't quite place it - it was just a feeling stirring in his gut, playing on his mind like an itch he could not quite scratch. There was the fact that Shinjiro had come alone too. Not something that Hyousuke had thought much of initially, as he'd assumed Gekkoukan to be Shinjiro's turf, but it struck him as a little odd when paired with every other factor present in the conversation. He took a moment to give a response beyond an affirmative nod and accompanying grunt, deciding to mull his next response over before finally giving in and deciding to test the waters.
"Dunno about that. I've been going out a lot, and it hasn't killed me yet." A cocky statement on the surface, but Hyousuke spoke with a voice that did not quite have the confidence to sound cocky. Were one to listen closely, they might have even considered his tone a little morose, and noted the subtle emphasis on the closing word of that response.
As though he was simply waiting for it to happen.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"...the yet's doing a lot of heavy lifting there," Shinjiro says with a sigh. Does this guy see it as inevitable?
He shouldn't care. But as they talk, he remembers the feeling of Hyousuke's Resonance. The ache, the sapping... is he tired? Tired in his soul?
"...listen. I know what it's like to isolate from those who could help. I also know that's probably not a good idea. Shouldn't risk throwing your life away for a scouting mission."
A single acquiescing breath.
"It should at least mean something, right?"
It kinda feels like he's not asking Hyousuke for Hyousuke's sake, even if that might not be his entire intent.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke gave a short laugh at Shinjiro's response. He said nothing, and what few parts of his mask weren't opaque were mirrored - there was no way to see just what kind of expression he wore. Yet the silence was deafening, and the upright posture which he assumed might have seemed forced to particularly sharp-eyed observers. He didn't address the issue of isolation either, instead choosing to move straight to some pithy, casual, dismissal of Shinjiro's concern once more.
"I'm not gonna throw it out on a scouting mission." He said, waving his hand a little, as if to try and brush away a bad smell. The gesture quickly slowed to a crawl, however, and his hand did not so much return to his side as it did drop to it. "...I've still got work to do." A grim smile, and a grim tone. The mask could not muffle his voice enough to disguise either. Not that it would have done much, once he canted his head a little towards Shinjiro, as if to silently ask if the same could be said for him.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
"Good," Shinjiro says firmly. But the dismissal is still frustrating, and...
The comment about work to do causes him to look straight at Hyousuke, sighing. The cant of the head gets Shinjiro taking a breath, before.
"I get it. I really do. I don't got much time to get mine done, but..." He trails off, not sure what he's saying.
In the sickly green light, it might be hard to tell, but Shinjiro's hands shake. They always shake. And his body's pale, a little gaunt. He's not very healthy.
"Don't give up on the future if you still have one."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Shinjiro was the first, in Hyousuke's view, to do away with the subtlety. Their little dance around each other probing and prying to see if the other felt the same, could finally come to an end. He did not have to pretend. He could not let down all of his guards - not yet, and certainly not in front of someone that was barely more than an acquaintance - but in that moment, there was understanding. Hyousuke's shoulders sagged at the realisation, as though a great and terrible weight had been lifted from them, and he had been afforded a moment's reprieve from holding it aloft.
The mask, for all the skill and care it had been constructed with, was limited in its function. He saw through the visor, but he could not see with perfect clarity. In the green light, sickly as it was, he could only guess that what he saw was shaking in Shinjiro's hands, and night's black embrace made discerning the pallor of his skin a difficult task. But Hyousuke could guess at such things, hearing how Shinjiro spoke. Somewhere, deep in his core, he could tell that the man before him was unwell.
He himself fared no better, though his symptoms differed greatly. He seemed to be strong, upon first glance. Tall of stature, possessed of great strength and muscles hewn into an athletic figure by countless hours of gruelling training, he was a mountain of a man. But underneath the protective layers of his armour, the iron of his body had been battered and tarnished. Bruises, fresh and old, lay scattered across his body, pulsing whenever so much as a stray thread grazed against them. His muscles ached from constant exertion, their rest too short and their work too long. His eyes were bloodshot and underscored by darkening bags, keen though he tried to keep them. And then, there were his hands. The skin on his knuckles had been shorn away by vicious blows, allowed a moment to scab over, only for him to throw himself into the fray once more and rip apart those wounds.
Every movement he made required effort. Small, perhaps. Enough that he did not need to think on it, and could let instinct drive the vast majority of his actions. But, no matter how minute the strain in his movements were, it still remained. He was, by all accounts, tired.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Subtlety wasn't doing anything, so Shinjiro discarded it. He, too, cannot fully trust Hyousuke, but there was understanding nonetheless.
"...how long have you been fighting?" Shinjiro finally asks, glancing back to the tower. "I first Awakened in middle school. But... we know that's not when the fight starts, right?"
He sighs. "It sucks to do alone, that's for damn sure."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"I don't think I ever stopped."
Hyousuke's words hung in the air like smoke. They drifted between the two, faint and fading, but present nonetheless. Only when their last echoes had dissipated did he continue, stretching a little to try and work out some of the soreness in his muscles. It did little to help in the long term, but at the very least, it distracted from it. Or perhaps talking of his feelings was an unfamiliar feeling in and of itself, and he could not help but fidget as his mind raced to figure out what the 'correct' response to all of this was.
"I Awakened a few months ago. June, I think. It's all been a blur." The last sentence was said with a sigh, as though speaking the words took too much effort, and he could only stand to let them fall from his lips as a breath. "But I've been fighting for... fuck, I don't know... I don't know anything else..." The words clung to his throat like tar, needing to be dragged out with every mote of strength he could summon. To expound upon them took more than he had left in that moment, so he turned the conversation back to Shinjiro instead. "But having all that power when you're just a kid... how do you handle that?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding. He's never stopped, either.
"...I get it," he tells Hyousuke. "When the world's unfair to you, the only way forward is to fight it. But then you forget how to do anything else, if you even learned."
But, about the question given to him, he laughs. It's not a pleasant one. "Poorly. Losing control is a real risk. It's a dangerous power... one that can cost lives." He rubs a hand through his hair, anxious.
"Tartarus has been around for a long time." He's not going to give Hyousuke everything he knows (and he knows a lot), but if the guy's scouting, he should at least go home with something. "Like all this supernatural shit, it's the hubris of humanity at fault. People making selfish decisions that spend the lives of literal children."
There's contempt in his voice. It makes him sick.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
His muscles tensed. It was subtle, and it was short, but fabric rustled and protective layers of hardened material creaked. Anyone with sharp enough ears to pick those sounds out amongst whatever could be heard in the distance might have been able to tell that Shinjiro's words struck a chord with him. Forgetting how to do anything else... He was thankful for the mask, for it hid how hard his jaw clenched, and stifled the quiet grinding of his teeth against each other. Even as the conversation shifted back to Shinjiro, he could not pry his jaw apart, and allowing it to fall away was an agonisingly slow process.
Hyousuke remained quiet throughout. It wasn't as though he had nothing to say. Rather, there was far too much for him to decide on any one thing, to say nothing of how he was not sure if he could even phrase it correctly. But, for all his silence, he was alert, and he was attentive. His visor locked firmly onto Shinjiro, he did what he could to keep his posture from going slack, and he waited for some few moments to make certain that Shinjiro had said his piece. Only when those moments had passed did he speak, but even then, it was a little hesitant. Each word that edged past his lips was a tentative one, while each thought was ventured with care.
The contempt did not go unnoticed. Dense as he was, even Hyousuke could sense it, the intent palpable enough that he felt some hint of revulsion, even without the details. Yet, he could not reciprocate it. Not fully. His mind wandered, dredging up the memory of the Palace. Of its ruler. of the man that had done such heinous things to his friends, and threatened things so vile the very thought left bile stinging at his throat. He thought of how he had fought to help his friends, and save the women Eiji had taken. He thought of the man he and Ichika and Vesper had saved from the bride... and the sibling that he had failed to save from the assassin.
"But I can use it to help people." It wasn't a counterargument. It wasn't intended as comfort. It wasn't even a provocation. It was a statement of fact, plain and simple. "I don't know why I have this, or how I got it, but I... I want to do something with it. Even if..." Hyousuke did not finish the thought. He did not feel he had to. He did not feel he wanted to.
The implication that he was willing to spend his own life was, he hoped, clear enough.
GAME: Shinjiro Aragaki flips a coin! The coin comes up tails!
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
Shinjiro tenses a bit as Hyousuke tenses, but he doesn't do much. Instead, he listens genuinely to Hyousuke's words.
"...what matters is that you're not doing it because someone told you to, that you have a reason. You don't have to do this. But... if this is what you want..."
Shinjiro sighs. He adjusts his beanie. He doesn't *like* it, but...
"Look. I'm Shinjiro Aragaki. We hardly know each other. But you ever need someone to bash in Shadows with, I live in Iwatodai and often find myself in Sumaru. Better to make sure you succeed in the process, and to do that, you need more able hands, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Shinjiro's disdain for the decision didn't escape Hyousuke's notice, but he did not react to it beyond a slight downward tilt of his head. Not a nod, but an inability to look Shinjiro in the eye, or even pretend to while the visor kept his face obscured. It did not last long. Shinjiro introduced himself, and Hyousuke's hesitation at whether or not to return the gesture lasted all of a moment. Shinjiro had proven himself of like mind, and by all appearances, did not seem to have any ill intent.
"Hyousuke Suzuki." He said back, though the impact of it might have been dampened somewhat by his refusal to take off the mask. "I'm a Kasu student, still living in the dorms." As if he had not just moved there only a few months prior. "I mostly stick to Hirasaka, but I'll give you a call if I'm in the area." There was a lot else he could say with some reasonable degree of comfort. That Ririka could vouch for him, that Ogre and Phoenix could too, that he thought Shinjiro deserved to make it out of this more than he... But it was something to be told another time, if ever. There was one thought that had played on his mind once Shinjiro had offered assistance, however. "Actually, I might need to call you soon. I heard some rumours about something new lurking around this place..." He unfurled that same sheet of crumpled paper again, clearly displaying notes on the job Tamaki had given him.
The writing was chickenscratch that a doctor would balk at.
<Pose Tracker> Shinjiro Aragaki has posed.
As Hyousuke introduces himself back, saying that he'll call him, Shinjiro's pulling out a tiny notebook and pen, writing his number on a small pad of paper and tossing it to Hyousuke.
He then takes a look at the chickenscratch, and cannot make it out. His face is amused, but otherwise stony.
"Sure. I play a bit of detective sometimes, so I'm game."
Hopefully, knowing he has an ally would keep Hyousuke out of Tartarus tonight. And if they did go in... hopefully they didn't go beyond the lobby. Scout in and out.
Either way... a kindred spirit. How worrying that is.