2026-01-14: Chariotable Acts
- Log: Chariotable Acts
- Cast: Umie Akabane, Ryuji Sakamoto
- Where: outside the Triple 7, Shibuya, Tokyo
- OOC Date: January 14, 2026
- IC Date: September 10, 2012
- Summary: Umie meets up with Ryuji (who she is definitely meeting for the first time) in order to find out what kind of person Kazusa was before her 'change'. Despite a few initial mishaps, the two hit it off well, but isn't that usually the case for anything to do with Chariot social links?
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
>> hey, by chance, do you know someone named Kazusa Motojima at your school?
That was the text Umie finally sent Ren Amamiya, after talking to Joker (who is, of course, a completely different person).
Some conversation was had, which led to the meeting of:
Umie Akabane and Ryuji Sakamoto, two people who have never once met each other ever in their lives. Ever.
(At least this keeps Umie from poking around Shujin Academy, for now.)
Having Ren pass along the message to Ryuji to meet her after her shift at the Triple 7 the next day (if that worked out), the short ash blonde young woman huffs a sigh, flips her phone closed, and bathes in the cool breeze generated by the cute panda fan Shiryuu gave her.
(She may or may not have tried to speak through it, it was one of those hot as hell days.)
----THE NEXT DAY----
Blonde baby hairs fly loose from Umie's red hairband as she steps past the sliding doors into the early September air, which is, unfortunately, still too warm for her tastes. Thankfully, having changed out of the hot pink and lime green uniform, she's dressed casually, in a red and white baseball tee, denim shorts, and tennis shoes.
Ryuji'd likely recognize her from his times as Skull, and, more or less, there's not much of a difference, aside from her ever changing masks. (That is, if he's made a mental note of her at all, outside that meeting with the Cardboard Dragon.)
Glancing around with a brief touch of anxiety, Umie walks over to the painted brick wall next to the entrance, whipping out her phone and looking through her messages.
..... Come to think of it... should she... look for a Shujin uniform or...? She knows Ann is Ren's friend. Is this Ryuji a friend too? Well, too late. She'll just ask instead!
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
"Yo!" From out of nowhere, a blonde punk walks toward the woman getting off her shift. He was dressed in a Shujin uniform with several embellishments (loud undershirt for example) that would probably get him in trouble but such was the life of Ryuji Sakamoto.
"So a friend of mine said you were looking for me?" Ryuji blinks, looking the woman over. She does look familiar but it isn't really connecting on how he knows her. So he just kinda looks at her with a neutral expression raising a brow.
"So uhhh...how can I help?" Ryuji says, unsure of how he could help. Unless it was Ramen Places to try. He had a hundred of those.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Drawing out a soda from her purse and cracking it open as Umie waits, she begins to think.
Which means, naturally, she's going to overthink.
Ryuji Sakamoto: if he's anything like Ren, Umie begins to assume, he's probably a private type of person. (Sure, Ann wasn't, but that's *Ann*.) Coming at this from the assumption that these two know each other in a friendly way or may even be friends, that has to be it. If Umie had to guess, Ryuji'd be on the quiet side and reserved at first, slowly opening up when he got to know you a little better.
She'll have to be careful, talking to this hypothetical Ryuji, and not let her often forceful nature cause the poor guy to clam up--
'Yo!' says the blonde punk from out of nowhere, wearing a Shujin uniform, as well as a loud undershirt and several embellishments Umie can assume aren't exactly allowed.
"-Ulp-." Umie holds up a hand for Ryuji to wait for a moment, as she tries to keep from sputtering her drink all over the sidewalk.
"You're... Ryuji Sakamoto, right?" Straightening, her eyes still red from coughing, Umie clears her throat. ".... If you're not, uh, I'm a little too old for you, and your friend's an ass for putting you up to this."
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
Ryuji blinks as he watches Umie. Did she almost just spit out her drink? Man, this is going to be an interesting one. He find a place to lean, slouching in his stance.
"Woah! Yeah that's me but I'm spoken for so not a worry!" He holds up his hands, smiling awkwardly before he settles down some.
"So uhh...I admit my friend just mentioned you were looking for me...so uhh whats up?"
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Wiping her mouth, Umie clears her throat for the final time. "Then... that statement was not for you, so... don't worry about it." She pauses, trying to think of a proper statement to allow herself to unbury herself from the hole she's just dug.
(Ah, Umie, you did it again.)
She lets out a long sigh as she rubs her neck. "My bad, it's been a long shift; I had a few people hitting on me so I wanted to make sure all my bases were covered."
Drinking the taste of her cough away, Umie continues. "Well, more like," she begins, a lavender nailed finger poking out as she raises her can, "someone who goes to school with you: a young woman by the name of Kazusa Motojima."
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
Ryuji nods, tilting his head. "Right! That makes sense!" He feels just as buried by this whole situation.
"Oh, that sucks.." He offers, leaning on the wall as he rubs the bridge of his nose.
Ryuji almost trips when Kazusa is mentioned. Between her threats at the arcade and sickening feeling he deals with in class, Ryuji is just not a big fan of Kazusa as a person. Still, there was something wrong with her soo...
"Uh huh...I mean it depends on what you want to know. Like I can tell you what I know about her around school but she's not my friend or anything."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"Eh, it's fine," Umie says, waving a hand-- one that is partially covered by a half-glove, despite it being warm. "Nothing to do with you; just part of working in retail."
So, it stands: a konbini clerk is asking about a classmate Ryuji knows. Whose name is--
"Umie Akabane, by the way, if Amamiya-kun didn't pass it on."
'It depends on what you want to know.' Looks like she'll need to be a little more specific, instead of counting on Ryuji to just volunteer what she assumes would be whatever gossip struggling to burst right out of him.
"She's been... acting strange lately, is that fair to say?" she asks, from behind her drink, just before sipping it. "I don't know her myself, but, let's just say a friend asked me to check in." This statement is stretching the truth; Kazusa's brother never asked her to look into anything, and, even if she thinks of it as 'looking into it for Joker', that's even more of a stretch. Joker didn't ask her to do anything.
The friend is her. She is the friend.
"Problem is, even if I've seen her inside the store, I have no previous experience to go off of. To me, she seemed like a nice, normal young woman."
There's a slant to her smile as she looks up at Ryuji out of the corner of one eye. "But other classmates seem to be pretty perplexed by this. What sort of person was she, before?"
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
"Akabane, right..." Ryuji nods as he sucks in a deep breath.
"Oh...Yeah. I just didn't know what some adult woman would know about that...Yeah she kinda has been...weird." Ryuji leans on the wall, nodding when a friend is mentioned. He doesn't at all suspect who the friend is, accepting her answer as plausible. PLUS, Ryuji did want to sort of vent about this girl.
"Pth...She's one of those mean girls. Basically threatened me once cuz I saw something out of character for her. Even then, what she is now...doesn't add up...More over, I dunno if you like...how do I put this? I get this weird freaky feeling from her since school started..."
Ryuji notices the smile and nods. "Yeah...again, she is either one hell of an actress or something is up."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Umie gives Ryuji a dry grin, her tone crisp and airy. "What, you don't regularly encounter scores of adults just poking their noses in the business of people in high school?"
The short blonde stops right at the end of her quip, realizing... yeah, that's the problem, right there. Of course some group like the Phantom Thieves had to come in before anything could change.
".... Then again," she says, adopting a more sincere tone as she looks away, "if people actually paid attention, they would have realized that nice successful coach that Shujin hired was a wolf in sheep's clothing."
For better or worse, she doesn't follow up on that, instead folding her arms as she looks at the people passing the two of them by.
That monster's been dealt with, however; Umie needs to look at if there's another monster of a different sort.
Kazusa was a mean girl. "Eh?" Umie redirects her attention back to Ryuji. "Sounds like a handful." She gestures with a hand. "I take it, by 'out of character', you don't mean... what she's doing now, since it doesn't sound like she's been in the mood to threaten you."
'How do I put this?' Ryuji mentions a 'weird, freaky feeling'.
"..." Huh. The soda can provides an important mask as she thinks, brown eyes considering Ryuji quietly.
He doesn't have a resonance she can sense, but, then again, neither does she, and... neither does someone like Maria, someone who definitely does not have a Persona. Perhaps, if it's the same feeling she feels, maybe Ryuji is on the cusp of Awakening himself, somehow, or otherwise primed, she thinks.
"Some people are just sensitive to those sorts of things," Umie suggests, courteously looking away. "You might be one of them. I'd be careful who you tell that to, though." She rolls her shoulders. "... But, that's besides the point, I'm just a paranoid konbini clerk who sees a lot of things."
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
"Heh. Not unless they are being assholes, not generally." He responds with an equally dry tone, grinning as he relaxes some.
Then that asshole Kamoshida is eluded to. Ryuji tightens his jaw, feeling instantly angry as a ache still comes from his leg. "Yeah...Well adults generally don't care unless it's their ass on the line. Gotta keep up appearances and all." There is some edge to Ryuji's voice. Not anger but just general discomfort. He finally sighs to let off some of the tension.
"Yeah no...I don't like the girl if I'm honest but I'm also not going to betray her trust. Just not my style....Point is what she was doing wasn't this. It was...human I guess...This feels fake. Like something wearing her skin or something."
Ryuji blinks when the woman suddenly slips into something like a hard boiled detective. 'Paranoid Kobini cleak'? Yeah sure. Ryuji isn't naive not to assume that this woman had some connection to the weird goings on. Just he wasn't sure how just yet. "mmhmm...Yeah I'll be careful. So uhhh what are you going to do with this information? Like I can't really think of who to ask..."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
While Umie knows Kamoshida had been aggressive towards Ren in some way (enough for Ren to see the Phantom Thieves as the ones responsible for saving him), it never crossed her mind that Ryuji would be the same, outside of the general sentiment of being part of the same student body the coach had terrorized.
"Yeah." Despite being an adult (and openly admitting to it) Umie doesn't refute it, slipping her hands into the pockets of her shorts. To still feel that anger, and yet, be several months into being a legal adult herself... it's a feeling that doesn't get old.
But it's not like she's any different; the news didn't stand out to her beyond just being a case of corruption, only notable from its ties to the Phantom Thieves, and even then... it was just a rumor that such a group even existed. And then, it didn't become truly real to her until she heard Ren express, in his own way, just how he had been affected.
It's what it means, to be the 'normal, boring adult' she brags about being.
"You don't have to like someone," Umie says, a touch more quietly as she trails from that reflective mood, "in order to be concerned--" 'Like something is wearing her skin or something.'
She stops, her eyes narrowing slightly.
It has to be it. He must be on the verge of awakening, if he can sense that. Or, maybe, even people without any such trait can feel it, as well?
"That answers my question there," Umie says, trying to soften her reaction as she realizes he was reacting to her earlier insinuated question. "You don't need to detail that. Though, I have to say... you're a upstanding person for holding yourself to that, Sakamoto-kun."
Yes, in no time at all, Ryuji is now a '-kun'.
What is she to do with this information?
Umie chuckles, cheekily pinning a finger to her lips and closing one eye. "I told you, it's for a friend. Do I seem like the sort of person who lies to people regularly?" She's still grinning, as she says that, but at the very least, she drops that finger from her lips..
"I'm trying to get a sense of what's happening, since... I felt the same thing," she admits.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
Ryuji most calms down from the mention of the man who tried to ruin his life. He's getting better about that since joining the Phantom Thieves but still...
Ryuji mostly keeps that to himself for now. No sense in telling this stranger his life story. He sighs as he looks her over again, scratching the back of his head.
"Hmm? Oh ok." He isn't sure what to make of this other than someone with powers meddling. It is a feeling he understands quite well. "Heh. I guess. Maybe I'm also just not wanting to deal with the fall out from someone like her. I got my own troubles and I don't need someone like her on my ass."
"Right. A friend. Not gonna judge but you oughta be careful. Adults being friends with teens is kinda...sketchy?" Ryuji nods, not getting the vibe from Umie but still.
"Ah...So you know what I'm talkin about then! Like she is weird man and I'm starting to get in trouble from not wanting to be around her when she's like that. I've faked being sick like...well don't worry about it." He realizes he is almost about to tell an adult his secret class escape techniques.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
.... Boy, would Umie ever relate; the fact that she suspects nothing beyond a passing knowledge of the man speaks to Ryuji's efforts.
Or, alternatively, that pesky ability of an adult to overlook something until it becomes personal enough.
For better or worse, Umie doesn't register as having a resonance of any sort, though this in itself may not be at all alarming if Ryuji isn't the type to notice, one way or another. (Or, if he has come to the same conclusions as Umie has, about him.)
"Ah, so you're actually a ruthless person," Umie teases. "Or a smart one, more like."
Ryuji warns Umie; she shakes her head. "Believe me, I realize that. It's more..."
Who would believe you, if you said someone is walking around in a human skin?
At least, Ryuji understands now. "... Yeah," Umie says, nodding. "I can dress it up as having a friend who's interested, but in reality... I'd like to see what the heck is happening there. If only certain people can see it, what happens, when someone who confronts her on this?" She frowns. "Which is why I'll give a warning of my own."
She looks towards Ryuji, her expression dead serious. "Don't do that."
Not that she... knows, what would happen.
Ryuji nearly gives away his secrets, and Umie looks aside, grinning. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that part, but you're going to have to think of some strategies, just for the time being."
<Pose Tracker> Ryuji Sakamoto has posed.
"Probably smarter than I let on." Ryuji says, grinning devilishly.
He merely nods when Umie admits to having a desire to see this thing for herself. He is now sure she has some sort of connection to the paranormal part of this. The only thing he can say for sure is that Umie is definitely not a Phantom Thief.
However the warning makes Ryuji stop and stare. After a moment, he decides to not pretend and just sighs. "Uhhh Don't do what? If you mean get involved, way a head of you" He is unfortunately very involved already but he can pretend!
"Heh...Yeah. Long as I can graduate ok, I'll do whatever it takes."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Ryuji's devilish grin is answered with one of Umie's own, though she masks it by sipping from her soda can.
Well, if this is a friend of Ren's (as opposed to a mere acquaintance that Ren just happened to know, which is equally possible), she's beginning to see why.
Certainly, Umie's not doing a great job with hiding it, having shown her hand a few times in order to gain information, especially right after Ryuji revealed having a weird feeling himself.
It felt like a necessary risk to try to warn him, just in case.
.... of course, she could have explained that better.
Umie blinks, a touch oblivious for a brief second, before Ryuji clarifies.
"Oh, I mean, don't... uh... go up to her and... say she's not who's claiming to be..." She rubs her neck, wincing. "I swear, I don't think you're that stupid, but if I don't at least warn, I'll feel bad if you take it on yourself. Leave the dumb decisions to people who've graduated and should know better, okay?"
Pausing, she checks her phone. "Ehhh... my next shift is up already..." She heaves a weary sigh. "That's all I really need for now. Thank you for answering a few questions, Sakamoto-kun. With luck, it'll all just blow over and we'll just go on our merry ways like nothing happened, eh?"
It won't blow over, not without a little effort on her part, but Ryuji or Ren don't need to worry about that.