2026-02-19: Navigation Blind
- Log: Navigation Blind
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Kasugayama - Air Raid Shelter
- OOC Date: 2026-02-19
- IC Date: Fri Sep 28 2012
- Summary: Yua goes into the bomb shelter to save a student, only to find demons in need of saving from Shiryuu. But when he reveals that he has no map -- and Yua realises she didn't bring hers -- things rapidly take a turn for the worse. Shiryuu learns a great many things about Yua's capabilities and history; Yua learns a thing or two, too.
- Content warning: References to torture, human trafficking, human experimentation, child abuse
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua missed her first Kasugayama class this week, on account of her impromptu pilgrimage. But she's here again on Friday, showing up around lunchtime to get any early paperwork done and get ready for her afternoon class. It goes well, as always; some of her students are rather quiet, but most appreciate the opportunity to get moving. Yua needs to be a little more careful with her movements -- a few ruder students have asked her if she's gaining weight, now she's starting to show, but she insists that's not an appropriate question to ask their teachers.
(She can be quite stern, when she has to be!)
She has some paperwork to finish up after class, as well, of course; she struggles through it, as well as she can. Luckily, she's not running any groups at Studio Chura after this today... because she has to contact Para-Mind and ask him exactly what they even mean in the behaviour assessment she was told to perform.
Luckily, texting is quite discreet.
But by the time she claws herself out of the teacher's lounge today, it's well past the three-thirty in the afternoon when she likes to leave; there aren't many students still hanging around, now. The teachers are by and large hiding away in their lounges, of course, trying to survive their rotation to Kasugayama. Perhaps that explains why --
"Teach! Teach!!"
-- someone's hurrying up to Yua, when she's walking out of the ground floor.
In her black ballerina's leotard, skirt swishing with the motion of her turn, she's unmistakable; the eyepatch over her left eye, doubly so. Her right eye widens, alarm in the garnet shade, as she sees a boy hurrying up to her. Her fingers rest, daintily, on her black handbag. "Sakinobu-kun? Goodness, what's the matter...? Ah, was someone hurt again?!" It wouldn't be the first time Yua's escorted someone to what passes for the nurse's clinic; once or twice, she's even taken battered students in her very fancy car to the hospital, when those services failed them.
"Muh--maybe?" Iemitsu Sakinobu huffs, hands to his knees, as he stops. "There's these noises comin' from the bomb shelter, Teach... like someone's gettin' beat all to hell! Uh -- heck!"
"It's all right," Yua shakes her head, as she turns around and starts walking towards the shelter. "That place ought to be empty... maybe some boys snuck in...?" It's a lie, but it's one all the teachers perpetrate; most of them even believe it.
"I dunno... but it's freakin' me out!" Iemitsu huffs, behind her. When they get to the door, at first, all is still --
But then, distantly, there is a distant pained howl.
"Goodness!" Yua exclaims, again. "I see..." She fishes in her handbag to produce a pocket flashlight, and goes through the effort of opening those sealed doors.
"Please keep other students from entering," she asks the boy, politely. "I'm not sure if it's safe."
"No one wants to go in there!" Iemitsu exclaims. "You don't come out! Even you, like... you gonna be okay?"
Yua smiles, to him. "I'm tougher than I look," she advises, warmly, and closes the door behind her, descending the stairs.
There's a false bottom to her purse; a hidden compartment, where she hides her Evoker. Her long fingers curl around it, as she lifts it free.
"Ah... all right!" She calls, when she steps deeper into the shelter. "Mr. Demons, if you've caught a human student, please let me know right now! I won't be cross with you if you let them go... even though you know you can't steal people during daytime!"
A chain rattles, with the ruffle of feathers.
"Mister, she says!"
"Maybe she's accusing us of eating the misters...?"
"Hauuuu... that's soooo unfair!!! I didn't even get a nibble!"
"You didn't get a nibble, but Archangel got skewered!"
"Oh, I saw that! That was so funny!!"
Yua turns, as the cacophony of voices echoes out around her. "Skewered...? -- a Persona User's stuck here?!" Her eye widens with horror, as she realises the position she's in. "If they see me--!!"
As she turns in another revolution, though, she comes face to face with a woman in a mask. The demon called 'Angel' is bound in leather and chains, and one of those leather straps, secured over her eyes, has an eye drawn upon it. "Seeing's overrated," she insists, reaching for Yua as her white feathered wings flap behind her. "You're halfway there... let us help!"
"Yeah!" Another Angel exclaims, appearing behind the corner Yua backs into. "You look way easier to mess with than that other guy!"
"Easier -- excuse you! I am a teacher!" Yua exclaims, scurrying back in a third direction. "The students' safety is my responsibility! T..tell me where that boy went, right now!" But she can't hide, entirely, how unnerved she is by the demons clustering around her, particularly not as she sights three mire skulking up.
"I'll tell you, iiiif... you tell me something!" The first Angel smiles, taking another step forward. "Hey, hey, what's 'married'?"
"What's -- what sort of question is that!" Yua exclaims.
"Married! That ring means you're married, right? So tell us!" Angel insists.
"W--well, it's an arrangement... a promise between people... it's like a contract...? And it can be for love, or, um, other reasons, but it's better if it's for love..." Yua's grasp on her Evoker trembles, uncertain.
"Booooo," another Angel calls out, behind her fellow. "Everyone knows marriage is how humans have babies! That's why they say 'I do want a baby'!! There's this whole ritual, and when it's done, the human's growing another human!"
"You're misinformed!" Yua cries. "W-we do say 'I do', sometimes, if it's Western, but that's not what it means!"
"Oh yeah?" Angel asks. "Then explain how you're married and growing a human."
"I got married because I was pregnant! It didn't cause it!" Yua's frustration only grows.
"Man, you don't know anything about being a human...! Hey, hey, next question." Angel pauses, a moment. "Is it true that incubating humans like you are the tastiest?"
"N-- no more questions!" Yua cries, lifting her Evoker to her blind eye. "GRETCHEN!"
That massive woman manifests, the bars of her jail cell closing around Yua, as those vicious blind Angels crash into them.
"Wrong answer!" "Wrong answer!" "You're the most delicious type of human!" "Gretchen, God will forgive you if you let us send her to Heaven...!!"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
A little further, and she might have stumbled on the blood.
Ryouhara's investigation into Kasugayama had led to an underground bomb shelter that felt more like a labyrinth than a hideout. It was necessary, though, for his interests in the schoolchildren here, to verify the nature of the rumors picked up by his intel. If not that.. then there was something else he needed to verify.
And then he heard a commotion behind him.
"ara, ara... it's true what I've been told, demons are really only good for enslaving..."
The onmitsu pads quietly from the smear of ink black shadow the passages behind him have become, striding out into view as if out of an inflicted night itself. He doesn't wear a haori today, but his teal standing collar is made of thick wool, and the collar stands high enough to hide the grey haired boy's mouth if he tilted his chin just right. Little metal plates affixed to the half-hand long sleeves identify his clan in twin engravings, and the straps of suspenders hang slack to just above his knees, disappearing beneath his sweater.
With him comes the steady beat of a quiet, intense rhythm, unsettled and abbreviated. It makes his words louder, as if every part of his thoughts were wired to a loudspeaker.
"A 'marriage' is an agreement between people. An incontrovertible bond of destiny that links humans."
"In this sable world of dirt and dark, the word of a demon means nothing. And in this way, one could say the same of men, when they are born."
"Weak and fragile, a child must be nurtured to become a powerful soul. But as that life grows, and bone is replaced with stone, and stone with iron, the words of young men, women and 'x' become themselves stone, then iron, then steel."
"Not all have this ability. Not all have this conviction. True words of will can only be forged in that pig iron of no thing, smelted and folded until they become backed by true power. Then, and only then, can a 'bond' like a friendship, a marriage, or deeper become something exemplary."
"Then the word and promise reaches its full might, becoming a shining point on a chaotic, miserable timeline. They become the consecrate power of all due law underneath and above the moon. Even then, a promise can still grow in strength."
"...until it becomes a tenth of the strength of my word."
The cognitive BPM warbles in the air like deep water, like two seperate frequencies being offset, half-measures drumming high and tight in a stallion canter, muffled until they focus to something finer, something higher fidelity.
Until his sneakers spark and crackle with repressed lightning.
He looks between them. One... two.. five. Probably more. His eyes smoothly track over to the protective cage held by Gretchen, and the poor soul inside of it. He gives a slow blink. The boy raises his sword as he comes within a stone's throw of those angel-cum-demons. He holds it, first at his side and curving forward, then he flips it, until the hilt's kashira points forward, and the tip of his blade covers back at his knee level. Shiryuu's left eye glows a feral blue in the dark.
"As Shiryuu of the clan Ryouhara, I promise, the next ill-made thing who speaks a word out of turn will become eternity's plaything before they can think to speak a second."
His chin lifts, incrementally, slightly.
"Go."
It's the only warning the boy with the black sword will give.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Crash! Batter! Bang! All of that is fine and good, but Hama isn't; the shining execution-spell batters at Gretchen, visibly, as she strains to withstand God's fury.
"Ah...!" Yua gasps, as she lifts a hand to cover her face. "Plague me not--!"
What the locusts send to save her, then, is a boy; and he is dressed similarly to her students, but of course, he's a year or so too old. "Don't look!" Is what Yua cries, reflexively, hiding her face as she sees that blue uniform.
Until he speaks --
And then --
"Oh!" Yua gasps, as she realises just what boy it is, her hand lowering down. She's really quite delighted, hearing him declare his word is that strong; isn't he such a fine young man? And he's come to defend her, too! "Shishi, it's you--!"
"Shishi?" The Angels look to each other. "Is that a Shiisaa?"
"He can't be," another Angel shakes her head. "He doesn't smell Okinawan."
"But she does," a third points out. "Is that the reference? Hey! Hey, lady! Did you name him after Shiisaa?"
"Er..." Yua pauses, looking between them. "I-I really don't think you should ignore him..."
Her warning, of course, comes after they've spoken those words out of turn; and Angels, ferocious as they are, really only have the might of God to speak for them. Even with them juggling Dias onto each other, they won't last long.
They scream, when they die, too.
"You did try to warn them..." Yua sighs, as Gretchen's arms fan outwards, and she steps towards him. "But, oh... those strange noises from the bomb shelter, they were you...?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The boy with the grey hair tilts his chin up slightly, the gesture more imperious than grand. But despite; he makes a thin, watery, dissatisfied face.
"H--hey..."
The sound is almost inaudible. The boy complains a little, as the angels argue amongst one another. There's about three things he doesn't like that's currently going on. The Ryouhara prince's voice drops. "...hey, pay attention to me..."
They're not even listening to him at all.
Wait a minute, "...Shishi.." The boy's lips tilt to one side. "That's really not what.."
The boy sighs, defeated. It was a good thought he had, too..
"You guys are really unconscionable..."
Shiryuu flicks out his handkerchief as he stops a little bit past Yua, skidding to a stop on charged Nikes. As he puts on his brakes, he ends up dropping low to save his soles by digging in his heels instead of the balls of his feet to stop, skidding ashe goes. His cognitive BPM catches on the same beat dramatically, swelling and scratching awesomely if it weren't for the tremolo. Once, twice, three times. Then it rolls off a cliff.
wub wub wub chakita chakita. wub wub, chakita chak.
Shiryuu wipes off his blade with a soft piece of cotton, stilling the little resonant hum it's making. He's still nettled about the whole matter, chagrined expression wreaking havoc on his calm. His bad eye is closed now. "Iii ya," he complains. "At this rate, I _will_ have to figure out how to just enslave them. -- yes, I was here ... investigating. But, ara, I don't make any noise..."
Almost as if on cue, Shiryuu startles as he hears bloodcurtling screams. He looks behind him. Long, glowing-hot scars are cut into the concrete in his wake, scrawling an aragami's riotous crosshatching of violence behind him. Little electric arcs seethe and branch along the cuts. A hand lifts to the back of his head. A hand, this time not his, falls nearby, absent an owner. Little bits of leather bondage gear are laying all over the place, cut in half.
"...oh, right... I guess it could have been."
Shiryuu frowns.
"For the record, I don't smell," he objects half-heartedly.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Oh..." Yua says, softly, seeing Shiryuu's utter devastation at his groove being threatened. The poor boy! He put his heart and soul into that entrance--!
And in the wake of his horrific violence, she gasps, "oh!", rather more alarmed, her hand clasping over her face again. She remembers the smell of blood; the alacrity of it all, carried as surely in a bullet as it is in those razor-sharp swings. It is too much, indeed, for her to follow, just as it is in the stories... though it has rather much more to do with the way Yua keeps flinching and freezing, here in a place near reality.
When she is safe, though, she comes out.
"... you can bind them to yourself," she says, her free hand grasping over the wrist of the one holding that Evoker. "Mimi's done that, with her Pact... she's bonded to Empusa, you know? So they come more easily when she calls... and they'll hear out the deals she offers them." Her gaze lowers, with an uneasy smile. "She... needs to gift them brilliant gems and jewellery to keep them from eating me, too."
She looks up, then -- looks back to her Persona. "Gretchen, aid us," she bids her, and Gretchen's arms sway, as first Yua and then Shiryuu are plunged into a deep, soothing darkness; if Shiryuu's expended any of his vitality in his efforts, he'll find it returned to him. "There," she smiles, looking back to him. "Now they won't come seeking my heart so easily... ha ha, I should have done that to begin with, shouldn't I? But I thought a student was trapped here, and this place is worse than a maze, so the easiest way to save them would be to ask the beings tormenting them..."
Yua is a fake teacher. There's no call for her to really put her life in danger to save these miscreants!
... even so, she didn't hesitate.
"Demons are very mean and nasty and disrespectful!" She insists, then, stomping a boot. "I don't like them, not a whit!" ... she's still mostly normal, but summoning her Persona's evidently made her a little strange. "I thought your speech was very good," she insists, shaking her head. "I felt very reassured when you said your word was that strong... and hearing you be so confident made me really happy!"
She presses her fingers to the side of her face. "You said you are investigating? Does that mean you haven't been here before?" A pause, and then: "Um... and does that mean... how long have you been here, Shishi?"
If he came here without a map...
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Ahaaa... sorry."
The grey haired boy's voice is hushed, unobtrusive, at least compared to the excess and ice-cold confidence of a few seconds or so ago, his comtrition seeming to fit in much better amongst the play of children than the executioner's walk.
It's very strange, as his mood seems to vacillate wildly over the course of her explanation, He leans back, slightly -- as if he expected every word of what she was going to say -- yet he blinks, as if it were the first time he'd heard of demons at all.
"Well.." Shiryuu starts, his eyes lowering to Ijuuin's specially-built Evoker. "I don't have much to say on it... I've not had good luck with a lot of demons, really.."
Well, at least, getting them to listen to him anyway...
The power of Gretchen's cascading black is a tiny reminder to him of exactly how far out he's made it, the dull ache of his eye in his skull abating. "Is it really okay to be chasing students into here, though?" Shiryuu thinks aloud. "If it were someone less invincible than myself..."
Shiryuu seems like he might be about to make a full recovery, when it's all cut short by a tiny little stomp of her boot, and Shiryuu frowns. "Aa -- take care of your body!" he begins to object, when she abruptly assures him his speech was very cool and good.
Shiryuu isn't sure he likes it, when it's said like that. He looks, for all the world, like a bewildered cat.
Oh. Hm. "I've been here for a fair amount of time," he replies noncommittally. Oh, she thinks, and Shiryuu shakes his head.
"...it's not a problem," he tells her, despite the implication that he's hopelessly lost. "In these types of areas, I use jutsu to fly to any point I please, so there's no ..."
He pauses, as he realizes that Yua is here with him, regardless.
".....er."
Oh no.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua tilts her head one way, then the other. "You haven't? But... of course they should listen to you!" She says it quite geniunely; Yua believes in him!
But why does it kind of feel like she believes in him in the manner of being proud of him, too...?
... man... moms are scary...
"If it were someone else," Yua shakes her head, "it would be even more important I came down to save them! They might not seem too dangerous to you, but my students at Kasugayama really can't defeat anything much tougher than each other! They just think they're invincible, since they like to play at fighting so much..." She sighs, and it's debatable, really, whether Yua properly realises whether these kids eat the curb in the fights they get up to.
It's possible that there are Bosses who have downplayed the entire situation so that she wouldn't fuss over them...
"But I was scared for a moment that the youth who'd come here was a Persona-User, too... haa, I don't have any of my veils with me when I'm teaching," she sighs, looking down. "The Order wouldn't forgive me if I revealed myself, but I couldn't just leave some poor boy to be gobbled up..."
She looks duely chastised when Shiryuu insists she shouldn't stomp, though. "Sorry," she shakes her head, and stills her feet.
She does think his speech was very cool and good, though...
But Shiryuu says it's not a problem, and Yua smiles. "Mm... even someone as powerful as me can't simply see the way out of this place," she points out, gently. "There's magics in this place which tangle our untanglings, and snare. When you go to those places you please, did you notice how you were never sure whether that pleasure led you to the left of where you were, or the length you'd spanned?" Her smile is sympathetic. "That's right... this place, to our powers, is a 'blackout'. Even someone like me, who enacts her blackout against others... even I cannot map it so easily."
She opens her handbag, tucking her Evoker into it so that she can use her hands. "But it's all right," she assures him. "So long as you have a map, you'll be able to find your way home! Let's see, let's see..."
Rummage, rummage...
"Oh!" Yua chirps, her face lighting up, as she finds something unexpected. "I was going to give this to Ryouhara-kun," Kurou, in context, "to give to you today, but I must have forgotten... oh, it's lucky I found you!" She smiles, all but sparkling, as she pulls out a gift box bound by a ribbon. Inside... are squares of muscovado, smelling of molasses! (Unlike Shiryuu, who, indeed, doesn't smell at all. ... Yua smells like something, though. She smells like iju flowers; she cultivates a neatly-groomed hachi-uye tree for Miho's purposes, but the perfume, of course, she needs to buy from a vendor.) It's made from Okinawan sugar canes, but it's a complete snack, despite essentially being just sugar.
"I brought muscovado back home for everyone," Yua explains, smiling. "It's kind of old-fashioned, but it's really good, and it's good for you, too! Since you're the Shihaisha, I got something special for you, too... kippan!!" She sounds terribly excited about that. "It's citrus mochi! They used to be a snack that only the nobility can eat, and even now, there's only one shop which makes it... luckily, we were in Naha! I was so excited when I realised I could get you something like that!!" Sparkle, sparkle! "But it wouldn't fit in my handbag," she sighs, "and I didn't want it to get squished... so come visit sometime, won't you? I can give it to you then!!"
It's only after she's handed over the muscovado -- they're good for you, so they'll restore your SP, too! -- that she realises, or perhaps is reminded, that she was looking for something. "Search-a search-a search," she hums, as she rustles through, only to keep rustling... and keep rustling... and...
"Oh, dear," Yua says, as she looks up from her handbag.
"I don't think my map is in here at all..."
And right after she'd just got done talking about how this place was so difficult to escape!
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Aa." The sound does a lot of heavy lifting for Shiryuu, serving variously as confirmation, affirmation and exclamation at once. Objection and question are a different sound entirely. "There have been people who could, back in the day, it's said, but..."
He lets the thought trail off there -- the truth is, demons aren't very cooperative for Ryouharas in general. He hasn't quite asked Kurou to try, but ... well, there is a small amount of concern that his subordinate will identify too strongly with the demon way of thinking and then go to join the first horde that runs. It's a remote possibility, but it _is_ a possibility.
Shiryuu prefers to leave their relationship of 'idealism' at that. That's the nature of that relationship, and it's simple. Yua and himself, it's not as simple, but manageable. Save for times like these, this 'goodwill.' It reminds him of the frustrating Akabane, and the way she...
She's telling him about the twisted magicks of this place, he absently realizes, though not precisely every word got through. The boy with the grey hair blinks suddenly, shaking his head briskly at a notion that exists only in his own musing. He's talking about the clan. Even that much shouldn't be revealed, really.
It's strange. The sweetly-scented instructor's earnest nature is distracting. She's relentless and saccharine, and...
There is a word for it, 'mother,' but Shiryuu does not recognize it.
Instead, the boy's eyes half lid, his expression neutral as her excitement spreads to him like a lead brick lowered into a pond. There's a little tension in the omnipresent bass that follows the boy around, settling easily into a subtlety in the background. Shiryuu arches an eyebrow when she produces a gift-wrapped box and for all the world his rhythm sets off her presentation with a staccato flourish.
Shiryuu notices the discrepancy, and wills his tempo into something close to silence as he primly accepts the gift. It does not, however, stop his subconscious from remixing her search song, a few moments later.
Luckily, Shiryuu doesn't have to pay attention to that right now, as he curiously unwraps the box, a single scintilla of interest wrestled into line. "Aaa... my shinobi have yet to give their report," he thinks aloud. It looks like chocolate.. "It sounds like all went well.."
"--iih?"
A gift, just for him... the boy looks more than a little confused, even as the idea of noble citrus mochi seems very good. He thinks about the right words, but.. "...hey...that's..."
He trails off in the space between. Mm. She can't find her map. Though he's mature enough in that moment to realize there's no easy route, it is a problem he believes he can solve. "Hrnh. I would use my strength and overwhelm the maze," Shiryuu thinks aloud, "but there would be a chance that you could get left behind, and that's unconscionable, under the law of my incontrovertible order over the moon. However. It would also be true to say that I exercise dominion over the weapons caches, and explosives..."
The boy wordlessly reaches into the hip pack behind his back, attached to his belt. "Please stand back, and cover your ears."
He should probably be stopped.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"It's okay," Yua assures Shiryuu, with that gentle smile. "I've never been very good at negotiating with demons, either. They always end up saying, 'and then I'd eat you!', and I get terribly scared, and then there's no talking to them at all..."
Is it a matter of the clan? Yua grasps that much, but she discusses it on an individual level, anyway.
She realises that he's zoned out, too; years with Miho have taught her well to see the slight glassy nature of a gaze, that distance in the eyes, the way all the emotions die down. But Yua doesn't pull away, realising something like that; she offers him the same bubbly warmth she had been, like a lighthouse on the shore to call all those distant ships back to port.
She giggles with delight, when she hears that staccato flourish, and chirps affirmatively: "Ta-daa!"
How does Yua, a grown-ass woman, get away with saying 'ta-daa' as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She blinks, though, when Shiryuu mentions his shinobi. "Huh?" She asks, tilting her head. "But I didn't see anyone...?"
...
"Oh! They must be very good!!" Yua looks quite amazed and impressed by this revelation, as if delighted by the idea that ninja are real all over again.
Her hands clasp together, as she insists: "I know I'm troublesome for you, so I wanted to express my appreciation, you know? I know you just want to keep us safe, Shihaisha." Herself and Hiroki, presumably.
She looks quite charmed, really, as Shiryuu starts on about his ABSOLUTE STRENGTH -- but it's an expression which shifts to alarm, as he starts talking about his weapon caches. "W--wait!" She cries, lunging forward to grasp at his arm before he can grasp whatever he was going for. "Please, don't!"
Yua is much smaller than him; it's all the more obvious, as she grasps his arm with trembling hands. "Mimi... Mimi was shot!" She wails, and it might inform why her hands are trembling. "She got shot because of me! Because I froze up and didn't get out of the way! Because of that -- because of that, Mimi was shot in the arm! So I don't want to hear more explosions, I don't...!! It was hot, a-and it wouldn't stop, and the Empusa took it as payment, and she never complained even when we went on pilgrimage but it must have hurt s-so much and, and, and, and she and Ton-ton have to do that all the time and it's awful and I don't like it! No...!"
Well, now there are two hazards facing Shiryuu.
One: this dungeon is threatening his rep.
Two: there's a sobbing woman clutching his arm and she doesn't seem like she's about to stop crying or holding on any time soon.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"Hrmf. Demons aren't complicated," Shiryuu grouses, almost as if trying to convince himself more than anyone else. "Just as dense and brittle as clay pencil lead..."
Shiryuu is all too happy to switch his focus individually. After all, it explains why they are impervious to his flawless orders, which should be enough to override any rumor of problems of the blood. Absolutely so!
Of course, Shiryuu does his best to keep the beat leashed tightly, the moment he realizes it's consciously helping Yua be extra at him. A bit of discomfort unspools from the onmitsu as she aggressively 'ta-daa!'s him, the boy squinting at nothing in particular.
"..iih..it's... fine?" He would explain that it's only natural to assign shinobi to keep an eye on matters in the situation of a protective order, but he truthfully loses track of the thought. Ostentatious displays like that are unfair, kind of...
The most Ryouhara gets to do is scratch the back of his head, sheepishly.
The warbling sound of the beat slowly trickles into the steady melodic hiss of strings beneath his nerves, muted to a trembling level below the tamp of his sneakers. Instead of being mortified any further, Ryouhara elects to Take Action, and reach behind him for enough bombs to knock a hole straight through to the far side of the shelter. 1940s garbage has nothing on the peerless manufacture of Ryouhara ninkougakujutsu. "KARENJI--"
-- ?!
Shiryuu, in his determination, has completely disregarded the idea that he could be taken from behind and is highly alarmed to find himself locked in a terse struggle for arm space with someone who wails louder than he himself has ever heard in his life.
Or maybe it's because she's crying _at_ him and it's making everything a whole lot worse. If a single tear falls on him, he will absolutely melt.
"A--ano!! Ijuuin-san!"
'Mimi was shot!' "Wait, what! Hey, let go, my bombs are extremely --"
'more explosions ... hot and it wouldn't stop and --!' "iih! Th, you're crushing..."
'as payment and she never complained' "Wait, who is--"
"Ton-ton and -- what, now who is--??"
... eventually Shiryuu might wriggle free.
A moment, two, of steady, tear-streaky silence. Shiryuu releases a slow sigh, long, and heavy, with all of the emotion it suggests. Powerless, he primly sits in place, right where he's standing, on the ground. He's very close to a sliced angel hand, tersely gripping .. well, we hope it was a mask. Shiryuu closes his eyes, calmly.
"....well, there are many ideas between the earth and the sky," he says. "But first, I will hear your story."
Shiryuu quietly eats his candy. SP, up.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mm... demons scare me because they are complicated, though," Yua frowns, not quite understanding why Shiryuu would want to simplify them. "They're... 'alive', you know...? They have opinions, lives of their own, though they can't live them in our day-to-day... it's like we've come across something like humans, but which are different to us on the most basic level, like... like looking at a corpse. It should be familiar, but it's just, wrong..." She sighs, looking down. "... but when I breathe in the universe, sometimes their way of being makes more sense to me... when I'm really sick with it. I think I could understand them, but what would that mean for me...?" It sounds frightening, certainly.
Yua, equally, hasn't quite put a pin in her theatrics causing Shiryuu critical damage; this is her normal speaking voice! (Well, the one she puts on when talking to people, anyway. He's seen the other one... he didn't like that even more.) Still, she can sense he's discomforted, and so she wonders: is he the sort of boy uncomfortable with gifts...?
But then -- there are bombs and Yua glomps onto Shiryuu and she's really rather good at grappling, isn't she?! That's not fair, either! Unfortunately, her terrified clinging still can't match his skills as an onmitsu, even with the advantage of surprise (and tears!); he wriggles free, and sits down, and Yua, hiccoughing, lowers herself down to the bomb shelter floor beside him.
"Mm..." She hums, rubbing at her eye. (The tears just come from the one, apparently.) "Back... back at the start of the month... I failed Nishiyama-san, and... h-he left my eyepatch open when we left my trap and the world became normal." He might note that her eyepatch is still closed, now; perhaps he can draw a line of best fit between that and Yua not raving incoherently. "It hurts more than anything, Shihaisha... I can't think, I can't breathe... it's too much, goes too deep, and it's all happening at once! He latched it shut, but... but then he took the bell... oh, those horrid bells. They ring them, and -- and my hand..." It trembles, as she pulls the ring from the middle finger of her right hand, the one holding tight a long stretch of black material across the back of it.
Some people wonder if it's a decoration which hides her Mark.
... the hand which Yua extends out, into Shiryuu's space, has been marked by acid burns: deliberate, spread out over time, and utilising an acid clearly designed to burn more than eat away.
It answers any questions he may have entertained, in the back of his mind, as to why her grip strength is so different between each hand.
"When it burned, they rang the bell," she relates, dismal, and sounding quite ill to speak of it.
"When they ring the bell, it burns again..."
Her hand falls, slack, into his space, as she looks away from the offending scar and its dangling decoration.
"... Mimi was really mad," she says, after long moments of silence. "He was her superior, but... she started making deals, talking to people... she wanted to get rid of him. Well, he knew she was doing that, so... so he called Recchi and me to a warehouse, and Mimi came, too. He wanted Recchi to kill her, but she didn't listen to him!" And the way she exclaims that, it's striking. "Mimi -- Mimi said that if he left forever they'd let him go, but he didn't want to live in another country and worry all the time, so... so he took out his gun, and... and Recchi didn't listen to him, but he fired on her, and -- and I was behind her, and -- and I couldn't move. I really couldn't move at all..."
Tears well in her eyes, again; she swallows down a lump in her throat, and it takes a moment. "She said she was watching... watching something, like... she knew what to do...? But I -- I-I was there, and -- oh, Recchi was furious I was there, Mimi said she'd miscalculated... the bullet went into her arm, and, and it was... it wasn't bright red, it was dark? But it smeared red, and... and it got on me, and it was hot, and... I didn't have anything, I had to take my skirt off to wrap around it," and her dominant left hand drops, to fiddle at the fabric. (Different skirt. That one... was retired. Full honours.) "I -- I know how to -- I used to go camping, you know? Boating... but there was so much blood, and it ran down her hand, ran down her Mark, and she laid her trap, and -- and she's in good standing, you know? She can call the Demons, and they'll come. It's not like me. And she called Faust, and she set him on fire, and the smell... oh, and the body... the Empusa were dancing with it, I felt so ill..."
Yua quiets, a moment longer. "... we spent the night getting Mimi medical treatment... she called Eiko-san for some special work, so everything was ready for us to go to Okinawa next day... Ton-ton's family, too. Ah," she pauses, looking up to him. "Hiroto-san, you know? Nakamura? He's our friend!" That salaryman?! Wait... Hiroto Nakamura... without belabouring her nickname talents, Yua goes on. "My soul felt so heavy, so I pushed us to pilgrimage right away... but Mimi found something she'd been looking for at the end of it, and that tired her out, too... even resting all day the next day, it was still really hard."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The boy eats solemnly. Those little processed bars of dark sugarcane make tiny little snap noises as he eats with all of the grim thoughtfulness resembling a boy who had just been in a car accident. Tiny nibbles, with a brief thought on the earthy, bitter notes that balance the sweetness. Shiryuu is a fastidious eater, and the pernicious environment does not at all cause him to leave any crumbs to get onto his sweater.
More importantly, Yua is now sitting alongside him. Shiryuu almost objects, but then realizes he doesn't have any cushions. A truly unconscionable situation they've found themselves in...
Shiryuu will have to order his shinobi to gather maps for every area between here and Tokyo.
The boy with the grey hair would at first be mistaken for a monolith, presenting a grim countenance alongside the sniffling schoolteacher. The shihaisha, unmoved by a miserable plight such as the unconscionable horror Yua recounts.
A tiny, miniscule breath, measured and unspooled so as not to betray the thoughts he hangs on. He's familiar with the name 'Nishiyama.' Rokuro is one of the high ranking Order elites, one that makes even Shiryuu's position as the operations contractor at the head of the most powerful onmitsu clan in the Order seem like middle management. He is, in fact, the reason why they are even there side by side even at this moment.
Shiryuu cracks an eyelid as he senses Yua moving, only to see the mark she displays -- not the same Mark as he'd seen before, but a mottled, blighted lagoon of acid-seared skin. 'When they ring the bell, it burns again...'
An engineered psychosomatic, used as a cognitive leash...
There is quite a bit that he could, as shihaisha, say and think to what she says. He could rail at the injustice of it, and offer some cold comfort as need be. But...
He sets the delicately wrapped gift box down in front of his knees. "Hiroto...." the boy seethes.
"Ah, Ijuuin-san. All of these names of people I don't care for..."
The boy settles back, hands going to his thighs, laid flat so the metal pieces reflect the light above, his sword laid at a peculiar angle across his right knee to keep the edge from resting on the ground.
He sighs again; the slow easing of nerves set ablazt by...
So, that person is dead, a scorched plaything for demons. All based off of Miho's ambitions... hmm.
"That man, Rokuro Nishiyama." She'll notice he doesn't use an honorific.
"A small minded, petty mouse with dreams of being a lion. Against 'a person of that quality,' the only shame is for the fools who trusted that he would use the gun he was sold on himself before anyone else. In that sort of circumstance, blood is a sacred thing."
"A person who is exemplary is glad to bleed in exchange for their cherished people, no matter how much is spilled."
The onmitsu's hands bunch up in the slack of his pants, bunching up the coarse fabric. He is looking dead forward. "Had he survived, I would have been pressed to execute him myself, but... the bond we share is not the same as the bond between you and 'her.'"
Shiryuu thinks on it, something found at the end of a pilgrimage. It, and other details are things he's going to be thinking on a lot. However.
Shiryuu reaches back to his weapons pack slowly, decisively.
The world's tiniest bottle of water is offered to Yua, insistently. Seriously, it's not much longer than the narrow side of his palm.
"... a bond like that would make any amount of blood acceptable," the boy remarks, absent and faraway, deliberately looking away from her.
"If it were for 'her,'" he thinks aloud, "I would have run the clothes stained with my blood as a battle standard, to let every last person understand how much they will have to spill before a hair is harmed."
... he blinks.
"...that is the incontrovertible nature of a superior bond, I think," the boy breathes quietly, vexed all of a sudden. "...sadly, I wouldn't know anything about it. Please hydrate, Yua-san. It approaches the time we need to begin interrogating more demons to make our escape."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua's glad he's eating, really. And it is delicious: the sugar is unprocessed, unrefined, and has a rich taste for it.
And she will be glad they have maps. She went camping all the time, remember? She knows the value of a good map.
Her hand rests of the floor, beside his leg, as if she cannot bear for it to attached to her body. He has nothing to say of it, it seems; but this, Yua thinks, is safer.
She should not tell him what she has.
"... be nice," she pouts, her pleading understated. "He's in a bad situation, like us... he's joined with Mimi, too. Oh... Recchi didn't like him, either..." She takes a deep breath, and heaves a deep sigh. "But my heart is so heavy, Shishi, my soul's so heavy. Because Ton-Ton and Mimi, they've both had to kill a lot of people... Mimi had to kill a lot of people even just to find me. They know what to do when they see a gun... and I just want to weep!..." What she wants, apparently, she does, because another sob cracks the air again.
If Yua hadn't cast such strong Shroud magics, the demons would surely clamour around to eat her tearstained heart.
"Um," her breath hitches, "I think... I think Mimi didn't ask you to do it because he was on the next step up from her. If he died suddenly, people would have a lot of questions for her... they'd blame her for that. And then they'd blame her people, too... that's why she spent so much time talking to people. I, I think she was saying how he wasn't very competent, so it would be a favour to the organisation if she handled him or something like that... but Mimi protects me from a lot of what those horrible people say." That is to say: she doesn't know.
She looks to the bottle, for a moment, blinking uncomprehesively. "?..."
It's a complicated expression, on her face. "Um... Mimi would say the same thing, I think... and I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be held by her, no matter how bloodied her hands are." Her teeth worry at her bottom lip. "But I'm not a very strong person... so when I see it, I cry... I'm not like Mimi, there. Ah... but you..."
Yua tries to smile, despite her tears; the warmth she summons is genuine, choked though it might be. "... you found someone really special... I'm really happy for you." And the terrible thing is that he might be able to tell how wretched she's feeling, because Yua is the sort of woman who would normally love to end that sentence with an exclamation mark.
"I think you know a lot," she points out, gently, though she doesn't press the matter. Instead, she says: "... um, I'm really happy to hear you call me Yua-san." It is Shiryuu's wishes that she drink that finally has her making use of that right hand again -- though he'll note the way she turns her head, to put the whole apparatus in her blind spot, as she unseals the bottle.
And she drinks it with her left hand.
"... thank you," she smiles, resealing the bottle and handing it back to him again. "Um, just a moment..." She takes the ring, and stretches the stretchy fabric out to fit it over her middle finger again; in a triangle fan, it covers the back of her hand, hiding the ugly scar from sight and from mind.
She extends a hand up, wordlessly asking for his aid in standing; and she takes a moment to orient herself to being upright, again, because of course her blood pressure does like dipping.
"Let's start here," she suggests, moving along one side of the hall. They soon come to a bulletin board, with a schedule still plastered to it -- scheduled ration drops. "Maybe... we're close to the kitchen...?" She wonders, as she keeps walking forward.
Until -- click.
Yua's mind is not so dark as to realise what has happened; but her foot is sensitive enough to realise when something's depressed down when she's stepped on it. "?" She wonders, looking down at the old rug she was walking over.
And Shiryuu has milliseconds to act before her blinded senses process the threat and realise she's walked straight into a trap.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
You can see the wax and wane of Shiryuu's discomfort. He absolutely seems to be more comfortable discussing violence than feelings, and is not at all willing to cut the salaryman any slack, from the way the boy makes the tiniest 'pff' sound as Yua speaks out in his favor. It's definitely something different than the grey-haired boy's only loosely antagonistic relationship with Ryuuja, which is itself not even fully realized. His grudge is something much more deeply seated and personal.
In fact, it's really only when Yua distracts him with talk of the political undercurrent inside o the Order that Shiryuu forgets the icy little thread of enmity blackening his mood. "Hnn," he opines in that muddied, wordless sort of fashion. "Interpersonal affairs of the Order have never held an enchantment for me," he admits.
That was always the prior shihaisha's interest more than his. Shiryuu was meant for a much, much different purpose.
"Just to say..." he thinks about it for a moment. "Rather, it's enough to say that the Order has two types of people in it. Those souls who suffer, and put their lives on the line for what's important to them, and those who abuse and harness those people for their own designs. It's something that Ijuuin-san knows well. There's only use in the world for one of those classes of people."
It's really all Shiryuu will comment on the matter. A blink, as his hands bunch into his pant legs again. Yua-san. Why didn't he realize it? The moment of recognition causes him to breathe outward in a short, sharp sigh, as if to regather his senses. "It's, not like..."
His eyes focus downward on the floor, two different shades of brown and one shot through with threads of blue. ".... she needs someone like you, I think.. otherwise, it becomes hard for an exemplary person to remember what it's all for..."
The smile he finally shows Yua is glamourous, and radiant.
"A--ah, I must have misspoke," he assures her. "People like me don't have the ability to have any of that."
He tucks the bottle of water away once he receives it, quickly moving out of his kneeling position and picking up his sword in the false to stretch out his legs just enough to support Yua as she beckons -- there is no objection nor resistance, and in truth, Shiryuu seems rather alarmed whenever she changes position anyway, as if the faintest breeze would be an undue risk in her condition.
....the click that hits his ear would also qualify.
Shiryuu's stomach drops. He'd noticed traps earlier, but... it takes a split second too long of an eternity to figure out the appropriate solution. Possibilities whirl. Activated by a footstep, the sound is from a pressure plate, Ryouhara knows. Unfortunately, the type of pressure plate that triggered as a momentary switch instead of a single cycle trip were much more rare, and had gone out of fashion relatively quickly, so keeping the switch depressed would be unlikely to work.
Secondarily, Kyotosaigan's shinsoku would allow him to reach her in time, but crossing space alone is not enough to get her clear. The acceleration needed to -catch- her in her current state would be likely to cause damage to her spine and -- worse yet, Hiroki. An unacceptable risk.
The only answer is -- "SARUTAHIKO!!"
Shiryuu is fast, lifting the hilt of his sword to point down the line of the room. The sound of old, ancient wood and rope bursts all around him, even before his Persona appears at his back, surging every bit of his rhythm into notes along the old, fraying rope. The result is a kaleidoscope of ancient bridges spraying through the corridor, terminating and bouncing between walls, floor and ceiling with the rumble of driftwood boards laid between and tightening the hemp bracketing them.
The problem with Sarutahiko is that the bridges the Persona creates are fairly indiscriminate -- they can create pathways for anything that they appear for. However, they also obey no actual realm of physics, and the wooden boards that hopscotch around Yua are no different, a rat's nest of myriad paths turning 'up' into 'down,' 'left' into 'right,' and 'diagonal' into 'lateral.' The stabbing network of bridges -- a literal explosion of them -- confound the release of blades, rocks and more importantly, fork beneath Yua's tread.
One step becomes ten backwards. A second, another ten. Even a gasp is turned into another ten pace backwards as the bridge shoots like an arrow, and Shiryuu's only real liberty to the effects of an unknown trap is to point everything everywhere else but where Yua is currently heading.
That is -- backwards. Fast. Back to where he can catch her.
Hopefully safely.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mmmnnn..." Yua hums, sadly, when she realises how dismissive Shiryuu is being of her good good friend Hirato. But she doesn't push him, then.
She's just sad about it...!
"Mm-hm," she hums, in a fashion more like agreeing, when he says that the politics of the Order aren't terribly delightful.
There's something sad, in her eye -- as Shiryuu talks about souls suffering and bleeding for what's important to them. It is as fragile and beautiful as stained glass, the way she smiles with so much regret. The autonomy he speaks of is a fever dream; she cannot wake him.
Miho stole her under the augur of protocol, and it is a freedom
they can always
revoke.
"I'd never find my way through without her..."
She'd rather talk about Miho, anyway.
Yua lifts a hand, to press to her chest. "... I'd like to help her," she says, quietly. "I'm a lot of trouble, but she's never stopped loving me... even when I'm so wilful." And has her attitude shifted, over the past month? It's subtle; it's hard to say.
His smile glows, though, and Yua's smile grows a little easier to see it. "It's okay," she assures him, softly. "I won't tell. They're not having me watch you... so they wouldn't ask me that kind of question."
She has to answer their questions, of course.
Shiryuu knows what happens when she fails to perform in that arena.
... that was an old scar. They've been torturing her for a while, huh.
Yua's kept her eyepatch closed -- all the better to speak normally with him. In doing so, she is blind; and blinder still, in a place like this. She steps onto that plate, that click --
"Ah!" --
The word for world becomes 'bridge', in quick succession; when her foot steps back, it is onto that wooden slat. She takes three steps back -- was it three? Would three take her so far? -- as in front of her, an explosion rocks out to the left of the hall, rocking the ropes of the bridge -- another bridge? -- which directs its kinetic energy in another direction entirely.
Shiryuu's one mercy is that it isn't a large explosion; it was a trap laid for enemy soldiers, to stymie them from moving deeper into the shelter, and by necessity it could not rock the foundations of this place.
(Even if it were mighty, it may not be able to; this place is not, entirely, just the bones of a prayer any more.)
She stumbles backwards; if she were alone, she would fall.
She will not.
"Ah -- I didn't--!" Yua gasps, a hand clutching her heart. "Oh...!" She is quite frightened; it will take her a moment to get a grip on herself, and until then she will grasp Shiryuu in a strong grip, instead.
"... I'm sorry," she says, then, looking down. "I didn't want to frighten you, but like this, I really can't see as well as I could."
She straightens up, and lifts a hand, curling, to her chest.
"Can you... make sure it's latched tight before we go back to the school proper? Sometimes... I get quite strange... I forget."
What is she --
Yua lifts a hand to her face, and releases a latch at the side of her eyepatch, pulling the strange material back to reveal an eye with three pupils, bands of black crossing the whites of her eyes and leaking out the sides of her eyesockets in a tattoo coming out from inside.
Her Mark isn't hidden on her burned hand.
It's in her eye.
But it is not, it seems, presently active; those pupils are black, not gold, and there is no overwhelming sense of creeping wrongness crawling from them. She told him about it, once -- the way her eye opens her to the world -- and he will see, in her expression, the way her attention splits at once.
She takes her Evoker in hand, and lifts it to that tri-pupilled eye: "Gretchen." And red flame erupts from it, again, as she invokes her, and a dozen gems shine.
"The hood," she says, then. "The hood! Why have you brought this to me again?! To blind, to gouge, oblitiate! What lies at the end of it is only the death of silence, then? Haha," she laughs, shaking her head. "And the stones thought themselves mountains... all the works of Man dwarfed by a single stroke of Heaven."
She takes a step forward, tilting her head. "But in the gloom, a whispering: the floor's not a floor any more. They have dug a dozen holes here. The graves are hungry, now. See, there: they are breathing. There, and there..." She gestures, from one trap to another, indicating them to him.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The ground shakes, the sound of old wood shearing and boards rippling as they scatter like so many pickup sticks. It is one of the least well-controlled techniques the shinobi possesses, but at least part of the point was to put as much junk wood and rope in the path of that explosion that...
Just barely, he keeps her from crumpling to the ground, or have her legs annihilated in one instantly bad day. The tradeoff is that the moment Shiryuu catches her at the upper legs is also the moment Shiryuu forfeits any chance of not wearing the teacher like a _distressingly_ flexible mink stole. Or octo.
Honestly, he only escaped via luck that last time, and now Shiryuu is disadvantaged by the loss in equilibrium. The result is so pronounced that she can feel exactly how hard Shiryuu's heart beats in his chest in that moment, the stallion running a marathon presenting a very different view of the way the boy stands calmly, making the most polite attempt to pry Yua's iron grip off of him again. It really doesn't matter how different her two hands are in the matter, if both may as well be banded steel.
It's almost enough to distract him from her next words, the boy not quite prying her loose in time for the words to register to him, for him to internalize that she means to protect them both via the use of that....
"Yu--" !!
It's worth noting that Shiryuu certainly knows at least a little more than he lets on, with the haunting, creeping spay of that Mark's insipid drape spreading over her eye, instead of anywhere else. His own eye shines blue when both go wide, the silver wires of Kyotosaigan flaring bright as his chakra instinctively moves to his iris, contrasting her own.
Miserably, it's not an unfamiliar sensation. Even so, this is the closest he's seen it, and the first direct glimpse of what lays behind that eyepatch. And there is a feeling when he sees them, Shiryuu realizes, a nonexistent bile sensation at the back of his throat. Rising, like each of them were brimming with a part missing from the sky itself. To him, they feel subtly different, each one with a distinct color and frequency all its own.
The number of Marks Shiryuu has been this close to in the past is three.
One felt like a miserably grand festival of want and fear.
Another, like a child playing ball in an oppressive, empty courtyard.
Yua's feels like the subtle wind of a cobra's coils just out of sight.
The mad scrawl of words that follows root hard in the shihaisha's grip on control, as he forces himself to think. 'The rationality of words' means nothing when a Mark is used, he thinks...
".... thank you," he tells her quietly in reply, the coldly polite onmitsu's voice never rising above a whispery hush, as if not wanting to wake a sleeping child. He nods, distant and ..
...is that a flash of sadness in his eyes?
"....I will do this thing, for you."
The blade of Bankasoujin runs through his fingertips as he reveals a set of silver spikes, crackling with light in his free hand. Balancing a set of needles along the black curve of his blade, Shiryuu keeps them there just long enough to throw them in three parcels -- the first with an underhand swipe of his blade to throw the ones cupped against his mune, the second set thrown with an overhand slash of his blade to dart the ones gathered closer to his blade's ha. One, two, in quick succession, with the third following his step into a second cutting motion with his bare hand.
He is long enough to wait while she points out each one to him, to adequately guess at the mechanical nature of each based on placement, and likely areas of trigger.
Then, for each, a single steel-tipped thunderbolt.
Gashin darts fly with a silver, white-edged flash in wings. The Ryouhara boy will pierce each one through the eye, using the steel needles to inject an electric arcing bolt right into the heart of devices. Some may trigger prematurely as their wires are shorted. Others will have their contactors fused entirely by precise applications of very, very conductive heat.
The way he throws is complex. Though a plurality of those dense bridges have been blown to smithereens, the others still exist, and if Yua is looking closely enough, she moght notice that Shiryuu curved more than one of those needles downthe edge of one bridge, or deflected it off of the board of another to hit his mark from an extreme angle.
Even so, the motion is smooth, and the boy places himself between Yua and the traps, this time by instinct alone.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
There must be more out of sight. Those black bands stripe around the white of the eye, and spill from the eyesocket; at some point, back there, they must have made the journey from optic nerves to skull. (And through, one wonders, the brain?)
But Yua's Mark has not been used, today.
... if she invoked her Mark right now, without the drugs... she'd die.
"I see what I see," Yua relates to him, then. "From mortal gaze, and no further."
Gretchen's bars cross before her, as Shiryuu does his work; her arms cross across her chest, in turn, Evoker still held in that left hand. She is still and silent, and if she remembers his less-than-graceful save, she expresses it only in the way Gretchen's absolute defence shields her from his work.
Not that any of them would reach her. "Exacting needlework will string the thread without dropping or crossing over," she speaks. "The room is clear..."
Her head snaps up, then. "... no! Danger's coming!"
She's talking about the Cockatrice, bobbing its way in, though apparently she sensed it only moments before its entrance. "My eggs? My eggs?" It clucks, pecking at the rug. "You... you blew up my eggs! It took all day to set them up!! Bu-CAW!!!"
And as that terrible beast aggresses onto Shiryuu, beating him with its wings, Yua speaks behind him: "Tell me the truth."
And her breath comes ragged and pained, as Gretchen's jewels shine.
"No sword, no assault touches that nest, tucked away, the egg was stolen, fostered... Pierce it through its heart, and inter it now beneath the Earth! Gretchen!"
Her augur is a poor fortune for a boy with a sword -- but Yua urges Gretchen to entomb the snakish chicken-beast with the raining jewels of Mamagnara. It gets one final word in before it's done, though:
Well, more like a breath. Poison Breath.
Yua wondered, before, what it would do to her to understand a demon... and Shiryuu might understand her worries a little more, if he's paying as much attention to her as to another of the endless enemies, here.
She's collected more kegare... into that eye.
"We arrived too early," Yua says, with frustration, as she digs through her handbag. "I'm not dressed, it's improper, is there nothing here...? Ah -- a scrap!" She pulls from that false compartment at the bottom of her handbag... a bullet?
No, it can't be -- because she's loading it into her strange, heavy Evoker. "Load Patra Cartridge," she invokes, rote, as she lifts it to her left eye.
"Firing."
And in an instant, images of a healing spell reflect in Gretchen's jewels, as she channels a spell not her own into Shiryuu's body to cleanse him of those poisons.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
'..no. Danger's coming!'
The boy had been ready for a misfire, for one of his senbon to fall ill of the exacting mark, to deflect fire or absorb an explosion. But Shiryuu's eye is sharp, no matter what the target. What drags his attention away is the thought of those haunting black bands, and what sort of misery must have been inflicted.
Was it in connection to the Mark? Kouzou suffers in an underground safehouse even now, but whatever process was used, acid wasn't part of it. He knows that her ability is one of the finer expressions of Order capabilities -- much like Kazuhira, there was a reason why Rokurou commanded such a high rank.
But there is a difference between blaspheme and torture, between a simple covering and the systems of locking patches and -- hoods? -- Ijuuin had to endure. There were other facts, he knew, that drug on his attention, somewhere in the chatter. Luckily, he had a strong memory, and would invent a new written cipher for what he'd heard later.
Wait. Danger? Shiryuu instinctively looks back, checking to assure that her cage still holds. He knows that it should prove proof against most attack -- after all, didn't it hold off even his austere power?
That's roughly when the Cockatrice lurches into the field of his awareness, the wind shifting just so to carrying that distant shuffle to his ear, the crowing of that bird raking across his hearing.
To Shiryuu, as fine an ear he has, it's no different than the braying of a mule.
"....eh... sorry?" The boy takes a dim expression with the comical demon as it -- she? -- marches right up to him, forcing the boy into a mist stance with this sword as he begins to beat him liberally with her wings. "Agh -- phff! You knave!"
To his merit, Shiryuu doesn't give any ground while Yua is behind him, even if one of the wings is bigger than a tower shield and lifts him up a good foot when slammed into his midsection. He is doing his level best to chase her off with liberal swiping of his sword. "Get--! You--!"
His eye aches. Using Setsuna against so many angels in quick succession made further applications of shinsoku untenable, especially in what was likely to be a protracted expedition. IS THE DAMN THING TRYING TO ROOST ON HIM? "I thought so!!" Yua's outed the lies now. At least, he thinks so, while getting beaten. "No surrender!! I'll crack every egg next time!" Slash!
"!!"
Shiryuu can't cut through _breath_ in time, not this close, not without spreading it between all of them. The boy is caught in a sparkling miasma, and is launched clear from the bird by a seismic rain of glittering gems for which his cutting wind has no dominion. Flipping end over end, the boy just barely manages to land on his feet and immediately hits the ground skidding, his sneakers tearing a twin trail of squealing impact in his wake. He hits the threshold, and immediately drops to a knee, pupils blown wide, a hand clamped over his mouth, suppressing a fierce cut in his chest.
Don't -- don't give in.
His eye aches, harder this time, the pain splitting through his skull. It's not usual. It's almost like --
He catches her, just as she loads that round into that special arms and shoots herself right in the eye. Before he can make any objection, any recognition of anything really, a nimbus of pale light washes through his very bones, causing him to gleam in the pile of gems that served as the cockatrice's final resting place.
... but his headache does not abate.
"...hhh..." Shiryuu breathes, the air sliding healthfully and full into his lungs. Flat along the ground, the boy's hand position changes on his sword as his stance widens, forcing himself to his feet.
A hand raises to his left temple, as a droplet of blood, fresh and new, spatters against the ground. It's from his eye. It's the only thing that doesn't heal, the only part of him that's not restored to new.
".... thanks," Ryouhara says, forcing his breath into a normal cadence, even as he takes a handkerchief out.
"...you don't have that many rounds, do you.."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
There are some things, in the Order, considered precious for the opportunities they afford them... though some would call it sacrilege. The number of their experiments which have proved suitable to be Marked is vanishingly low. Without some way to control that subject...
There are things they have wrought, through Yua's flesh, which they had precious few opportunities to develop.
And not just with regards to her Mark.
"Ah!" She cries, within her cage, as she sees Shiryuu withstanding so much. "Shishi...!" He won't let the demon reach her, she realises. She does what she can, with her own magics. They're not unformidable -- though they have to reach a greater distance to the fight.
But she could have hastened him from the epicentre in a much... kinder fashion. Yua bites her lip, as she watches him find his feet -- with a terrible squeal -- only to take a knee.
"The strength of your word batters at the chassis of your flesh," Yua reflects, sadly, seeing him struggle to his feet. "Pray, let me aid you..." And it's Gretchen's magics, at least, which settle over his bones again, making him indistinct once more, soothing him in that darkness.
But as she steps towards him, she finds -- that blood hasn't left. "It hurts," she asks, with boundless sympathy, "doesn't it?"
... there are times when hers hurts, too. A great many decisions have been made, for Yua, in the crucible of a pounding skull.
She sighs, looking down at her handbag. "No," she admits, downcast. "Not many. We scattered the seeds, when this tree was planted; yet in darkness it blooms, and unattended, few more have sprouted since." She pauses, then, she shakes her head. "No -- I mean -- I'm not to use it when I'm not wearing my face, but if I can't be with Gretchen, we get very upset...? We need to be together, so... but I was never meant to fight dressed like this, I'm not dressed, it's not proper... oh!"
Yua steps forward, grasping at his hand, her brow knit. "I'm still here," she assures him, with a touch of desperation. "It's okay, I'm still right here. Only I am there, now, too -- in the hall, outside, there's a paper... propaganda... and in the drawer there is a treasure long unclaimed, passed over, too mundane to check. There is rot -- no, metal, it must be rust -- and it is on the pipes... where no one has checked for decades." She's a little unclear about the boundary between object and life, apparently.
"And there is more, there, more -- but how can I describe it? You do not have the eyes to see. The look of -- when a thing becomes so aged, it gains its own soul -- and the intent of this place," she says, insistently, stress entering her tone as she tries to describe something without words. "To hide, to obscure, to make safe, never to be claimed, never to be raped by dog soldiers who would drag women from their homes! But the hall sinks to darkness, the ceiling to darkness, beneath -- and I should see? I should see? But in the darkness there is only their smiles, the formless wanting-hunger... they are there, they must be there..." And she looks distracted, for long moments, before she looks back to him again.
"I cannot see," she bemoans the fact, "but I will blind them. If they enter my trap, then I will see -- I am sure I will see!" Her optimism is a touch strained. "I know you are weary, and I... I will protect you, too!"
His own finely-honed Anti-Navigator skills might pick it up -- what happens when she takes a step back, into Gretchen's embrace once more. The room darkens further, a gloom which forbids the emergency lighting from piercing far; in the near distance, he can even hear an Ogre yelping, "Huh?!", as the logic of the space around them rearranges itself.
No walls have sprung up; no doors created. Physically, the space is the same as before.
But outside the epicentre Yua carries around herself and Shiryuu... everything feels confusing and new, to the demons who would hunt them.
"It's all right," she assures him, then, as she steps forward, out of Gretchen's embrace. "I'll continue calibrating it as we go... it isn't how it ought to be used, but I can do it. I can only see a little ways, but now they can only see a little ways, too..."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
He's never been known for an iron constitution.
Gretchen's power flares over him, knitting his bones back together, inserting verve into his cells, a wall-to-wall nimbus tying everything helical-tight. Fibres torn from exertion soothe, and strength returns to his back, letting the boy stand up, the end of his sword used as an unkind cane as best he can without completely ruining the edge.
No, the point is definitely going to need sharpening. No matter how much care he takes, he's going to need to ram it through demons with brute force at this point to strike killing pierces.
But stand the grey-haired boy does, a grim mien sketched across his face. He has the grimace of someone who would stand even if he only had one leg left, even if he had only one hand and no eyes left.
Blood spatters the ground freely..
The chassis of your flesh. It hurts, doesn't it?
"'Costs, gladly paid,'" the boy says.
He's quoting something.
But her hand is gentle on his, the handkerchief twitching in the fine bone of his wrist, still covered in a dense layer of wool.
He looks down. If he focuses, his mind can just barely pick out the meaning behind her words on the fly. If he had to think on it, it's almost like she's speaking with more than one voice when 'that eye' is open. She speaks about Gretchen, and not being together. Even beyond the Mark, different and usable without suppressants aside, it feels as if...
How did she put it, before? 'Seeing through it, those people enter into me...'
But... it's not just a Mark, is it? The ache in his own eye is not 'simply' the presence of a Mark, which he's never been able to detect, not with such an aching clarity. Almost like...
The boy is calm, as the stretch of black goes on, as something he can't quite see confounds monsters in the distance. His touch grazes hers as the handkerchief raises, sliding beneath the messy shade of his grey bangs to press tight against his eye's socket, quelling the blood flow from his lacrimal duct. His sword levels off at his side, as he thinks aloud of the information.
"A drawer... we'll have to find it to find the way out." He pauses. "If it doesn't seem usable, we'll have to make someone tell us."
It wouldn't be proper, for only her to exert herself. Not for his sake.
"...please.."
In that twisted, safe space, the hilt of his sword rises, the sword held false in his hand. They are close enough now that Ryouhara can close the distance between them. He reaches out -- to lay the hilt of his blade across Yua's collar, over the line of her heart. His knuckles rest lightly there.
And in his touch is all the weight of the authority vested in the term 'shihaisha.'
"Take care and ...do your best."
He is tired, from already being here under his investigations. And those investigations have led him to a great many places where he 'imagines' demons who would be able to cough up information would hide. And before, he wouldn't make a promise against a nebulous doom, or an infernal time limit. She speaks, he thinks, with the will of the entire building. But beyond that, it's not the only voice, perhaps.
It almost sounds like a 'bond.'
It's not the same. It's not doom.
Just monsters.
"The entire rest must be left to me, whom shepherds the hope and will of every new generation under a grand wing."
The blood soaks through his handkerchief, vicious and slow. Pull the chakra from the edge. That familiar edge, the edge between life and death. Ashe. Spirit. Qi. The monks and shamans have a hundred names for it. In the darkest occult space, it is 'realization.' The intimacy between here, and the other side.
Shiryuu brings his entire will to his Kyotosaigan. He lifts his blade, turning away from her, to chamber his handkerchief, and face in the directions she indicates. A single heel lifts from the ground. He braces the bloodstained flat of his hand against the spine of his sword.
...monsters have never held much interest for him.
He goes in a breath, to ransack every living and dead corner of the place.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q Halsey - Control
Gretchen is a citadel; Yua is fragile, dwarfed against her. It is usually the case that a Persona's strengths will be reflected, to some degree, within the person... so why is it distributed so unevenly, in her case?
It's not in balance...
She's not in balance.
But he has paid the costs, and her brow knits, to think of it. She can imagine a great many costs; a terrible weight.
"I cannot weave my trap far," Yua admits. "I cannot... see to place it. But we will know. Where I see, I can see, you see? Long did I practice, labour, in the black. No sound, no light... only the abyss. There it sang to me, spoke to me, and I saw..." She looks out, over the room. "... now, it is my other side, blinded. But my mortal eye sees still, and so where I see, I see. One compensates the other. I should not pierce this hood at all... this sublation of Sight. Oh," she sighs, and turns, hands grasping at her chest. "Have I aught sense at all? Rambling, rambling... fractured from existence!"
... she seems like she can hear how little sense she's making, right now; like she's trying to communicate something, over a suddenly-vast gulf, only to find her voice sounding foreign as it screams into the wind. She sounds frustrated, and it's reflected in the wringing of her hands, too. She's upset. ... does using her powers... make her upset?
(Or is the word 'unstable'?)
The lucky thing, at least, is that Yua's traps can extend a little further than the place they're placed; an aura which surrounds the grounding of her horrors. It gives them a little more breathing room, with regards to confounding the demons who make this place their home. (This home she's invading. Who is the soldier?)
Shiryuu points out that the drawer may well be key, though, and Yua turns to him, lowering her hands. She tilts her head as he issues his plea; and what the difference his word makes, as he presses the hilt of his sword to her heart, and, trustingly, she stands just where she is. Her hands lift, to curl over it, over his hand; she hugs it lightly to herself, and smiles, head bowing down as she listens to his promise here. "I'll lay today's fate with your hands," she assures him. "I know you'll see me safely back to Mimi... thank you."
He can't protect her from Doom's ticking clock... but she doesn't expect him to.
(That charge is Miho's, and in this she works tirelessly.)
She releases his blade, and steps into the room opposite -- pausing, a moment, at the door. (They were personal quarters, once -- more a bunk than a bedroom.) "Yes," she says, looking to a cabinet. The third drawer, I saw true. And... here, in the footlocker..." She crouches, and fiddles with the latches. What's inside isn't a map, though; it's a fine dagger, with a hilt and sheath of jade stone. "Oh... it's beautiful," she smiles, as she lifts it. "It is no leading guidance... but why don't you take it?" She asks, as she hands it, in its sheath, to Shiryuu. "I'm afraid my hands shake too much for a blade... Mimi said that's fine. Because if I grasped one with a quailsome heart, it would be easily repossessed... more like to find my heart than another's."
She straightens, and pulls back the blankets on one of the bunks, only to find -- a dusty, aged teddy bear. "Oh," her expression crumbles. "It would have been a treasure, long ago... lost, lost to evacuation..." Her hand pulls back, to grasp at the silver fox plush clipped to her handbag.
"If it isn't here... we will have to go room by room," Yua says, her voice trembling, a touch. "I can't see... I can't see! Ah," she covers her face, with an aggrieved smile. "Emotional. I'm emotional. Forgive me. This place upsets me, black and blind, for it reflects all my sins."
"I was a jailor, once..."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Shiryuu knows about being unbalanced. The feeling of black omen built up behind everything you are or ever will be, weaponized as a tireless ache threading into every sense you ever had. His left eye4 is bloodshot, glowing in that muted blue as Ryouhara forces Kyotosaigan to remain active, to marshal for another charge as needed.
There are limits, he thinks she says, for that dominating aura of unreal that turns tons of muscle and hunger to stepped knots in the halls. For this reason, he remains at the ready.
For this reason, he gives his leave and soldiers onward.
The hall opens into a smaller space, intimate and militant all at the same time. He does, to his part, check others, trusting her sight to find what was already found, vigilant against angels and demons that may remain unseen. Only when he's relatively sure that no traps lay in undescribed space does he let himself fall further back into the room, enough to catch sight of that blade.
He'd heard the frustration in her voice, the helplessness of blindness, an edge that weathers down every syllable of her words. But did he actually understand it? It's hard to tell, with the way the boy's keen attention smoothly shifts.
She looks up, a knife in hand.
Shiryuu appears somewhat pensive to see her with it, all truth told, and she temporarily enjoys the full span of his attention until she explains; until she hands him the blade, one he reaches out and accepts, with a warm hand, testing the weight of it in his hand. "It's not something that you'd think would be in a bunker," he mulls absently. "Something that came to be ... after. If this ever was."
He recognizes it for the gift it is, tucking it into his obi. ".... aa," he agrees, a grateful tone sliding like the shadow of the moon behind his voice. "The petals of a flower that blooms brightly in the sun cannot themselves have any part of the thorns beneath them that protect them. It's not ... 'synthesis.'" He looks to that dangling fox at her handbag, his mood unreachable.
...he picks up the teddy bear, when she recoils.
"...no," he tells her, absently studying it.
"It never stopped being a treasure," he thinks.
"It just.. didn't have anyone to take care of it."
He doesn't panic, the tiny labors in his breath managed carefully as the onmitsu stands, turning away. She says she is blind, and the envelope is finite. He thinks about it carefully, the little teddy bear that hangs in his grasp. It, too, is clipped to his hip pack, in a mirror with Yua's own.
"Oi.. Yua-san," he starts.
"I think... I don't believe in it... the type of people who would put a hood on someone to strengthen them, to steal their light. An honest accounting of power isn't in the misery inflicted upon people..."
As he speaks Shiryuu kneels down, crouching deep until his hand can rest flat on the cool, concrete floor. His eyes close. The electric nature of the occult scratches harshly beneath his touch, a tiny spark arcing from fingertip to ground.
"... it's in the bonds between them, I think. When one person comes to save you, above all others."
The sound returns. It's a cyclical rhythm, and it returns slowly, building with each iteration through each bar. Shiryuu takes advantage of the fact that they can't be seen, can't be heard, to set loose his cognitive BPM. The rhythm is in the ground. In the air, rattling and shaking in the pipes. It's pure motion and urgency, all recycling with each synthetic crash, reverberating to one imperative.
BITCH. I SAID...
The sound, the tumultous, razor-sharp beat is a distant rumble, as Shiryuu's cognitive imperative is loosed from the chain to scatter haphazard and scattershot through this region of bunker.
He quietly, discreetly shuts the door, to be safe.
It's not supposed to go _far._ Not compared to that envelope. But anyone who hears it...
"We'll stay here for a few minutes," he tells her, before turning to finally check the drawers she indicated, and the other ones. He pointedly doesn't explain what is about to happen.
He pauses, as she apologizes. As she declares herself a jailor.
Even his aching eye softens.
"...did you ever have to hurt anyone?" he asks.
Kill anyone, the question is left searingly unsaid.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua misses that pensiveness, the caution. She does not think of herself as a woman who would draw a blade, so how could she conceive that it might be a danger? It is as much an ornament in her hands as she is in the Order's; she offers it gently, as if it were foreign to her hands.
"I worried I was weak," Yua admits, a touch rueful. "For I could not grasp that blade; I could not look. But, I am not..." Her hand comes to rest, at her belly, and she says: "I must protect him. A boy born to darkness will know nothing but."
If only she knew.
She blinks, though, as she hears her name in that familiar tone again; she looks to him, then. "It was necessary," she replies, though her tone is a touch absent, "so was I assured." She speaks as if she had a choice. "I..." Her hands fold, one over the other; she sits herself down, on the side of that dusty bed. "... my power is not honest, but still, she came to me."
Yua looks vague, for a moment; but when she looks down, when she looks to his bag, she smiles. "Oh... you'll take care of him?" She asks, with that gentle tone. "Perhaps, one day, you'll find the child who was torn from him... there are still these wonders, here and there, in this existence."
He closes the door, he raises the beat, and Yua quietly facilitates the spread of his own Anti-Navigation through the unnerving trap she's set around them, serving as an amplifier to help him spread his influence despite the blackout. (It still won't go terribly far; but two in harmony are stronger than one in perfection, regardless of one's opinions of Kirijo.) She tilts her head, humming along as she traces the beat, as she inventories the edges.
"They blame each other," she relates, absently, looking at a space past the wall. "Their fear and malaise turns now to anger... they fight. Ah... they will defeat each other! You are wise," she nods, to him, as she realises his plan. "But... I cannot see how far those battles rage. I should..."
She should be able to see.
She looks down, at her skirt, and balls it in her hands.
"Yes," she says, though she doesn't realise the unasked question. "I kept Sybil in her temple, though she saw the truth of God. Many times they made to flee... and I kept that door from them. More still were our sacraments. And at times those prayers overwhelmed us, and it was we, the seers, left to stop it... you know, there was another."
She looks to him, a hand reaching up to rest at the base of her left eye.
"He offered both his eyes to his pursuit of knowledge... and oh, the things he saw. Such wonders did he speak that his intestines were spilled across the floor in his ultimate haruspicy... and what was left was left to us."
Her hand drops, a little, to press against her cheek, as she looks away. "... but these duties do not trouble me as much as one. One girl... with no Persona of her own. Unlike us, yet showing the signs... my task was to temper her. Many days would I trap her in my abyss, confuse her mind, curse her body... many times I left her afflicted, disorientated, unable to find her way free. She was... just a girl..." And here, her fingers tighten, where one hand still grasps her skirt. "When she was excommunicated, I was sure I had pushed her too far, pushed her to death. But... a great span later... I found her. I dare not look too closely," she says, quietly. "I will not name her here... I promised. But she has a name..."
"Oh, she has a name."
And why does Yua look like she'll cry, when she smiles about that...?
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
It was the plan. Shiryuu is prepared for the eventuality of having to capture a demon and interrogate it as planned, but given that even one is an annoyance when he's not using his full power, it's far more viable to let the beasts tire themselves out on eachother while the two of them stay relatively well hidden and sequestered away.
Plus, while Shiryuu didn't think of himself as a 'navigator,' it was only reasonable to allow the two of their special powers to naturally work within the realms of one another. At the very least, it would mean he wouldn't have to use explosives, which he's already labelled as a special forbidden act under the countenance of his own authority as shihaisha.
Troublesome, to limit his own power even further than he normally does, but it was what was necessary to maintain control over affairs here. Miho, he reasons, would understand the matter. Underneath the banner of 'shihaisha,' it was his due duty to return her intact.
Hopefully, he'd do so without being eaten himself. Being an invincible Shirogarasu can be a problem when your enemies want to literally devour you. He would literally die of shame before Kurou had to come retrieve him from an ogre's gullet.
Or worse, Akabane.
It's those thoughts that muddied up the conversation when Shiryuu looks at that teddy bear, the worn little thing with its belly and an ear worn threadbare from a child's love.
Perhaps, one day, you'll find the child who was torn from him, she'd said.
" "...aa," he thinks, a few moments later.
"We'll protect that world, until then..."
The New World Order entrusts its members with a miserable legacy, he knows. And in some ways, the crimes she describes are almost banal compared to the sanctioned perversions of the organization. But what she describes is a broken mirror of everything; surrounded in fogs and layers of obsfuscation wound together tighter than a maiden's corset.
Tied tightly enough, secrets like that can choke, he reflects.
The boy, to his merit, does a good job of going through the drawers as a pretense for the moment. It's intense, as the boy pulls and sorts through a paper or two, feeling the drawer slides and internally obsessing over the way they squeak, even as Yua explains to him exactly how a man gave his eyes away -- she'll see that he catches a sliver of sight of her, in the reflection of a broken mirror's shard stuck to the wall.
He doesn't look back, the gleam of his handplates raising under the dimmed light as he spreads his hands across the edge of an open drawer. As she looks at him with unshed tears in her eyes.
"....too often," comes his small, intent voice, "a child, all alone, pays the price for the ambitions of old men."
Shiryuu looks up, stretching his limbs slightly. "... I was never tortured. Tormented. I lived a charmed life, and held an ephemeral existence free from danger. My every whim was taken care of. My every will was obeyed. I was the child destined to forever be satisfied with my lot in life. I'm not like ..."
.. he shakes his head.
"... Even without the force of those men, it is impingent upon me to bear the gravity of decision. That decision will inevitably be to bring far greater harms upon the world than it can necessarily bear. I, the empty-headed boy who, in my charmed existence, never learned a thing about goodwill. I can do this thing, and I won't abide the orders of another old man."
A small, short, sharp laugh.
"... so, it's not worth it to bear the guilt for the ambitions of ill-mannered men. These children that are left in their wake ... when everything is done, and 'synthesis' is realized ... I'll save them all."
He sighs outward, the reality of the situation hanging sharply on his bones.
".... Remembering a promise, a name, is right, until we all buy back our rights to speak them aloud."
The boy tries his best to smile. The expression is thin, unsure, watery.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua won't let him be eaten so easily.
Though... that dark cast to the walls heralds nothing good.
There are things, though, which cannot be said; unspeakable horrors, laid deep in creation. Shiryuu speaks of the children, speaks of himself, and Yua's hands clutch at each other in her lap.
Through the infinite storm of information coursing through her body, she understands something about him, too.
"I'm not like them, either," she says, softly.
"This power... was something I grasped as an adult. After I graduated... and joined the military... and ended up somewhere else." The guilt in her eyes could slay every demon in the compound; but there's something there, in the guilt she claims, and the timeline she gives him. Surely he's heard, by now, that an accident led her from basic training into human trafficking... "But there were children... yes. There were children... and I worry their names are lost to them forever."
She kneads her skirt, rubbing the fabric through her fingertips. It's a soothing texture, the tutu frill. It's her.
"When you're a child... the word for your world are those walls. To be kept, and told... is to be crafted. I was given new purpose... but it was the purpose I once had which pulled me from my prayer. Were I raised in such a manner... how could I learn what I had never known?"
She's talking about herself, but she's not really talking about herself.
"I think a child who was never told 'no' would not know much of boundaries," she says, softly. "I think he would not learn that human beings can place limits on their efforts or their time. He would not learn how to navigate arguments... or how to cope with disappointment. He would not learn that some dangers must be avoided... or that whims may lead to ruin when they crash against society. Mm... as a mother... I would be concerned for a child like that."
She still can't quite meet his eyes, as she looks down at her hands. "I think he would grow into a fine young man who would cause himself grievous injury, just to keep a silly little biddy safe from harm... to save everything..."
Tears fall, and they fall only from her right eye.
That terrible Marked thing in her head -- it remains quite dry.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
He's dimly aware of the sounds of demon violence in the distance. His perceptive abilities are not anywhere near the quality of Yua's 'eye,' his his senses are still sharp, and he can feel the trembling undercurrent of the indefatigable cycle beat, spurring our the beasts in men, and the demons in beasts, and whatever black rage lays in the truest heart of demons.
It's always a little bit of a misunderstanding, how long a fight lasts. Even the most savage battles are measured in seconds, not even minutes. Some are shorter even for their brutality -- it doesn't take much to exhaust a man, and while a man would not pose a threat at all against a demon, it takes a supernatural threat to exhaust a supernatural threat. The calculus is clear on it. He reasons that she hadn't been looking for him long, so they can't be far from the entrance. So there's not that long left.
Right?
Shiryuu's fingertips raise against the edge of the drawer, as if to tap against it but never quite following through on the motion. The little corvid stretch of the boy eases his tensions only by infinitesimal degrees, his hyperawareness threatening to ache worse than his eye.
A slow rise leads him to push a hand into the feathered mop of his hair, scratching his head absently.
It's hard to keep track of the razor thin line between euphemism and reality, between first, second and third persons, where the awful lies and secrets of the Order were involved. But Shiryuu knows well their penchant for trafficking, and what happens to low-living creatures who don't meet their exacting standards.
"It's a miserable existence," he acknowledges, "to have so many names written on your hands..."
A bloodstained kerchief drops out of his pocket, held in one hand at his hip, as Shiryuu sighs, a sword-long gesture as he turns from the wall, from the broken mirror and the empty drawers.
The bloodstains from his cloth are flipped neatly to be concealed in his palm, leaving a clean edge of the handkerchief speared snug on the edge of his thumb. Setting the blade of Bankasoujin on the bed next to her with a light click of the fittings, the boy leans down in front of Yua in a crouch, sniffling heavily as he rests an elbow on his knee.
He disregards the chill of her dead-yet-living eye, the ophidian glare his subconscious tells him it's giving him. He pays no attention to it; none in the slightest. Haunting as it is, powerful as that pain is, Shiryuu's will surmounts that of eerie omens.
"No one should be judged for the crosses they're forced to bear," Ryouhara opines mildly, calmly. Tears fall, and the boy patiently daubs them away. First from the dance instructor's hands, so worrying in the frills of her tutu, then from her live, feeling eye, minding not the blood of his own eye in trade for minding his clan's ordered and sworn charge.
"Besides.. some of us have new purposes now," he patiently reminds. "You have the mantle of 'mother' to take pride in, 'teacher,' 'bond,' and 'protector.' All of these, together, are more helpful to the new world than even 'shihaisha,' I think."
Shiryuu will keep at it, until she can look up again.
"Perhaps there is a path out," he thinks.
He, himself, could be talking about their current predicament, or..
The boy shakes his head. "Think on it, and with it, no more of these limits, or these dangers." He makes a face, as he mulls it over further. "And ... I'm not that young," he insists. You're not that old, he implies.
He couldn't just let such a statement stand as is. Don't let Ijuuin win either, Shiryuu. It would be almost as unforgivable to your reputation as letting Akabane win. Almost.
"Eeeh.. They're probably going to be finished with eachother soon," the boy thinks. "Will you be strong enough to come out with me?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Does this space... obey reason, that way, such that beginning near the entrance leaves you so? Yua's not so sure; but then, she is blinded.
But she does remember how quick it was, when Miho was shot.
Someone's life could end... in such little time...
"My name..." Yua starts, and delicately; but the sentence shatters, before it can end. She found her name. How many others did not? The number hounds her, curses her, and she shakes her head, blind still to the way Shiryuu approaches... until she feels his sword rest beside her on the bed, and her eyes open, to look and look and look and look through him. (Could she become him, too, in that manner of analysis she has...?)
He's sniffling, she realises.
He's crying...
"It's heavy," she murmurs, though she relaxes her worrying grip on the tulle fabric when she realises what he's doing. "Hurting people... nails driving, and driving, and what do I rise? I've had to release students from my care, to who knows what end... my aegis is false, termites through the wood, the foundations won't stand!" But she swallows, when she feels that handkerchief on her skin, and the garnet gaze of her mortal eye focuses on him again. "Oh, she wasn't... permanently harmed, that time, but..." But there's always a next time.
"In our better world," she asks, a touch plaintive, "couldn't I be a teacher in truth? Oh..." She sighs, again, as she lifts one of those delicate hands to brush at his own cheek, with a finger.
"It will be better," she promises him, then. More firmly: "It must be better." Her way out... it's through the future Miho's seen, for them.
"But," she smiles, gratitude in her voice, "I think a 'Shihaisha' must already be a protector..." ... and she really sounds like she admires that.
Perhaps that's why she nods, keeping that smile on her face. "Bring it central to the spiral, whence it spreads along..." She tilts her head, brow knitting for a moment, before she just nods instead.
"I guess to someone older, we'd both be starting on our way," Yua muses, thoughtfully. "Though you'd best catch up... I will be through the unspeakable year in but a month's time!" What's so unspeakable about being twenty-two...?
Maybe it's twenty-oh-twelve that's the problem. They said the world would end, this year... though as always, they were wrong.
She takes a long, steadying breath, as Shiryuu asks whether she's the strength. "My energy is waning," she admits, "but I have strength enough for this. I'll follow you out..."
Yua lifts a hand, when he stands, to steady herself with his aid; she takes a moment, and then she assures him, with an extra effort towards saying it normally, "I'm okay, now." And she's talking about her balance, but it's not just her balance, either.
Maybe an underground prison like this... is just... bad for her.
Her dark shroud follows them, as they leave. There's signs of a battle, out here in the hall -- ferocious claw marks on the walls -- but more importantly...
"There!" Yua calls, as she points to an aged sheet of paper, beneath the injured body of a Nekomata. "Blooming in the dark, the lily marks all points of creation!"
She means that Nekomata has a map. And her weak clawing is no match for Shiryuu, even after so many battles; he can claim it easily, even as, below him, the demon spits and hisses.
It says... they're in the B1 residential area... and the exit should be. . .
It's honestly like a miracle, how much easier it is to find their way with a map. (Somehow, they'd managed to get pretty deep into the facility... were they going in the exact opposite direction?!) Thanks to Shiryuu's music calling nearby demons down to brawl, and Yua's obfuscation slowing down any who get too close, they're able to get out of the bomb shelter without any more conflict -- with a pause, at the entryway, to make sure Yua's eyepatch is latched tight.
... but when they open the door and step back into normal space, they'll find the sun has disappeared beneath the skyline, and everyone's already gone home.
"Oh," Yua sighs, wearily, as she steps into the school proper. "We shouldn't linger here... Shishi, do you want me to drop you somewhere? That is, Seiji-san..." Seiji Sahashi, who is, himself, a very normal man.
Yua taps at her phone, as she texts him, reminded to ask. And then -- "One moment," -- she rings a number, bringing it to her ear. "Mm, it's me... I'm okay. I got lost in the bomb shelter, but Shishi protected me... ah, I thought a student was trapped there, so... it's okay, I just texted him, I'll be home soon. Sorry about dinner... aww, I know. Love you! Kisses! See you soon!" And it's not hard to guess who she was talking to, as she ends the call; few other people would make her smile as much.
"I didn't want Mimi to worry," Yua explains, as she tucks her phone back into her purse. "Since normally I'm home by now..."
She is, indeed, very predictable. Shiryuu's shinobi rarely have to account for changes in her schedule...
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
No.
There are no tears that stain the ground, no copper or salt at his feet. Children simply die in this occult world, and for most it doesn't matter, another notch on a ledger, another soul for the heap. You have to get used to these everyday happenstances, or you'll go crazy.
And then there are creatures like Shirogarasu, whom no one has ever seen cry, no matter how miserable the situation, no matter how harsh the pain, no matter how awful the crime.
..a finger twitches, at his knee.
For awhile the boy is quiet, gentle only in that patient touch, minding her quietly as she comes just shy of looking all the way through him, a sensation that leaves his eye aching and hyperaware.
"'A protector...'" he thinks aloud, the soft vocalization born somewhere in the back of his throat and borne on an even softer breath. His eyes skate, as he becomes swiftly distracted by his own thoughts, only anchored back to space by the determination in her voice.
"...." ...?
The silence threads on for a moment, as Shiryuu blinks, rubbing his right eye on a sleeve, then his left, clearing bleary vision.
"...There's time enough for everything," the onmitsu decides, standing.
To his own merit, Shiryuu decides to take hostages, not even ten minutes later.
And despite being almost cut to ribbons in the process, the boy drags the Nekomata all the way to the entrance, in case the map was a fake. There's muffled hissing and cursing as the tied up demon tries to take kicky swipes at his face. These are mostly dodged by the ninja, whom is perfectly content in holding the cat in a one handed full nelson right up until he sees daylight.
At which point he mercifully flips the demon into a whirling slam to put her (him? x? hard to tell) out of commission for awhile instead of just cutting the demon down.
The moment is seamlessly followed, all but silent when Shiryuu reaches from behind her. Without much fanfare, he stealthfully makes sure to snap Yua's eyepatch shut with a subtle, firm hand. It comes only an instant after that bone-shaking impact of a demon getting acquainted with concrete, folding over the latch until he feels it click snug.
Ninjutsu.
Shiryuu Ryouhara is sighing as he emerges from that ungodly hellhole after cutting the demon's bindings. "At least I don't have to rearm," he thinks, dabbing at little scratches along his neck and hands with that handkerchief anew. "The cartography needs to be updated here..."
Yua's already on the phone, as expected, though he does make a face behind her the moment his name is mentioned. Especially like that. It's really not a great expression. Luckily, Yua can only barely hear him object wordlessly.
"... Sahashi?" Shiryuu completes the name, with a little bit of an incredulous subtext to his words, for an unknown reason. "No.. it's fine."
As if to punctuate his words, the boy pushes the bunker door closed with force. It closes with a firm _don_.
"...I'm right where I need to be, tonight. Please arrive home safely."
That part, at least, should not be in question...