2026-02-28: A Knife for Two
- Log: A Knife for Two
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane
- Where: Jogashima Park, Miura
- OOC Date: 2026-02-28
- IC Date: Oct 2 2012
- Summary: In the far south, Umie meets Shiryuu to demand answers about the cold-blooded kidnapping of one of the Thieves' own. But the boy is far more skilled with knives than answers.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Jogashima Park, in Miura, furthest south of Sumaru. That was the location he'd suggested. The eastern edge had seen some better times, truthfully -- the two lighthouses on the opposite ends of the park were oft romanticized in idyllic tourist literature, and certainly earned their fair share of gaijin in the daytime. But truthfully, there were nicer lighthouses, like the one at Tsurugisaki. Even the lighthouse at the western end of the island was more popular. Awasaki, to contrast, is little more than a reinforced concrete pillar in the rocky shallows, the flash of its beacon being the only noteworthy thing about it. In truth, it looks like an inverted and awkward chesspiece, reinforced since the ancient earthquake that knocked down the original structure.
There's been some talks about rebuilding it again, but for now, in 2012, it is functional.
'We need to talk. It's important.'
Shiryuu is standing just above the waterside, just above the shallows, with the hiss and sigh of the tide cracking against the rocks just below. He's lit by little more than the thumbnail of the moon in the sky, and the glow of his phone screen as he stares at the text intensely. Frowning at it for what was probably the third time this evening, he slides the red phone away into a pocket. His haori draped over his shoulders, the pale gleam of the silk making him stand out in the dark. He's crouched, his elbows on his knees as he waits in silence. His blade is slung across his shoulders, and he's the only one here, currently.
'Meet me in Miura,' he'd replied, and his subordinates had taken care of showing her exactly where.
It's cold here, as Fall takes firm hold. There are a hundred better places to do this, he thinks. But ...
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
----?? DAYS AGO----
The moment Umie got home, it was a matter of de-stressing. The late hour helped disguise the remnants of whatever transferred over when she stepped out from the kingdom, but all she really could do for the ache in her shoulder (courtesy of Phoenix) is take an aspirin and bear it, as she tried to figure out what to do with what Joker told her.
'Didn't you enjoy how much *fun* you had with your precious buddies? Go on. Be that _compassionate person_ who stands for broken things...'
A tendril of hair brushes against her ear, easily becoming the stand-in for a pair of small lips holding a quiet peal of laughter.
'And break a poor boy's heart...'
----?? NIGHTS AGO----
The Kingdom that was Maria's prison is no more, and now, Umie walks through the door of her apartment, and grabs something from the fridge.
Whatever high she was riding crashed like a dinner plate against concrete, as she pulled out her phone.
She hadn't sent a message yet; it was a wise decision, considering she's even more sore now.
Maybe... tomorrow... Yes, she wants to talk to Phoenix first, that's why she didn't...
(She eventually does send that message.)
-----NOW----
Umie is a responsible adult. Umie is a person who has a good heart.
(Umie is.... a coward, trying to make sure no one finds out.)
... But at least she still showed up.
"Shiryuu...." There's no care taken to hide the sound of the footfalls of her sneakers.
He cuts such a good figure, standing in the moonlight like this.
"It's... a good night. And... a good place, to talk." Where's that anger? She's trying to summon it now. Is it because she's not in front of Joker, or wearing a mask?
She's not covering up anything at all, and certainly isn't looking down to hide the confused muddle of her emotions.
"You... know now, that I'm connected with the Phantom Thieves. I'm not a part of them, but... I owe them a lot. They saved my life, after all." She looks up, placing her hands in the pockets of her jacket. ".... You kidnapped a friend of theirs, tortured them, and then, when they came to save that person, you had Kurou Ryouhara try to kill them." She takes a step, then another, moving closer towards the figure. ".... Why."
"Why did you do it? Was it for the NWO?" Please, tell her it was.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
He's ...painfully aware of how enchanting she would look, the selene halo dancing off of her clothes from the moon straddling the eastern sky across his mantle. For a time, he is a quiet creature, crouching small and unobtrusive, staring out over the water.
"It's a good night," he agrees, quietly.
If he doesn't look back. If he thinks for a moment, if he imagines, he could think of her as 'the enemy,' or 'a rival' or 'a person who is sure of her next moment,' someone cool and powerful and sure and worthy of the next few moments. Someone who would understand, clear-eyed, that she needed to take her weapon and put it through him for her ideals.
It would be easy, the shihaisha thinks, if it could be like that.
She tells him of the Thieves, and how they saved her. A tiny, white hot ember settles in his middle as his fingertips steeple, tightening with every passing second as Shiryuu thinks, as she tells him what they thought happened.
The boy is bracketed by the ruthless tide, for a time.
"...as expected."
The boy's grey hair shifts, pouring over as he tilts his mouth into his hands, the sharp expression hidden there completely lost on the sea. His shoulders shift, encompassing a single breath around that heavy question.
Why.
"...That young X, is the future."
Shiryuu stands slowly, the emblem of the three leaves on his back straightening with him, opening across his back like a flown flag. Slowly, his hands go to his sides, the volume of his sleeves dropping over his wrists. He thinks that it would easy, if he looked at her and found deadly resolve.
He turns towards her, and is saddened.
The shihaisha's face is a fine honed neutral, the flat press of his mouth evincing no shame nor fear nor mercy. It's easy to imagine his eyes as hard and sharp as a sword, but the shade of his grey hair falls over them, and it's hard to make out his gaze with the moon at his back.
His mouth moves, and his voice is calm and clear.
"Understand that the Order will never control the Ryouhara clan," the boy states, with heat lingering in his voice. "The responsibility for every heartless act falls to me and me alone. Every blade and every hand exists underneath the sovereign authority of the shihaisha, with the censure for defiance being immediate execution without hesitation."
The shadow across his face creeps lower.
"... even if you brought your shoge, it won't be enough."
Irrespective of whether she's hidden it, the thought is interrupted. The twirling saya of Bankasoujin lands between them, not more than three arm lengths from Umie, the smooth violet pearlescent hilt of the katana sticking straight up, as the polished black saya sticks in the silt between rocks, expertly thrown. The entire weapon hums with ominous force with the heavy impact.
"Here," the boy says, straightening after the throw to raise a thumb over his chest. He pokes once. "Strike here, to kill. But ..."
He breathes out, sword long and slow, steeling his nerves.
She can't tell where he's looking, not in the dark.
"...if you come at me with anything less than full force, you won't succeed."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
They were both suited to the moonlight, as well as the moon. The pale of their clothing and hair catch it so well, throwing the angles of their eyes and face in sharp shadow.
How did Umie not know, when she met him on the beach, how he'd look here? Was it how he handled a blade, or made her first battle against another Persona User a fairly difficult one, despite her backup? Or how she wondered how quicker she'd bleed out, if he attacked her outside the Dark Hour?
Those memories have been pushed back, making room for the way he held her wrist, tracing that Mark while his eyes kept on her own. Squabbling in the taxi, or seeing him chatter over shoes in that upscale shoe shop. His little fits and mannerisms, his pride, the quiet little slips of a smile that make her feel like she's been one of the few to ever see them. Falling asleep close to him, trusting that the morning will bring those little morning routines.
The smell of rain and citrus that remained on his coat.
.... he tortured someone. He's done more, she's sure. The Order wouldn't have leave a useless tool lying around, nor would they allow that person to access the same files her profile would naturally be among.
"Young X? The person you kidnapped?"
In the end, the NWO was just a nice, dependable bogeyman for Umie to point her finger at, instead of the person she'd find her thoughts drifting towards on slow shifts, or when she smelled rain.
She still can't summon the will necessary to project the steel she needs, right now. The closest thing sits at her fingertips in the pocket of her jacket, but her fingers are reluctant to even consider drawing it. ".... It wasn't exclusively for you. I'm still a target of the Order; it'd be real easy for..." Her voice trails off, disappearing under the sound of lapping waves.
The blonde stumbles back a step at the saya that lands between them, nearly tripping as her body tries to replicate the natural grace her Persona usually would afford her.
It's a rather beautifully made weapon, looking at it in the moonlight, like this...
A perfect weapon, to end a man who stands at perhaps his zenith, or on his approach to it.
".... goddamn it, Shiryuu..." The white of her teeth are outlined in the lowering of her creased, pained face.
... He warned her, and she didn't listen.
She pushed her feelings on him.
She never even thought she could be interested in anyone.
She can't.
She raises her hands from her coat, and slowly, begins to sit, crossing her legs.
"I told you, when you came back from the dead." The wet glint in Umie's eyes betrays what her face turns back towards the light. "Someone I respect... has a firm opinion on that sort of thing."
"... The Phantom Thieves, to be more specific, don't kill. Even if I'm not one, it'd... look really bad, you know?"
...Don't lie. You just prefer your victims to be innocent, don't you?
With a subtle but sharp little tilt of her head, Umie bites the side of her cheek, in order to keep that instinctual need to respond to that mental jab at bay.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The way she looks at him now is not enough. It's not correct, and nonsensical to the onmitsu, Shirogarasu. Instead of readying herself, instead of that steel he needs, there is a different sort of heat. A question, posed more as a refraction of the truth.
'The person you kidnapped.' 'Tortured them.'
Good. There's no question.
"Aa," the boy confirms coldly.
How so like you.. ".. it is an ill-fitting burden that child has been dealt," Shiryuu notes clinically, focusing carefully on the words. "But it's naivete in the highest order to allow a simple child bearing a tenebrous legacy to go rampantly unminded in this world. For that reason, orders of harm are authorized."
That neutral expression, so carefully, flawlessly cut, pulls like the rope of a guillotine. His mien settles into the ghost of a frown.
"It is for that reason that I will bear the title of 'heartless.'"
He forces it away, the idea that a single 'bond' is something he could achieve. It's in what she says, that she doesn't carry her weapon just for him; that she is still a target. The onmitsu bridles visibly, rancor painting the sudden act of planting his sword in the silt, the javelin throw leaving the sword singing amidst the tide. For a moment, there is heat in everything he does and he takes a step forward when she almost slips, a tiny 'tch' bitten off sharply.
"...no," he finally says.
"Of all of the nameless, faceless blackguard, of all of the killers, it will be 'me' who is acknowledged as the most heartless, and 'me' who is the most feared. Anyone who quarrels with me, the Shirogarasu, for the right to target you -- surrenders to me their continuing right to breathe."
Hands tighten beneath silk; shifting the sleeves of his haori slightly.
"I told you," he warns her again.
"There's no one in the world who would do well with being my enemy." It's not a coincidence he reminds her just as she steps to sit down. He's telling her: Draw the blade.
She is sitting; and Shiryuu's lip draws tight in annoyance, a flash of sharp, white teeth showing. Principle stands on steel alone; pick up the sword.
"Pick up the blade, Umie..."
He's ignored. Now she is telling him about Phantom Thieves, and the boy's temper flares, spurring him to stalk to the left in a burst of motion. "Don't speak to me of that theatre of gentle idiots," Shiryuu grouses, ramming a hand through his silver hair. "I didn't...urgh. Get up, Akabane. Pick up the sword."
Why is her face wet with tears??
It's because he's not strong enough to scare her, the boy realizes. She doesn't trust him to be the person he says he is. His arms settle at his sides, forcing aside memories of heads rolling in the grass. He breathes slowly, darkly, evenly.
"...just an empty-headed pet," Ryouhara repeats to himself.
..and the edge of a knife drops out of his sleeve into his hand.
No matter whether it's above or below the moon, Shiryuu moves like the wind. He is inside of Umie's range in the space of a heartbeat, and the knife is at her throat inside of that same second, the boy dropping down from his jump to whirl into a squealing crouch and an overhand stab, that sharpened knife stopping only an inch away from spilling her blood.
The boy presses the palm of his hand against the pommel of his knife, to steady an uninvited tremor in his hand. His face is tight with determination, his eyes wide and ready -- no tears, no feeling, no remembering. Nothing but the next moment.
".....draw. your. weapon."
His grip tightens on the knife. Both hands. Stop shaking, Shiryuu.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
".... so they're a child?" Umie narrows her eyes. For better or worse, she takes it literally.
"You and the NWO just hate to see those little warped threads stand uncut," she hisses back, that reflexive bite of anger finally making its late arrival known in her voice. "I mean, that person might grow up to become like me, and no one needs *that* hassle, right?! But that's what the Order's really *good* at!! Creating little problems and letting others deal with them!"
She could still blame it being a scheme of the NWO, and she would have insisted on it, if she didn't know Shiryuu like she did.
It's a crutch. It's always been. It's better to blame the NWO for everything, fall back into the shadows, and feel like her helplessness is somehow justified. 'There's nothing anyone can do', 'it is what it is', 'what, you expect things to change?'
Umie reigns her anger back, not to dismiss it, but to help hone the blade of her thoughts, rather than let it burn her logic. "So here I am, Shiryuu. I'm your problem. That's all I ever was, to you." No, she wasn't. And he wasn't to her, either, even now. "You and Kurou'll deal with me, and you'll deal with everyone else that decides me being dead was ever an issue. Then, you'll go back to your routine, and your plans. Just an inconvenience. No one will ever know what became of Umie Akabane, and eventually, whatever ripples I created will cease to be noticed."
No weapon is in her hand but the one in her voice, the one she could wield in this battle the best, with her first name being urged on his lips. To hear it here...
It's personal.
"Those 'gentle idiots' took on a supernatural world with *no* idea of what would happen. To challenge the status quo... better if they didn't exist at all, eh?" Her eyelids lower, dark eyelashes reflected against the wet glint of her eyes. "How does it feel, to know that we never would have gotten to know each other, if not for them? And I..." But that's how it all works.
Connections start that simply, and grow when you least expect it.
'You should have given in. Look where it's gotten you. ... Deeper, and deeper it drags you into the Abyss.' Maria's Shadow's words were likely just a reflection of her extreme state, but...
'The Ryouharas are our enemies now. I pray you need not join them.'
'There's no one in the world who would do well with being my enemy.'
'...And I fear you may be put to the test.'
Despite it being outside any zone that could bring the aid of their Personas, Shiryuu is just as deadly outside of it as within. The blade is at her throat, and she has to pause, to keep herself from flinching, or reacting in a way that would continue the script laid out. Draw your weapon, and fight the NWO agent.
Joker definitely didn't mean *this* to be the test, but she was the one to walk into this.
Why does she have the Badb? Was it a quirk of receiving the Mark, a sign of her soul's corruption?
A less confident part of herself once wondered if it was a reflection of herself in a less than charitable way: a goddess of battle and death, driving her enemies mad and her beneficiaries towards the apogee of their short, brutal lives. A being who could be crone or maiden, who pointed a finger at powerful men and reminded them of their mortality. A damned crow who scholars struggle to pin where she starts and broader concepts like the Morrigan begin.
"... I should warn you." The path forward towards freedom will never be easy. "... Without Badb's protection, I'll bleed out pretty quickly. Those pesky bloodthinners can't take a hint..." That confident statement would be so much more effective, if not for the quiver in her voice.
Or is that the tremble of Shiryuu's hands? That's not the sort of grip a confident shihaisha should have...
It's both. "What do you do all this for, Shiryuu... And why.... did I come here, if I knew death was one of the outcomes?"
'You can't remember the moments you never grasp.'
Terrible tears betray her again. How weak, to cry when there's a blade to your throat.
"Neither of us.... are empty, Shiryuu. We might be broken, but we're... not empty."
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Yes, it's good. It's correct.
The boy whose eyes can't be seen is finally, achingly satisfied with her vitriol, the heat in her voice, the way she twists the knife like he knows she can. The white hot sting behind his eye is purifying to his resolve, focusing everything down to that single point.
If it goes on, he can force her to burn everything about them away, so that she can, too, be the child she was meant to be.
And everything that hurts will fade, and become irrelevant in the face of what needs to be done.
She tells him she will be a ripple that will fade in time, that her name will disappear. The boy's sudden, sharp flinch is only coincidental, he tells her with his stance.
No matter who she is to him, the time for his being weak is long past.
And then he can feel the weight of his knife in his hands. Lighter than it looks, heavier than you'd think.
"Aa," Shiryuu confirms, icily.
"..you're my problem, and you always will be."
He hunts her down, in every sense of the word. Don't back off, Umie Akabane. Be that terror in your mind. Find the invincible Shirogarasu's weakness, the way he riles at owing anyone anything, least of all Them, least of all Her. Don't run from it. He'll be every nightmare you ever dreamt of.
Because...
And now that steel is inches from her, the killer's hands tightening on the knife he hunts her with, every fiber of him forcing himself closer to it.
'I should warn you--' "--Don't," Shiryuu interrupts her, swift and fierce and sharp and harsh. Not even one more word, he tells himself. The next sound out of her mouth is going to be steel or blood, he tells himself.
He knows she has a weapon. "Draw it--" he tries to talk over her, to replace her thoughts with his own, to not have to think about it. To not have to think about how close they are, the way he leans in tight, keeping the knife close to his collar-line to make sure it's steady, to keep it retained, to keep from being disarmed by the idea of just how fast she'll bleed.
He forces the idea to override the thoughts in his head. The idea of the cool girl who is his enemy.
"Draw it--!"
When he's that close, finally his eyes can be seen, wet red to two shades of brave and battered brown, wide and angry and confused and committed and broken.
The boy flinches, when she asks him what it's all for. His lips tighten, trying to hold in the secret. 'What is the pain for?' Why?
"... no one in this whole world should have to die alone--"
'We might be broken, but we're not emp--'
He never gets out his whole thought, and she won't either. The boy closes that last lethal inch of space between them, resolved to kill her before anything else has a chance to break. But he doesn't move as he wills, the knife misses by a centimeter, punching past her shoulder as it drops away, haphazardly suspended on a finger for an instant when he wallows her into his tight embrace.
A knife is replaced by every charged intensity, the boy finally, angrily flicking the blade away. She only has a second to turn. An instant, a moment, the time to drag her into the drape of his white silk, a breath for the white crow to take every aggravation out on the sordid night exclusively with her, the damned crow, his claimed problem.
The knife is, in the end, replaced by the every demand of a stormy kiss.
It's messy, a haphazard passion amidst the tide and the rocks. It explains exactly nothing.
It's what happens, regardless.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
There are moments when the Badb's shriek shows its face in Umie's own: the bite of her words, using every advantage to stab back, draw blood, and continue, unsure if it's your own or someone else's.
Because her weaknesses lie in Shiryuu, and breaking them could mean she somehow became stronger.
And yet, all the coward could do.... was refuse to commit to the play.
'Draw it--'
"No."
'Draw it--!'
"_No_."
The more he tries to force it, the more she resists every attempt to hold her to her role. The cool girl. The child. The person who insisted that she'd die alone.
Anything but Umie Akabane, who fell asleep in his arms, who wept so quietly, who winced and resisted letting loose every ounce of vulnerability in front of him...
But gave each to him, because he gently accepted it, and showed his own.
What is all this pain for, anyway?
"....!" She flinches as the blade closes in, as the boy who kissed her forehead and wiped her sweat presses in that blade.
Ah, what a dumb, dumb way to die. Mai-chan doesn't need to tell her anything.
The knife nearly catches on the hood of her jacket, the pull of cloth being the first clue.
The second, the closing in of his embrace.
The third, how close his face is to hers, eyes close enough to see her reflection in his, and feel the heat of his breath.
The fourth, the feel of silk against skin and the distant 'ping' of a discarded dagger.
The fifth... ......
She's forgotten to care about numbers thereafter.
She can't even care about how long it'd take for her to die.
There's just his lips, and she's pressing herself into them, finally joining him on a field where she joins him, kiss for kiss, folding into his embrace with her own.
It's the only battleground she seems willing to match him on, merciless, ruthless, nearly breathless.
She's crying, and laughing, gasping and then just diving back in.
He smells like rain, and citrus.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
There is a band of strength in him, somewhere beyond the aggression. It lay there in the reflection of that knife's smooth, polished blade, discarded amid the messy scattering of rocks, worn smooth by the shuttling tide. There in the sea-sprayed steel's reflection, their silhouette is sharply entwined, as the powerful, sure boy replaces his killing stroke with a tight embrace.
"Umi--" words fail violently in that tumbled moment, that awkward, riled, intense kiss.
He lays hands on his so-called enemy -- and instead of killing her as he asserts every right to, he cinches her into the warmth of layers of wool and silk, threads of thought hyper-aware of how cold it is in the spray, how thin her blood is, how much she'll catch her death of cold. It's one of a hundred thoughts all competing for attention in his head.
But he holds her so very tightly to him, hand behind her shoulder, hand at the small of her back, her jacket bunching up in his arms. That last inch with her, hands tying tight the red thread of fate. It's the least gentle he will ever be with her, the last insistent tug existing solely as wordless affirmation of the boy's 'feeling.'
He thinks of her, and the nightmares she stands against, and if it's okay that he stirs those very same nightmares. It's one of a hundred thoughts, all competing for attention in his head.
And there they are, pressed forehead to forehead, parted lips scrabbling and competing through the only warm space between them for air, wantonly breathing in a conspiracy with the vexing, infuriatingly uncooperative girl.
Sprays of blonde and grey intermix.
"Y..you ruined it," Shiryuu quietly laments, a fragmentary notion hopelessly trying to pick up on a single useless thought of the hundred competing in his overfull skull.
She cries, because of him.
Then she laughs, and he thinks it could be because of him.
A fresh surge of sharp want eclipses every other thought in the boy's head, until no other is left.
He moves, this much he knows. His lips meet hers again -- soft, deep, wanting, apple-sweet -- and this time his aim is much, much better.
He's not sure of the rest.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
In the end, it was foolish for Umie to go straight to Shiryuu.
The path most direct might seem like the fastest way to resolve an issue, but the mess that is their feelings cannot and will not resolve easily.
Umie nearly got herself killed with her refusal.
"You ruined it yourself, by not answering," she murmurs back, between breaths, her lips curling against a row of white teeth, showing an involuntary smile that refuses to go away.
To ask a knife what the hand intends is foolish. He won't tell her, and be it the NWO or Shiryuu himself, he may not be capable of doing so.
There is a lock here. Umie has no key. But a lock is simply a barrier, and there is more than one way to seek a way past it.
But not tonight. Whatever thoughts she had to hone into a narrow purpose disappears against the touch of those sweet lips to hers, fading to nonsense like the noise of waves failing continually to become a musical performance.
......
That night, no pertinent questions were answered.
As for the rest...
.... Umie'll just have to hope Phoenix will fill her in, and go from here.