2026-05-13: A Mementos Meeting

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<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.

Suzume has been kind of busy since exams ended last month. She actually travelled out of Tokyo over a Sunday - not without knowledge; she did check in and it's not like she just vanished - and she's been to Mementos and Tartarus more than once. It's easy to suspect that she's Up To Something.

The fact that Reiya had *also* been with her on the Sunday she left had said something too. Maybe.

So when Suzume finally left a note on the SEES bulletin board saying that she wanted to meet up because she had some ideas she wanted to talk about, it might not have caught people entirely by surprise. She was a little vague in her post beyond saying it had something to do with Mementos and Shadows.

Suzume is currently in the common room. The television is off but she's in the spot that would get the best view of it if it wasn't. She has a can of Moonkist and a slightly nervous attitude that she is successfully camoflaguing by keeping her hands busy, tossing a small straight wood bar up in a spin and catching it out of the air. About two thirds of the bar is painted white, and she always tries to catch it by the dark part. Her accuracy is improving.

<Pose Tracker> Hitomi Mandai has posed.

 
Hitomi Mandai is here, and she lives here. So this is perhaps no great surprise. However, she does not lounge in like she's half asleep. (She came straight home after school and took a power nap, then put on civilian clothes.)

She is wearing those clothes as she descends the staircase. Sweater, sweatpants, it's certainly lounge-around-the-dorm clothing, but she has put herself together. She lets out a "hey" as she spots Suzume, and it may be noted she is carrying a notebook with two pens tucked into the cover by their little... pen clip things. (Editor's note: Look this up later.)

Hitomi pauses for a moment as she looks towards the kitchen, then goes straight on towards Suzume. "What's that thing?" she asks, eyes tracking the wooden tossy thing that Suzume is... well, tossing, even as she plants herself on the left side of one of the couches. 

<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.

Reiya has not been back to the dorm yet today. He's had things to do. Out there things! But he knew about the meeting, and so he is back, the dorm's door opening in silence and Reiya stepping through it, still in uniform. His blue hair is unruffled; his dark uniform is still tidy.

And now, he looks around the entry hall and then steps over towards the circle of couches, having a seat on the one opposite Suzume's position.

"Hello," Reiya says to those who have gathered. "I see I am not late." 

<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.

Ririka, who seems to keep her schedule pretty packed (too packed, probably), doesn't immediately see anything out of the ordinary with Suzume being extra busy. She's also not usually the type to read into anything like a trip taken with a friend.

But she does pay attention to the bulletin board, at least, and she made sure to note it on her calendar. So she was sure she'd make it tonight.

She comes down in jeans and a long-sleeved flannel shirt over a t-shirt, humming to herself. She smiles to herself, tapping out something on her phone before stashing it in her pocket and taking a seat. Her fingers drum idly on her thigh.

"Hey, everyone," she says. "So... what's up?" She looks at the stick for a moment. "... are you practicing juggling?" 

<Pose Tracker> Moriko Kumamoto has posed.

Moriko's running late. She may have forgotten about the meeting today and only got a reminder when her alarm for it went off. Which explains why there's the distant sound of an engine revving. Then she's inside not long after. Peeling her helmet off and tucking it under her arm. Making her way over to the group.
 
 "Yo." She offers with her usual dour look. Taking a heavy seat with an 'ooph' when she lands.
 
 Resting her elbows on her knees, she presses her palms together and leans in. "Sorry." She might be mentally catching up after the ride. 

<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.

Suzume is also in casual clothes. It's a little cooler now, so her previous light baseball T-shirt has been replaced by a slightly heavier one with a much more faded logo on it. She's still got the jeans, though.

The clip on a pen is called... a pen clip. Now you know! And knowing is half the battle.

Suzume flips the object up once more and catches it left-handed. She's not a leftie and she grabs it by the white part, not the smaller dark part, which gets a bit of a scowl. Now that it's not spinning, it's easier to see that it's roughly knife-shaped, but all wood and not sharp. It's the 'blade' that's white.

"I thought I'd learn," she says, slightly defensively. "I saw some people who did, like... knife tricks, on an online video. But the last thing you want to do is catch it by the sharp part. That's why part of it's painted white. Some of it's juggling, and sleight of hand, but I also want to get one for throwing at, like, targets."

Suzume has always been the sort of person to dive into a new hobby or skill heavily for a while...

Still, she sets the not-a-knife down. "Okay," she says, before letting out a breath. "Okay. So, you guys know I've been looking into Mementos for a while. It's kind of important, I think - not as urgent as Tartarus but still a big deal. But before I say what I was gonna, I want to know - what you know about Mementos? I mean, if anything."

"Then I'll say what I - I mean, we," she nods toward Reiya, "got up to. And what I think it means." 

<Pose Tracker> Hitomi Mandai has posed.

 
(yo SEES)

"For what?" Hitomi asks, her head turning to look directly at Moriko for a moment.

But only a moment. "Oh nice," she says, even as she opens up the notebook and gets one of her pens ready. She does swirls to confirm inkflow and then draws a little happy face at the top of the first sheat, crossing one leg over the other...

And taking notes. (Important: These notes will be available later! If you, dweller of future year 6969, read this log, and are in SEES, you can assume IC knowledge! Things that are NOT recorded as of this entry will also be noted! There are also little :D and D: and :/ faces in the margins! Did you know Hitomi puts them in her school notes? Suzume might've, anyway.)

There is a question. Hitomi glances towards Ririka, then Reiya, and then speaks up.

"Very little," she says. "I've only been there a couple of time. It sort of seems like a labyrinth or cave? I heard there's this giant hidden cavern under Tokyo they use when there's a typhoon just so the entire districts don't wash into the harbor and heap up on Destinyland... Oh, I guess it's more like a bunch of train lines."

She contemplates for a moment, and adds, "I guess we know the Group didn't cause it? Kirijo I mean. I assumed it was natural somehow. Maybe it's where they did research in the past?"

Hitomi also scribbles that down, which silences her for a few seconds. 

<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.

Reiya observes the knife-shaped wood that Suzume is using to train her reflexes. He looks around at the others assembled, too, nodding to Moriko as she apologizes. "It's fine."

"It's good to practice," Reiya agrees with Suzume, and then... what do they know?

Reiya at first intends to say nothing--but, he speaks up after Hitomi asks. "You know what I know," he says to Suzume first. "...and that includes that so far as we know, Kirijo did not create Mementos. We have no data on how long it's been around." 

<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.

"Hey, Kumamoto-chan. Don't worry, we haven't started yet," says Ririka.

"Oh, that's really cool," she says as Suzume mentions that it is, at least in part, juggling. "I bet that's really good for hand-eye coordination, huh?" But it's for practice. "That's... probably a good idea. But good luck!"

"Oh, right, yeah," she says as the subject shifts to Mementos. What do they know about Mementos?

Ririka looks very far away for a moment. "... avoid the Grim Reaper," she says, with a shiver.

"But past that... the Shadows talk, you can find the Shadows of people there, uh... you shouldn't, kill the Shadows of people," she says with a wince. "The layout changes, the Shadows really don't like it if you try to ride the train down deeper, there's that kid Jose who'll trade items for flowers, annnd..." She considers for a moment, fingers tapping as she hums to herself to trigger her memory.

"... you can find these rare treasure Shadow tings. At least, I saw one deeper down once." 

<Pose Tracker> Moriko Kumamoto has posed.

Moriko's eyes follow the block of wood up and down. Up and down. "Huh. Probably safer than what I was doing." Not that she explains it. It's probably not hard to figure out that her dexterity training is probably related to her outfit though.
 
 "I honestly.. don't know much about them at all." Sounding a bit surpriseed after she had considered the situation. "I just know they're there. I should look into them though."
 
 She fishes out her own little notebook. It's crumped, dubiously held together, but it works. And she begins to write things as well.
 
 "Good." She notes, that she hasn't missed anything. Though there is a flurry of movement as she works her way out of the biker jacket. It's warmer inside.
 
 Ririka stating that gets a confused look, "The reaper?" Her mind immediately going to some classic rock song that is now stuck in her head. She manaages to hum a short amount of that song before catching herself. Other than that, she does write everything down Ririka notes. Though the pen is pointed to Reiya, "I want those notes later." She knows him. It's less a problem being that forward.
 
 "If we can't ride the trains down, is there another method? Like tunnels?" She hasn't been that far! 

<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.

"Hand-eye coordination, yeah," Suzume agrees, though honestly she's mostly doing it because it seemed fun. She likes the challenge. Maybe she can learn how to hit a target with it? She's pretty sure there are clubs for that, if not at school...

Suzume has borrowed Hitomi's notes before (and vice versa, for other courses). She is aware of Hitomi's tendency to doodle faces in the margins in the same way that Hitomi knows that Suzume draws little abstract geometric patterns and also has messy handwriting.

Suzume takes in what people are saying and nods. "Yeah. It's a train system," she agrees with Hitomi and Ririka. "Or it looks like one, anyway." She explains to Moriko, "You can go deeper on the train to a point, but if you try to go too far down on foot it's blocked off, and the Shadows get agitated if you try to take the train past there too. There's Shadows of people in there, and treasure, and the Reaper..."

Suzume swings, leaning forward slightly. She's short enough that she has to scootch forward a little bit to get her feet back on the ground from the couch. "So the whole thing - Shadows, Mementos, Tartarus, Palaces, the whole nine yards - " She pauses. "Where's that saying come from, anyway? But whatever. All of it is 'cognitive space'. Or that's what I've heard it called."

"Tartarus is obviously, uh... it's in one place," Suzume says, looking in the vague direction of Gekkoukan. Or she would be if there weren't walls and buildings and such in the way. "Palaces - there's more than one of them, but they also don't really move around or anything. But Mementos is transit. It connects places, right? You can get into it from Tokyo, or Sumaru, or here. And they all connect as you go down."

"So I had an idea to do an experiment. Kirijo-san said I could run operations in Mementos so I called it one of those. I went out to another town, Hakone - it's a bit further than Sumaru," Suzume clarifies. Hakone is a touristy town of about ten thousand people, between ninety minutes and two hours by bus and train depending on your connections and ability to pay for a direct trip. It has a lot of onsen and museums.

"That's where I went the Sunday after exams. And I didn't go alone, I asked Reiya-san along, because... I wanted to see what was in Mementos there. If there WAS a Mementos there. Or if it was just Tokyo." Suzume frowns. "I'm explaining myself okay, right? I mean, so far."

"Anyway, there was a Mementos there. But it wasn't quite the same Mementos. It was smaller. Kinda run-down looking. There were buses, too, not just trains," Suzume says, "and they came less often. Like - well, like any rural stop. I guess. I've never really travelled to many rural places in Japan. But it gave me some more ideas too." 

<Pose Tracker> Hitomi Mandai has posed.

 
Hitomi continues stenographing. "Well that's good," she comments blandly to Reiya, before her eyes seem to turn around. She frowns, underlines a word (human) and leans back a bit in the seat for a moment.

"Now I want to go back and see one of these Treasure Shadows," Hitomi says, her tone light but not quite joking. "Yeah, there's like a charm, I'll tell you it later," that to Moriko, but then back to Suzume. Hitomi frowns for a moment. More narrative writing.

"Oho," she says when Hakone comes up, and the face next to Hakone is a picture of a certain extremely marketable :|-faced girl whose adventures also happened in the general neighborhood of Hakone. Her eyes also turn towards Reiya.

"Yeah," Hitomi says, about whether or not Suzume's evoking it right. (heh heh, evoker) But there is more to come.

"That's weird," Hitomi says. "Maybe Mementos is like... the cognitive train world? And though I don't really get what's going on with Palaces, those were like dream fortresses, kind of, right? At least that's what I was getting out of them, even if they weren't nice dreams," Hitomi continues.

Her lips then purse. She taps her lower lip with the pen tip, barely avoiding an impromptu tattoo before writing some more stuff down. (More elaborating details from Suzume's remark. Observers can see Hitomi tends to skip wildly over a page at first and then goes back to write increasingly cramped details.) 

<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.

That kid Jose... Reiya wonders what he is. "Most things are safer than what you do," Reiya points out to Moriko.

Reiya may also review Hitomi's notes, and so see the FACES of HITOMI. But not right now. Right now, the notes have to get made.

Reiya looks to Hitomi as she mentions the Treasure Shadows again. "Those are good training," he says. "And offer useful resources."

But Hakone! Reiya nods. Mementos there... and, well--

"I would want to experiment to see if it was only superficially different or if we can 'meet' others in Mementos from different places, as we can in the Tokyo area. That is, whether someone in Hakone's Mementos can encounter someone in Tokyo's Mementos."

But the dream fortresses...

"Yes. Palaces appear to be shaped by the mental state of one person. And yes, you are explaining yourself fine," he offers Suzume.

"Talking Shadows are still strange to me," he admits. "Partly because I don't know why." 

<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.

"Yeaaaaah, big thing with massive guns, chains, it's, uh... you'll definitely know it if you see it. Just, uh... don't fight it. Get away as fasst as you can. I think if you don't stay in Mementos too long it's okay?" she frowns as she says that. That was the impression she got, at least, but... there was also a lot going on, and a poorly-timed Persona Break.

Ririka also respects doing something because it's fun and/or a challenge.

But different spaces, with different qualities... And then Hakone. "Oh yeah, you mentioned going there at Akiket, right?" She listens, and nods, when Suzume asks if she's explaining herself. "Yeah, that makes sense. You wanted to see if it was local or kept going further out, right?"

"So a Mementos with busses, huh... that's..." Ririka frowns. "Huh. You know, if we ever take another trip... Yamagishi-san and I should check out the Mementos there, maybe our Navigator abilities will tell us more..."

Ririka looks to Hitomi. "I'll help you look, if you want to see one. There was this group that got to the one I was tracking first, though, but hopefully we won't run into them again."

"Yeah, I think Palaces are tied to the ruler... though there's also Kingdoms, that are in a specific place, kind of like a Palace? But... I guess it was tied to that girl, Maria Sakurai, though... she didn't exactly seem in charge, more like she was trapped..."

Ririka muses. "... kind of makes a Kingdom seem like an Atelier, except I'm not sure where those actually 'are', yet."

Reiya mention meeting people in Memento. "Did you have any luck?" she asks, curious. 

<Pose Tracker> Moriko Kumamoto has posed.

Moriko scratches her cheek at Suzume's explanation. "So like a gestalt accumulation?" Which is absolutely a scifi sort of concept and her drawing lines to what she knows. "You know. Like... a uh." She frowns. "Why cannot I not think of the book. Dammit." A look is shot to Reiya, like she expects he'd know what she's on about.
 
 Guns, chains and more. "You sure it's the grim reaper? Sounds like a t-shirt." She can't help it, she's seen those kinds of shirts online while looking at biker things.
 
 "Take me with you if you go. I'd like to see. Maybe poke around back home even." Not that she says it by name. Everyone knows she's got that drawl.
 
 Hitomi gets a quick nod, "A charm. Right." Noting down in her own notebook 'Annoy Hitomi for charms.' Which may confuse her when she wakes up tomorrow. "Train world?" That's a new one to her.
 
 "Well. I'm down for hunting them if you guys are." Said to both Reiya and Hitomi. "I need the practice. I'm probably too sloppy. I want to work with you on that later." Said to Reiya at the end there.
 
 "They're there. There is there. We can get into chaos theory and adjacent realities." She suggests to Ririka.
 
 She should probably stop citing random scifi books. 

<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.

Suzume makes a face. "I don't know what a 'gestalt accumulation' is," she says to Moriko. "But maybe I do. Lemme finish." She glances at Hitomi too: "Oho *what*," she asks, a little directly.

Suzume puffs out her cheeks. "I don't think they connect," she says to Reiya. "I mean - there wasn't a connection, like there is to Sumaru, in Mementos. It doesn't seem to be attached. And I had an idea why."

Suzume pauses to take a drink from her Moonkist, because her throat's a little dry. She sets it down a few moments later. "So my theory is that cognitive space is what you get when you get a lot of people thinking in one place," Suzume says. "Like how if you get a lot of mass in one place, you get gravity, if you get a lot of thinking in one place, you get cognitive... stuff."

"If Mementos was a place because of *everybody thinking*, then thinking more would make it bigger, and more complicated. Hakone's is smaller because there's less people there, and it's not connected because people in Hakone don't feel like part of Tokyo. I mean, Iwatodai may as well be part of Tokyo, it's so close to Aoyama-Itchome that you barely leave the city. Sumaru, too, is pretty close. But there's less people thinking in Hakone, and less people thinking *about* Hakone, than Tokyo, and it doesn't feel *like* Tokyo."

"I wish we could check, like... Kyoto on a trip or something," Suzume says. "Osaka. One of the other really big cities. Or, like... New York? Do they have Mementos or is it just a Japanese thing? Is it only in Tokyo and nearby spaces, or what? I want to know."

"But anyway, Tartarus was made after the experiment, right? We know that." Suzume gestures. "But the Shadows had to be here *before* that because they experimented on Shadows. So what if it was just something that... happens, because of people? Maybe they came from a cognitive space that isn't Mementos, and that's where Tartarus stretches to, and what the experiment did was drill a hole from here to there. And the Dark Hour is what leaks out, and that's what we have to fix. I don't know."

Suzume talks faster as she gets more into it. "But I think *thinking* is important. It'd explain why a lot of the demons look like yokai, or myths, too, right? If they're things people thought about, they're shapes for a cognitive being to be. Why there's Shadows of people there, if they had the right kind of thoughts, or the wrong kind... And why Tartarus Shadows *don't*, if they're from a different kind of space. Reiya pointed out - maybe that's why Kirijo Group had to do their work here, rather than, like, a secret island base in the middle of nowhere. Because there's only cognitive space, or power, where there's people."

"And then Palaces," she says, glancing at Ririka, "are little cognitive spaces that are made by one person. Like a bubble or something. And that's why they fall apart when you deal with the person's Shadow." Suzume doesn't mean kill. "I don't know about Kingdoms though.

"So I guess... I want to know more," Suzume finishes up. "But I think Mementos is important. And I think *all* of this is related, somehow. So, uh... I guess I'm asking if anyone has any other ideas, too. Or if you're interested in still looking into this with me. I'm gonna be planning trips back into Mementos soon."

(After the next Full Moon Shadow.) 

<Pose Tracker> Hitomi Mandai has posed.

 
"Oh, wow, I completely skipped over that. Is he like... Spanish? Mexican?" Hitomi guesses about Jose, which she knows perhaps to be a Spanish name. As she does this, she moves to the other page, and seems to be creating a new narrative space... and also doodling something else.

A... figure, bending over, like to scoop water? It's 'gets OK grades in art class' drawing, not 'the next hot mangaka' drawing, but it's recognizable as a person. Oh, with wings.

Her eyes turn towards Reiya. "If it's only trains, that might take a long time," Hitomi says. "I guess you could go to a big city somewhere else in Japan, yeah. I went to Kyoto in like... sixth grade, otherwise it's just been the country and shit for me."

Hitomi loosk towards Ririka then, and says, "Oh thanks! At least it's going to pay for itself getting out there, right?" Scribble scribble. The girl isn't scooping water up, it's a Treasure Shadow. Which Hitomi is guessing looks like a big stereotypical diamond with a spooky o~o face on it. She may have guessed well.

"There wasn't a train on Yakushima, though," Hitomi answers Ririka, "just that loop bus. We know there probably *isn't* one there, though, or we'd have probably seen it, right? Or did you guys just sleep through the Dark Hour?" As she does this, she draws what looks to be a sort of generic fat-guy face with big T_T-faced tears and saying 'a ya na mi i i i i i i i i i i i'

Hitomi glances at Moriko and writes down GE RE SU TA TO (?) with two underlines next to it, and she says, "I'm in too, if I'm not busy or whatever. And yeah, I mean, tons of people are on trains every day and they have been for a hundred years or so, right?" Hitomi addressed that for Moriko. "What was that other one? That's the theory the dinosaurs used to escape, right?"

Back to Suzume. "That makes sense. The train's a great place *to* think, right? Since you have basically nothing to do. You're just waiting for the train to get to where you want to go." She writes down the rest of that, with exclamation points and question marks.

The Tartarus facts are a quick note, so she adds some helpful labels to the picture she drew. 'earth (red)' 'treasure (shadow)' 'boobs (big)', and for the fat-guy face, 'dumbass (lol)' Then Suzume speaks more and Hitomi's eyes narrow in thought. "Yeah, those places do have trains... that's how we got there, and it didn't LOOK different from Tokyo." But Suzume has other thoughts.

"... you're right, they do, huh," Hitomi muses to herself.

"... maybe it's the other way around, and Shadows sometimes made it out, or people had Personas but didn't understand it, or something," she continues, in a tone of slightly halting speculation. "So, like, we know it's a youkai, but people saw the Shadow and called it a youkai. Maybe it heard?"

Hitomi considers. "They all seem to know Japanese if they don't just go gruooooh, skronnnk. Maybe they're telepathic...?" 

<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.

The Reaper... Reiya doesn't want to run into that. But for Hitomi, "I've been a lot of places, but not since I awakened my Persona."

"That's a good idea," Reiya says to Ririka about another trip. "I'm sure we will at some point."

Kingdoms... and Ateliers. Reiya is thoughtful about that. But to the question, "No, i haven't tested it yet."

Moriko asks questions, and Reiya points out of the book, "American science fiction probably doesn't hold the answers we seek, unless Heinlein-san knew more than I think he did." A beat, "But I will assist with your training. We can go hunting some night."

Suzume, though...

"Yes. I think you're probably right," he says to Suzume of connecting. "I just want to test it if possible. Unfortunately, without the ability to coordinate... It might be difficult."

But Thinking. Suzume explains her ideas, and Reiya is quiet; he's heard some of them, of course. But the Shadows... Hmm.

"As we discussed," he says to Suzume, "I suspect your hypotheses have some truth to them. My goal is to gather enough data that we can convince the Kirijo Group to do further research based on our findings. Then, we can learn more than we'd be able to learn on our own."

Pause. "...And," he admits, "They're less able to shut us out if we're the ones gathering the data," though he doesn't like saying this one, because he is loyal to his mother. But Yukari would say it, if she were here--and so he feels obligated to raise the idea.

"Hmm..." Telepathic? Or the other way around? "...There are demons, as well. Demons who take the form of youkai but also western beings. ...I don't know whether they have any relation to Shadows."

"Hmmm..."

"Either way, I'm of course in. I want to explore these ideas. Tartarus will remain my priority, but I have time for more than one investigation."

<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.

Ririka gives Moriko a flat look. "It was basically indestructible and nearly killed me with a bullet that was the size of my head. So... yeah. If it's not the Grim Reaper it's at least a Grim Reaper. Besides, Yamagishi-san analyzed it." Everybody knows that gets ou the name of the thing, right? Right.

"Just promise me you'll run if you encounter it, okay?"

That was not a good day. They came out of it okay, but... she doesn't want to joke abou tit.

She blinks at Moriko. "Uh... sure?"

But Suzume has a theory, and Ririka considers it. "So if you get a lot of people together... I guess that makes sense... I... don't know if I can sense anything to confirm that one way or the other, but... I guess I could see that. It'd be like... how those Rumors in Sumaru come true, right? When they get spread around enough?"

"Yeah, and like... I go to Sumaru all the time, to see my sister, and I go to Tokyo a lot, too, for the Philharmonic..." Ririka's slowly nodding as she considers it. "So I could see that. Like, they're separate, but they don't feel that far away."

As for drilling holes, and taking stuff from other spaces, Ririka frowns as she considers. "I guess... but if it's stuff with drilling I don't think that's something we can fix with just fighting like we do..."

"Well, the one Palace we've seen was located at a specific spot--in Maria Sakurai's case at the tracks for Sevens. Getting in was simpler though, but it had this kind of self-contained world, and... Sakurai-san was trapped there. And... Oh!" Ririka leans forward. "And it had a Sovereign, instead of a Ruler--two of them, actually. And the Shadows there were called Legionnaires, so... another different type of Shadow, in a different type of space. And I think they weren't like the normal Shadows or Demons we see, either. So that kind of goes with some of what you're saying, Fukura-chan."

"I'm... not sure," Ririka says to Hitomi, about Jose. "Maybe he's part of the Metaverse? He was able to drink those flowers, so..."

And she nods, about the Treasure Shadow. "Hopefully! The one I saw in Mementos was deeper, though, in the second section of it, so... I dunno if we'll have to go that far to find some more."

Ririka sighs. "I try to sleep through the Dark Hour." She's not always successful. "But yeah, I didn't think to check there, either..."

"Cool," Ririka says to Reiya with a nod. "And maybe... if we can get Yamagishi-san involved, we could do some tests to see if we could locate each other in Mementos, and how far away we can do that from..." 

 <Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.

"I didn't have the theory yet when we went to Yakushima," Suzume admits. "I didn't really start thinking about it seriously until after." After the Kirijo Group was willing to spill some more of the beans. She didn't have enough knowledge to come to much before that.

Suzume cranes around to try to look at Hitomi's drawings. What *are* those? she thinks to herself. The Treasure Shadow at least she can guess, but the rest of it... the labels don't help her put it all together either. Except maybe for dumbass.

"Maybe," Suzume says to Hitomi. "I mean, maybe the Shadows came first. Reiya-kun had that thought too. Like... there was a 'realm of the gods', or some actual myths, that was a cognitive space people used to have. Maybe that's why a lot of myths are in the past? But that's *really* not something we can test."

She nods to Ririka. "Palaces, yeah - they're specific places, like Tartarus. I think Mementos is different because it's... it *has* to be spread out because the whole thing is transit. Traffic. Connection..." Suzume is thinking again. There's something just out of reach... "Maybe it has to do with thinking about other things? Like... making links with your mind...?"

She frowns again. "I don't really just want to hand it to Kirijo Group," she says to Reiya, a little slowly. "But I do think we might need to learn from them too. But if we can find anything about how Mementos works, first, or how it connects - maybe we could try your thing. With people in different train stations, if we had two groups that phoned each other right before they went in..."

Suzume's thinking now. "Though honestly it would probably just be easier to see if we could get to Hakone from Tokyo Mementos or the other way around. Like how if you go in, you can come out in Sumaru, sometimes..." When the Mark gets used. "If we were in Hakone overnight I would've seen if I could find the path to Port Island, but we weren't staying through midnight. Monday classes, ugh. But that'd definitely be something you and Yamagishi-san can help with."

"I think we're going to have to try to push deeper, too," Suzume says. "So... yeah. Get ready for that, too. And thanks for listening. I just - I wanted to do more than sit on my butt and wait for a Full Moon Shadow. Still do. There's got to be *something* we can do." 

<Pose Tracker> Hitomi Mandai has posed.

 
Hitomi nods slightly to Reiya and then makes a few more inscriptions and - turns the page! It's a pretty big notebook and Hitomi is one of those freaks with small legible handwriting, even if it's not particularly pretty or neat. Still, those are some distinct-ass kanji. No wonder she had to go get a nice pen.

"That's a good idea," Hitomi muses. "They've got a real guilt complex about all of this, so you can probably get plenty of funding. I mean, I don't know if they would do more than give you some money, but."

She grows somewhat graver, though. "Yeah. I don't understand why any of that's happened in Sumaru. I guess it's not elsewhere... or it'd just be easy to understand. Heh." A memory seems to have surfaced, if not a good one, and Hitomi doesn't speak for a while, instead doodling someone in the lower right quadrant of the page she's working on.

She pauses. Hitomi looks up at Ririka. "Like a hummingbird?" She sounds almost hopeful.

The figure sketch begins then, and Hitomi basically writes down what Suzume says. She's even bulleting. She doesn't explain the doodles. "Hmm... yeah. I mean, do the gods exist because we came up with them, or did they exist and we just gave them names? Like if Susano-o is totally real - I don't remember if anyone's like, got... got him," Hitomi seems to falter here for a moment. "I guess if someone had him for a Persona you can't really talk, huh."

Her pen doesn't move for several seconds. She's thinking.

Or maybe weighing about the group.

"We can probably run everything through Mitsuru, if we need to," Hitomi continues. "If you think like her dad was guilty, and I'm pretty sure he was incredibly guilty, she's even guiltier. Hrm... maybe that'd be the easy way to try this out, though. We could make them pay for a hot springs trip, winter break? Then we can do recon out there during the Dark Hour."

The Moons probably won't cooperate, but hope springs eternal.

"No I get you, it's weird," Hitomi continues even as she keeps drawing. "Just... sort of being here. It feels messed up to SAY but you know what I mean, right? All of you? I guess you maybe knew a lot more about it earlier, Aomori... but like..."

Hitomi finishes the drawing. It is a picture of... Yukari? But she's in some kind of bodysuit hairclip situation, but still holding a bow and arrow. She is also saying "GOOTEN TAG" in English block letters.

"The novelty wore off," Hitomi concludes, as she puts little dot-eyes on the doodle.

"Hmm... we should figure out some hypotheses we could test," Hitomi concludes, looking up. "Like... how could you *test* if trains are connected to Mementos in specific, instead of... well you knew it was a bus, was it like in a tunnel or just on the surface? Or..."

She trails off again. Disquieted again! *Could you tell what the bus was like?* Or is that between-cities night darkness simply... nothing? 

<Pose Tracker> Reiya Aomori has posed.

Reiya sometimes sleeps through the Dark Hour, and sometimes doesn't. He often has things to do! ...But sometimes you gotta sleep through the night, or you get sick. That's how it works.

But Suzume...

"It seems logical that at least some of the stories were based in or close to reality, given that we've seen that such things aren't impossible. How much, which is which... That I don't know. But closing off avenues of investigation because of our assumptions won't get us anywhere."

Specific places... Transit. Hmm. Reiya has little to say about that. The Kirijo Group, though...

"...And neither do I," he admits. "I think their resources can test things we can't--but I don't want to stop being involved. They might say we're too young, that we lack the background..."

"But we're old enough to fight Shadows, and we have practical experience."

He nods. "I'd appreciate trying that. It would be a way to solidify our data."

"Yes, Personas don't speak," Reiya agrees. "But I wonder that too. Which came first?"

"...We shouldn't put everything on Kirijo-san," Reiya thinks. "That's another good reason to continue investigating on our own; I worry that it would simply be added to her responsibility."

Hmmm. Make them pay for a trip... "That could work. Maybe not a hot springs trip, but something during one of our breaks."

But being here... "Even I didn't know all of it," Reiya admits. "...But I understand. I knew that these things were to be my duty. Most of us found out, and then chose. It's... not quite the same."

"The parts of Mementos that have any supernatural activity seem to be underground, though aboveground it was..." He considers the technical term. "Spooky." 

<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.

"Well they had a bunch of shadows, and they got loose in the accident, right? So I guess they had to come from somewhere..." She looks to Reiya. "Has anybody ever said where they came from?"

"Well, if you're talking about gods and myths... a lot of Personas come from mythology, right? Amphion is from Greek mythology, I looked him up..."

"Lots of people ride the subway trains... they connect in all kinds of different ways... there's lots of busses, and highways, too..." Ririka considers. "All those people thinking about connections... people in a rush on those trains full of Shadows..."

Yeah, she's got nothing.

"Yeah, if Kirjo Group isn't holding anything back from us, then... maybe they could help." They did tell them a lot. Finally. But they weren't exactly forthcomig initially.

Going to Hakone, and then trying to find the way back to Port Island. "Yeah, you should definitely bring along a Navigator for that, if you try it." It's kind of in the name. "Just in case."

But thanks for listening. "Of course, Fukura-chan. Thank you and Aomori-san for going to Hakone to check that out for us. Now I'm kind of curious what I'd sense out there..."

"They won't even pay for our equipment," Ririka points out to Hitomi.

About Jose. "Maybe? Except... he just sticks a straw in it, I think. And the flower isn't like, a flower flour it's like a flower on a bubble, or..." Ririka trails off. "... cognitive flowers, maybe? I'm not sure."

"If we do another trip I want more warning next time so I can put it on my calendar... but a trip to go and check out supernatural spaces might be interesting..."

But Kirijo Group... "We're not too young to be cleaning up their messes. And it's not like any of them have been to Tartarus." She frowns. "... at least, I hope not." It's kind of a dangerous place to go without a Persona.

"I'll help with any experiments you want to do." Scehdule permitting, of course.

"Spooky how?" 

<Pose Tracker> Moriko Kumamoto has posed.

"I'm drawing from speculative scifi from all over." Mostly the US, as Reiya ends up pointing out later. "Since scifi's kinda useful for drawing analogues when you're into the creative parts of it." She holds a finger up as she talks.
 
 "Kinda that. A collective unconscious. Right?" Which is probably a better word for it now that she's thinking about it.
 
 "Maybe the experiment opened the way? Causing some bleed?" She's not sure, truth be told. She's clearly still riffing on books. Don't worry too much.
 
 "Knew a kid online that said he was Cuban with that name." She supplies helpfully to Hitomi.
 
 "Hah! But there's no cat." She seems briefly excited when Reiya makes the name in her head click. "Thank you. It was going to drive me around in circles."
 
 "I think it's a cannon not a bullet at that point." She adds helpfully to Ririka's description. "Time to leave is time to leave though, yeah."
 
 The confused look is given a, 'I'll explain later.' Look.
 
 Back to Suzume, she raises her pen, "So it's where people are, builds in a similar manner. Is out in the countryside even without usual connections." Then she lowers it and chews on the lid for a moment.
 
 To Reiya again, "Maybe they shape each other." The she sticks her tongue out, "Maybe I wasn't wrong drawing those lines. Hah."
 
 She does agree with RIrika though, "Myths and not just common ones." She taps her head. "The thing in my head's all kinda obscure." She frowns. "I had to do a lot of digging to find anything about her."
 
 She doesn't mention what happened to her either.
 
 "Still. I want to help. Call me." 

<Pose Tracker> Suzume Fukura has posed.

"So's Atalanta," Suzume replies to Ririka. "Greek, I mean." And sometimes a catgirl. FATE is weird. (But Suzume's does have the cat eyes, so maybe it's not all wrong...)

She's still watching Hitomi's doodle, and lets out a snort when she finishes. "Nice," she says, before turning her attention back to an actual answer: "I couldn't explain Sumaru either. Didn't even try. ...Sorry. Sumaru's weird in its own way." Hitomi knows more about Sumaru than she does, anyway.

(Probably.)

"I don't think they'd pay for a hot springs trip," Suzume says, "and I don't know if I WANT one, but maybe we can convince them to shell out for the museum. We actually blew some time at one of the outdoor exhibits since it seemed kind of stupid just to get to Hakone, check Mementos, turn around and come back right away... it was pretty cool. I wish I'd had a better camera. But it'd be good if we could go during the Dark Hour... hmm."

Her brow furrows. "Maybe if there's a school overnight trip we can convince her to let us do a special op. I bet THAT one's possible." Suzume brightens. Now that's a possibility!

Suzume seems cheerier now. "Well. Thanks for listening," she says. "I guess that's all I got. Once we get some time I'm going to put together another expedition into Mementos... and, yeah, Tartarus too. But I think we're good for the moment. So, uh... yeah."

She glances at Hitomi. "You mind if we share those notes around?" She figures that's why they were taken, but, well... "...maybe we should copy them WITHOUT the art before Takeba sees it." 

<Pose Tracker> Hitomi Mandai has posed.

 
"Gotta be hot springs," Hitomi adds, as she fades into stenography. It seems to be brightening her up, at least. "We can make it happen. But we could definitely get like a long weekend of art *and* a trip to a hot spring. For, like, cultural reasons."

Then she looks upwards.

To Suzume, Hitomi says, "No. She should see it."

Slowly, Hitomi smiles.

(She will not object to others copying out her text without cryptic marginalia.)

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