2026-05-17: Let's Tako 'Bout It
- Log: 2026-05-17 Let's Tako 'Bout It
- Cast: Pernelle, Yanagi Nagisa
- Where: Shimokitazawa - Peacock Silk
- OOC Date: May 17, 2026
- IC Date: November 11, 2012
- Summary: After the battles with the Hierophant and then Takahisa Kandori, Pernelle and Yanagi have a serious discussion about what happened... while making a ridiculous mess in the kitchen. It's still Pernelle and Yanagi, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Well! That was certainly an adventure Yanagi and Pernelle just had! What should have been a full moon affair become something entirely too wriggly, but Yanagi, in her infinite and perfect wisdom, had made the finest suggestion: takoyaki.
The wriggles will be theirs to conquer.
Now, one might wonder how one gets octopus sashimi at such an hour -- or any grocery, for that matter -- but Pernelle is far from one of them. On the way home from the exhausting ordeal, there is much giggling and cackling as a bird commits several crimes.
And so, in the safety and warmth of home, Pernelle is already dusted in flour as he uses his beak and fit to rip at the fish packaging.
"Yanagi, you are true a sage of this era. I cannot imagine where I would be without your insight. No, on, that is a lie! A fib! I can imagine it clear as purest crystal. It is dreadfully boring, and I should like to dump the very thought from my memory." He pauses.
"What was I talking about?"
In this blank moment, Pernelle looks Yanagi over with avian twitches and tilts of his head. Worried? Pernelle? Perish the very thought! They are home! And whole! And probably hail! Probably definitely! But the wriggles...
"Mm, you know, I do so love a pre-cooking snack to keep up the energy and inspire the appetite. Would you fancy me to fetch you something?"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
It was an adventure. There's a lot to think about--about Kandori, about the Arisatos, about Maki and what happened three years ago in Mikage-cho... how cold and empty the uncaring universe was for those two seconds...
But right now, there are snacks to be made! Delicious, doughy, fried octopus snacks! ...Do either Yanagi or Pernelle know how to make takoyaki...? Oh well, even if it's terrible, they'll both still eat it! And they certainly both had great fun doing crimes to get the octopus pieces in the first place. Exactly what kind of crimes? We shall leave that to the audience's imagination~
"Octopus, I think!" Yanagi chirps, kicking her feet idly from where she sits on a stool in the kitchen. "And how delicious it will be when we fry it up!"
She has also been lightly dusted. Pernelle is a messy bird. Messy in the sense of being sprinkled with flour--and messy in how disturbed he became by Kandori. It makes perfect sense to Yanagi--Kandori was disturbing to just about everyone there, including herself, and Yanagi can usually roll with most things--but she sees him look at her like he's thinking about what happened...
"Hmmm, what sort of something were you thinking?" Yanagi replies automatically. Then she shakes her head. "No, I'll leave it a surprise! Bring me something delicious, Pernelle, if you please!"
Under normal circumstances, there would be a heart mark at the end of that declaration.
However, the truth is, Yanagi is worried about Pernelle too.
Tsumugi Kujaku has arrived from Historia: The White Chronicle.
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
The commandeering of the Hierophant. To seek one twin Fool, but not the other. A macabre awakening. What must be an entire boat full of juicy gossip on shared histories with Yanagi's friends. There could have been tea! And cookies! Perhaps there could still be those things.
Delicious tidbits all, this sort of information, and these many questions, but Pernelle has not yet gone off into wild speculation and fantasy about a lick of it. Well, it could always be the distraction of food.
Does Pernelle know how to make Takoyaki?
Listen, the important thing is he gets to fuck up an octopus in the attempt, one way or another.
"Octopus!" he cries in a delighted echo. "Fried. Octopus. Hehe... Ehehehehe..."
Yes. It is very important. Therapeutic.
Leaving a dusted trail like powdered snow smeared by his train feathers, Pernelle scurries his way... past the pantry and into his secret stash. Or one of several stashes the bird keeps around the building, some of which he does not remember making. This one sees him prying a piece of the floorboard up at a corner of the room. "A delicious surprise is the best kind of surprise!"
His head disappears below the ground like an ostrich before he yanks up something that is blessedly, mercifully fulled packaged in plastic and was not sitting raw in a hole under the house.
"How about... THIS!"
Pernelle stretches out his neck to offer Yanagi a bag of assorted gummy candies, shaped various bottles and glasses for the sodas and cocktails they're flavored after.
"Something sweet for a burst of creative energy might be quite satisfying, I should think! I had it stashed away for a special occasion, but then I remembered... every day is a special occasion."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
There could certainly still be these things, but Pernelle hasn't brought them up at all. When he rips and tears into that package of octopus bits with that creepy laugh, Yanagi's smile dims just a little bit.
She knows how he feels. She just doesn't understand why. Surely by now he'd be over it. Pernelle is the one who taught her not to linger on the bad things.
As he dashes into a corner of the kitchen and pries up a floorboard, Yanagi watches. Soon, he presents her with delicious soda gummies, still in the original packaging! She gasps, stars twinkling in her eyes. She of course already knows Pernelle loves her, but he really is quite insistent on demonstrating just how much tonight.
"How true! Though tonight could still be called a special occasion, considering we both maybe almost died," Yanagi says conversationally, accepting the gummies. She leans over carefully and strokes him on his feathery head. "Thank you, Pernelle! You're the best. <3"
Ah, there's that heart mark! Surely everything is fine, even though she just directly referenced the horrors they both just experienced a few hours ago. Surely everything is fine as she leans back and opens up the gummies with a pair of kitchen shears, plucks out two, and hands one to Pernelle.
"So what about that man was so especially frightening to you?" she asks, still conversationally, before popping a cola bottle candy into her mouth.
Joining Peacock Silk is what got Yanagi to embrace being fully honest with her feelings at all times. Of course she was going to ask sooner or later.
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Would that Pernelle caught on to the fact that it seems a demonstration. No, no, it's true, a bit of sweetness might as well be medicine after their harrowing night. A balm for a spooked soul! Normal behavior! Not a sign of affection at all, because a sign of affection just encourages --
You should not have come here.
Pernelle, who usually stretches up and tippy taps into receiving a nice pet on the head, goes still with Yanagi's words.
"Oh!" he says, voice shockingly hoarse before he swallows to wet it. "That! But you do know what they say: close does not count, except in horseshoes and hand grenades, and we are tragically without either! Ha... aha. Ha!"
To call such stilted sounds a laugh would be an insult to laughter.
"... The best!" he repeats, incredibly belatedly, and absently opens his beak to receive his share of gummy. He swallows it without chewing, staring somewhere into a time and place that is not here.
This peacock is fine. He is the most fine any peacock has ever been. Until --
"Frightened?" Pernelle snaps back to this reality with a small ruffle. "Goodness! Who would not be frightened in the presence of such a drab aura! Not a fragment of style to be found in his villainous machinations -- which is a dreadful waste of villainous machinations.
He hops back to 'preparing' the ingredients. Which, naturally, involves making more of a mess of everything. It'll be a miracle if there aren't plastic wrapping bits in the takoyaki, and if half the bonito flakes do not end up on the floor.
An egg rolls off the counter and splatters as it cracks open. Pernelle is unbothered. It isn't the first time. It certainly won't be the last.
"... He had something of his own shopping list, didn't he?" Pernelle says after a small pause. "The Shadow. The Wild Card lad. The 'Devil you don't know'."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"..."
Yes, Pernelle is clearly deeply unsettled. The way he goes still; the way his voice goes hoarse; the unnatural stilt of his laugh; the way he stares into a spacetime that is not here. He dismisses Yanagi's straightforward question with a... truthful-sounding answer, because it is the sort of thing Pernelle would say, but Yanagi has a gut feeling that it's covering up something deeper. Something rawer.
Somewhat like those octopus bits. At least he's making a mess everywhere, between the trails of flour and the seafood bag and next (but not finally) the egg. That is normal Pernelle behavior.
"He did," Yanagi agrees, picking out what looks to be a cherry cola gummy and nibbling on that. "The Hierophant he acquired; Minato, he gave up on, for now; but I wonder what he meant by 'the Devil you don't know'? Maki and the others didn't seem to know what he meant either, and they ought to know him best of all."
She pauses for a moment to nibble some more, thinking back to that moment.
"That's about when you started acting strange, Pernelle," she adds. "Why is that?"
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
It is all too incredibly awkward for as beautiful and graceful creature as Pernelle!
(Well, maybe that's not precisely the overall problem with it.)
Peacock Silk is a place where one can speak their truths and live their truths. Yanagi knows this well. She exemplifies it well. Her and Pernelle are two pea(fowl) in a pod, gleefully pursuing impulses and doing little to hide their feelings.
But this night Pernelle finds himself faced with a most curious and troubling snag in such a philosophy... one he did not even fathom existed.
The second egg that falls is because he halfheartedly nudges it to watch it roll off and splatter, bending his neck down in hopes the sight will inspire a bit more cheer into his heart.
"And I am most heartened little Minato-chan went untouched! Truly! Why, boiled down to its basic elements, the night went swimmingly!" The only almost died! Now they are here, making takoyaki, and with so many delightful new pieces of information to gossip about.
Yet Pernelle continues to act -- and feel -- as if something is amiss!
"... Why indeed," Pernelle muses, and his eyes shrink with one of his thoughtful squints.
"I suppose I am devilishly handsome. Yes, this must be part of it."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"I wouldn't say swimmingly. It was an awful experience, and we probably only lived because Kei convinced that man to walk away." ('Kei,' even though it was 'Nanjo-kun' earlier. Yanagi's had time to update her internal dossier since that moment.) "Though, in terms of walking away from a unique and unforgettable experience, it did go swimmingly," she adds thoughtfully. Some things are just a matter of perspective.
This is not one, she thinks. She's lived with Pernelle and the others since the start of the year or so. She knows them all quite well by now. It seems for a moment to her like maybe even Pernelle himself doesn't understand why he's so upset.
Then he says something odd. Something that is true, but doesn't quite fit in context. It takes Yanagi a moment of thinking hard on this to come to a certain conclusion.
"Pernelle," she says slowly, "are you saying 'the Devil you don't know' is you?"
She doesn't sound sure of herself. The way he says it still doesn't sound like he's sure either. But why else would he talk about being 'devilishly handsome' right after they talked about what Kandori meant by 'the Devil they don't know'? What would that man even have against their beautiful, lovable peacock friend?
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Pernelle makes a reluctant sort of noise as Yanagi corrects his blatantly misplaced optimism.
"All right, all right, not quite what we hoped, and not my most noble escort. But!" He fans a wing out toward Yanagi. "Unique! Unforgettable! Yes, yes! That is what I am getting at!"
Except he remains clearly distressed. How could Pernelle not know! Desire is a thing that seizes the heart, and then you act! Something looks delicious, and you bite down! What is this uncertainty? Maddening, is what it is. This is all the fault of the wriggles.
... Is what Pernelle would like to stir up to put some energy to his discomfort. Complaining can be enjoyable, from the right point of view! But all of this... it is so... esoteric! He cannot sink his claws or his beak into it to satisfaction.
As he contemplates, he rolls an egg back and forth, then grabs it with a foot to hurl into a bowl with force enough it breaks. This is one part of a process to create batter, but it would be a miracle if it becomes anything chemically functional at all.
"It sounds profoundly vain of me to hear it said out loud. ... But what am I, if not vainglorious? Emphasis on glorious!"
...
Pernelle heaves a deflating sigh.
"Just so."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
The wriggles were quite terrible. Devouring octopus tentacles should be cathartic if they ever manage to cook them into anything edible--and if not, Yanagi can watch Pernelle devour them. Until then, the eggs will have to continue to suffer.
At least it's not eggs in the mid-2020s, am I right?
"It was an exquisite experience. Absolutely horrible! But I don't regret experiencing it," Yanagi replies, as much to console Pernelle as to confirm the reality. "Life is full of hills and valleys. Or in this case, mountains and canyon gulches. But the gulch from a few hours ago will make mountains of our takoyaki! ...even if they are round." Yanagi muses on this for a moment. "How do they get takoyaki so round?"
For all that both of them are talking in circles now, Pernelle deflates.
Yanagi furrows her brows. He's admitting to it, but he still doesn't really sound certain. "Are you not sure...? Why do you think he meant you?" she wonders, leaning forward, gummies temporarily forgotten.
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Revenge will be seized, one way or another. If, a decade and some change from now, eggs should be prohibitively expensive for peacock experiments, then they will be stolen eggs and no they won't. Pernelle's thirst for vengeance cannot be stopped.
... It can be mitigated by asking him questions that force him to think his own thoughts, however.
"Horrible beyond horrible!" Pernelle agrees, not without cheer. "Why, if nothing else, we shall be able to have other valley level experiences, and then say, 'but it was not quite like that night, with the wriggles' and we shall feel immeasurably better about it!"
How do they make takoyaki round.
"I am puzzling this out as we speak! My thinking is to use the leftover egg shells, for they are a bit round. Ovum is close enough to be a hand grenade."
But the sticky questions. The important questions! He is not here to lie to Yanagi, who is so good to him with her wonderful ideas.
"How do I put this... Humans have become the sort of beast that often begrudges their own instincts. I am not bound by such delusions of my disposition. There are some facts that are true and you must know them, or you will become a denizen of the devoured."
Pernelle takes his attention from his monstrous project away to look to Yanagi.
"Of this, I am most certain. What eludes me is the why of it."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
"Pernelle, you're so right!" Yanagi declares. That's how she feels about a lot of bad experiences compared to what she's already been through. "Why, even this past night--as unutterably awful as it was, at least it lasted only a brief time, instead of years and years!"
If her trauma's going to give her nightmares either way, at least tomorrow won't be more of the same.
"Hmmm... Egg shells... I'm pretty sure that can't be true..." Yanagi muses, touching her chin. She brightens all the same. "But that doesn't mean we can't try anyway! They say necessity is the mother of invention!"
And clearly they need those eggshells to cook their takoyaki. Somehow. It's to be seen yet if they'll be as sticky as these questions the two of them are pondering now.
"Hmmm..." A beast that begrudges their own instincts... Pernelle really is so right, Yanagi reflects. Humans so often lie to themselves as well as each other...
Though Pernelle tried to lie, or at least to deflect, he gave in fairly easily. When he admits he knows he is 'the Devil you don't know' but not why, that's the final piece. At last, it makes sense.
"We certainly can't ask him why," Yanagi muses, leaning her chin on her hands. "We ought to tell Saika and Tsumugi about this. If he has something against you, he might try to track you down." She sighs. "And here I thought if the NWO showed up on our doorstep, it would be for me. I don't envy you the position you're in, Pernelle."
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Pernelle puffs up with pride, for being called right by the wise is a deliriously wonderful thing. That puffing eases as Yanagi speaks of the time frame, and he tries to let those thoughts carry on as she might wish them to with a nod.
"But a moment. A single evening. It was horrible and now it is gone! Goodbye, horrible night, we shall only miss you in theory, and never once in practice."
Another egg gets chucked into the bowl, and Pernelle flaps his wings wildly when the yolk nearly splatters him. He plucks a miraculous near whole-half of a shell that he intends to serve as his mold.
"When we are without answer, we shall create our own truth!" he declares.
As if it is that easy...! But, well, victory conditions. Pernelle's is only the torturing of cephalopod flesh. Which he will eat regardless of how edible it becomes in the process.
Honestly, considering he doesn't have thumbs, this might be going better than expected.
So, perhaps, is the questions. Is it a lie to not know? It does not feel terribly honest. Pernelle does so love lying and creative truths, but this is an utterly different context with company that makes more joy with the truth. He just has to grasp it...!
Alas, there may only be so much to grasp for now.
"No, no, certainly not. I do not think he would provide a satisfactory answer even if we could." Pernelle's neck suddenly goes limp, head dangling in despair for a moment to realize that they might have to tell the others. "Uuggh, I am afraid you are quite right. 'Twoud be irresponsible otherwise, and I already have so few of those. Responsibilities, that is."
At least he knows?!
But that last bit sees Pernelle paused another extended moment. He even stops an egg from falling from the table with his foot. Just because the NWO might covet Pernelle's adorable being does not mean they would ignore a Yanagi-shaped discovery.
Pernelle begins to vibrate, feathers ruffling and rustling, as his eyes shine with the gloss of tears.
"Ooooh Yanagi! I should -- I should abscond into the night! Collect my collections, pack them into a perfectly folded kerchief! The cute ones, with the little patterns, hung delicately upon a stick!"
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
Much better than expected. It's not like Yanagi's helping him out right now, content to sit at her stool as she has been since the two of them arrived. This is not to say that she wouldn't help, only that it's such a wonder to watch Pernelle at work that it seems a waste not to bask in its glory. Also her feet hurt. Sumaru is a long way to return from after getting wrecked in two back-to-back battles. At least they made good use of what Dark Hour remained before taking the trains home.
(The Mementos trains, that is. The real-world trains don't run after midnight in Tokyo, but the supernatural world provides such wonderful loopholes.)
"Yes... Not to mention that there's no guarantee he's telling the truth, or that he isn't just being a bully, like with Minako," Yanagi muses. "It's so strange to me that she has that much power, and yet he was so dismissive towards her. Why would he only want Minato? But perhaps he's just cruel like that. It doesn't seem out of character for him."
She giggles. "That's also so true!" she says of responsibilities and Pernelle's relative lack thereof.
But then he starts to vibrate and weep and declare he should run away. Yanagi stares at him for a moment, startled, until she realizes what prompted this. "Oh! Oh, Pernelle, doing that would be very stupid," she says tenderly and without an ounce of malice. "If you ran off on your own, then that would make you more vulnerable, and with you being the one who can guide us into Ateliers with or without anything else, it would weaken the rest of us too! No, you may as well stay, Pernelle. If we run, we run together! All four of us! We'll be stronger that way, too!"
She tilts her head, considering her own words. "...Although if we ran into that man again, it really wouldn't matter how many of us there are, would it... But maybe we can talk to Maki and the others about it. They fought him before, and Kei got him to walk away. They ought to have good advice for us. I hope."
It's better than sitting around worrying about it, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Who is Pernelle to deny Yanagi witness to his artistic passion and genius? It is only fair: there have been many times he has delighted in observing her own work! Tonight (is it morning, really?) she shall rest, and he shall commit culinary crimes! Everybody wins!
"Utterly uncouth behavior!" Pernelle quips, adding more flour to the disaster he is creating. A good chunk of it does not land in the bowl, but upon his egg-coated feet. It is going to clump there. "I am, admittedly, stuck on the way he described godhood and desire. An empty man, to be sure... but vaguely interested in power. Did he mean to spark a rise out of her, or are there things he can see we cannot...?"
He did, after all, speak of Pernelle, who was otherwise minding his own business! (He was not quite minding his own business.)
Unfortunately, all this thinking overloads Pernelle into a fit of anxious despair.
He sniffs audibly, tear rolling down his beak as he curls his head against his own body to become as small and ball shaped as possible. "Oh, no, the Ateliers...! Yanagi!! You and Saika and Tsumugi follow what might as well be a key that is a BOMB!"
He sniffs again, slowly uncurling, and seems to be slowly calming for her words.
"... Do you mean it? All together, at once, us four? ... No, no, I know you are quite right, Yanagi. Right as always. I mustn't give in to foolish impulse bred by despair."
Should impulse be born of anything else, though...
Pernelle brightens, feathers fluffed up before he smooths them. "The tea and the cookies!" This is, naturally, how he chooses to remember Maki's introduction. "An immaculate plan. I should very much like to arm myself with at least a smattering of extra information."
<Pose Tracker> Yanagi Nagisa has posed.
It's probably that period of the day that is so late in the night that you call it morning, but it is not actually morning in the sense that there's any lights on.
The state of the kitchen will be a fun surprise for Saika and Tsumugi ifwhen they wake up andor come home. No, Yanagi doesn't know if they're here or out. What is she, their mom? She's younger than them! Don't be silly.
"Hmmm... You have a point. If he is a god, then he could well see things we can't," Yanagi murmurs, looking away as she touches her chin. "But the way Kei talked about it, it sounded like he's being puppeted by something else...? In which case, maybe he would just say things out of spite... but the most spiteful thing of all is an awful truth rather than a mean-spirited lie. On the other hand, sometimes you can use the truth to imply a lie..."
Yanagi knows a lot about this. She was meant to be a control at Blacksite Revelation, so she got a good look at how the doctors treated everyone else.
Pernelle could never be ball-shaped. Not with that train. "Well, maybe so," Yanagi admits, "but if we had to, we could run away into someone's Atelier and use the Fabric of Reality to throw them off our trail." What would they do about Peacock Silk the building? ...That hasn't occurred to her and she wouldn't know even if Pernelle asked. Yanagi's wisdom only goes so far! Regardless: "We wouldn't be able to do that as easily without you there!"
She smiles warmly when he picks himself up, heartened by her words. Considering it was he who encouraged her out of her despair so many months ago, it always makes her happy when she can inspire him in turn. "Yes! We are a team, after all."
Until they reach their goals as a team, anyway, but Yanagi doesn't expect to live long enough to see them to their fruition, so what does that matter?
"Yes!" she chirps of tea and cookies. "Then let me reach out to her, and we'll all get together to talk about it sometime soon. How does that sound?" And, once he confirms: "Wonderful! Then let's get back to frying up snacks~!"
...she says, before she goes back to munching on gummies. They're good gummies!
<Pose Tracker> Pernelle has posed.
Wherever they are, they are all connected by Pernelle's surprises. He's helping the Fool's Journey!
"Do you think him truly a god, or simply a fancy suit sort of man with enough money to get funny ideas about it?" It is difficult for Pernelle, even at his most facetious, to deny the all consuming presence of that power. "A god's puppet, do you suppose? Oh, goodness, I do wish I knew the story they were all chatting about! Beautifully ominous, I admit, but I wish to know things!"
The matter of truth and lies is also a conundrum Pernelle chews on as Yanagi lays out the options. "Hm... A lie has no power to offend to those confident in its falsehood. But if you do not know the state of its truth, or fear it...? Perhaps it fed on what the girl does not know. Or... perhaps it was not her he needed to hear it. Ah! Fascinating possibilities from a horrible man on a horrible night!"
Alas, speculation gives way to Pernelle attempting to ball, among other anguish. He is foiled by his own beautiful train.
But most of all, the ball is defeated by Yanagi's inspiring truths. Aha! She is like... opposite of the wriggles man!
"A team," Pernelle whispers with his mending hope. Until, of course, the goal, but Pernelle is nothing if not a one day at a time sort of bird.
"This would be most delightful, Yanagi. And if they are indeed your friends, I should love to meet the in a more pleasant and tasteful setting."
Wonderful indeed!
But there is an important task to return to as another egg splatters to the floor, and far too much baking powder dumps into the bowl, followed by a heaping dose of soy sauce and devious giggling.