2026-07-10: A Memorial of Mistakes
- Log: A Memorial of Mistakes
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara, Umie Akabane, Kurou Ryouhara
- Where: A Strange Place
- OOC Date: July 10, 2026
- IC Date: December 07, 2012
- Summary: Right after the the fight in Sumaru Bay, Shiryuu, Kurou, and Umie find themselves in a strange place that none of them are familiar with. However, the same cannot be said of the place itself, which is very familiar with them. However, with all of them as injured as they are, they have to keep moving, or disappear forever.
- CW: Trauma Responses
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 1: side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate" - Challenge Level 1 -
| Approach Options: Proficiency or Academics |
| Conditions: Clumsy - Proficiency Down L1 and Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
Tumbling through the void, you fell through at least ten gates, all
stacked at physically impossible angles. It felt like forever before you
landed here, in the center of a vast, flooded cavern cut into the abominable
stone.
The vagarious iridescence of reflections from the water seethes across the
cavern walls, glittering like waterborne gems that may or may not actually
be present in the dancing floodwaters. Though the water is deep enough that
you can't see the bottom, you may still stand easily on its surface, as
solid as glass, only the lightest ripple indicating your passing.
A torii gate stands on the water behind you, a dark, impossible mirror to
the space above, crimson red with pitch-black ofuda hanging forlornly from
its posts. Ahead lay a crippled, sunken ship, lopsided and run aground,
buried in a rocky shore that looks like the outer facade of a building,
tilted to a bizarre, mad slant.
The ship is silent, bitter and lonesome. All rotting steel and overgrown
with green vines, it's lit solely from a single consecrate beam of bright
light from far above. The dilapidated ship lists dangerously, hull sitting
at almost a forty five degree angle above the floodline, the fore and bridge
decks of the vessel unreachably high towards the top of the cavern, with the
aft section melding into the rock face.
A small, shattered helicopter is crumpled like paper, rotors snapped off
and bent around it. It's all but wrapped around a shattered helipad that
used to be attached to the ship, itself now forming a loose bridge that
cants towards the cargo area, allowing entry to the ship. But one method of
entering the ship itself is a keypad outside of the aft cargo hold,
flickering with barely-functional illumination.
Instead of a numerical code, the door is secured by a password system, and
the door to the hold is secured with what appears to be ancient clockwork
gears instead of any actual modern latching system. The password doesn't
seem to be anything basic, and changes on the day and the whim of the
blasphemous world. Only a passing knowledge of the ship itself -- or a
willingness to get physical with the interlock -- will gain entry to the
ship's interior spaces.
(OOC NOTE: Passages in red text will appear in some rooms. These represent
omnipresent thoughts or feelings that can be detected by those open to it.)
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
....and slowly, the vertiginous sense of being flipped end over end over end and being thrown entirely through a building fades to a harsh, piercing, subluminal whistle, reminding his senses it's time to be alive.
In one moment, Shiryuu was watching it go all very, very wrong. Akabane was crumpled and bleeding, and Kurou was running towards them just as something he couldn't identify was piercing into every nerve he had.
It would have been easy to think, instinctively, that that was how people with that Mark died -- stolen into something indefatigibly black and vacuous in the sky. He could be forgiven for making that assumption, to try his 'eye' again and again to try and steal them away. Each time, doubt was an acid at the back of his spine. Kurou was too far, Umie too far gone, his strength not enough by a sight.
But as the night grew closer, a very young 'fear' replaced it, and he could be forgiven for that in the moment.
But he won't be, he'll see to it.
The water trickles a muted trail of crimson from his eye as the elder Ryouhara stirs, face half submerged. The cool kiss of water breaks as he awakens, mouth breaking open in a short, sharp gasp as he sits up with a start, disoriented and at the wreckage of what he assumes is "Ruin"'s work, the sinking of the ship entirely, and they must have washed ashore.
But it doesn't look like any shore they've been on, and Shiryuu looks up at the light, dum and dumb. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he instinctively recognizes the familiar silhouette of Ryouhara artifice at the lower decks of the wreckage that was not there before, of weapons so far up they might as well have been on a mountain. Instinctively, some part of him recognizes this before he is fully conscious and aware of what it means.
"...ah..."
It is also not the part of him that takes alarm when his first conscious thought lands. "!"
"Kurou -- Umie!?"
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Loneliness was something that tied Umie to many people. It binded her to people, made her invest in their lives, made her feel loss when she inevitably had to draw the curtain back, creating a distance her and someone else.
Over and over, neverending. If it wasn't due to having to hide her late night excursions, the bruises and scratches, or the green hour she was attracted to like a moth to a flame, it was the girl in her mind's eye, like a jealous old friend with a face that became less and less similar to Umie's own, as she grew up.
It is loneliness that made a peculiar trait of this place. It is silent. No demons or shadows inhabit it, though with how newborn this space is, it is bound to be infiltrated at some point, later on.
(Those beings will just find themselves the unfortunate casualties of a space that is hostile to anything that comes in from outside, much like the people it was born from, but that is for the future to reveal. Perhaps, that is also why they don't hear Joker and Ruin, whereever they are?)
"... ngh...."
Her chest hurts. Her right hand hurts as well, though that's mostly due to Ruin smacking it in the earlier stages of their fight.
She smells... kegare, coming from somewhere. Her hand goes to her chest, and comes away with blood.
Ah. That's a problem, isn't it?
Her brain begins to collect backwards the 'now', remembering shocked faces, yells, names being shouted.
Shiryuu. Kurou. Joker.
A goal is verified in her mind, and Umie sits up, a mechanical, practical frame of mind kicking into gear.
It's the same as any Dark Hour, after all: you must survive. Before you can search, the bleeding must be stopped. Sweat itches at the corners of her mask as Umie pads down her jacket, grabbing whatever could be used to staunch the bleeding: a roll of bandages will work, yes, but what about the others? They all have to make it, too.
A quick glance upwards as she loses sight of her goal in the face of the massive ship. "...."
Don't think about it. Just keep going.
She tries to shout, but her voice cracks, her expanding ribcage just making the gunshot wound shoot right back up to priority one.
Some wads of clean tissue are pressed to the wound, Umie wincing and curling in on herself before continuing on.
She hears someone calling her and Kurou's name, but the rattle in her voice makes it hard to call back. At least it's easy to see her, out in the open, like this.
Surrounded in a thinning veil of faint red.
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
It is through Joker's quick thinking and action that allows Kurou to -- miraculously -- land on his feet.
Even in a space such a this, where every angle is wrong and glittering illusions taunt from thick darkness, and where a ship broken and half reclaimed by life and death alike. It's just that 'landing on his feet' means very little if it's into water.
He will be wet, and wet is near certain death. The chill of clothes sticking to skin. The restriction of movement. The threat of sound a single droplet of water can make. It is a terrifying suggestion the mind offers to stay in the water, hold his breath, and pray is the better plan.
Kurou's fingers curl in, and do not sift through water density. They run across a hard, glassy surface. He is not in, but upon. And, somehow, has landed on his feet, should a crouch count as such.
When he tries to speak, his voice is steady, but so very small. He is not sure why he thinks anyone would hear that. His instincts have him speaking as if he must not be heard at all.
It takes a moment to realize it, in mind as well as body, for it's the body that is always loudest: this is not before. This is a time after Gashadokuro's hunger. This is a time when --
He must find them.
Kurou rises to his feet, combing back his sweat and sea salt sticky bangs back with his fingers. "Akabane-san." His voice is still soft, but carries across the void this time. He sees her, wandering out there, he hears Shiryuu, calling for them both. He tries to set his hand to her, to steady here. "Rest," he demands.
"We're here," he calls to Shiryuu.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The skull-splitting whistle is one that only Shiryuu can hear, and the splitting headache matches his looks -- a wet, stringy, soaked mess, far and away from the perfect onmitsu that he projects. His left eye is stuck shut -- it still burns, and Shiryuu is no longer convinced the wet feeling on his face is water.
His sword is on the ship he dimly realizes, finally. If Ruin returns -- and based on his voice, he will -- he won't even be able to conjure Sarutahiko. He doesn't even know how long it's been, or how much of a head start he has.
Problems for later.
The boy runs. Hearing Kurou's voice draws his attention away from the ship, away from his instinct to try and figure out where they were last, finally focusing on the water around him.
Suppressing every fibre of what he 'wants,' the boy's tired relief is still obvious when he approaches them. She's still alive. So is he, but...
There's so much blood everywhere.
Ryouhara's lips tighten. Put the thought aside. One step in front of the other.
"Don't stand," he tells Umie, instead of literally anything else.
"Make sure," he tells Kurou, instead of literally anything else.
Take care of yourselves, is the shihaisha's order. There's no time. No time to think about it anymore. "The ship's ... been moved," he says, looking back towards it. Why is the world backwards now? He doesn't understand what's going on, but...
"... There'll be a sickbay."
The shihaisha breathes out, sharply focused, one eye forward and staring at the ship.
"I'm going to go back in and find it. I'll bring back supplies. If I run across 'that man,' I'll put a stop to him. ... I'll save Joker, too."
The grey headed boy breathes again. The kegare level of his ninkou is shrieking in his head, and the wet, bloodstained hand he rams through his hair does absolutely nothing for it.
"...If I don't come back, try to trigger an explosion to summon the clan. The last shipment was laced with explosives. We should be close to a hospital," he thinks, though he has absolutely no apparent reason to say or believe the latter.
"Don't follow me."
The boy's already jumped off, trying to make his way towards what's left of the helipad.
MONAD: Shiryuu Ryouhara has acted with Proficiency toward side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate"! Base! <Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Umie looks at Kurou, and comfort swims on her face. A shuddering sob contorts into a laugh, exhaustion blending into happiness as she realizes she's not alone.
"Kurou," she croaks, bypassing politeness for the sake of having as few syllables as possible. It's also because it's Kurou, and Umie trusts that he'd understand.
Thirdly, because it needs to be highlighted twice, it's Kurou.
"... Guess I lived," she smirks, a twinkle in her eyes, as she carefully, sits, then lays down, her breathing settling.
But only for a moment.
"Owowow," she says, a split nanosecond later, as she shifts, purely for the selfish reason of seeing Shiryuu's face.
The happiness she feels at Shiryuu being alive is shot through (pun intended) by the blood there in his eye, and the unsettling presence of something wafting from him.
"... Kegare...?" she murmurs aloud, confused. "Why's your eye..."
His first command as shihaisha is for her to not stand, and for Kurou to make sure she doesn't, because he knows Umie well enough.
And Shiryuu is exactly right.
'If I run across 'that man,' I'll put a stop to him. ... I'll save Joker, too.'
Umie groans as she gets up. "Nope. No. Not doing that alone. Could be agents in there. Still have Badb, and still have my weapon."
".... Also... I was the one who asked Joker to help me. The Phantom Thieves need him back." She needs Joker alive, as well. No longer because of what he represented, or some small part of her that had a crush on him, but because she considers him someone she wants to call a friend.
Also, on a more direct note...
".... I don't want to lose you." It sits at the center of everything, the reason behind so much of what Umie did, and is doing now.
Shiryuu's plan is sound- logical, even. But Umie knows Shiryuu well enough in the ways he's very much like her, and that way is how either of them would handle a situation like this.
They'd try to control the situation.
"... Kurou is here with me. We'll protect each other. We'll do this as a team. Okay?"
And she'll make that plan manifest, with the stubborness that has likely tested Shiryuu's patience many times, if not won his affection. She'll need help, of course, but using the Badb, she's able to recongize one thing.
"..... No demons, or shadows. No one with a detectable Resonance either," she says, her voice a whisper. "But Joker and Ruin are able to bypass Badb's sight anyway. So would any agents lacking Personas."
MONAD: Umie Akabane has acted with Bird's Eye View toward side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate"! Automap!
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
The battle was as brutal as it was fierce. Kurou is trying to assess the damage now. Umie is the worst off, but Kurou fears he makes that judgment too soon. In the battle with Hodai, Shiryuu had tried to obscure an entire wound across his torso. There is so much blood, and so much wet, that everything melds together in uncertainty.
Much like this place.
Kurou has blade marks across his back, and the brutal hit that sent him flying. The impact throbs, and must have left a mark. But as long as Gashadokuro hungers, Kurou stands.
Right now, he stands with Umie. Her sob turns into a laugh, and his grip on her tightens to hear his name. There is an Umie here, where there almost was no more Umie at all.
With her pain, he relaxes, and then he moves, to let her see Shiryuu easier.
"I can stitch the wound if we find one," he promises of the sickbay. But --
We, he says, because he does not yet realize Shiryuu only means he himself will be finding it. Don't follow. Usually, the sihaisha orders bring a calm and clarity to everything. There is certainty in the path. But now the line has never been clearer: there is the sihaisha's order... and then there is loyalty.
He already knows that Umie will disobey, and he does not try to stop her. Instead, he is right with her, offering his shoulder if she needs the support. It is making sure she does not stand if she is given the means to lean.
But unlike Umie, he does not know what words to say, only that tangled knot of feelings that cannot decide if it should explode or wither at the thought of Shiryuu's disappearing form their sight, fighting alone again to try and protect them.
So, instead, all he adds is:
"... Please."
They need to keep going, and he can, at least, help Umie do it with minimal aggravation to her wounds.
MONAD: Kurou Ryouhara has acted with Without a Trace toward side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate"!
Diligence and Patra!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|)
-==== side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate" - Round 1 =========-
Umie Akabane Academics Success
Bird's Eye View Automap Fatigue: 0 Morale: 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shiryuu Ryouhara Proficiency Success
Proficiency Base Fatigue: 0 Morale: 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kurou Ryouhara Proficiency Success
Without a Trace Diligence and Patra Fatigue: 0 Morale: 1
-============================ Party Conditions: =============================-
Starting Conditions: Clumsy-2 and Stupor-2
Final Conditions: Stupor-1
-====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====-
-==== Reach: 1/6 |= | ===================================================-
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
MONAD: Umie Akabane has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 2: side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized" - Challenge Level 2 -
| Approach Options: Understanding or Charm |
| Conditions: Bothersome - Charm Down L1, Hard - Understanding Down L1, and |
| Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The flooded spaces in the ship's corridors apparently drain through this
chamber, an idyllic water garden running through the ship's cargo areas.
Despite the ostensibly utilitarian space, beyond the ship's bulkheads and
partitions lays a spread of basins, water tables and fountains, all draining
into one another and filling the room with the omnipresent sound of
trickling water, and the distant, serene clack of noise-maker sozu bamboo
pipes.
While the footpath is both overlooked and overlooks multiple basins, the
vast below drops off into lush forever, brush and greenery swallowing up
lower basins and water tables in a nonsensical drop further down the
suggestions of an artificial mountainside. Most of the flowers this high up
are types of waterborne lotus, all serene and white, however many of these
flowers are toxic to the touch, paralyzing whosoever tries to touch them.
He doesn't wear armor, not like the others. He is a boy cut from
refracting, shimmering light, an apparition standing on the other side of a
compound lens folding out of the floor. The complex assortment of lenses,
rocker arms and focusing arrays channels a single lonely beam of moonlight
from above to project the boy at play, a boy in a lavishly patterned kimono
and a white lightning bolt shot through his shock of black hair. A sword,
far too large for the boy, is tucked in a sheath at his back. The mechanical
lenses portray him in shimmering, liquid relief, as if on the outer edge of
an event horizon. He bounces a colorful ball -- the only thing real -- on
the ground, focusing on the play.
Every so often he looks up, as if searching for someone to play with. Every
time he looks up, he finds no one in the lonely garden. Ignoring you at
first, the boy sighs, and continues.
At even junctures, the footpath shifts, the apparition shimmering. Folding
into the floor, the entire apparatus disappears only to unfurl somewhere
else, projecting the shimmering boy and his lonely game somewhere else. The
ball bounces from place to place, following his path and play.
Slowly but surely, he'll find his way to a gravestone at the center of the
garden. On it is written a name: 'ISATO.'
A dangerous place, a lonely game. The boy will only be here for a short
time until he is gone, disappearing at the grave. Though the boy does not
speak but for the click of the complex machinery around him, understanding
why he is here or getting his attention off of his doomed dream may prompt
him to point you to the way out of the chamber.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
There is nothing left of the panicked boy from however long ago, tied up and replaced entirely by the sleek, grim, imperious countenance of Shiryuu Ryouhara of Akita. No matter how miserable his state, no matter what situation he finds himself in, the boy replaces doubt with his will.
A will that he finds the others in full defiance of.
"Umie... Kurou..." No one listens to him. Shiryuu's mouth tightens as Umie stands -immediately- after his order not to, and the look he gives her is far more intimate and grudging than he'd give anyone else.
She is alive, he realizes, alive enough to point out he's unarmed. Ironic. There is a small -- not really small, he notices in a forcibly detached way -- urge to tear her dumb mask off and kiss her stupid face.
The boy sighs, sword long as he distinctly plucks his sole functioning eye from Umie and turns towards his subordinate. 'I can stitch the wound...' "... is that right," he asks the younger, appraising him for injuries of his own. The invisible blow that sent the smaller shinobi flying off course is still a matter of concern, Shiryuu recognizes, with bitter memory. He could have internal injuries, though he's familiar with the power of the youth's Persona. How long will that hold out?
'Why's your eye...' "...that's not important right now," Shiryuu replies firmly, attempting to gain a handle on the scenario and stifle the fomenting rebellion.
'...I don't want to lose you,' '...please.'
Shiryuu's eye narrows.
".... what is even with you guys..."
Shiryuu absolutely doesn't consent, but he turns back away, folding his arms in abject annoyance. "We had our spies get security codes to the ship beforehand as a matter of precaution. From here, the lock is..." he pauses, "different," deciding, "but it should still work." He gives another sharp look at stupid-face Umie as she gives her own assessment of the matter.
"They won't escape these hands, either," Ryouhara grouses, leaping ahead.
****
However, the first thing Shiryuu realizes is that literally nothing in the ship conforms to their intelligence anymore, and the flooded corridors are far too long and twisting to even fill the logical space of the ship. And the worst part about everything is, it gets uncomfortably familiar uncomfortably fast.
The chamber they arrive at is not the cargo bay, not anything like it, opening into.. the outside? "... iih?" No.. it's more than that, isn't it?
He knows the mechanisms that unfold from the floor, though their armatures work in unknowable, indiscernible ways to channel moonlight into a ... "...Supralunar imagery?" he wonders aloud, as a ghost literally appears in their mist.
For all of his bravado, Shiryuu very plainly has no idea what he's looking at. Which means that he is also late to notice the very important parts of what he does know.
MONAD: Shiryuu Ryouhara has acted with Understanding toward side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized"! Base!
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
If only Shiryuu knew.
It's probably Kurou being there, as well as the unknown status of where Joker is, that keeps Umie from kissing Shiryuu right then and there.
That, and the fact that she's currently needing to depend on Kurou to really move.
Hodai and Ruin's mention of Umie using Kurou as a 'pet' and 'boy toy' continually cycle in her mind every time she lets herself lean or use Kurou's offer of help. However, there's not much that could be done for it; she *has* to use Kurou to steady herself, and thankfully, Kurou's slightly taller height makes it easier for him to do so.
".... When we get to the sickbay, we'll patch you up too, Kurou," Umie says, feeling guilty that she used what she had on herself as it was, with only some leftovers for Kurou or Shiryuu by the time both found her. Her insistence, at least, allowed part of Kurou's feelings to be expressed at the very least; she wasn't raised in the same environment as he or Shiryuu, and doesn't carry the same complusions to display that lawful sort of loyalty.
Umie's loyalties are bought through action and whim alone.
Though, wasn't that what underlies Kurou's, as well?
"... There's a lot of water damage," she whispers, leaning against Kurou as they walk. Her kintsugi mask, she slowly realizes, is likewise damaged, having sustained damage during the fight, and had liquid seep in through the cracks of the sealant, as well as the weak points where the gold leaf was applied. She debates removing it, but her hand quivers as it nears the paper maiche edge. "..."
She can't be seen, even if she's among people she trusts with her life, and even though her name's been said many times.
Nothing's making sense here; she needs all the armor she can get her hands on.
*****
Umie's eyes widen slightly.
"... He's alone."
It's an illusion, but the blood loss and injury have made her a little more direct with her emotions, for better or worse.
And of course, her heart would be the one to break seeing a child playing alone.
Logic reasserts itself, and Umie looks around. "This..." The foliage, the apparatuses, the machinery... "What is this?"
Keep it together, Umie. "... What did I do...?"
MONAD: Umie Akabane has acted with Understanding toward side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized"! Base!
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
It will hold out until the power of Persona cannot be called, and only then will anyone learn whether or not Kurou is in a state to crumble like a pile of bones at dawn.
But Kurou has his own resolve he paints over his fears. If Shiryuu can take any comfort in the way Kurou looks back at him with his loyal but unwavering disobedience, it is that almost certainly Umie Akabane can be held responsible for this show of willfulness.
He may have been called a pet or even a toy, but the attempts to insult never landed on Kurou himself. Perhaps because he never thought of himself better than that...
"Triage," he says to Umie, and there is a willfulness in this reminder, too.
... Or is it because... when he thinks something is that incorrect, he doesn't really dwell on it.
But what is with them? Kurou does not know how to answer that. It is not how he should be behaving. Yet, just a moment ago, it was all almost empty again... Now it's together, even if he has to hold it himself to keep it that way.
The architecture continues to make little sense. Kurou tenses briefly, surveying the garden with a lingering gaze suggesting far more confusion than even its chaotic nature warrants. He looks down at the flowers.
"... Ah. Mother would ask me to fetch these, sometimes..."
Then, for Umie's benefit:
"Do not touch them. They're poison."
A boy bounces a ball alone in the deadly garden. Silent as the ghostly child, Kurou watches the pattern of play. "Umie. Please rest," he asks her, gently helping her settle if she'll allow it.
Then he waits for the moment when chasing after the toy takes so long it begins to drain the momentum, and then he makes his strike...
... knocking it back toward the child. And if it should bounce again, Kurou moves to respond, weaving through toxic flowers, over basins, and balanced along mountainsides. It is a dangerous game.
But Kurou still plays it like a game.
Is it even for the sake of finding their way through, or does he simply not want to leave this ghost to his lonesome, with the familiarity of the location?
MONAD: Kurou Ryouhara has acted with Shut Up and Nod toward side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized"! Amrita!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized" - Round 2 =========- Umie Akabane Understanding Failure Understanding Base Fatigue: 1 Morale: 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shiryuu Ryouhara Understanding Success Understanding Base Fatigue: 0 Morale: 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kurou Ryouhara Understanding Failure Shut Up and Nod Amrita Fatigue: 1 Morale: 1 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Bothersome-2, Hard-2, and Stupor-1 Final Conditions: Bothersome-1 and Hard-1 -================================================= Party Result: Failure ====- -==== Reach: 1/6 |= | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
MONAD: Shiryuu Ryouhara has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 3: side::LUNA > The Moon; Pisces > MOON GAZING - Challenge Level 3 -
| Approach Options: Charm or Guts |
| Conditions: Bless - +1 to Group Roll (Per Character), Bothersome - Charm |
| Down L1, Hard - Understanding Down L1, Mindnumbing - Academics Down L2, |
| Reaper - Add 1 Fatigue., and Terrifying - Guts Down L2 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
You enter into a square engawa (or veranda) surrounding a tsubo-niwa: a
small enclosed Japanese garden. A small pond, outlined in stone, is situated
next to a Japanese maple with delicate red five-pointed leaves. Curated
patterns are drawn into the gravel, adding order between limestone rocks
covered in moss. Past the roof's overhang, you can see a brilliant view of a
bright jade moon, coating the meticulously tailored space in a familiar
verdant glow.
It's always there for you, every night: a still, beautiful world with no
stars.
(BGM: https://youtu.be/-7e-MKch5ZY Yasuharu Takanashi - "Osoroshige")
As leaves shiver in a laughing wind, a leaf falls onto the pond's surface.
Soft, echoing footsteps run past the edge of your vision. You may hear
purred whispers, letting you know that no one knows you better, that no one
else could possibly understand what it's like. All except her. She's always
been there for you.
There is an absence in the corner of your vision: a crawling shadow where
you expect something to be. It has your hair, your face, your eyes, your
body. No one else can see it.
It is a creature of contradiction. It is not you.
Remain firm in your sense of self. Support those in your party who falter.
This night will end, just like the others, and you will be able to continue
on.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
If the first signal that something was wrong was the ship's garden, surrounded by poisonous flowers, the second will be the shift in spaces to what would be considered a traditional Japanese manor, with a sliding door to pass into the a space seemingly forgotten by time.
You could even think this was a place to rest, given the environment's intended purpose: a carefully curated patch of nature, squared off from the rest of the world, with a square portrait of the sky drawn past the overhang of the roof. There is plenty of space to sit and rest, maybe even find some time to apply healing to those wounds.
It's an illusion, as fake as the garden here, and the starless night above.
The whisper in your ear disagrees.
It'll be there, in the corner of one's eye: a thing that is not you, shaped like you, maybe even more perfect that the you you are now. Maybe it crawls, maybe it walks on tip-toe, maybe it presents itself in a straightforward manner, as casual as a street encounter.
It shouldn't be there.
'You showed your Mark to both Joker-san and Shiryuu-kun in order to get close to them, didn't you? You wanted to be accepted, so you forced the issue.'
And Umie is no exception to that, though her being the source further compliments its power over her.
'That's the problem, right there. Neither of them can understand, Umie-chan. Not even sweet Kurou-kun.'
"....." It's not quite Mai-chan; this has her face, rather than the mocking monument to the person she was. It hurts, all the more.
'But me? You've known from the beginning who your heart belongs to.'
".... This is an illusion," Umie begins, in a mutter, raising her voice to the point of a painful crack. It comes from experience, having to constantly second-guess herself.
Badb's senses detect no shadow or demon, and that holds constant here as well.
".... Whatever you see... it's not real."
One hand clutches Kurou, reaffirming her grip and the trust held within, while the other will reach for Shiryuu, if he's close, attempting to interweave her fingers in his.
"... _No matter what it tells you_."
The Badb's wings spread out overhead in a flood of blue light, casting a shattering shriek over the intimate space.
But maybe it was just so she didn't have to hear it, anymore.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
In the end, it's only when the young man's fingertips grace along the cold surface of a gravestone that he realizes what exactly he's seeing, the thing at the back of his mind the whole time.
Others intuit more than he -- Kurou is smarter; knows to share what he already knows. Umie is kinder -- she feels the child's obvious, plain loneliness, where Shiryuu sees only struts and magnifying lenses, feels only a miserable pit in his stomach.
But Shiryuu actually knows the child's name and why he is here, and it only occurs to him to give it voice when he touches that gravestone.
Umie's voice strikes the last chord in him, her broken heart moving the otherwise paralyzed shinobi to speak.
"....his name was Isato," Shiryuu says quietly, staying with Umie when Kurou steps away, numbly falling into place as if by pure instinct.
The ball bounces between Kurou and Isato, the ghost watching him with illusive eyes, the paraselene watching the shinobi curiously as he effortlessly weaves between the toxic flowers to return that ball to him. One could even say that the boy is soothed by his presence.
But he never smiles, does he?
... truthfully, Shiryuu hasn't spoken since the boy cut from moonlight, a silent, hyperaware vigil of a space that's so clearly bent, the ship that he knew crumpled up and flooded like a tin can clutched in a fist. His haori is still soaking wet and by all means and rights, he should have abandoned it ages ago. But the symbol of 'Ryouhara' is something the boy seems attached to wearing like a flag in the night, no matter how he wanders the halls. He entrusts Umie to Kurou and does his best to take point -- he is, if nothing, seemingly in solid condition.
Ryouhara's discipline is top-notch, and any vagary in his sense of balance is accounted for ruthlessly, the boy's stride cautious and doggedly persistent. It helps that these ... spaces they're making their way through are at the least idyllic, perfect and peaceful displays of architecture, no matter how familiar they may be.
Enough so that it's deeply alarming when Shiryuu finally runs across a space that doesn't seem connected to anything he knows. The boy stops short in his stride, finally and deeply disoriented. He looks up. Around. And along.
'What's the matter?' he asks himself.
How do you intend to get out of here? You don't recognize anything anymore. You might have cheated the first few times, but now your luck's run out... naa? Even worse yet... you've led everyone in after you. It would have been fine... if it were just you, right?
After all. You're *strong* ... naa?
No...? Maybe not. It'd be better, it'd be easier if you were. You wouldn't get everyone killed. It'd be easier if you were 'someone.'
Someone like ... me.
Shiryuu blinks, as the silver-haired genius snickers at him out of the corner of his eye. How fast was he? How long has be been there? He doesn't speak, but the shihaisha is very clearly fixating.
A genius, unparalleled and vaunted. A man sitting in the corner, propped against the wall, swathed in clothing. He's so powerful, they had to put a straitjacket on him. And yet it doesn't even matter at all, as the man's chin tilt into the collar of his sweater. He grins a scythe smile openly underneath his purple shades.
Pretty, empty-headed little pet...
'.... it's not real'
Umie's voice drifts in over Shiryuu's head like a voice above the water. He only hears a bit of it at a time, and only until her fingers entwine with his, only until he can feel the solidarity of the two of them, that warmth at his side can he forget about the wet chill setting deep into his bones.
Shiryuu blinks once, twice.
"....I don't see anything. I don't hear anything," the boy lies.
And spreads his free hand at his side.
Badb's shriek hits Shiryuu's resonance like a hammer. It's something particular to that boy -- not the light, but the sound of that creature's call gets plucked up, tuned to the right frequency, chopped, and dropped through his subconscious. The sound breaks, flickers, cycles, drifting off into the sky...
"...get ready."
...and then from the jade moon itself, that shriek is shot into the ground like an arrow, the high keen stroked from its treble all the way into thick, swollen digital bass. Through Shiryuu's resonance, the sound lands in rhythm with the flare of blue light like a vast hammer, heavy enough to shake loose every soul and ghost in earshot.
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Something in Kurou tells him the game is important. For him. For the ghost. For Umie and Shiryuu to reaffirm one another's presence, side by side. It should be repite: a chance for the weight lifts and everyone can draw breath into their lungs without fear... but Kurou finds his heart aching. Isato. A boy who had a name. A boy who has a grave.
How many of them are there?
"Isato," Kurou repeats, because names have power. He does not smile, either. None could be blamed for thinking, if only for a moment, that two ghosts were at play. Once the game ends, Kurou bows to where the boy once was. "... Thank you for playing with me."
As they move on, he does not speak beyond any small warnings and direction to Umie if one step to the next should require an excess of care or weight to distribute differently. But this is still more voice than Shiryuu.
The gardens are beautiful, he thinks.
But beautiful things in a garden are often the most deadly, he also thinks.
This rule applies, most of all, to a still and beautiful world with no stars.
Everything was pieces of familiarity stitched together. In this new space, he remembers nothing. Is that so strange? There is so much he struggles to remember. But those things are fuzzy edged, like shapes you cannot quite make out in the dark, threatening to take on new shapes. This place is carved into reality and shining clear jade.
An illusion, Umie calls it. That makes sense... Illusions feel the most real of all.
Especially that walking corpse just outside his peripheral vision.
'There's no way back.'
Just a little lost. Everything's still okay.
'But you don't believe that.'
Couldn't he?
'Not with it haunting every step, or every time your fingers close around a teacup. You can fill the cracks with gold, but water will still fall through the missing pieces. It's a simple fact of life: sometimes things break, and they become useless."
It's not real. No matter what it tells you.
'Sometimes that thing is you.'
Umie's grip on him tightens, and Kurou's next breath in is audible for the sharpness of it. She and Shiryuu are navigators, resonate in a way Kurou isn't, with shrieks to pierce illusion, guided on a rhythm that thrums in a hammering pulse.
But if they say it isn't real... And if they say it isn't there...
Kurou looks his free hand in quiet contemplation before biting straight into it until a trickle of red oozes down the lines of his palm.
Well. That's real, and vivid, and demands the brain's immediate attention over almost anything else.
MONAD: Kurou Ryouhara has acted with Overkill toward side::LUNA > The Moon; Pisces > MOON GAZING! Specialty!
MONAD: Umie Akabane has acted with Blackbird's Bite toward side::LUNA > The Moon; Pisces > MOON GAZING! Bravery and
Focus!
MONAD: Umie Akabane has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 4: side.SOL .. track I .. MERCURY RECORD: "Doom Decide" - Challenge Level 2 -
| Approach Options: Academics or Understanding |
| Conditions: Stony - Understanding Down L2 and Terrifying - Guts Down L2 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The grind of a rack and pinion system draws open the battens with a heavy
turn of the handwheel, opening a bulkhead door into a separate compartment
of the ship. Much of the ship is a tangle of tilted industrial catwalks and
halls, the pale light spilling from the porthole windows mixing with the
flickering red glow of lanterns. But the tilt of the flooded ship outside
does not always conform to the space inside, disappearing and reappearing
between compartments. One full step past the bulkhead more than inverts the
path, impossibly twisting over 180 degrees into another time entirely.
The slide of the feudal-style manorhouse's shoji paper door clacks shut
behind. Dark crimson ahead sullies the tatami mats in the room, the pools
disturbed only by the drip of floodwater from an anachronistic tangle of
pipes overhead. Squelching static bleaches the light from the lanterns at
odd intervals.
"I was the first," he says into empty, uncaring space.
At the far side of the room, a noble thing in armor sits, knees folded in
seiza. A thing -- because there is no true indicium that it is a person at
all, a large brass beast ensconced in panels and ridges of samurai armor
made of origami. The black paper of his armor is scrawled over with white
ink, missives and protections in painfully alien cipher. He has only the
brass eyes of a man.
A katana lays across his lap, bound with a labyrinthine nest of bright
orange silk. The scent of flammable lotus oil is stark around the ribbon.
'TENZEN' is the name that howls in the wind though the timbers.
"A man is given a choice between his family's lives or his family's
future," that machine says, the mechanized growl hollow behind a mask. "One
choice preserves the lives of today. The other preserves the lives of
tomorrow. In one, you are a demon. In the other, a monster. Choose now, and
begone forever," he instructs. "Love, or duty."
The question is frustratingly ambiguous -- but he speaks as if the choice
has already been made for him, caring very little about the choice made
today. It's not the answer, but the conviction with which it is spoke that
can convince him to let you pass without burning you with the flaming mark
of a traitor.
"I was the first," he repeats, again.
Again, it doesn't matter at all.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
"Isato," Umie repeats, after Kurou does. "... Did you know this was on this ship? Is this some sort of memorial...?" Kurou's direction and correction keeps her from being the one to disturb this place, at least; she doesn't object, either.
The Ryouharas are mysterious enough that something like this here, despite being so complex and hidden away, seems to make sense.
The garden being next had blown that notion out of the water.
'....I don't see anything. I don't hear anything.' Umie regards Shiryuu quietly, tired enough to let her gaze do the talking for her. And because that still isn't enough, she says something more. "... Liar," she says, with a half-grin, half-chiding, half affectionate, as if in the next moment she was going to run her fingers through his hair in a tease.
But that hand is currently intertwined with his, the other with Kurou, and that is where she finds herself needing to be.
There was nothing about the garden itself that called to her memories, save for the current of its appeal to traditional views and ways of life: pristine, controlled, quiet. A still, green-tinted world with no stars, where her true soul resided every night. Like Kurou's mind suggesting letting himself sink into the embrace of water when he first landed here, Umie's mind asks the same: curl up and lie here, and let the night take her.
Joker will be fine, won't he? And Ruin certainly... isn't... (No, Ruin's probably here too.)
How selfish can a girl be, to just want to lie down and wait for the next curtain to rise?! They don't even know why any of this... is!!
But she also feels it, a combining of resonance, a beat synchronizing with her own.
Shiryuu asked someone to listen, and here, Umie does, falling in sync with his. Her eyes fall closed, and she loses herself in that, rather than the night.
It spreads out like waves, ebbing and flowing, then falls into its natural coda, heartbeats bowing out after the performance.
Umie opens her eyes, and glances to Kurou, seeing the red on his palm.
".... You saw something too." Grabbing the last of her tissues, she hands it out to Kurou. "Here."
They have more to go before they can manage to see this through.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
'Is it a memorial?'
"I don't know," Shiryuu replies, and it seems genuine.
"....none of this is supposed to be here."
Even so, that weary onmitsu watches them; Kurou and the boy, Isato. He watches them play for a lot longer than would be responsible.
It looks like you're lost again... what is it about these places that gives your sense of direction such fits when it's most important? Don't worry.... I'll always show you the way. Just follow in my footsteps.
Shiryuu's jaw is set, even where Umie accuses him of lying, even where Kurou knows to break illusion. Shiryuu takes any reply he could have made to her, and tips it in thick, chunky electronic bass until even the strongest's voice, at the back of his mind, fades.
"Kurou," Ryouhara finally says, as his touch lingers at Umie's hand subconsciously. "Be careful. We don't know if the ship's sickbay is even close yet." That touch lingers even beyond the borderline of reasonable assumptions of attention, as Shiryuu's hand only drops away from hers once he is well on his way to walking.
"If you injure yourself overmuch and the situation destabilizes, even with your jutsu...."
Destabilizes. Right. As if it couldn't be more unstable.
He pulls the batten open and steps into -- and through -- a shoji door, replacing thick, cold, wet iron with elegant rice paper, the catwalks having no relevance in the idyllic, feudal spaces they find themselves in. The boy in the wet haori steps into the space and -- is stopped by the machine laid in front of them.
The boy's derision is almost immediate, even before the sigh that sounds through the timbers to remind them of a name. "It's like our Kouhigoki," he notes, pointedly. In that way, it's almost like a memorial. But...
'A man is given a choice between his family's lives or his family's future...'
The scent of flammable oil reaches the senses just as Shiryuu moves.
"Tch." Shiryuu's teeth show as he pulls a knife with a four inch blade from his sash, and immediately steps forward to kill the huge machine with his bare hands and a tiny dagger, while it's still talking.
"Some of us should have chosen better," Shiryuu replies, mid-stride.
He's already made his decision.
MONAD: Shiryuu Ryouhara has acted with Academics toward side.SOL .. track I .. MERCURY RECORD: "Doom Decide"! Base!
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
As Umie hands over the clean tissue, looks down at his bleeding hand. "But... It is not necessary..." He slowly shakes his head. "I do not think it was lying, but... You said not to listen. So I didn't."
Once Shiryuu tells him to be careful, any resistance over the tissue disappears. Kurou's head lowers, a little, as he apologetically accepts it to press into the self made bite marks on his palm.
"... Understood."
For his part, Kurou can think of a number of ways the situation could become more unstable. He steadies himself and Umie, and follows Shiryuu through the ship of patchwork gardens and feudal architecture. Surveying the machine, he only nods slowly, letting Shiryuu's words be the one that stand.
The wind is howling...
Shiryuu already moves to wield a dagger against the machine, and Kurou's muscles go taught, his jaw set firmer as his body begins to tremble with a rage that does not show on his face.
Kurou, as a dutiful shinobi, is often mistaken as having no opinions or desires of his own. It was a feather, loosened from his fingers, that spoke the loudest against these notions at is fell to the ground.
That judgment has not changed, and nor shall he accept a traitor's judgment.
I was the first, the voice says, and the red in Kurou's vision fades just long enough for him to sense a different meaning than the one his rage wants to bite at. Concern calms Kurou's demeanor as he watches Shiryuu.
For a boy who wears little emotion on his face, there the sense of a sentence that cannot begin. Words he needs to say, but does not know how to form. For a long time, he is silent, only watching.
When he finally does speak, it is quietly.
"... I would not be here... if not for someone who chooses both."
Maybe that's too much to say with Zakuro's so fresh in their minds eyes. But there's a difference between a shinobi that falls in action, and the choice that had been made for so many of them.
There's a difference in how Shiryuu fights for their family's future. That's what Kurou believes.
MONAD: Kurou Ryouhara has acted with Academics toward side.SOL .. track I .. MERCURY RECORD: "Doom Decide"! Base!
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Nothing seems to be where it needs to be.
While the bandaging on Umie's gunshot wound has stabilized her enough for them to move, it's just a compromise between lying down and hoping help will come (which it will not), or recklessly ignoring it and hoping they find the sick bay before she hits a point of no return. And that's just what Umie is dealing with; they are all wounded. If Joker or Ruin are here... The ltter could be wounded someplace, yes, but if she loses too much blood, his actions will be meaningless, and she can't help him, or Shiryuu and Kurou, for that matter.
So she's surprised that she's been as helpful as she has been, so far, despite needing Kurou to move more effectively.
"You did good," Umie affirms, as Kurou applies the tissue to his wound. She couldn't see what either of them saw (if there was anything at all) but Kurou confirms it was *something*, at least. Even the fact that everyone was similarly affected was a bit of a guess-- born from what she was seeing, yes, but still a guess.
(... not that Umie is going to admit that it was a guess in front of Shiryuu. She can't let him win!)
(Umie'll let Shiryuu take the lead, though.)
The surroundings continue to be confusing, the soft Japanese quiet of the enclosed garden replaced with a network of black iron and pipes, clashing with the feudal surroundings.
It extends to the binary of the metal automata's speech, drawing a hard line between love and duty.
To choose between two things, drawn in ways where neither is what you want. To serve the family and community is key to helping all; Umie wouldn't necessarily argue with that as a whole. However, when an individual is cast aside, and the cruelty is overlooked in favor of a large picture only one person can see... it is the thing that draws a discordant note against Umie's ears.
She speaks up as the stranger, the third party whose bias lies in how her fingers earlier traced against Shiryuu's own until they had to move, and how her grip against Kurou's tightens, attempting to impart reassurance to that trembling rage written into his frame.
How did she end up like this, tying herself to two agents of the NWO? It comes in her reply.
"Sounds like you're the one that decided to frame things that way, and that there was only one way things could be. You drew two paths for yourself, and made it seem like some honorable sacrifice that you chose one over the other, and that others had to decide the same. Was it worth it, in the end? To curse everyone with your stubbornness?"
Just as she was, early on, sorting people into her enemy or her ally in regards to the NWO.
It's so much more complicated than that, isn't it? And she's still not sure if trying to make her own path really was that sound.
'... I would not be here... if not for someone who chooses both.' That 'someone' that Kurou references is clear in Umie's sight, as Shiryuu goes to make his stand, armed with only his knife.
She doesn't know any of the history here, but she feels she understands enough on where she wants to be.
The Badb that is Umie responds in turn, playing the role it has for millennia: responding to its favored warriors, inflaming the battleground's desire for blood, and seating itself among its corpses as the mistress of death.
"... Even a small knife can kill a giant, when in the hands of someone determined enough."
MONAD: Umie Akabane has acted with Bird's Eye View toward side.SOL .. track I .. MERCURY RECORD: "Doom Decide"! Automap! (|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side.SOL .. track I .. MERCURY RECORD: "Doom Decide" - Round 4 ========- Umie Akabane Academics Success Bird's Eye View Automap Fatigue: 2 Morale: 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shiryuu Ryouhara Academics Success Academics Base Fatigue: 1 Morale: 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kurou Ryouhara Academics Success Academics Base Fatigue: 2 Morale: 4 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Stony-2 and Terrifying-1 Final Conditions: Stony-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 3/6 |=== | ===================================================- -==== Loot So Far: ==========================================================- Items: 0, Money: 0, Gear: 2 (|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
MONAD: Shiryuu Ryouhara has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 5: side::LUNA > The Emperor; Aries > WEIGHT - Challenge Level 4 =-
| Approach Options: Guts or Proficiency |
| Conditions: Bless - +1 to Group Roll (Per Character), Reaper - Add 1 |
| Fatigue., Stony - Understanding Down L2, Stony - Understanding Down L2, |
| and Terrifying - Guts Down L2 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
(BGM: https://youtu.be/FjSydTHktq4 "Other Mix 2-5" - Persona 2 Eternal
Punishment OST)
An oppressive shade of deep crimson dominates the chamber. Black bordered
panels line the top half of the room, while the lower half is decorated with
painted panels, though the lighting makes it difficult to see what's
depicted on them. Before anyone even thinks of escaping, the sliding doors
behind you shut tight with a sharp clack.
In the second half of the room is a wooden shrine on a small platform,
with a sloped roof and a small set of stairs leading up. Whatever is inside
is obscured by a heavy sudare screen, but the more you try to make sense of
it, the more it feels like an anomaly, glitching and shifting like a broken
signal, full of sharp edges and black static. Stare at it too long, and your
mind will fill it in with something you fear.
Whatever it is (or what your mind paints it as), it's about to notice you,
and you will not appreciate its attention.
Whatever you do, don't let it see you.
The fear alone may make some freeze, while the resourceful may try to hide
or obscure the being's sight. More courageous souls might walk forward and
destroy the screen, but find nothing but a collapsed pile of rusted metal.
Bear the weight of being perceived or do your best to escape its notice
until the gears outside turn again, and you are able to leave.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Love, or duty.
'Sounds like you're the one that decided to frame things that way, that there was only one way things could be.'
"You stood for the oppressed, when no one else would," he acknowledges, quietly.
There is no indicator that they, Kurou nor Shiryuu -- should even recognize the huge machine, half again the size of a man and easily Shiryuu's height even sitting on the ground. It is, in truth, the scent of the ninkou that he carries that identifies him first -- a massively scaled up version of Karenkyouhoujin, a sword that uses a resistant wicking cloth soaked in lotus oil to cast dazzling walls of fire. Ironically, when Tenzen stands before him to banish him, even Shiryuu looks small.
"In that way, you were an exemplary Hogarasu in your time," the strangled, one-eyed boy with the stringy grey hair commends the machine, meeting him one eye to two, little knife gripped in hand.
'...I would not be here, if not for someone who chooses both.'
Ryouhara's jaw sets, as his remaining eye closes.
"...but when it came time to do so again, your resolve broke."
"Tenzen. For what you were ...this is 'thank you.'"
The machine looks up grimly, between the two faces who have passed their judgment. Not of the choice they must make, but of the one he made. In the end, the spark from the machine's glove never reaches the cloth, before four inches of steel cuts the hydraulic lines of its suspension.
"....."
It doesn't matter at all, does it?
The response is almost immediate, with another shoji slamming shut behind the group, Another, and then another... the tatami lengthen, and oil that looks too much like blood disappears, along with the assassinated Hogarasu before his killer. Vertigo lurches into the pits of every stomach, and bodily throws a hallway of doors through the three, slamming every open door behind them until --
####
$$$$
!!!!
Static fades and glitches, eating up the air they breathe. Without another step, they're dropped wholesale into a room that replaces the old one entirely, bearing passing resemblance to it only in the fashion that a kitchen bears a resemblance to that same kitchen after someone's been butchered in it. A pale red haze descends like a pillow over the face, pins of ill intent breaking into evey nerve and bone.
The austere weight of judgment and abhorrent purity is intense here, mocking the same judgment that was passed only minutes ago, a foul aftermath and miasma redolent fatally of this space where you are inexorably led.
A decision was made, and you were not part of it.
And now it doesn't matter at all.
The weight of space hits Shiryuu like a hammer, his tired stance rocking him back a half step as the way is simply replaced by a shut door. For a cold blooded instant, he fears. Is the choice right? Resolve replaced nigh immediately with doubt, and the world stretches, snapped tight to another 'axis' entirely in a mechanical half-printing overlaid on the first, one second overexposed onto the next as Shiryuu's gaze is forced -up.-
To stairs, to a closed wooden curtain, shifting with what he interprets as open malice. "...eh??"
He stares, and then looks back, and then looks forward, the funeral pallor and gravity of the situation beginning to set into his bones. The boy looks up, looks around, his eye aching in its socket as he shuts it tighter, fixating up onto the massive panels above along the upper edges of the room. Everywhere he looks, static bleeds into every corner, imagined judgment in every panel.
The thing behind that sudare threatens everything around him. Is it Ruin? It will leave him alone and alive, to contemplate the trail of bodies he leaves in his wake. A child, balling their fists and screaming.
No one will hear.
"H...hey," Shiryuu says, an unbalanced quiver in his voice. "Don't... give up."
"...don't hesitate..."
The boy raises his bloodied (?!) hands and presses his palms around the tiny handle of his knife, raising his fingers just below his left eye. His voice barely makes it, in the tidal wave of nihilism that reminds him that _it doesn't matter, didn't you hear the first fucking time!?_
The kegare causes blood to spatter openly at his feet.
"I'm going to bring down a panel... use your longest range techniques to make sure it lands where it's supposed to."
In front of? Behind? On? Shiryuu can't even put enough of a thought together for that much. Just move. Don't think about it. Trust your instincts.
The onmitsu forces his bloody shearingly blue eye open one more time.
MONAD: Shiryuu Ryouhara has acted with Shinsoku toward side::LUNA > The Emperor; Aries > WEIGHT! Escape and Efficient!
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
If the last room was something that fell in the twilight realm of something Umie feels she understands but could not be sure of, this is in the harsh spotlight on a cruel stage she didn't want to be a part of.
It feels grossly intentional, this room. The real thing that spawned this little nightmare space looks nothing like this save for the little wooden shrine, which in itself is a construct of traditional Japanese practices. It's larger than it should be, but doesn't that make it easier for the thing inside to be the shape you need it to be, rather than the smaller, more impotent object that occupied it, in reality?
The same goes for the crimson color of this room, a product of a religious bonfire reinterpreted through a barely-remembered collage of a child's memory of something that falls beyond adult understanding.
If only Umie Akabane had the understanding and foresight Tatsuzou did and still does; this room would have been so much grander, a beacon to a pure world.
*CLACK*
The doors shut behind the group. Kurou will feel Umie's grip on him slacken and fall away.
In Umie's mind, the social structures, calming rituals, and bonds dissolve away, leaving a skeletal credo of panicked, animal survival. She draws her hands against the wet broken mask, pressing it down with a mechanical logic, like a child throwing a blanket against the monster under her bed.
Or maube it's for the sake of keeping those hands close to her mouth, muffling whatever sound her throat may be trying to express.
Like a twisting, tightening rope, tensions build, and then, with a half-heard grunt, it all releases.
Like in the past, the Badb materializes, infusing the tense air with a shrieking fury that embodies one half of the two processes within her: an overwhelming anger that needs to be demonstrated, selfish in its desire to do violence, lonely in its helplessless to exert change. .... Then there is the crouching girl, wobbling back, trying to open the door.
'H...hey. Don't... give up. ...don't hesitate...' *drip, drip, drip* Umie can hear the drop of blood and the miasma of kegare. What is Shiryuu doing?
A plan and a goal is laid out, and Umie looks over, hood exposing one scared eye.
These are not a child's hands on the door, but ones with red nails, painted the color she wants, with chips and cuts where she ran up the ship to keep with Joker. Calluses from use, worn in places that were felt with a loving thumb, as she felt the calluses on Shiryuu's own. These are hands that tried to clean Kurou's face as he looked like the entire world fell in on him in that clocktower.
These hands had the audacity to try to block the visor of a man who tried to kill her, and may still succeed, if she lets herself become overwhelmed with fear.
It's a small spark of light to go by, but Umie will use it to guide her way out. Instinct and force, moving forward? That is where the Badb shines.
Badb's shrieking and thrashing stills, the disparate effort condensed into a forward effort, as Umie ignores the door entirely, pointing her fingers towards the flickering, unknown thing.
"Persona."
MONAD: Umie Akabane has acted with Blackbird's Bite toward side::LUNA > The Emperor; Aries > WEIGHT! Bravery and Focus!
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
Umie points out the fallacy. The only way things could be... as if these things should be different things at all. As if one can be sacrificed to feed the other. To think that way...
... It's why they're in this sorry state, with Shiryuu left to clean up their mess, and those who still remain struggling to see his will done under the stain of old contracts.
Kurou's face shows no emotion as he watches Shiryuu give his gratitude and farewells to the crow of fire, and his own respect. This, too, is why Shiryuu is Shirogarasu. Kurou does not know if he could see kindness in the shapes of his soul, or even wear it as a mask, in such a moment.
With a knife, the machine is done, and Kurou's rage drains completely.
If only he could have found some way to hold onto it before the shoji slammed shut, and everything lurched into static. Kurou falls into red pain and begins to drown. He reaches to catch hold of Umie, but his fingers rake through the pins and needles of empty air.
In the static, he hears the end of a staff hit the ground, the vibration reverberating across the chamber. In his periphery, he thinks he sees a toy or model of a shrine.
It makes Kurou's muscles stop.
The staff thunks again and Kurou's gaze, without having to move, without daring to move, is thrust upon glitched darkness that threatens to come into focus: a silhouette dancing behind a screen, or a shape behind him, casting its shadow on it.
It makes Kurou's lungs stop.
Pupils shrink and dart, but cannot be pried away. His focus betrays him, trying to make the shape mean something while every instinct and memory reminds him what happens once he finally recognizes the face that means to judge him.
It makes Kurou's
h e a r t
stop.
He clutches his chest with his hand, squeezing his fingers in. And squeezing. And squeezing. And squeezing to the rhythm of a manual beat. Breaths drag out of his throat like razor blades. The next step he forces himself to take collapses under him as if the bone had shattered in his leg.
As if he had no bones at all.
"G... Gash... G..."
He claws at his own throat for his scarf. But he cannot speak the name. He cannot find his grip. He cannot dare tear his hand away from his chest and stop squeezing his own blood through his veins. Darker and darker the world grows, and there is no ground to stand on. There is no edge to grab. There is n o t h i n --
Don't give up.
Don't hesitate.
A shriek cuts the darkness, and Kurou sees a hooded woman with pallid skin shield his vision from what almost becomes clear in the dark.
In perfect silence, his own heartbeat drowning out every sound, Kurou launches the chain of his ninkou, guided by instinct alone, with claw poised to strike at the panel with Shiryuu's command, and prepared to yank it to finesse it into place with the kind of brutality only fear can inspire.
MONAD: Kurou Ryouhara has acted with Overkill toward side::LUNA > The Emperor; Aries > WEIGHT! Specialty!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|)
-==== side::LUNA > The Emperor; Aries > WEIGHT - Round 5 ====================-
Umie Akabane Guts Success
Blackbird's Bite Bravery and Focus Fatigue: 2 Morale: 5
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shiryuu Ryouhara Proficiency Success
Shinsoku Escape and Efficient Fatigue: 2 Morale: 4
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kurou Ryouhara Guts Success
Overkill Specialty Fatigue: 2 Morale: 5
-============================ Party Conditions: =============================-
Starting Conditions: Bless-0, Reaper-0, Stony-1, Stony-2, and Terrifying-2
Final Conditions: Stony-1 and Terrifying-1
-====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====-
-==== Reach: 5/6 |=====| ===================================================-
-==== Loot So Far: ==========================================================-
Items: 0, Money: 0, Gear: 2
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 6: side.SOL .. track XXI .. EARTH RECORD: "The Forge") - Challenge Level 1 -
| Approach Options: None |
| Conditions: Chest - Add 2 Item/Money/Gear. and Revelation - The best |
| result. |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The harsh clang of iron rings through the core of the ship. A baleful
ember-red glow permeates the vast core -- past a certain perimeter, it is
formless, featureless and vast, the web of pipe and conduit from the other
decks curling into the furnace-bleached white void at the far forward side.
Tumbled and harshly bent, the catwalk paths surrounding the ship's furnace
are asymmetric and chaotic, sketching out a loose path above the iron floor,
where multiple mechanical statues gather around a single focal point.
Shinobi and samurai alike, the armed and armored statues take various
positions across the ground, some standing with hands clasped together in
kuji-kiri hand-seals, others frozen in place holding weapons that glow with
spangled auras of nightbound starlight.
At the center of the statues lay a final mechanical man, frozen in mid-blow
with his hammer driven into a ingot on the anvil, the ingot held in place by
the fierce grip of a set of foundry tongs. Fireflies made of origami flutter
around the impact point, as if mimicking sparks from the impact.
Every so often, a machine will arrive from another part of the ship.
Insensate to your presence, the automaton samurai will forcibly drag a
squealing monster of some sort caught elsewhere in the ship to a circle of
arcane seals on the ground before the sweltering crucible. Once there, the
beast will be forced to kneel, and the machine will settle into a full lotus
position at the foot of the sealing circle. Then, the machine will put its
hands together and begin to murmur a wordless incantation.
If you watch this for long enough, the white, sweltering void will churn
into a deep, shining, crystalline blue, its light dyeing the beast black,
until it breaks apart into black crows, fluttering and cackling through the
forge. Once it does, a new item will materialize into a stand just in front
of the smithy, blotting out the light around it with an eerie starlight
radiance.
The machines around seem to exalt you, respecting your strength. Taking a
newly forged item from the stand will open the way out, a torii gate
standing at the end of a great, black, lonely path.
(OOC: Send a @mail to Shiryuu if you need help deciding what random loot
you get!)
Final Loot: 2 Items and 2 Pieces of Gear!
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
A stronger person would have said something better.
A better person would be able to assuage the pain of his friends.
That child in Akita shouts, as loud as he can. And they break under the weight, one at a time. Shiryuu feels it acutely, in ways that he would not had been able to any other day -- any other place. But to be caught in this sunken hell of a memorial to every poor decision they ever made, wet, bleeding and aching, after being forced to watch the people at his back die, it imposed a uniquely piercing kind of understanding upon him.
It would be one thing to die ingloriously, overpowered and dispensed with as trash. It would be another thing entirely to watch these people around him do the same, and be unable to do anything about it. His Persona is miles away from his grasp, his only weapon remaining being a tiny knife, soaked with oil that this place was trying to tell him was blood. He's all but broken, his skull aching.
But he is alive. They are still alive, he reminds himself.
That's enough, for now.
The static haze over his milky iris makes the intense red light only lightly less hard on his left eye as he forces it open, the muted pupillary response from the color causing his eye to reflexively water at the intensity, the sheen of the lens installed over it crackling and arcing with white lightning over the fine silver wire lanced into the sclera, until those clear tears run cloudy pink, then thick, vicious red. The boy utters something, a small subvocal chant that has nothing to do at all with ninjutsu.
He focuses hard, even as the crows scream above him, and their herald -- her Persona -- battles the very air itself in full revolt.
"It's ... it's fine.."
Kyotosaigan glows more fiercely. His blood spatters the ground, as his stomach threatens to upend itself, turning sour and churning in blatant warning. Shiryuu almost vomits, as he tries.
Focus, he says to himself.
What would that boy behind him think of him if he broke, here?
Would he ever see her again, if they became lost in this space?
Wasn't it he, who started this...?
Focus. "... never hesitate," he repeats.
Shiryuu breathes outward, and takes a step ninety degrees to the world.
From an external perspective, the boy with grey hair seems to split, glitching to the left mid-step before a hundred steps are folded into one, and he crosses across the room and up in an instant, clinging to one of the huge panels suspended high up in the room by a single bare arm. Objectively, he doesn't have what it takes, not really -- a wet, ragged boy stabbing fiercely at the track and nail holding the wood sheet in place while holding on for dear life. But he is doggedly persistent.
Persistent enough to pry the panel loose a nail at a time with that little knife and the force of his body weight. He falls, the panel tumbling end over end after him. He'll likely land on his feet.
The rest is up to them.
The clawed end of the chain whirls in, sinking deep into the heartwood, Kurou's aim deadly, true, to right the panel in the air, to tractor it into alignment, to aim it true. And in the next, Badb's talons seize it roughly, her keening shriek winnowed down into vicious silence.
With the finality of a door slamming shut, the panel too slams over the curtain, replacing shades with a wall, guided into place and sealed with a Persona's power. Whatever was on the other side never gets the chance to lay eyes on them.
Then and only then will gears churn in the ship's belly, peeling open the path from panels like a sectioned orange.
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
When Kurou needed Umie, Umie had pulled away, leaving his hands with nothing.
There will be moments later when Umie will look back at this and feel deep regret; however, that will be in hindsight, as the Umie of now is still gathering the pieces of her full self.
But it still comes back, for Kurou, in how the ghastly dark grey cape and blue-veined legs of the Badb fall over him, blocking his sight of the thing his mind constructs.
The Badb is the Badb, but it is also Umie. The protective bent to her methods becomes reasserted twice over as she remembers -- is reminded -- of the things that child never had. That, as well as what she wants to exert, by being the person Tamaki once explained herself as being: the person she wished she had, back then.
The impulses and cause and effect is still there; this is just a small victory earned over a split-second impulse that turned out to be the right one.
The instinct to resist, to push back, is so fiercely intertwined inside her.
Foolishly, Umie moves, one hand held over her wound, her path consistent until she's able to fall to Shiryuu's side in a rough embrace. The kegare burns like a needle in her mind's eye, continually reminding Umie that is it there, and that she still has no clue what any of it means.
Shiryuu's back will feel wet, as sobs unhinge themselves from the alcove inside Umie's chest, falling out like the crush of sea foam against the shore.
*clang* *clang* *clang* *clang*
In the stilled silence, the mind will naturally fall on whatever it can hear, be it the muffled heartbeat of the person Umie is lying on, or the clang of something being hit.
"..." She doesn't want to move. Like before, she wants to lie there, forever.
But the Badb in her is a restless thing, uneager to spend time wasting away. So, she draws back, and slowly walks forward. '... Gonna scout," she mumbles. "Something... weird is up ahead." There was a signal, of a shadow or demon, and it had disappeared.
The rough edges of her latent senses can only make out so much, but going there, she realizes the blatent truth.
It's like a demonstration at a forge, with a mindless shadow, having fallen into this strange place, being reforged into something anew. The moment the machine is done, the machines all around the group bend in quiet exaltation.
"I think... they want us to take it."
A way clears, leading to a lonely torii gate.
"... I think we're going to be okay, for now, guys."
<Pose Tracker> Kurou Ryouhara has posed.
He didn't catch Umie's fingers. His hand couldn't find his throat, and was clutched to his chest, unable to find her. He could barely hear Shiryuu. His body was good for very little but obedience.
This time, in his favor.
This time, not lost in darkened hours, but enveloped in a cloak that reminds him of fuzzy blankets.
This time, the haze lifts, and he breathes.
In the end of it all, Kurou is unseen unless one looks down to see him huddled. He grips Soumeiunsatou in one hand, thumb lifted from the hilt and pressed deep into the meat that connects his shoulder to his torso. His other hand claws into his hair, head tucked down, nails biting into his scalp, and chain held to drape over his back like a cold weight.
Breathe.
Umie sobs, and it makes Kurou aware of how much his body begs to let go of the tension and doesn't know how.
Breathe.
They are still alive.
That is enough, for now.
He hopes that he remains unseen until he finally picks himself up from the floor. When his head lifts, his expression is still unchanged, but his face is soaked.
Even so, his voice is steady.
"Then we take it, and we hurry."
She still needs medical attention, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Aa. There is much to regret tonight.
His fingers slide into the spaces between hers. By the time it's all over, Shiryuu is on the ground in a crouch, breathing slowly. The foul miasmatic pressure that stained every corner of the space red seems to be lifted, and for a moment Ryouhara's shoulders can lift. The kegare level of his ninkou still clings like needles to vast swaths of his skin under his coat, but it's not something he pays attention to now, even when her weight lands on him like a bag of wet sand, soaking his damp haori anew.
What, really, can he say? Is that ... something he even can understand? It's outside the realm of pretty, empty headed creature.
No.. don't think about it.
"....hey..." Shiryuu starts uneasily, his voice still tired and unsteady.
"...'m going to win, if you let your guard down like this."
Shiryuu squeezes that hand lightly. His is a watery attempt at a smile. Quite pointless, really, and it's probably lucky that Umie, at least, never has the chance to see it. Shiryuu gives his glance over to Kurou as he fixes his expression into something far more grim and flat, painfully lifting himself up after her. Umie doesn't get far -- Shiryuu moves at the same cadence she does, getting a shoulder underneath her pointedly.
"...you guys. Acting like you're invincible too," Ryouhara observes, grimly. It's both noting the current moment, and the tacit acknowledgment that they decided to come at all. It's a rueful sort of acknowledgment, stated flatly, though it would be a mistake to ascribe anything but endearment to the observation.
His left eye is a red mess, and absent his will to force it open, the swollen thing is staying intractibly shut.
"mmh...rebels and malcontents," the shihaisha decides, unilaterally.
"...one foot in front of the other," he agrees with Umie. "Come on. We have to get home so I can decide your fates.."
The machines seem to exalt them in the light of the forge ahead, one by one recognizing and hailing their presence. It's a wild, eerie coordination to behold. The boy stares with one wondrous eye, and for once, even the elite ninkousha doesn't _quite_ know the totality of what he's looking at. "Aa... a." It's almost all he can muster, when Umie recognizes gifts for what they are.
Then, ironically, Kurou is the first to make a decision.
"...yeah, you're right," Shiryuu agrees. He finally drops his little knife there, in the forge, as if it were an offering. He lifts a hand to Kurou, for him to take.
"...let's go. You lead, this time."
<Pose Tracker> Umie Akabane has posed.
Fear and tears: two things Umie *hates* showing. At the same time, she is allowed to, by the same machinations that would rope off such things to people like Shiryuu, Kurou, and beyond that, Joker, though what lies underneath each of their own reasons will be different.
"... finnnnne....." Umie mumbles into Shiryuu's back, as he mentions something about 'not letting him win'.
They all make their way out through the torii gate, and into chilly winter air.
There is nothing behind them but a normal alleyway between two buildings, while up ahead, there is a sign.
---NARUMI MEMORIAL HOSPITAL---
Seeing the double doors, lit from the inside against the late night, is all Umie needs before her strength begins to flag.
No, there's something she needs to do, first. Slipping a half-gloved hand into her coat, she unearths a cell phone and punches in a message or two. as she looks up.
>> you ok??? at Nareumihospital
>> will b ok, u b safe
>> talk later
She flips it closed, her body sagging with a sigh. She looks up...
And up.
And... up.
".... why is there a ship... here..." she says, wavering. "... Are we... still there?"
There is a ship embedded in the side of the hospital, joined in place in a way that feels unnatural, like it had just been phased into being. This late at night, people are moving and rushing around, with the distant wails of emergency sirens.
"Someone's injured! Three of them! Over here!" A man in hospital scrubs notices the three of them, seeing the bloom of blood on Umie's chest, the red dripping from Shiryuu's eye, and Kurou's overall state. "Get them to the south entrance, we can figure out where to transfer them later!"
If Shiryuu and Kurou want to leave, this'll be their only chance. However, there's one problem: Umie's now sagging against Shiryuu with her full weight, mumbling something about 'you win'.
The boat was too much, it looks like.