2026-07-18: Running Out Of Time
- Log: Running Out Of Time
- Cast: Yua Ijuuin, Miho Ijuuin
- Where: Miho's Penthouse, Aoba, Sumaru City
- OOC Date: July 18, 2026
- IC Date: December 12, 2012
- Summary: The Dark Hour comes while Yua and Miho are still awake--and they discuss Yua's condition. TW: medical experimentation, death discussion.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
What wasn't captured in yesterday's horror was the strain of the day before that. Tomoki helped Yua to the clinic, to get checked out; she almost missed her class again, but pushed herself to show up and run it, thinking of the way her students needed to vent off steam with some good old fashioned movement before finals. And it was no sooner than she'd finished up classes the next day that Tyrrha reported in about capturing Noriko Katayama...
... well, Yua couldn't let her daughter fight alone. She felt bad enough realising she'd found a fight for herself without backup last time!
Tyrrha's safely hooked up to her charging bay now, of course; a little later than they'd have liked, but of course Yua still had to feed them after all that. In her nightclothes, hair tumbling over her shoulders, Yua sits on the side of their exquisite four-poster bed, as
tick, TOCK
they run out of time.
Even in the sick green lighting of the Dark Hour, though, it's clear why she's taken to lining her eyepatch with black. Now unobscured by makeup, the tips of four dark fingers stretch out onto her cheek, a thumb trailing the line of her eye. It's subtle, but...
... looking at it plainly is unsettling.
Still, this is the one hour of the day it's possible to get a good look at what's going on under there... since Yumi's veils shroud the Groom's sight as well as anyone else's.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Miho was concerned, of course. This is an understatement; another attack like this... it could mean raising the dosage of her medicine. It could mean hastening Yua's death. It could mean harm to the baby. It could mean, it could mean--
And then they had a mission.
Miho accepted Yua making food, but only because she knew it would make Yua herself feel better--otherwise, she'd have... well, she'd have ordered something in. Miho doesn't cook much.
But now, Miho is standing, looking to Yua. "Yua, I--"
TOCK
Miho pauses. The Dark Hour is here, and Miho finally sees it--that hand pattern...
Abandoning her previous conversation, Miho stops, and says, "Yua."
"May I see your eye?"
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsptRbS-27M The Birthday Massacre - Parallel World
Yua looks to Miho, brow creasing. We don't have much time, she might have told her, as she feels the lurch of crossing-over.
But there's no time for that, either. Her lips shape the connection, and it's done.
Painted green, her dark skin is sallowed, thrown in sharp relief to the black against her; it is all the more obvious, now. Her brow arches in a quiet kind of sorrow, so unlike her energetic petulance.
There's the performance, and then...
Her gaze breaks down, and she nods, quietly.
"All right... just... I'll grow strange, again."
Stranger than she is at baseline, in these mysterious places...
... because that eyepatch is itself a veil.
Without it, she sees through.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
They don't, really. But still...
"I understand," Miho says. "I only need a moment."
The eyepatch is a veil... That is true. But Miho is resolute. She sees what she sees, and she will continue to look for a moment--
And then gently, she reaches down to shift the eyepatch off.
"I only need a moment," Miho murmurs, and will look.
Those fingers...
To think of fingers.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Okay," Yua nods, turning her face up to Miho again. "... I trust you."
The eyepatch unlatches, slides up to secure above her eye --
-- as three pupils look up to Miho.
Four fingers snake down, as if pouring from inside the eyesocket; a thumb grasps at the corner of her eye, like some mockery of eyeshadow, completing the set.
Grasped by something beyond this existence, buried deep inside her skull, expanding out...
"You wane," she says, as she looks at her, and sees where the paths intersect. "Lay now your head to my breast and recover, else to be winnowed and torn..." Her hand reaches, past Miho, for the Evoker laid at her bedside table. "And there -- I do not yet see --"
The frustration in her voice is pushing her to look, but it's not as if Yua isn't tired, too, after a mission like that... even with her reduced capacity.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"Thank you." For her trust. ...And there--three pupils, four fingers, and a thumb. A hand, grasping Yua. Miho frowns as she looks upon it. That thing within her...
Miho sees it. "I will," Miho assures her. "I am wounded and injured indeed, but with rest I will be well."
Miho gently sets her hand on Yua's to forestall her going for the Evoker.
"Shh," she guides.
"It is all right."
Miho replaces the eyepatch, careful and snug.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua's warnings, it seems, were already heeded; "the path signposted, the..."
Miho's hand.
Yua looks down at it, against hers, regal and pale in the sick moonlight. "Hearthfire," she is distracted from her Power, for a moment; a moment long enough for Miho to latch her eyepatch back over her eye, secure it in place, observing in that moment skin integrity to ensure she's remaining well.
Yua gasps, as, gently, she is blinded again; she looks back and forth, trying to anchor the room back in her sight again, before she looks up to Miho again, points a finger up to herself meekly. "Is it bad?" She asks, with concern.
It's been getting worse for a long time, now. At first, it was just her pupils, changed with her Sight, but slowly...
Slowly...
Miho had to bargain her way into #22's file to get the full scope on it, with half of the creeping corruption happening beyond her line of sight, but one thing can be presumed.
... those experiments had those fingers snaking out, from the inner sanctum of her eye, to grasp her skull.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Hearthfire; Miho's hands are warm.
Miho waits for Yua to return to her, her expression soft. She waits, and hears the question, but...
"I will not lie," Miho says. "It is concerning to me. The 'fingers' appear to be growing."
The experiments. It must be them.
"But all is not lost. You are still 'here'.'"
She said it, though; they have little time...
Miho leans down to hug Yua. "Thank you for showing me. I saw, and... I had to see the detail."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Yua nods, swallowing. "I saw... in the mirror. Mm, but when I put eyeliner over it, it doesn't look weird..." Much like, perhaps, the way Miho keeps her arms covered.
(Despite having, Yua would insist, the world's most impressive gun show.)
"I'm here," Yua affirms, and doesn't even say it in portents.
She hugs Miho back, and tightly. "Sit with me?" She asks, into her neck, and she does not only seem small because of how much Miho has to lean down to reach her.
"... she got mad at me again," Yua says, when she's able to hold onto Miho again. "Like... when they made an airplane that's me, they used glue instead of rivets... so I get in the air and it's like... I'll shake apart..."
She shakes her head, looking to Miho, her brow knit. "I'm broken," she insists, her voice thin. "I can't be fixed... you know that, right? You know we're not the same? I'm -- unstable. I'm coming apart... day after day... but I'm not strong enough to accept that, Mimi. And that... it makes her more mad... she wants me to die."
There are tears in her eye, but just the once. "I was supposed to die," she insists, the despair of the hidden hour digging deep into her.
But if she should have died... what does it say, that she's still here?
What sin is Gretchen hungry to correct?
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"That's good," Miho says of eyeliner. But Miho does cover her arms, too.
And Yua is here. "I will," Miho says, and sits with her. Yua explains, and Miho's eyes are on her, golden-brown and full of worry. She hears the analogy... and frowns slightly, not because she doesn't understand, but because she does.
"I know we're not the same," she says, "But I will not accept that you cannot be healed." Not 'fixed'. Healed. "If it is weakness to refuse, then I am weak, as well. ...I won't."
But Gretchen... Mm.
"What makes you say that you were supposed to die?" she asks.
She can think of many reasons. But she wants to hear Yua's one.
"...Tomoki-san told me, about the attack. Though he could not know what it was."
"It seems it is getting worse..."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
Healed...
"Nn," Yua shakes her head, gently, smiling to Miho, when she says she must also be weak. "You're kind."
That Miho just cut her enemies down doesn't disprove this in Yua's mind at all... because a cruel opponent would have exploited the weakness of an injured foe.
She scooches closer to Miho, leaning against her in the sick green light of the impossible hour. "Because... a lot of bad things happened," she says, trying to get a grip on her 'self' again. "I don't think... humans were meant to go through things like that. The first time they gave me a gun, I realised I couldn't bring myself to shoot Dr. Tani, even though she'd done all those awful things... so, the second time... I lifted it to my own head, and..."
Her gaze moves to the dresser. "... it was an Evoker," she relates, though of course it wasn't that Evoker -- that Evoker was stolen from her, and still hasn't been tracked down. "When I accepted that death was the only way I'd escape, that's when I met her... Gretchen. Mm... so that's why she'd be so mad that I can't accept it now," she supposes, glum.
"Since it's kind of like a betrayal... or something like that."
Yua sighs, and shame turns her face away, her fountain of hair veiling her face. "Even though... not being able to take it was a betrayal, too... sorry, Mimi. I should be able to tell you I never gave up, right...?"
She bites her lip, as she nods. "He saved me," she says. "Mm... I hope I didn't scare him..."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Kind, Yua says. Miho does not think it is true.
But she won't argue, tonight.
Miho puts an arm around Yua and listens. Bad things happened, and Miho knows many, but not all. And what she says...
"I think that first part is true." Humans were not meant to go through such things. But, "..You're kind yourself," she says. To not be willing to shoot her, even for all that...
Miho gives Yua a light squeezes with the arm around her.
"I do not think it betrayal, to live. Nor is it a betrayal that you felt despair."
"Here and there, I wondered sometimes--wondered if I would ever find you. ...But what counts is not the moment of weakness--it is the journey on which you continue."
"You lived. And I found you. That is what matters most."
A pause, and Miho shakes her head. "He was alarmed, but only on your behalf. He will be fine."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Nn," Yua shakes her head, as she leans her weight into Miho, her arms snaking around her to clutch at her waist. "I was just a coward... that's all. I was too scared... to do anything."
... Yua, it seems, doesn't think so, either, and she doesn't have the grace to keep as silent.
Despite her warm approach... well, it's universal that your voice sounds different when you're hearing yourself speak.
"I hid them away... I wonder if someone else is helping them, now." Someone must be, she thinks, dismally. That much insight in one place should be a beacon... if not for its counterweight.
When Miho says she found her, though, Yua rubs her cheek against Miho's shoulder. "You did," she says, softly. "I wish... I could hold on for you that way... claiming victory through determination. But the cracks keep showing... every time I paper them up..."
She blinks, at the tears in her eye.
"That's good," she says, with just a hint of a sniffle. "I don't want him to get hurt... he's a nice person."
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
Too scared... "Mm." Miho will not argue with Yua about herself, today. But she does worry. ...If nothing else, she thinks Yua remains soft in that way... in the way that she can remain.
There are so many hard edges to both of them, now. Like prison bars.
"Maybe," Miho says. "Or maybe they found another way. ...Either way, no one has disturbed it to my knowledge." For better or for worse. Mostly worse.
Yua rubs against Miho's shoulder. Miho leans her head on hers. "...I don't think less of you, for having a limit," Miho says softly. "We are not the same. We are together because we differ."
But every time...
"But I am not done looking. ...And we lost the girl, but... we have others. Kandori-san's research continues." She didn't have it in her heart to sacrifice a young girl, but she can manage it with the others.
A pause, then. "...Thank you," she says. "But what I'm focused on right now is you."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
It is certainly true that Yua is soft, both figuratively and quite literally...
... but she is, indeed, immured.
"Mm... it's still running. Well, Project Hemetheoi, anyway... I couldn't exactly look around." Yua would sooner never return to the site of her Revelation, but...
So long as there are people still trapped there, it's the right thing to do.
Yua's eyes lid, feeling Miho's head rest against hers. "I'm happy," she says, though she says it faintly. "Mimi likes our contrast... at least when it's most things, that's... really nice."
But...
When the contrast is whether their own Persona wants them dead or not...
"I know," she says, softly, reaching for Miho's hand. "You'll never stop... that's how you are, Mimi. I love that about you. I just..." Her fingers twitch, as the fear grips her again.
"... no matter what happens," she says, instead, "it's not your fault, okay? I love you." She squeezes Miho's hand, sinking down a little more. Miho's focused on her, and she smiles. "When Mimi looks at me... I'm really happy..."
And she is -- truly, elementally, she is -- but somehow, she sounds close to tears again, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"Right," Miho answers. "They won't allow me the run of the place, either." Though she would rather have it--and know precisely what was done, what will be done, what must be stopped...
But it isn't how it is. Even though continuing to try--it is what they must do.
But Yua... says she's happy, in all of this, and Miho feels an ache within her heart as a result. "Of course I do," she says. "Tall, and small. Butch, and femme. Hard, and soft. ...We have aspects of each other within us, but are so visibly different."
But that contrast...
Miho accepts Yua's hand. The fear gets her, and Miho tries to warm Yua's hand with her own.
"..."
"I love you," she says. "But I have not given up. ...Nor will I."
"instead..."
Miho lifts her head and turns. "I'll look at you," she murmurs. "My eyes will stay on you."
Metaphorically. But for now... literally.
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuB5NSuF2U8 Distant Worlds - Eyes on Me
"They even lock you out of so much... even though you're an Executive and everything... mouuu, what's even the point of working for those awful people, then?" That resentment, at least, is a little more Yua, cheeks puffed out and offended on Miho's behalf. "You're more powerful than them now, anyway! I'd like to see any of them doing work for Ishigami-san!" Depending on how one counts, Miho is, by all accounts, three or four degrees from the top by now.
... at least Miho is, anyway. Yua doesn't have any illusions about her position. Even if it's one degree further, being under Miho's command, there are few agents who would look at her as an equal knowing where she came from.
"It's all yin and yang, huh?" Yua wonders, with a small smile. "When we're together, we're in harmony... sometimes I wonder... if I'm so broken because I was alone for so long."
Well, being alone certainly did something to damage the way Yua relates... if she'd wonder whether losing Miho was what did it.
... even if she's too centred on Miho, though, there's got to be an element of truth to her anxiety.
Being torn from everything that mattered to her... shattering her connection to her family and her lover and her home...
It does not leave a person whole, no.
What fills the hole in her, now, it's...
"Miimimi," Yua murmurs, lovingly, as she squeezes her hand. She hasn't given up... she won't give up. "Hearing you say that... I feel like... it'll really be okay..."
Even if it's hopeless, hasn't Miho grasped victory from a hopeless situation before? When she found her, trapped in that wretched hood, blackened to all but the beyond, and Gretchen recognised Faust, and she knew --
Miho turns to her, and Yua's smile wobbles, slightly, as it spreads, infectious in her affection. "Mimi... I'm really happy!" ... it's hard for it to feel entirely right in the Dark Hour, but she tilts her head, tugging at Miho's shoulder, inviting her in for a kiss anyway.
Sinking into her arms, Yua tilts her cheek, against Miho's chest, to look up at her. "But, you know..." She adds, reaching up a hand to play at Miho's hair, even as she's all but draped down in front of her. "... Tomo-kun really is a nice man. If something happened... I'm okay, Mimi. Since... I'm still your sokushitsu, right? So... I don't mind cooking dinner for him, too."
When he comes over, surely. He does, sometimes! And Yua does, indeed, cook dinner for everyone!!
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
They do lock her out of a lot, Miho reflects. She's an executive in name, but in practice, they undermine her as often as they're able. And she is more powerful than they are, in the conspiracy and in the Dark Hour and--
"You're right," Miho reflects. "...I don't need them. There is nothing more they serve for me. I should not give them more than they are due... and I already have."
But Yua wonders it, and Miho smiles back. "...Yua..."
Because of being alone. Being without her. It strikes Miho, then--the way that Yua was so alone, for so long. The way that Yua is wrapped so much in her alone. It is gratifying, to be sure--wonderful, to have one's destined partner focus on them only...
But she is not whole. And this worries Miho, in the moment, who tries to hide that worry though she would say she shares so much with Yua. ...One thing, one secret.
But Yua murmurs, and Miho puts her smile back on. Because she won't give up. "Then believe it," Miho murmurs. "As much as you can."
Hope is such a small, easily smothered thing. But Miho has not given up. ...She will not.
Miho leans down as invited, by that happiness, by that tug. She kisses Yua, and then lets her sink into her arms, holding her there.
But...?
Miho blinks in surprise as Yua mentions Tomoki, though she smiles at the hand in her hair. If something happened...
"Yua," Miho says softly. "...Yes. You are my sokushitsu. Your place... is honored. Unique."
Miho finds her eyes sting, despite herself. She will not let it show if she can help it.
"I love you. ...And we'll all have dinner together, soon."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"Mm, mm!" Yua nods, firmly. "They're big jerks! You don't need them, Mimi! You're so much stronger...!"
... also, she's rich enough that she can live a lavish lifestyle just off of interest, which is apparently money, something Yua had no idea about until she got closer to Miho. Yua thought money was money, but apparently a bunch of things are money...
If Miho has a secret of her own, though, then it is just a sin shared by both of them; Yua wouldn't begrudge Miho for those worries she keeps behind her smile. She hugs herself snugly to her, seeing that wavering of her smile; her own spreads after that little faltering, seeing her smile again.
"I really believe in Mimi!" Yua chirps, despite her mortal decision in the dark. And she is easily smothered, but Miho has worked so hard to protect her...
Her cheeks colour in the green light, as she smiles, hearing Miho's soft voice. "Seishitsu," she murmurs, in turn. It's not quite what they wanted, but... it's something they can have, isn't it?
Yua hums, though, because those glittering edges to her eyelids... they're something she's more attuned to than anything else. Her hand reaches a little further, to wipe them from her lashes with a thumb.
"I'll always be with you," she promises. "That's what I wanted... more than anything. I'll never forget that... and I promise I'll fight... really, really hard to keep making dinner for you!"
... she was trying to reassure her, but now she's tearing up, too...
<Pose Tracker> Miho Ijuuin has posed.
"I don't. I am."
That's very true. Miho has a lot of money already. Enough that it can sustain itself. ...Especially considering that she can get more from her father...
But her secret is safe for now, safe from being spoken aloud. And Yua? Yua believes in her. Miho still tries to protect her, holds onto her in the green light.
It's something they can have. "I love you," she says again.
But hum... Yua catches it, and Miho regrets for only a moment that she couldn't hide it. She cannot regret hearing Yua say what she says. And what she wanted...
"Yua..."
"Thank you," Miho murmurs. "You will. ...And I'll fight, too."
"We're together, in this too."
<Pose Tracker> Yua Ijuuin has posed.
"I love you," she murmurs, lovingly, in reply. Yua loves that Miho is strong, and she loves the way Miho protects her, and...
"I love the Mimi who's scared, too," Yua says, even though she can't be cool about it like she tried to be for all of ten seconds. So it's a little teary, then, but with a smile, that she says: "When I can help Mimi with those big feelings, too... I'm happy."
She presses a hand to Miho's shoulder, to lift herself up to kiss her, again.
"... we're together," she affirms, softly, pressing her face against Miho's. "We're a team...!"
Just like wife and wife...
"Right now, let's fight our sad feelings... they get worse when it's green out there. I'll say a spell to make the scary thoughts go away...!" Yua giggles, against Miho's ear. "Are you ready?"
Yua pauses, for a moment.
"Veal~ cor~don~ bleu~!" Yua warbles, cheerfully. "I'm gonna make some tomorrow!"
She looks so proud of herself...