2026-09-12: Overbalanced
- Log: Overbalanced
- Cast: Isabeau Fontaine, Shinichi Nagisa
- Where: Shujin Academy - Rooftop
- OOC Date: 2026-09-12
- IC Date: Tue, Jan 08 2013
- Summary: Isabeau's keeping an eye on the false Shinichi, because some of his targets can't defend themselves... but Shinichi, driven to the depths of paranoia by the theft he's suffered, is watching her just as closely. He threatens to drop her off the rooftop -- but she gets away with just a little physical abuse for now.
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
Shinichi Nagisa has been more paranoid today at school. He reacted once to someone on his team coming up behind him with a surprise on the back of camaraderie in the hall, by putting them in an arm bar and shoving them up against the hallway lockers.
He realized his mistake, quickly enough and brushed it off. "You shouldn't just walk up on a guy like that." He says, with an affable grin that hid a taut look in his eyes.
Girl after girl has been trying to talk to him today to 'put themselves on the list'. No, not the hit list, but the 'keep me in mind when Kanae doesn't work out' with the implied 'Foreign Girls rarely work out.'
They're just being friendly, naturally. Just, friendly.
But his patience has been short with them too. He's terse with even them, as they walk away disappointed.
Any one of them might be a Hunter. Any one of them. And he's-
-he's Shinichi Nagisa.
It's lunch time now.
And Shinichi Nagisa has no lunch in hand. Yet he's walking up the stairs to the roof, two at a time, in that long-legged, tall person kind of way.
The rooftop is supposed to be 'off limits'- and with no lunch, that means he's not eating alone, right?
The door isn't chained up today, the chain sagging over a handle as he pushes the door open- and heads onto the roof.
But when anyone looks onto the roof- there's nobody there.
What's going on? Where'd he go?
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoey4W_3bos Taylor Swift - Vigilante Shit
Any one of them might be a Hunter, spear in hand, drawing the angle, arm pulling back...
There's no spear in Isabeau Fontaine's hand, today, and yet she's somehow in all those background shots of Shinichi in the halls. Watching him throw that teammate into an armbar... watching him reject those girls.
(What did he do to --)
She must be interested, even though she's still seeing Yasushi, right? That's got to be why she keeps... coincidentally... being in the same hallway as him. Well, you know what they say about French girls...
... but then it gets to lunchtime, and he doesn't have anything to eat, which must mean he's got something else in mind.
Isabeau can think of more than one normal girl who'd be in trouble; really, she can't not think of that blood.
She's quite tall herself, for a girl in Japan, at five-foot-six; it's no trouble at all for her to take those stairs quickly enough for no one to realise she's breaking the rules.
She slows, though, when she reaches the rooftop exit; deliberately, she takes out an apple, as she steps over the threshold.
Where is she is the first question; who is she comes second.
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
You don't fear the hunter that comes at you with a spear in hand. At least, that's the theory. It's what Kikuno did. And some part of him fears her more than anyone else.
You're supposed to fear the hunter that stays concealed smiling to your face, then stabs you in the back.
It's gone. The object that's tied to this boy's mind. And he has no idea who took it to begin with.
Indeed, Isabeau slows- then steps over the threshold. Step.
Step.
Then a shape, looming above her lets its legs fall from where they're braced up against the wall of the school. Lowering itself down silently with a one armed pull up behind her.
The other arm, has already shut the door.
It sliding into the frame and clicking into place is likely the first sound she hears.
An Abuser - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBXe2EqTik
"Hey, Fontaine-chan." He says, without a single ounce of friendliness, not in his smile or his eyes. "Looking around for the latest hot goss? Or maybe you just wanted to eat lunch with me...?"
He stands between her and the only exit off the roof.
Well... the only easy one.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Green eyes narrow --
-- only to smile, when she turns around. "Oh, Nagisa-san!" She says, and if the honourific sounds a little stilted, well -- she's still learning how to use them. "You already are up here? How good," she means 'fortunate', but she can't get bogged down in vocabulary right now. "Why do we not combine them both!"
She takes a few steps back, to perch on one of the discarded desks, up here, gesturing with her apple. "How was your holiday?" She asks, as if he hadn't beaten her publically.
As if it's normal.
As if she doesn't hate forcing her mouth into a smile with every passing moment.
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
He doesn't respond to her suggestion at first, staying silent up until she asks the question about his Holiday.
"Had a break-in at my place. Something of mine was taken. So I'm in kind of a bad mood."
An intensity to his gaze, to his posture, it's almost palpable to her resonance. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that... huh?"
He doesn't directly accuse her of course, but that's as direct an accusation as it comes in Japan- land of infamous indirectness.
Of course, he doesn't know for certain, but in his paranoia- anyone following him around must be involved.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Oh, no," Isabeau says, and give her some credit -- she manages to sound upset for him. "That is, comment dire... very frightening!" She does remember Kazusa's grief, of course -- but what does the girl expect her to do, leave him to assault however many girls until they conquer his Atelier?!
She has to keep an eye on him. Most of these girls... they don't even have Persona, and some of them are already marked for death.
As she's expressing 'sympathy' for him, then, she's casting a subtle glance back to the back half of the rooftop -- scanning for girls he's chased up here.
She can't see anyone...
"I do not even know where you live," she assures him, when her gaze finds him again. "I have been too busy with Yasushi-kun to bother anyone like that!" And indeed, that is the rumour, they've been getting closer... "Here," she offers, and this, too, is a touch stilted, but perhaps it's just her poor grasp of the language, as she straightens up and starts walking to the door. "I will ask him if he has heard anything..."
If there's no one up here, it should be as simple as warning anyone else from climbing the stairs.
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
"Annoying really." He corrects on the 'very frightening' part- as if to imply he's not scared at all.
"It's a minor inconvenience. But- someone taking what's mine. Well. I can't let that slide."
She's backing up, he's standing in place, there's no wasted movement there. Like a very efficient predator. Even if another target passed in front of him right now, he wouldn't stop his pursuit of this prey.
"Doesn't mean you haven't heard something about it." He notes, at the idea that she has no idea where he lived. It's when she tries to move on by, that his hand grips her upper arm like a vice.
It's like in any Japanese media, if a man grabs your arm as a woman, you must -stop-. Except there's more physical force behind it.
"Let's not bother him with this." He suggests, "I think that'd be better for everyone, don't you?"
And he does not let go.
"In Sumaru City they have their rumormongers. Here? Well... even if you're just some big fat gossip, I bet you still have something you can tell me."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Of course," Isabeau allows, "you would not be scared." And what does that say about her? About girls?
She starts to say, as she passes, "I have not --"
Until -- too close! Wasn't she skirting him well enough?! How did he just reach out and -- "You are hurting me!" Isabeau yelps, and that fear and concern is an entirely different beast to her faux sympathy. "Wh--why should I not bother him?!"
With Shinichi's problem? With Shinichi's manhandling, more like.
Her face flushes with anger as he insults her weight, and she jerks her arm, again. "I have not heard anything!" She insists, hotly, a thread of panic working its way through her. "I bet you just -- just left your window open, you arrogant oaf--!"
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
"Good." Is his terse answer to the idea he's hurting her. "Because this is between you and me." He adds on why not him.
"And I don't want to have to cave his face in because his girl is a rotten little sneak."
But then, as she jerks her arm again and insists she hasn't heard anything, his grip tightens, right before-
-just left your window open-
And his gaze sharpens with a certain anger. "No, not mine. The balcony door. You wouldn't think living on the second floor that you'd need to worry about panty thieves. Especially since the only ones are my moms."
As he then begins to pull her with an easy strength. Certainly she has muscle. Quite a lot of it as an athlete. But there's a rawness to his own. Like it's not even a teenage boy's- it's a teenage boy's without the limitations they place upon themselves to function in society.
And so, he hauls her to the chain link fence then in front of him, pressing her back up against the cold metal of the fence in January as he stares her right in the eye.
"You know I would have thought a fatass like you would be more afraid of heights... All that weight, when you fall, I bet it's that much worse, right? Maybe I underestimated you a little."
A beat.
"... Hunter. But only a little. Even if you're not afraid of climbing up to balconies." There's no vicious grin, no self-satisfaction in a smirk, no- nothing. Just an entirely flat affect.
An emptiness to his wrath, "I bet- you're still afraid of the fall."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Leave him alone!" Isabeau barks. She's on edge enough that she even spills out why: "He's -- he's nice to me."
It feels so pathetic when she says it like that -- someone who isn't laughing at her when Shinichi grabs her this way, who doesn't claim she deserves it.
Not to her face... anyway.
But Isabeau says more than she meant to, feeling too keenly the threat in Shinichi's fingertips. Her eyes widen, when he talks about the balcony door, and she bites out: "H--how would I know that!"
Isabeau, as it happens, is strong. Let alone swinging that racket for hours a day -- she does the kind of climbing that lets her get into second-floor windows so easily. Overhead lifts are just normal, to her. But even with those muscles beneath those layers of fat... a homunculus is something else entirely.
He hauls her into the fence, and she grabs his arms, lips twisting in a snarl which only spreads when he names her.
"Bah! It took you this long to figure it out? That is right, monster. I am a Hunter. Why do you not tell me where you live? I would love to visit you at night! Crush a bronze vial, and plunge my spear straight through your heart!"
We note, here, that Isabeau did not hear Yanagi's warning about a Homunculus's abilities with their coffin.
"You want to drop me? I will drag you to Hell with me, creature. And when you rise unbroken as I bleed, everyone... will... know," she spits out each word with venom, her voice lowering dangerously.
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
"More than a bitch like you deserves." He points out, of a man who's nice to her face. But no guy out there doesn't say more in private, things he'd never say in front of her- at least, in the Homunculus' mind.
'H--how would I know that!'
He doesn't say anything on that remark, he's said enough of what he thinks, even if it's half paranoia.
Expressionless, he stares at her as she boasts of how long it took him to figure things out. That she's a hunter. Her threat.
"But right now." He leans in whispering beside her ear, "You're just a dumb, fat bitch who got caught stalking her prey. ... When she's no hunter, just a dumb, fat bitch."
One hand reaches out to old chain links, rusted from the elements, and pulls. And PULLS-! And there's give, as several points where they connect to the poles come off, curling some as the warped metal attaches to nothing else.
Promise (Reprise) - You Know It. You Love It. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwLvcaDMhU8
"Is that how it'll go?" He asks, as he leans back while still gripping hold of her. "Even if you managed to pull me over with you- all I have to say is you were trying to jump- and I tried to stop you."
His head tilts in a strange way, even as he still looks her in the eyes, "I'll be a hero. Because I tried to keep a tragedy like Suzui-san from happening again. The school will be buy it- because it's so- very easy- to believe a fat bitch like you snapped- and decided to end it all. After all- nobody likes you, Fontaine-chan."
Her shoulder, he pins against the chain link fence, but her opposite can feel no fence behind her.
"It must be so- very lonely being such a rotten bitch all the time. Telling yourself that it makes you better than everyone else because you are. No... I don't think even Yasushi-kun will shed a tear for you. He'll man up... and realize, it was only a matter of time."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
The injury of being called a bitch is one which Isabeau wears silently; even so, there's no mistaking that grimace, her sharp intake of breath.
"D--do not lean in so closely to me!" She breaks that silence to snap at him, jerking back against the fence as she feels his breath at her ear. "If you think I am helpless, you are mistaken! I --"
There -- the rattling -- the whine, as Shinichi shows off his strength, and not even Isabeau is brave enough not to say, "Stop--!!"
He might lean back, but she's still grasping him tightly, and the fear in her eyes is something she covers with her anger. "Do you think they will believe that -- when you walk away as if nothing did happened?! Do you think they will not be suspicious that you are not dead!"
It's easy for her to believe what he's saying, though.
It's true, isn't it?
No one likes her.
She's never needed anyone to like her, she insists, hotly, in her heart, but of course that's a lie. If that were true, she wouldn't have a boyfriend... and even he, Shinichi insists, won't care.
She catches a glance behind her, calculates the distance, the velocity, points of arrest...
She feels terribly cold, in the wind up here.
He might really kill her, she thinks, as her stomach knots. She hisses, on the heels of it: "What do you want, thing?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
"That's really what you're worried about?" As he leans in, looking her right in the eye, "Let me tell you something... there's nothing sexual about this. Even if you were a looker- rather than some fat pig, I still wouldn't do anything like that to you."
There's no smile, no smirk, no chuckle, no nothing.
"It's about who I am... Shinichi Nagisa. I'm a looker- a man's man. I don't need to rape anybody to get some."
Do you think they will believe that -- when you walk away as if nothing did happen?
"Of course they will. Your fat ass cushioned my fall. People will believe that shit any day of the week."
Because media makes people believe such things are truly possible. That miracles can happen.
They'll hope a miracle occurred here on this roof-
-but of course, none ever did.
His hand pins her for a time longer, as she hisses asking what he wants. And he looks down below, as if assessing his chances.
"What do I want? ... to drop you."
And there's a tense moment, where it might seem like he actually might do it. "To see the look in your eyes as you realize how helpless you are to stop the inevitable. That's what I want."
But then... his grip relaxes, but he doesn't let go. "But there are too many people right now who might see, if I did that. Enough that maybe- I wouldn't get away with it."
So instead, he gives her that flat, cold look, "So I want you instead to tell all the hunters out there- there's only one way I'll make peace. That I'll let it all slide."
And now his grip instead shifts to her hair, as he grabs a whole mass of it and twists it painfully. As he looms so close that the tip of his nose almost touches hers.
"RETURN IT. Then walk away. Or I will kill- ALL OF YOU- not while you're Hunters- but while you're dumb fat bitches sleeping helplessly in your beds. Do you UNDERSTAND me?"
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
'That's really what you're worried about?', he asks, as if every girl wouldn't worry about something like this. "You think you are so big!" She snaps, bile in her throat. "You do not understand human feelings at all! Or... am I giving you too much credit, monster?" The possibility just makes her more incensed. "Of course. Men always say it is not rape when they do not care to count it."
Maybe, Isabeau thinks, he knows just what he's doing to Kanae.
She'll kill him for that.
"Do not count on landing on top of me so easily!" She snaps, but even as she does, she's running through the possibilities. She probably orients in freefall better than him -- but he's not human --
He says he wants to drop her, and she feels sick; and try as she might to keep it from her eyes, it's right there, writ large across them.
She is human; she is afraid.
When his grip relaxes, she jerks to the side -- trying to get away from that hole in the fence. "You will not get away with it," she says, with venom. "I promise you that."
Tell the Hunters, he says -- and she wonders, with a stab of panic, whether her allies have encountered him already. It's just as she realises he must not be referring to the class of Persona-Users that --
"Eeeyowh!" --
-- he FISTS HER HAIR, her neck wrenching painfully as she's yanked. "Do I look like I have anything you want?!" Her voice raises, as she shoves at him. "Let me go, you wretched thing! Ow! All right, all right! Whatever it is, I will let myself know, just let me go!"
<Pose Tracker> Shinichi Nagisa has posed.
It stings, her words. Even if he doesn't physically react. So he draws from a memory of Shinichi Nagisa, years ago- while he was...
"I understand enough that you're trying your damndest not to cry in front of me right now. To put on a brave face because you don't want even something like me to see it."
He prods.
"But even if you don't. I'll know some part of you really wants to. To collapse. To be weak. To be protected."
He whispers to her, "All girls do. And you're no different from them. But shhh." He puts a finger to his lips, "It'll be our little secret. Hey- that'll be my way as a guy, of protecting you too."
Even his insight into humans, he uses only for violence, to twist the knife.
"Won't I?" He whispers again, to getting away with it, "... Won't I?" He echoes it again.
But as she raises her voice, and shoves at him, demanding he let her go, "No. Since I can't drop you... there's only one thing you have that I want."
He says with an almost clinical tone now, despite the anger still present in his tone, "Make the smart decision. You say 'myself'... as if you're the only one..."
Letting go of her hair abruptly, he shoves her, trying to push her off-balance to the concrete of the rooftop as he alights on the gap he's created int he fence, "... but you're not the only one I know of, Fontaine-chan. You'd do well to remember that."
Then, without any warning, he grips the edge of the ledge, and swings over it down to a third floor classroom window, sliding it open, and ducking inside.
"-whoa! Did you actually climb the school? Dude that's badass-" Isabeau can hear a male voice.
Before another female voice pipes up. "That's so reckless! It has to be against the rules!"
Another girl's voice, "So cool though-"
The window slides shut, leaving Isabeau alone on the roof, while the monster receives accolades from his underclassmen.
Underclassmen who would not desire to speak to Isabeau- their senpai, if they could help it.
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Shut up!" Isabeau snaps, but she might as well have told him he's right -- even as she insists to herself that she's not going to cry, she won't cry.
Her face is hot for -- for normal reasons -- she's angry, okay?! Shut up!
"You... you do not know anything!", Isabeau lies, as easily as she breathes. Of course he's wrong! She tells herself, sternly. She's strong! She doesn't need anyone! And this monster -- is just -- "Do not do me any favours!"
Her face twists, as she insists: "I will make sure you do not!"
But yanking her like that, there's little she can do to avoid being thrown to the ground -- though at least she knows how to fall well.
'Don't interrupt the enemy when he's making an error', was it? That sounds like something her father would say... if the fake Shinichi thinks all Persona-Users are Hunters, all the better, right? Still, her hands curl, against the concrete. "Sure," she says, and her throat feels dry.
As he swings over the edge, and everyone celebrates him for the same habits which get her maligned as a Witch...
"S-shut up," Isabeau chokes out, in French, shifting to her knees as she rubs her damp eyes with her fall-reddened hands.
"I'm not... crying."
Snf...