2026-09-17: Contents Of The Heart
- Log: Contents of the Heart
- Cast: Kanae Fuyuki, Isabeau Fontaine
- Where: Aoyama-Itchome Station
- OOC Date: September 17, 2026
- IC Date: January 11, 2013
- Summary: Kanae and Isabeau infiltrate Shinichi's Atelier. The horrors within go beyond bickering, and they fundamentally differ on some important matters. Nevertheless, they work together. CW: Horror, gore, misogyny.
(|========================== Aoyama-Itchome Station ==========================|)
-==================================================== Tokyo/Aoyama-Itchome ====-
A crowded train station leads to sunny streets and colorful businesses, but this
is an illusion of freedom. Your perspective narrows as you continue to walk, no
matter whether you turn down the main walk or cut through the alleyways. Darker
shadows line the way, past the temptation of vending machines, as the gates and
higher walls of the building come into view.
March along with your fellow students to your destination, some few of whom
understand that society forces them to consign themselves each day to
imprisonment. The kanji for 'Shujin' in local prep school Shujin Academy means
'Utmost Excellence,' but it also sounds like the word for 'Prisoner.' That
wordplay is all too apt, concealing in plain sight the fact that you are a
prisoner here for six days a week and the majority of your waking hours...
And then you go home.
MONAD: A party led by Kanae Fuyuki has begun the event Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho.
(|============= Monad - Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho ==============|)
-==== Round 1 - Challenge Level 2 ===========================================-
| Card: In These Halls, Terror |
| Approach Options: Academics or Proficiency |
| Conditions: Ineptitude - Proficiency Down L2, Shuffle - Draw 1 Minor |
| Arcana., and Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjYxvF-J7Fo
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
You appear in what looks like a darkened school hallway. Shine some light on
a bulletin board though and you can see that this is actually Our Lady of
the Holy Stoat Middle School, in the town of Mikage-Cho.
But it looks like it's been abandoned for months. The only light on down the
hallway flickers pathetically every so often, the classroom doors won't
open, and even if forced open, one runs into a great barricade of debris
behind each of them.
With whispers and whimpers behind them, shushes and calls for quiet. One may
see why in short order. Flegmat Humors wander these halls, mumbling, their
forms taking the shape of huge sickly Oni with unkempt purple manes,
dragging clubs behind them. Dog-headed ones half their size flanking them.
They look like demons- demons from that time, but warped, as if to fit some
half-remembered watercolor of them.
If you listen to their mumbles long enough, you may pick out the words for
'Filial Piety' and 'Divine Punishment' at least, as they wander the
labyrinthine halls, eyes glassy. If one enters their field of vision, then
they freeze, then begin to charge, screaming expletives and swinging their
clubs wildly.
In order to get past them, you must expertly navigate these halls through
the occasionally posted, confusing floor plans, keeping out of sight.
Of course, you could just fight them, but that'd be an exhausting slog, and
energy you can't afford to expend here at the beginning.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Go to the internet cafe, log into the site, and...
Once more, Kanae Fuyuki and Isabeau Fontaine stride into a dungeon. Once more, the Hunters hunt. ...But this time, it's different; their relationship is different, for one. And their relationship to the owner of this Atelier is very different.
Kanae draws her hat down, and narrows her eyes at what she sees, at the drip drip dripping of this place.
A darkened school hallway... a bulletin board. "...Guess it's a Christian school," Kanae comments. But the abandoned look--the flickering lights...
Whispers, shushes, calls for quiet. Kanae sees an Oni--and darts around a corner. Demons... but warped.
"Sight lines," Kanae comments. "If we can see them, they can see us. We need to get around them--use our other senses."
"...Bet I can stay quieter," she murmurs.
She's not going to fight. She's going to use her brain.
Though her gunblade is at the ready... Just in case.
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has acted with Film Talk toward In These Halls, Terror! Smarts and Efficient!
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"Why are we back in middle school?", is the first thing Isabeau asks -- in French, naturally.
Didn't you know?
She was living in Mikage-Cho, during the incident...
In her longcoat, slung over one arm, she scowls. "Catholic," she corrects her, sharply. "Saint Hermelin isn't really a Christian name. And these flyers..." She scowls, as she examines them. "... they don't describe any activities we had."
'We?'
"Bah," she snorts, when Kanae points out sight lines. "The most basic of the basic tenets... of course I won't forget! If this is anything like it was -- follow me."
Isabeau doesn't need a floor plan, after all... if she attended this school herself.
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has acted with Trapper's Tactics toward In These Halls, Terror! Focus and Patra!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== In These Halls, Terror - Round 1 ======================================- Kanae Fuyuki Academics Success Film Talk Smarts and Efficient Fatigue: 0 Morale: 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Isabeau Fontaine Academics Success Trapper's Tactics Focus and Patra Fatigue: 0 Morale: 2 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Ineptitude-2, Shuffle: Wand-0, and Stupor-2 Final Conditions: Ineptitude-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 1/6 |= | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Kanae is also speaking in French, for Isabeau's benefit. She uses it often enough at home, these days. But Isabeau corrects her; Catholic rather than Christian. It seems a fine distinction to Kanae, but it's right, so she doesn't argue it. "Right." Pause. "...Hm. Makes sense, though--this is like, some sort of twisted reflection, isn't it? It's made up of Shinichi's impulses, not the real place."
But, as it happens--the floor plan is the same. Isabeau knows, and Isabeau leads the way. Kanae, as it happens, is even quieter--so she wins that one.
...But Isabeau also knows the way, and as a result...
"...So you went here too," Kanae comments softly when they're out of danger. "Did you know him?"
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has drawn a new Challenge!
(|============= Monad - Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho ==============|)
-==== Round 2 - Challenge Level 2 ===========================================-
| Card: The Future Promise I Walked By, Missing |
| Approach Options: Academics or Charm |
| Conditions: Bothersome - Charm Down L1, Ineptitude - Proficiency Down L2, |
| and Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
Once out of the school, a little origami angel-spirit floats towards you to
get your attention. Those familiar will recognize it as a part of Peacock
Silk Navigator Yanagi Nagisa's Persona, Giselle. Once it has your attention,
it floats away, appearing and disappearing, to guide you in a certain
direction.
Soon enough, it brings you to Yanagi herself, resplendent in her
brilliantly-colored Transmutation with her rainbow skirts, sunset pink hair,
and peacock green eyes. She smiles at you as her needle-limbed Persona
pirouettes behind her, and points towards a particularly thick patch of fog.
"Over there is St. Hermelin High School. Use it for a secret passage to the
core of this Atelier," she tells you.
So you go... but the fog doesn't lighten any. In fact, it gets only thicker
and colder... until...
"HEE-HO!" "HEE-HO!" "HEE-HOHOHO, WE GOT 'EM NOW, BOYS!"
Several misshapen Jack Frost Humors leap up to surround your group and
freeze the ground beneath your feet solid!! The slick footing makes it near
impossible to fight back effectively as they swoop in to attack--but the
suddenness also means it's not an even freeze. If you can identify a solid
enough launching point, maybe you can use the ice in your favor to make a
hasty getaway. Otherwise, maybe you can (ahem) /snow/ these Frosts by
complimenting them on how sneaky their ambush was?
Either way, afterwards, one of those little origami spirits floats down
before you and unfolds into animation paper that displays the following
message:
/Sorry, the high school was a lie. Good luck! <3/
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"I don't know if he remembers me," Isabeau scowls. "They decided I was a 'Witch' out here... so I can't account for sticking in his head. The fake doesn't know, certainly. But there was a gas leak, three... I suppose now it's four years ago? You know how these stupid people insist on using gas to heat everything? Back then, the high school had a really serious gas leak... everyone who was around got messed up. Tchah, even my step-grandmother... if he wandered into the high school, maybe his head was cooked. It would explain a lot."
But there -- Kanae will have to introduce the spirit, because Isabeau tries to stab it. "Do not sneak up on us!" She chastises Yanagi, in stilted Japanese, as if that were her fault. But the high school -- "... bah, his head was very cooked?" She wonders, and then adds, to the woman, sharply: "Think not of that."
In they go, through the fog... as it clings to their skin, sinking in through the layers of Isabeau's vest and coat, causing her to only make the situation worse with fogged breath spiralling through the chill.
But the cold isn't just in the air... it's in the ground. "Trap!" Isabeau barks -- in French, again -- as that chorus of HEE-HO echoes through the air; her warning may well let Kanae leap free, as she does, in the tiny window they have before all the ground freezes.
"Kill them!" She declares, and cares not for what label the Humour is plastered with as she does. 'Friendly' Humours are as easily killed... and ought to be. Running? No.
Violence.
Though it's violence she needs to be constantly thinking about, with the slippery footing...
And so, the origami spirit appears again, and --
"I'LL SHOVE THIS SPEAR STRAIGHT UP YOUR --!!"
Luckily, she snaps this in French, so it's probably unintelligible.
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has acted with Trapper's Tactics toward The Future Promise I Walked By, Missing! Focus and Patra!
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
A 'witch'... Kanae doesn't show sympathy; it's the wrong time, and it would just annoy Isabeau. A 'gas leak' though gets Kanae to lift an eyebrow. "Right,' she says. "...I guess."
Kanae throws her hand out in front of Isabeau. "Hold on," she says. "It's not an enemy--and you couldn't hit it anyway."
It seems familiar to her... and when they reach Yanagi, there they go. "Secret passage, huh...?"
Kanae nods. "Thanks."
Kanae keeps her weapon at the redy as they go, because the fog is getting worse by the moment. The chill doesn't bother her, but the lack of visibility does--until suddenly Isabeau barks trap, and Kanae leaps free.
"Isabeau!" ...But there's no getting Isabeau out of her rage. Kanae considers a moment--
Well, Leshy resists Ice anyway.
So Kanae takes her position afar, watching a moment as isabeau fights. It might seem that Kanae has left Isabeau to die, for a bare moment.
Only a moment. "VALKYRIE!" Kanae shouts, and slams down into the ice, shattering it around her.
Her Persona appears, and her blades cascade all around, inflicting panic on the Jack Frosts. Or, well... 'Jack Frosts'.
"Keep them off of me," Kanae directs Isabeau, "And I'll take them all down!"
A shattering of the walls between identities, and Kanae crushes her gold dust again. "OROBAS!"
The flames dance through at the horse-demon's command. "..I saw an action movie with a sequence on ice."
When they get the note...
"She's got an angle," Kanae says to forestall Isabeau's anger, to help mollify her. "Let's find out what it is."
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has acted with Film Talk toward The Future Promise I Walked By, Missing! Smarts and Efficient!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== The Future Promise I Walked By, Missing - Round 2 =====================- Kanae Fuyuki Academics Success Film Talk Smarts and Efficient Fatigue: 0 Morale: 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Isabeau Fontaine Academics Success Trapper's Tactics Focus and Patra Fatigue: 0 Morale: 4 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Bothersome-2, Ineptitude-1, and Stupor-2 Final Conditions: Stupor-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 2/6 |== | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Kanae retreats, but that's just fine; the monsters have revealed themselves, and now fall to her spear, and all is good in creation. "COME!" She hollers, as the Jack Frosts squark "HOO?!", not expecting their snacks to turn around and bite back. She has to wrap her legs around a glassless inner window to bend backwards and stab one of those horrible little creatures with her spear collapsed to a knife; she shoves the grip into her mouth, as she presses her hands to the ground, feeling through her protective gloves for the place where the ice is thinner against the join of the wall, and grips it as she pushes herself up into a vicious handstand which sends her off to the other side of the hall -- one leg braced up against the wall as the other slides into the place where the slippery floor joins it.
There, Kanae summons her courage -- to hear Isabeau tell it -- and burst in with panic and flame. "... all right," she snarls, as she shoves her knife back in its holsters for a moment. "It's time! Mielikki!"
Isabeau, as it happens, uses drugs. Crushing a bronze vial in a hand, that waspish, vexing fairy rises, to weave the protection of the forest around Kanae. Two of the Jacks Frost (if we use both pluralisations we can maximise how wrong we are!) try to pincer her, only to be consumed in Orobas' flame -- and a third doesn't even manage to get through his, "ULTIMATE ICE PIERCING ICICLE ATTACK--!!" before the horse takes him down, too.
The last of those Humours, afflicted by Valkyrie's panic, scrambles down the hall -- and it's too slippery for Isabeau to pursue. Once they're out of the arena, at least, the ground becomes a little more stable...
"You're not bad when you actually try," Isabeau supposes, shrugging a shoulder. "Perhaps movies are good research material..."
But Kanae insists Yanagi has an angle, as Isabeau expands her spear to brandish it at the spirit, and Isabeau snaps back: "She can have this angle if I have anything to say about it!" A wave of that spear indicates just how sharp that angle is. "Bah... but you want to know what she's on about? Fine."
Isabeau scowls, as she stalks forward. "Are you sure that's even Nagisa-san...? The one I met was actually helping us..."
... there she goes, using honourifics again.
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has drawn a new Challenge!
(|============= Monad - Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho ==============|)
-==== Round 3 - Challenge Level 3 ===========================================-
| Card: To Gamble on Your Future, Know What You Are Willing to Lose |
| Approach Options: Proficiency or Academics |
| Conditions: Bless - +1 to Group Roll (Per Character), Ineptitude - |
| Proficiency Down L2, Shuffle - Draw 1 Minor Arcana., Stupor - Academics |
| Down L1, and Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
While traveling the cognitive Mikage-Cho, you pass through the Atelier's
version of the Mikage Sun Mall. The exterior is dilapidated, and within,
most of the stores have been looted and burned out. Hostile Humors lurk, but
there's one storefront that's still solid and thus defensible: the chain
casino, Judgment 1999. You sneak in to wait for a chance for the enemies to
thin and pass through the mall.
As you wait, you see inside that most of the gambling machines are broken,
save one: Code Breaker. In this game, you guess numbers for prizes, and the
more you guess correctly, the better the prize you get. But beware, for if
you fail to guess /any/ numbers correctly, you'll have to fight through a
swarm of Coleric Humors to flee the mall...
Use your smarts to calculate the odds. Otherwise, luck is also a skill!
OOC: The "numbers" are based on total successes vs. failures, including the
overall success/failure! The prizes can be items, money, weapons, or armor,
based on your preference; feel free to use this to justify an upgrade.
Contact Shinichi's player for a guideline of what you might win, or else
just go for money.
If everyone succeeds, you win a super premium prize! If there are more
successes than failures, you get a good prize! If there's an equal number of
successes to failures, you get a decent prize! If you get more failures than
successes, you get a mediocre prize! And if everyone fails, well... Better
hope you don't...
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Kanae would say, instead, that she was analyzing the enemy's capabilities. Their lack of area attacks meant that she could afford to switch to an ice-weak Persona, knowing Isabeau's defensive capabilities.
Is she really willing to trust her life to that girl...?
Jacks Frost are jacked up. "Heh," Kanae says, and her mask shatters again as she returns her Persona to Leshy--her baseline. "They can be. ...But when I can work with a group, my flexibility goes a long way."
Still, Isabeau mentions an angle--but... hmm. "No, I'm not," Kanae admits. "But I suspect it was. ...Well, whatever. We'll find out one way or another. It's Shinichi who matters to us right now."
Pause. "It's weird when you use honorifics," she comments, then turns on her heel and keeps walking.
Cognitive Mikage-cho stretches on ahead, and Kanae spots a mall. Being a red-blooded teenage girl, she is interested. She glances in... "Hmm. Might be something useful in here," she comments, still in French--and then steps inside. She sneaks through. "We can use that one as a defense point..."
But soon: Code Breaker. "...Numbers for rpizes, huh..."
Kanae glances at Isabeau. "Let's do it. I might be able to get a new Persona out of this."
Why not? It's possible.
"I've seen tons of heist movies--the trick is to count what you see, and what's not there, because they don't always re-use it. So, if we can calculate..."
Let's find out!
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has acted with Film Talk toward To Gamble on Your Future, Know What You Are Willing to Lose! Smarts and Efficient!
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Isabeau does a lot of analysing the enemy's capabilities herself, despite people thinking she's a hothead...
"I work better alone," Isabeau insists, despite her healing-defensive capabilities -- some of them simply don't work on herself! "But in this case... I can facilitate you."
She points out the target, and Isabeau's expression darkens. "... yeah. He's trapped in here... bah. As if I'd let it eat him!" But what's eating her?
"... euh... Yasushi-kun gets upset when I don't," she brushes her honourifics off, a touch awkwardly.
But there -- the mall. The mall, with doors blocked, as if it had been shut down for months. A sign hangs from one nail from the wood: 'BUILDING CONDEMNED'. The date is illegible.
"Tchah!" Isabeau spits, as they fail to open. "Don't be thwarted so easily! This old place is easily scaled!" She grabs the pole and shimmies up it, to flip onto the upper awning at the front of the mall -- and she makes it look so easy...
But luckily, it's easier to climb in through an upper window when someone's showing you where to go. "... seeing it like this is freaky," Isabeau admits, rubbing at her exposed arm, as they step through the internals. "-- wait, there! --"
That's the sound of Isabeau spying a Humour, and going to stab the Humour. Don't worry about it. Soon enough, they come to Judgment 1999, and Isabeau scowls up at it. "... his parents lost enough money in this damn place," she spits, stormy. "You know -- Taikou -- uh, Taikou-san." Her stepfather, she means; the only father Kanae would remember her having. "He told me these places are usually illegal fronts for their gangs and the like, but he was never brave enough to tell them that... bah."
She shakes her head, as she investigates the machines. "Broken. Broken. Broken... hm? You think? Bah... fine. Let's see you do it!"
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has acted with Parkour Everywhere toward To Gamble on Your Future, Know What You Are Willing to Lose! Specialty!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== To Gamble on Your Future, Know What You Are Willing to Lose - Round 3 =- Kanae Fuyuki Academics Success Film Talk Smarts and Efficient Fatigue: 0 Morale: 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Isabeau Fontaine Proficiency Success Parkour Everywhere Specialty Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Bless-0, Ineptitude-2, Shuffle: Cup-0, Stupor-1, and Stupor-2 Final Conditions: -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 3/6 |=== | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Isabeau insists it, and Kanae shrugs. "I like having strategic options, personally." Pause. "...Thanks."
She'll let Isabeau have the win for now--especially since a few moments later... Well, before that, "I don't plan to let it, either. We'll take it out first. And then it'll see about underestimating us--in its last moments."
It might be said that it'll be its... last surprise. No? Wrong theme?
But Yasushi, "Does he? ...Guess it's nice he's trying to help you fit in," she says. She remembers how Isabeau reacted when she worried over him...
Besides, if she wants a boyfriend, it's a better option than the one she's got.
"You sure it won't collapse beneath you?" Kanae wonders. But then, Kanae watches Isabeau go... and 'hmms'. "It's pretty freaky," she agrees.
Kanae lets Isabeau do the stabbing while she handles the sneaking for the moment. And indeed--Judgement 1999.
"Yeah? That sucks," she says. "If you want to gamble, you can't offer more than you're willing to lose. That's 101."
Then, "...This is probably a front for something, but who cares?"
DING DING DING. Kanae acquires a bunch of cards marked 'Temperance'. "I can get a great Persona with these."
She grins. "C'mon, let's go. I gotta see Igor later."
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has drawn a new Challenge!
(|============= Monad - Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho ==============|)
-==== Round 4 - Challenge Level 2 ===========================================-
| Card: In This Place of Healing, I Know Only How to Harm |
| Approach Options: Guts or Proficiency |
| Conditions: Clumsy - Proficiency Down L1 and Terrifying - Guts Down L2 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
Eventually you come to a towering hospital, shrouded in mist. A single
window on the third floor flickers with a glowing shade of crimson,
eternally lit in the night.
Pushing into the lower floor of the hospital are Coleric Humors, in the
shapes of zombies, easily dispatched. What's more disturbing though is what
occurs as one pushes into a treatment room, or an operating theater.
Hulking Melanc 'Orderlies' wearing purloined patchwork pads that look like
sporting equipment are merciless torturing Sanguine Humors strapped down to
some treatment tables, every single one a girl dressed in patient gowns,
missing some part of their features.
Some their eyes, some their mouth. Inevitably something is missing upon
them, as if lost to time. They poke and prod, and sometimes beat them with
sticks, injecting them with chemicals, or even just emotionally berating
them.
Under the influence of the Homunculus, the Melanc Humors have become barely
articulate monsters, who grunt out only single word invectives against them.
"Stupid."
"Bitch."
"Parasite."
The Sanguine Humors, once powerful beings in their own right are mostly
barely sensate from the pain of their torment, but some of them manage to
turn their heads your way, pleading without words- not for themselves, but
for the salvation of this place from its new master.
It would be simplest to just use the fact the Melanc Humors are preoccupied
to sneak by, these are only Shadows after all. Saving the Atelier will save
them right? That is, if you can manage to look the other way...
But if provoked to try to save them, the Melanc Shadows howl like beasts,
more vicious than they ought to be slavering as they pounce onto you,
swinging a stick the size of a person like a bludgeon.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"I'll make it pay," Isabeau promises. "It hit me. It dangled me off the rooftop! It pulled my hair!"
... which means she's encountered it again, huh?
Of Yasushi, "... he's making efforts," she insists, a touch defensively, and that's that.
"Do you think this is my first rodeo?" Isabeau asks, when Kanae wonders about the structural integrity. "Look -- listen -- feel. Press your weight slowly into a fraught foothold, and test it. Move quickly along unsteady beams to distribute your weight across it. There are many ways to navigate a condemned building."
But then, the gambling -- "What are you prepared to lose?" Isabeau wonders, arms crossed, as she leans against the machine. Ding ding ding...!
"Euh? What'd you get?" Huffy as she is, Isabeau can't cap her curiosity, as she leans over to peek at the jackpot. "'Temperance'...? Ha! That would be you!"
She's saying that Kanae is a middle sliders dweeb. Rude.
Getting out is as much of a process as getting in -- and it's no easier when they get to the hospital. "This isn't right," Isabeau scowls, as they make their way inside the dark foyer, what ought to have been an information desk now fouled by the flayed skin of a Sanguine Humour pinned to each of its edges. On the skin is carved a map, red flecks of blood still leaking from the places where it's been separated with surgical precision, a pile of surgical sponges rising on the desk where a computer ought to be where someone has carefully, considerately mopped up even more blood... still dripping, down the side of the desk.
"What sick garbage is this?" Isabeau claps a hand over her mouth, as she draws closer to it, and realises what it is. "This is... wait, look. Those numbers... they're room numbers. This is a map... someone made a map, out of... eugh..."
Isabeau ducks behind the desk, with retching noises, and that at least the camera does not capture. No, instead, as they use its guidance to move through the low levels of the hospital...
... how did they get to that point?
It is made clear by surgery commenced without anaesthesia nor count, as a Melanc Orderly patiently carves a girl's face from her head. "Slut," it grunts, as it works. "Slut. Slut. Slut."
The Sanguine Humour looks to Kanae and Isabeau, for a moment, with a desperate expression -- before the knife carves up over her ear.
Isabeau does not think, in the moment, whether removing a girls' face is possible. What she does instead is to draw her knife from its holding-place, expanding the spear out. "DIE, MONSTER!" She screams, as she throws it forward -- right between the monsters' shoulder-blades.
Summoning Mielikki, she weaves a protective spell around Kanae -- while Isabeau charges in to retrieve that spear.
... at some point in the melee, she'll take the moment to end the Sanguine Humour's life, too.
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has acted with Guts toward In This Place of Healing, I Know Only How to Harm! Base!
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
"...So that's how that went down," Kanae murmurs. "On the roof..."
She heard about an incident--but there...
But he's maiing efforts. There's that. "I guess not," Kanae says. "Though I have trouble imagining you at a real rodeo..."
Isabeau wonders--and Kanae looks sidelong at her. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She seems deadly serious about that much.
Temperance! "Balance is an important concept," Kanae says with a shrug back. "I need Personas with various traits in order to have enough tactical options to win any battle. ...Because they will be tested."
But the hospital is here. It indeed isn't right. Kanae's nose wrinkles, her expression twisting with disgust. All this blood... All this skin.
"I don't know," Kanae answers, and shifts her scarf up above her mouth and nose. She doesn't throw up, like Isabeau seems to--but she hates this. And there... Room numbers.
"It's wrong," Kanae says. "...It's sick. it's--"
It grunts words. ...It moves. Isabeau and Mielikki They rush into battle. Kanae narrows her eyes.
"...The ones who aren't too far gone... We spare them," she directs. "They're supposed to be here. The Sanguins. This is where they belong."
"But the rest... These 'surgeons'..."
Kanae lowers her mask. She stares out at the monsters now charging in around them. Her eyes are pinpricks.
"Per..." Blood drips. "So..." Skin falls, where it was carved. "Na."
Blue light BURSTS from Kanae's position, and ice shreds down the corridors up and down.
"Crush them."
Like Isabeau, Kanae is capable of terrific violence, when pressed.
Unlike her, it's done with a small smile this time.
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has acted with Wild Side toward In This Place of Healing, I Know Only How to Harm! Specialty! (|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== In This Place of Healing, I Know Only How to Harm - Round 4 ===========- Kanae Fuyuki Guts Success Wild Side Specialty Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Isabeau Fontaine Guts Success Guts Base Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Clumsy-2 and Terrifying-2 Final Conditions: Clumsy-1 and Terrifying-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 4/6 |==== | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
Of course the rumours spread.
"I would be great at a rodeo," Isabeau insists. "I could tame any bull."
But Kanae isn't about to reveal all her cards, and Isabeau assures her: "If you won't tell me, I'll just have to find out." Ominous!
"They'll be tested today," Isabeau insists, then. "You'd better keep up." Out of the mall, then, to the hospital, and --
"They're all monsters!" Isabeau protests, when Kanae argues for sparing the Sanguine Humours. "And they're monsters whose purpose in life is to be tortured! How can you defend those -- those things! They're all beasts for the blade!"
Hey, Roger's a Sanguine Humour!! ... then again, have you seen the way Isabeau looks at him...?
... it's clear that Kanae will have to be on her toes, if she wants to keep Isabeau from cleansing this Atelier until it's white and burnt.
But ice explodes from Kanae, and it is not just this Orderly she pierces, like a mouse impaled still living on the butcher-bird's thorny tree. A dozen more doors are blown inwards by the force of her rage -- and the ice finds a dozen more Melanc Humours.
They are left to die slowly, on ice slow to thaw. Isabeau does not bother to carve them down; instead, Mielikki's gentle-clearing light shimmers as another Orderly charges into the room to try and take out Kanae from behind with a club the size of her, before her bear-claws glow with anger and she slashes him into nonexistence.
As they make their way through the cleared hall, then, at each door, they see the Sanguine Humour which was not strung up like her torturer...
"And this one?" Isabeau asks, for each room they pass.
"And this one?"
"And this one?"
Each time they meet a girl strapped to the table -- the same question.
The same motivation.
Universal, uncomplex, complete.
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has drawn a new Challenge!
(|============= Monad - Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho ==============|)
-==== Round 5 - Challenge Level 3 ===========================================-
| Card: Before the Apathy of the World, I Shudder |
| Approach Options: Proficiency or Charm |
| Conditions: Annoying - Charm Down L2, Boss - Add 1 Fatigue on failure., |
| Clumsy - Proficiency Down L1, Ineptitude - Proficiency Down L2, and |
| Terrifying - Guts Down L2 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The elevator is out of order, forcing one to use the stairs to get up to the
third floor.
Once in the hallway, you can see the crimson glow of room 302 peering
through the cracks of the door.
Unfortunately, there's a Melanc Humor in the hallway, nearly three meters
tall, long spindly arms, holding a clipboard, and wearing a white coat- as
it stands over a Faceless Sanguine Nurse, still twitching upon the floor.
Upon his face is a perpetual, tired, apathetic look. "Time of Death, Fifteen
Thirty Two." As he casts Mudoon, and the Sanguine Nurse erupts, becoming a
pool of shapeless Ichor.
He then turns towards your group.
"So sad. So heart-breaking. I need to go on break... but I shouldn't. It's
so busy right now. So many patients are dying who need me to call them. So
little time. So little time."
He then moves forward, creeping on far too long legs, as his eyes glint with
the barest sliver of malice behind their sorrow, "Time of death, Fifteen
Thirty Three." And begins to cast Mudoon at one of you.
A direct fight is extremely dangerous, but unavoidable it would seem. Or is
it? There may be hope in convincing this Melanc Humor to go on break rather
than continue 'working'.
Of course, if you do fight it, it's not so much a matter of powering
through, as avoiding the dangerous Mudoon spell, cast repeatedly long enough
to score a decisive blow.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
"...Yeah, you're an expert at bull," Kanae quips at Isabeau.
In French, naturally.
But Isabeau is sure she'll find out, and Kanae grins back. "Maybe you will." A beat, "Because they will. Don't worry--I can keep up."
And Isabeau protests. "No. This? This isn't their purpose. I won't believe that. That an ordinary person has that in them. ...This is 'its' doing. And I won't do its work for it."
Kanae could make it quick. She doesn't.
But at each door...
"This one," Kanae says.
"This one," she says again, though her voice is tighter, tears at the edges of her eyes at what she sees.
"This one! All of them!" she snaps eventually.
But up the stairs, with no elevator, they are here. They rise upward, and there's a crimson glow: Room 302. But the Melanc Humor in the hallway is huge, standing there with spindly arms. And there, his face is apathetic but his words--
"NO!" Kanae cries, and ther, the Humour is gone. The one who belonged here....
"So sad. So heart-breaking. I need to go on break... but I shouldn't. It's so busy right now. So many patients are dying who need me to call them. So little time. So little time."
There is not a single question in Kanae's mind that they will choose to fight. With isabeau at her side, they could do no other. ...But it's not just Isabeau.
"DOWN!" Kanae calls, and leaps out of the way of the coalescing curses of Mudoon.
It's dangerous. It may be too dangerous. Nevertheless--
"You're going on break, all right," Kanae says as she kips up from where she'd hit the ground. "Forever."
One spell to avoid. One spell to handle. Kanae has nothing that can completely obviate such a spell, so she'll have to rely on conventional defense.
So if it's too powerful to just bring down...
"Leanan Sidhe!" Kanae calls. She starts laying down Submission as the fairy woman whirls into existence, proof of her bond with that woman who told her her heritage was more than just inconvenient.
Then Leshy is back--and with status and spell and endless swings of her gunblade, Kanae fights for their lives.
MONAD: Kanae Fuyuki has acted with Tennis Ace toward Before the Apathy of the World, I Shudder! Focus and Patra!
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
"A monster's purpose is to be a monster," Isabeau snaps back. "If it's so 'natural', why is it all so twisted?! When they're no longer seen by the likes of you and I, that's when these things will be natural!"
She pauses, and adds, scowling: "The other Atelier was still built from Ka-- euh--Motojima-san's interests and beliefs, you know. We can't very well say that Atelier spoke to her soul and insist this cannot be. So which is it? A wretched lie wholesale, or the ugliness of what should not be exposed to air seen through human eyes?"
When she comes to the elevator, she jams her thumb into the button. It glows, dimly... and then, the white backlight turns red. The elevator doors open to reveal it's been converted into a storage room, with IV poles and observation machines and commode chairs shoved in haphazardly. There's no way to remove all the clutter, no way to enter...
... so the stairs will have to do. They're streaked with black, old blood, as if something had been dragged down them forcefully and with no consent at all. "... I am... glad my boots will not remember this," Isabeau manages, a touch halting, as she avoids touching the rusted railing.
(The brilliance of manifested clothes is that they re-manifest fresh every time.)
"Disgusting," Isabeau's lips curl, as they push open the fire exit door, and come face to face with another monster. And there --
Isabeau knows Mudoon; her team are all veterans, having had Personas longer than she's been alive. Realising how close Kanae was to being scourged from the Earth forces her heart into her throat, even as she leaps away from the explosive force, too.
If Kanae dies here -- to this creature, then --
No. Isabeau will not allow it.
"Mielikki," she summons that fairy, again, as she ducks beneath a bed left carelessly in the hall to avoid that overwhelming magic. "You are not the only one with cards," she calls, to Kanae, as she pulls out one of her own -- a Rakunda Card which resonates with Mielikki, as she casts the Spell Card on that spindly, horrific beast.
She has to roll out from under her cover as it's crushed under the weight of the Melanc's power, but as soon as she gets a little ground...
"It's time, Mielikki! Crush it to dust!"
... Isabeau has a hammer, and the hammer is the birth of a little star, 'Megido.' Having shredded its defences, and in a hallway too narrow to facilitate quick dodging for something so big... it's an assault which is more carefully considered than it may seem.
MONAD: Isabeau Fontaine has acted with Proficiency toward Before the Apathy of the World, I Shudder! Base!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|)
-==== Before the Apathy of the World, I Shudder - Round 5 ===================-
Kanae Fuyuki Proficiency Success
Tennis Ace Focus and Patra Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isabeau Fontaine Proficiency Failure
Proficiency Base Fatigue: 2 Morale: 5
-============================ Party Conditions: =============================-
Starting Conditions: Annoying-2, Boss-0, Clumsy-1, Ineptitude-2, and
Terrifying-1
Final Conditions: Annoying-1
-====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====-
-==== Reach: 6/6 |=====| ===================================================-
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
(|============= Monad - Shinichi's Atelier: Cinvat Mikage-Cho ==============|)
-==== Round 6 - Challenge Level 1 ===========================================-
| Card: To Move Forward is to Accept the Weight |
| Approach Options: None |
| Conditions: Revelation - The best result. |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The door knob of Room 302 is warm. A little too warm. Enough to make one
hesitate in worry that there's a fire behind it.
But as it opens, the red is revealed to be countless Higanbana, Red Spider
Lily flowers, lining the floor, the walls, the ceiling of a far too large
room. The walls move as if a sky full of clouds in animation, behind shadowy
bars and crimson blossoms.
In the middle of the room is a hospital bed, with a cocoon whose webbing is
stretched to encircle the bed from so many sides, like a restraint to keep
it there. A monitor floats in space above it, several wires connected to the
Cocoon, with an EKG tracing of beeps that are coming far, too slowly.
There isn't much time left.
A Sanguine Humor lays upon the floor, dying, a crimson blossom clutched in
her hand. Reaching towards you, she offers it, before expiring herself, as
crimson blossoms grow over her, consuming her in a rapid decay.
The Blossom itself will never decay, and has a faint shine to it that would
make any botanist in reality think it's fake, but it can be used for potent
cognitive alchemy to create equipment associated with Death or Rebirth, it's
always either red or white in color. So too can they be traded to the Velvet
Room and Time Castle for a set of powerful Skill Cards related to Light or
Dark.
The room itself shifts, vision narrowing. Now the room itself pulses out of
synch with the electronic beeps on the monitor, quickening. Like a predator
ready for the kill.
The Homunculus is here. Even if you can't see him.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.1 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
"This isn't the human world," Kanae says calmly. "WE..."
But Isabeau has a point she can't refute--interests, beliefs, and the ugliness of the human heart. Kanae thinks back to what Igor and Henry said to her. ...What Henry said, especially. About a saying from his Master's master...
'The face of divine love; the mask of demonic cruelty'.
"No, you're right," Kanae says. "This... is real. This is the fear in Nagisa-kun's heart. ...As that monster seeks to replace him."
She lifts her hand, and her fingers curl into a fist. "We'll save him. We have to. Even if he has something like this inside him..."
"We all have ugly sides, don't we?"
She does.
but there, they reach the elevator, and... "Ugh."
Kanae, too, avoids touching the guardrail. "I feel like that too," she says fo boots remembering. "Super disgusting."
But--
Isabeau will not allow Kanae to fall. And so she doesn't. With their Persona abilities, they cut the enemy down to something clsoer to their level--and from there, they fight. Kanae keeps applying the spells that weaken the Melanc and prevent it wielding its full strength, and more than once Isabeau brings down that glorious hammer.
By the end... They're both up, even if Isabeau has spent most of her stamina. Kanae returns to her 'main' Persona again, and takes a breath. "...In we go," she says.
The doorknob is warm, and Kanae opens it regardless. The light is the spider lilies...
"What the..."
Kanae looks around--and then sees it. A cocoon. It's almost there. "Soon..."
The Sanguine Humor on the floor gets Kanae's attention, and he kneels down. "It's all right," she says gently--but the Humor only presses the glowing crimson blossom into her hands. "You..."
Kanae squeezes her eyes shut, and then opens them again, ready.
"Isabeau," she says. "Miss Sournois..." In French, of course. "She could make us something protective out of this."
"...I'm willing to go to her, if you think it's the best way."
But vision narrows. The place--
"...He's here. I don't know if he's seen us..."
"But let's get out of here, and link up with the others."
"We have our way in."
<Pose Tracker> Isabeau Fontaine has posed.
At first, Isabeau is quiet, as Kanae talks about ugly sides. Then -- "... that 'thing', it's preoccupied with the idea," she volunteers, a touch more quietly. "What I'm hiding... and not only because it knows we took its Thread, though it thinks us all Hunters." Kanae, at least, knows the proper noun.
With her SP reserves depleted, Isabeau chews a chewing soul, as she pauses by the fallen doctor. "Wait..."
Vivienne taught her how to skin a monster for parts; using her knife, it's not so hard to cut away a wicked bone-saw and find that what's beneath isn't merely a handle but a gun, as if the imagination of this place were thinking of all the cruelest ways to end a life.
Being waylaid by that does mean that Kanae is first in the room, though -- and surely she's kinder with that floral gift than Isabeau would have been. "I'll trade you," she issues her, as she hands over the Saw Gunblade. "Something like this... the Time Count will be interested in it, too. I told you, didn't I?"
Beat.
"You're not the only one with cards."
... why doesn't Isabeau want Vivienne to know she was in here...?
The monitor beeps, slowly, and Isabeau scowls as she looks over the sick decorations of the room. "Tchah... I should rip him out right now," she insists. "Why wait for them? They'll only slow me down!" A light pause, and, "... though, you said that sickly woman was his sister, didn't you... bah, fine."
Reluctantly, Isabeau leaves this wretched place -- before she can be reminded of just how strong a Homunculus is, in its seat of power.