2026-09-27: Reliable Allies
- Log: Reliable Allies
- Cast: Kanae Fuyuki, Coin
- Where: Shibuya Station - Buchiko Exit
- OOC Date: September 27, 2026
- IC Date: January 16, 2013
- Summary: It started with a missing hat... Kanae meets Coin, and Coin makes a friend.
(|====================== Shibuya Station - Buchiko Exit ======================|)
-====================================================== Tokyo/Shibuya Ward ====-
Day in, day out, throngs of people choose to pack themselves inside shining
metal behemoths called "trains" that then hurtle them towards a set destination.
They then get out at these "station" nodes, acting as if it were entirely
normal! This particular one is a confusing, winding labyrinth that seeks to
distract them from escape with underground malls, juice stands, and offers of
gainful employment. Eventually, one solves the maze and ascends to see the
sunlight once more.
The square above is just as full of humanity, from down-on-their-luck teen
buskers looking for their big break, politicians in front of restored train cars
making speeches that speak to the history of this place, and even smoky booths
cordoned off by glass to make certain no one should suffer from their vice. A
statue of the loyal pup Buchiko stands here enshrined like a local god,
surrounded constantly by tourists. Go further, and you'll see the busy checkered
crosswalks and looming screens above that demand the attention from all who
pass, showing them what the powers that be demand they focus upon.
Welcome to Shibuya.
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
For some reason, Kanae Fuyuki is a little less inclined to be in predictable places at the Dark Hour these days. She should probably be at home; she has school the next day. but she isn't, instead still being out in Shibuya when the dark hour hits. She'd just come out of a movie...
But now, Kanae is in Hunter's garb, with a jagged saw of a gunblade in hand, stepping around blood puddles and through the green-tinged night. She cuts a dark figure, albeit not a tall figure. And just now, she's come out of Central Street and here towards the statue of Buchiko. She comes to a stop at the plaza nearby, looking around past the various coffins still out at this hour.
...But no Homunculi, so there's that?
"Gonna be a pain to get back..."
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
There's no homonculi. But...
The quiet of the Dark Hour is interrupted, as it sometimes is, by Shadows. Most common in the Dark Hour are mindless shadows, but these are more embodied. In fact, they're a trio that Kanae might be familiar with!
A Pyro Jack floats by, followed by the less common Jack Ripper (a little fellow in a trenchcoat, wielding an old-style and dangerous-looking straight razor), and finally there's a Jack Frost bringing up the rear.
But this Jack Frost is wearing a hat with a feather on it. It looks sort of like the ones Cait Siths wear, but not quite; this feather is bright green and faintly iridescent.
"Run, hee ho!"
"We can lose her if we get into the station!"
"Hey, who's this other hee-hunter?"
(The Jack Ripper doesn't say anything. He rarely does.)
A few moments later, and there's another voice: "Hey! Come back!" A beat, then: "I hear someone! Stop those Jacks!! I'm almost there...!"
Who's calling is not obvious, but - well, it *sounds* like a person, and not a demon, at least...?
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Kanae is familiar with these guys! She even has a pact with Jack Frost, through which she received a very special Skill Card. She has it on her Persona now! ...But that's not the point. Pyro Jack floats by...
And another Jack, with Jack Frost. Kanae lifts an eyebrow. Demons in the Dark Hour aren't unheard-of, but she doesn't see them that often around here.
That's a nice hat, though. And indeed--Kanae intuits what's just happened from what the demons have to say and the person in the background...
So Kanae turns, dropping the tip of her saw gunblade into the ground. It's a terrifying-looking weapon, with rust and old blood in the crevices, despite being otherwise new.
"Now, now," Kanae says, and lifts the brim of her cap to reveal her dark eyes.
"Stealing isn't nice, Jack. You're not going anywhere right now."
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
"It's no fair! You're ganging up on us!"
"We'll just have to keep going, hee-ho!"
Jack Ripper still doesn't say anything, but he flips his razor open.
Despite their bravado, they don't especially want to fight. It shows in the way they stand (or, well, in one case float); they have a prize and they want to get away with it, but they're being challenged. It's harder to get past than they'd like, especially with that menacing gunblade-saw readied... The hat's a little battered, too, there's two holes where the blue hood the Jack Frost still has on underneath is visible through it.
"Hold, thief!"
And then... someone else drops down from above.
Whoever it is is a blur of colour, at first, red and white and black, who drops onto the Jack Frost, the two of them rolling in the greenlit night in a wrestling match. Whoever it is isn't much bigger than a Jack Frost, either...
"I'm the mascot! I deserve the hee-hat!" the Jack Frost whines, as the new figure pulls it away from him with a rough yank.
"It's not fun when there's two hee-hunters," adds the Pyro Jack.
The Jack Ripper *still* doesn't say anything.
Regardless, the three of them make an attempt to run away, and the new figure doesn't stop them, instead beating the hat against her legs to knock the dust off and then planting it firmly on her head. Those holes weren't accidental, because her ears fit right through it.
Revealed in the dim light of the Dark Hour, the individual is clearly not human. She stands about two and a half feet tall, so she has to look way up at Kanae. There's a tail, currently fluffed up with annoyance, not at Kanae but at the fleeing Jacks, and the ears already mentioned.
Her sword is has resting on her shoulder, and the blade is large enough that it wouldn't be too out of place in Kanae's hand, if less of a bastard sword and more of a one-handed sword; the grip is clearly sized for her, though, it's not a misused human-scale weapon. In addition to the replaced hat, a cavalier hat with a green feather in it, she has a long leather coat, knee-length, worn open over a waistcoat, which is buttoned mostly up, though there's a puff of white fur with red fringes at the collar.
(The fur is not on the coat.)
Her eyes widen slightly, green against the vibrant orange-red fur she has over the top of her head and down to her nose in something vaguely like a mask shape as she regards Kanae. "Another Hunter! I thought they were just confused about it." But that outfit is *pretty clear*, at least to her. "Aah, the first person I've seen out here...!"
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
The razor gets a lifted eyebrow out of Kanae, who is trying to keep it friendly but is now also planning out her moves. Weakness hit Pyro Jack for an extra turn to Rakukaja...
Well, don't worry about it.
But that wrestling match interrupts the sudden possibility of blood, and Jack Frost's whine gets a little laugh out of Kanae. "You have a hat," she points out to him. They make to run... And Kanae waves her free hand. "Bye!"
Then she looks upon... the inhuman being before her. A fluffy tail. A hat with earholes through which there are ears. And a sword.
Kanae does like swords.
...It's the first time she's seen a non-human Hunter. Kanae imagines, for a moment, how much Isabeau would hate her.
That makes her smile. "I don't meet many Hunters I don't already know myself," Kanae comments, and bows, stowing her gunblade. "I'm Kanae Fuyuki. And I am a Hunter! As well as... a person?"
Hmm.
"Anyway, it's nice to meet you. ...Who are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
The new figure's ears perk as Kanae introduces herself... and bows. Right! She should do that. She got so excited she forgot for a moment.
So she sweeps her hat off her head and goes into a rather fancy-looking bow to match Kanae's, sweeping her hat-hand to the side dramatically. She straightens afterwards, because she's going to have to look at Kanae again and she already has to crane her neck. (Fortunately, she has no problems with that.)
"I'm..." She hesitates for a moment, her hand sliding into her pocket, and says, "Coin! I'm Coin." She's never really needed to say it before; Trish doesn't use her name (Coin suspects she wouldn't remember it anyway), and she's never had to introduce herself to anyone else.
Coin returns her hat to her head, absent-mindedly adjusting it so it fits just right. She also slides the sword into its spot on her back; she doesn't have a scabbard (she'd never be able to stretch her arm up enough to get a sword that size to slide into one on her back - try it, it's impossible) but there's a loop that holds it in place.
"I'm a Hunter too. I've been to Foraines before, and I thought I felt one out that way a few nights ago..." She gestures vaguely east. "It wasn't, though. I think it was something else, but I couldn't find it when I looked, so maybe it's not there at night...?"
She frowns in thought, then brightens again.
"And, obviously you're a person! Most people can't go to the places where I can, though, so I don't see many - and never a Hunter before, though I know there MUST have been some around." She nods, firmly.
Then she looks worried for a moment. "You DO know about Foraines, right...?" She didn't just confuse Kanae?
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
That's a nice bow. Kanae is impressed.
"Coin. Cool." An anthropomorphic fox may as well be named Coin. "That's a nice name." And it might as well be nice.
Kanae's weapon similarly just kind of stays up there. There may be a magnet involved, or it may just be cognition at work. Certainly a scabbard would be hard to fit to this one...
"Oh?" Pause. "Oh." No Foraine. "Most stuff is hard to reach in the Dark Hour," Kanae thinks. Still--she is obviously a person!
"There are some others around," she says, "But... we don't exacctly get along." She smiles after that, and nods. "Yeah, I know what a Foraine is. I resolved one last year. That's the only one I've found, but there are other Hunters who have been in lots of them. Apparently they hadn't appeared a lot again until recently..."
"I know about a lot of those places, but probably not all of them. I usually Hunt alone... but there's been this 'Atelier' that's too big for one person to deal with that I've been in lately." Kanae gestures to a bench, and moves to sit down, to make it easier for Coin.
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
When Kanae sits on the bench, Coin considers it for a moment and then hops up onto it, seating herself next to her. Her legs, unable to reach the ground, swing absently.
"That's right," Coin agrees. "They were pretty rare, but they're showing up again. And I know someone's stopped at least a couple..." She looks at Kanae thoughtfully. "I guess one of them was you!"
She doesn't get along with the other Hunters? "You really should find someone," Coin says, seriously. "Without reliable allies, you don't have any hope of survival." Coin echoes Henry's words from months ago, without knowing she is - or knowing who Henry is, for that matter - but it's something she's sure of. "It's too easy to get lost without friends, or overwhelmed."
A beat, then: "Atelier," she repeats. "That's... something to do with connection...?" Coin trails off. "I haven't been in one of those, but I think I know what they are."
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
"One was me," Kanae confirms. "Le Foraine de l'Etape," she says, and you can pretend there's an accent over the E. "...The Foraine of the Stage. One of my best friends was suffering from it... and I was able to save her, despite what the other Hunters told me I should do. We're still friends today."
But Coin is serious, and Kanae sighs. "I know," she says. "You're not the only person to say so. This 'Atelier', i'm only able to investigate because I have friends to help. ...But that's not the same as knowing other Hunters. I need allies, for..."
"Well, it's a long story."
Atelier. "Mm-hm. There's this creature trying to take over the body of a boy I know. It's called a Homunculus. It's taking advantage of this place? It's really nasty."
"But I went in with Isabeau--sometimes I get along with her OK, she's another Hunter--and... I think when everyone else goes in, we'll be ready to fight the Homunculus."
"...You ever been to the Velvet Room?"
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
Coin doesn't recognize that *particular* Foraine, which only means that it isn't one she's been in. Was she even around then? 'Last year' could be anything from 'just over a couple weeks ago' to, well, a year before that.
"I'm glad you saved her!" Coin sits more upright at that: "If you managed that, you're doing something right. But it would still be better to have some friends along..."
She's sure that's important. She *knows* it is.
"...though I guess you have an ally, if you work with another Hunter sometimes." Coin considers for another long moment, looking more serious.
"I don't like the sound of that," Coin says. "Something like that in an Atelier... it's not supposed to be there, and it's not right. Maybe *that's* the cognitive distortion I smelled, not a Foraine at all! So you're going to Hunt the Homonculus?"
"...oh, the Velvet Room? I know it. Trish sometimes goes nearby." But has she been inside? She didn't quite answer that one.
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Closer to a year, as it happens.
"Thanks," Kanae answers. "...It would." She is doing 'something right', anyway.
"Kind of. When we're not working together we fight a lot. So it sort of averages to... not." Pause. "No, even when we're working together we fight a lot."
But Coin doesn't like it? "...Mm, yeah. I agree. The Atelier is probably bad enough normally, but... with that Homunculus in it, it's all wrong. It's really messed-up. So it might be. You can sense that kind fo thing, huh?"
That's a useful skill...
"Trish," Kanae sighs. "Her prices..."
"Anyway the reason I ask is that there's someone I know there, who helps me--his name's Henry. He's... a wizard, I guess? And he told me the same thing you're saying. That I need allies. Reliable allies."
"...How about you?" she asks. "Do you have friends like that?"
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
"I can!"
Coin puffs up slightly, proud of her abilities. "Cognitive distortions... sometimes they smell, and there's always this pressure. Like... you can feel it, just a little, even when you're not touching it." Words are slippery, and sometimes don't map well to cognitive effects that they were never meant to handle. "But I can tell. I try to fix them when I can, but there's only so much I can do!"
She shakes her head, quickly. "I've never met Henry. But he was right, so it's not THAT surprising that someone else knows it too, right?" That was one too many 'rights', Coin thinks to herself, looking away from Kanae for a moment. Her first time talking to a human - just sitting down and *talking*, normally - and she's putting her foot in it, a little bit!
Does she have friends like that?
"...no," Coin says. "I don't know very many people at all. I wish I did!" She sounds... wistful, really. It's no leap at all to determine that Coin is lonely, judging by her sudden look at Kanae when she asked that and the expression she's got.
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
She can! Kanae listens. Pressure, smells... And 'feeling'. "Hm. I don't get it, but I sort of get the shape around it?" That's the best Kanae can explain. The explanation makes sense, she just doesn't have those senses. "Cool. It's nice to fix stuff, I guess."
But Coin ahs never met Henry... He was right, though. "I guess not," Kanae agrees after a moment. For all that Coin might be putting a foot in it, Kanae doesn't seem to mind much. Instead--
She smiles. "Is that so?"
She puts out a hand, as if to shake. "Then, I guess you've got one," she says. "Right?"
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
"Well, it's just sensible. You need allies," Coin says, sounding serious again for a moment. "You can't do everything yourself! Someone by themselves, who doesn't have anyone they care about - well, that's a little sad, really..." Coin trails off again.
But then Coin stares at the hand, eyes wide, as if nobody has ever offered her one to shake before.
(Nobody has offered her one to shake before.)
Then she grabs the hand. Coin has an energetic grip; she just keeps shaking Kanae's hand for a few moments. "Thank you!" she blurts out. "I mean - of course!" She tries to get at least some dignity back, with mixed success, clearing her throat.
She does let go of Kanae's hand, then. "But... us Hunters should work together, too. If you're Hunting the Homonculus, I'll help. Just because those Jacks got the jump on me ONCE doesn't mean I'm helpless. They just stole my hat when I was distracted, looking in a store!" One of the konbini; though of course it was not precisely *open* during the Dark Hour, the door wasn't locked and nothing stopped Coin from going inside.
Coin pauses. "I didn't take anything," she adds, because that seems important. "And if I did I'd leave some money behind."
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
It is pretty sensible. Kanae can do a lot of things... more than most Persona-users. But she can't do them all at the same time. Her power has been enough to let her get by on her own for a while, and go farther as she's made friends, but...
Coin accepts her hand, and Kanae smiles. She's energetic, all right; Kanae blinks as Coin continues to shake her hand until--'Thank you!' "Right."
Of course.
"...Cool," she sayss. "And hey, I believe you. You show me somebody who hasn't been tricked by a Jack and I'll show you somebody who hasn't been around demons that much." A beat, "Store, huh...?" She's suspicous!
But then, "That's best. ...It's not like I'm a cop or whatever, but the person who'd get in trouble is probably the worker on shift. That's no good."
"But one thing, uh..."
"I'm glad for your help," she says, "But how do i contact you? ...Do you have a place you go?"
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
"That's right," Coin says, nodding firmly about the Jacks. "I just wanted you to know that you don't have to take care of me specially, when I come with you."
Does that mean she doesn't need a Persona? ...does that mean she HAS a Persona? Now that Kanae is close and has spoken to her for a while, there's a certain kind of vibe to her. She doesn't feel like a demon, whatever she is. (Even if Coin might not be able to answer the question precisely if asked.)
But then Kanae asks how to contact her.
...
...
"...I forgot about that," Coin says, a little sheepishly. "Um. I could meet you somewhere...?" She doesn't have a phone, apparently. "Sometimes I'm in Mementos, or other places, and I come out during the Dark Hour a lot. There's so much STUFF here! Actual physical stuff, not... cognitive stuff. It's a different feel."
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
"Oh, yeah?" Kanae does catch that vibe, now that she's close. Hmmm... Not a demon, but...
Well, why not? She's met Pernelle. And Kanae likes Coin so far.
"Ahah..." She laughs a little, but, "Tell you what--I'll give you my address. You can meet me there when I'm not in school, and if I'm not there, you can leave me a message."
Other places...
"There really is a lot of stuff in Tokyo," Kanae agrees. "...Cool. Then, here's to Hunting."
And then, for just a moment, Kanae spaces out, as she hears Henry's voice mention that this may be an Important Ally to her, one day...
Kanae shakes her head, coming out of her space-out. "I'm just waiting around for the Dark Hour to end so i can get on the train, myself. ...It is a nice hat, though."
<Pose Tracker> Coin has posed.
Coin has much the same feeling about Kanae. No voices from Henry - she wasn't lying when she said she'd never met him - but she doesn't need them to know.
There's some sort of connection between her and Kanae. Maybe it's just meeting another Hunter for the first time. But maybe...
Well, whatever it may be, it looks like they're allies, judging by Coin's slightly toothy grin. "It's the best hat," she says, adjusting it one more time. "Give me the address, and I'll come!" It will probably be in the Dark Hour, though. There is a non-zero chance Kanae is about to be woken up in a few days by a visiting Coin...
"I should get on the train too!" *Coin* means the one in Mementos, though.