2026-10-03: The Mystery of Mizunagi
- Log: The Mystery of Mizunagi
- Cast: Hyousuke Suzuki, Maria Sakurai
- Where: Sumaru City
- OOC Date: 2026-10-03
- IC Date: Sat Jan 19 2013
- Summary: Hyousuke and Cherry - a mysterious figure claiming to know him - enter the wreck of the Mizunagi, hoping to unravel the mysteries contained within.
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 1 - Challenge Level 1 ===========================================-
| Card: side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate" |
| Approach Options: Proficiency or Academics |
| Conditions: Clumsy - Proficiency Down L1 and Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
Tumbling through the void, you fell through at least ten gates, all stacked
at physically impossible angles. It felt like forever before you landed
here, in the center of a vast, flooded cavern cut into the abominable stone.
The vagarious iridescence of reflections from the water seethes across the
cavern walls, glittering like waterborne gems that may or may not actually
be present in the dancing floodwaters. Though the water is deep enough that
you can't see the bottom, you may still stand easily on its surface, as
solid as glass, only the lightest ripple indicating your passing.
A torii gate stands on the water behind you, a dark, impossible mirror to
the space above, crimson red with pitch-black ofuda hanging forlornly from
its posts. Ahead lay a crippled, sunken ship, lopsided and run aground,
buried in a rocky shore that looks like the outer facade of a building,
tilted to a bizarre, mad slant.
The ship is silent, bitter and lonesome. All rotting steel and overgrown
with green vines, it's lit solely from a single consecrate beam of bright
light from far above. The dilapidated ship lists dangerously, hull sitting
at almost a forty five degree angle above the floodline, the fore and bridge
decks of the vessel unreachably high towards the top of the cavern, with the
aft section melding into the rock face.
A small, shattered helicopter is crumpled like paper, rotors snapped off
and bent around it. It's all but wrapped around a shattered helipad that
used to be attached to the ship, itself now forming a loose bridge that
cants towards the cargo area, allowing entry to the ship. But one method of
entering the ship itself is a keypad outside of the aft cargo hold,
flickering with barely-functional illumination.
Instead of a numerical code, the door is secured by a password system, and
the door to the hold is secured with what appears to be ancient clockwork
gears instead of any actual modern latching system. The password doesn't
seem to be anything basic, and changes on the day and the whim of the
blasphemous world. Only a passing knowledge of the ship itself -- or a
willingness to get physical with the interlock -- will gain entry to the
ship's interior spaces.
(OOC NOTE: Passages in red text will appear in some rooms. These represent
omnipresent thoughts or feelings that can be detected by those open to it.)
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke's mind was a maelstrom of thoughts, all clamouring for attention, each making a desperate attempt to drown out the others. His own future, the wellbeing of his friends, the motives and aims of the enigmatic fencers and those that held their reins... All those and more lingered within his mind, but none could hold the fore more than a few moments before something else strove to take his place. One thing managed to worm its way onto centre stage more often than the others, however, most likely because of recency - his brother.
Ten years, he'd not seen the man. Ten years that he'd languished with his parents and with those that had pretended to be his friends, while his brother had wandered off into the middle of Tokyo to pursue some government job or other, presumably living a cushy life far away from all that transpired in his absence. He could have simply vanished off the face of the Earth, severing contact with all that had known him before he'd left... and yet, despite it all, the man had swooped in at the last minute, and saved Hyousuke from some ignominious span in juvie.
Why, he wondered, did he help? Why did he not turn his back on someone he owed nothing to, and only stood to risk losing time, money, and reputation by helping? Someone he'd not seen in just over a decade by that point, no less. Leaning against the back of a bench in the dead of night, having taken a stroll through the bitter cold to try and clear his head, Hyousuke found himself no closer to an answer than he had been the first time he'd posed the question to himself. In fact, he only had more - something exacerbated by the presence of a thin, red, string, laced neatly around his finger.
He didn't quite know what compelled him to follow it. Down empty streets and through derelict backalleys, he stumbled around, too distracted to think much of anything that he saw. So when he came to the torii gate, sanguine red and towering above him, he almost stepped through without thinking. He blinked as his foot edged near the threshold, and he waited as every instinct in his body screamed above the noise of active thought, demanding that he step back. That past that gate was nothing good - that only death or worse awaited. But Hyousuke, more curious and reckless than was sensible, couldn't resist the urge to figure out another supernatural phenomena.
Hyousuke stepped tentatively out, sharp eyes dragging slowly across the landscape before him. The water rippled, but did not break, its surface like a plane of stygian glass. It seemed impossible that he could walk on it, and the animal part of his brain railed at the idea. But he'd seen and done plenty of hitherto impossible things in the past six months alone. To walk towards that decaying husk of a ship, and what remained of the broken helicopter, was nothing special. Not even if it mean traversing the water's surface.
While Hyousuke recognised that a password was needed, and that there were no doubt clues scattered around the area, he was just smart enough to know how dumb he was. Feeling as though he'd never figure out the code, Hyousuke stretched a little while looking over the gears, before reaching forward and attempting to open it manually.
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has acted with Warmup toward side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate"! Diligence and Focus!
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
Brightly-colored sneakers splash across the mirror-like surface of the water. Their owner pauses, then turns about to regard the iridescent surroundings. Overcome, they then hop up onto the air, absolutely taken by the sights they've come across.
"Yes! It worked! It wasn't just a prank, this time!" Maria -- or rather, as she is now, Cherry -- cheers, flashing a V with her fingers at the torii gate through which she's just passed. "This is so cool! I'm in a new place! --Huh?"
She's just realized she's not alone in here.
"Hey!" she says, rushing over to Hyousuke. "--Oh! It's you!"
She pauses, looking him over, clad in her Will of Rebellion tattered thief outfit, cybervisor and all. She's not someone he'll know, like this. On the other hand, he's someone that she--
"You really helped me out last time, you know? I'm really glad! ...Even if it kind of hurt," Cherry admits, pulling her mouth in a moue of dismay as she remembers that encounter, if from the remove of the curse having taken her over.
Or, that is, the curse that had taken /Maria Sakurai/ over. Cherry is a completely different person, definitely.
"So, you heard about that rumor, too? --Oh! Did you tie one on to remember something?" she remarks, of the string on his finger. "You're supposed to used a handkerchief, though!" she admonishes him, wagging a finger in his face.
"But come on, come on, let's check this place out!" she exhorts, grabbing an arm and tugging if that's what it takes before she dashes off towards the ship.
They might be of similar minds on this front, though, for instead of trying to figure out the code she first stretches her legs and then--
Kicks at the door.
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has acted with Warm-Up Stretches toward side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate"! Specialty!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side.SOL .. intro 0 .. TURNTABLE SATURN: "the gate" - Round 1 =========- Hyousuke Suzuki Proficiency Success Warmup Diligence and Focus Fatigue: 0 Morale: 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maria Sakurai Proficiency Success Warm-Up Stretches Specialty Fatigue: 0 Morale: 2 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Clumsy-2 and Stupor-2 Final Conditions: Clumsy-1 and Stupor-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 1/6 |= | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Maria Sakurai was someone Hyousuke would have recognised, and understood that he'd helped. Cherry - who was most certainly a different person he'd never met before - was, in fact, not someone he remembered helping. He blinked at her, eyes glassy and face as blank as a canvas, attempting to remember even the vaguest detail that might have helped him figure out who she was. Alas, he had nothing. Unable to hide a thing, Hyousuke simply gave as firm and confident a nod as he could in her direction.
"Any time! No idea who you are, but I'm happy to help" He said, flashing a toothy grin before returning to his work. "Dunno what gave me these powers, but if getting a ghost to beat people up's gonna save 'em, I'll do it."
Indeed, the adventers it had taken him on were quite bizarre, but they could be considered later. For now, the door was the main concern.
"No idea what the red string's for though. I just looked down, and it was there. Dunno if it'll come off, but it looks like it's on tight. Besides, it got me here, so I'm wondering if taking it off's even a good idea. Probably gonna get lost without it..." He gave it a cursory tug or two, mostly just to see how it'd react, but left it largely alone before continuing on.
Their repeated efforts were not in vain. Even without a code, their repeated efforts to brute force the entrance open bore fruit. The creaking, groaning, and screeching of metal being kicked and wrenched away filled the room in a deafening cacophony, before stopping altogether once the gap was wide enough to walk through.
"Come on, let's get going. This thing's not gonna figure itself out." Hyousuke said, dusting off his hands.
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 2 - Challenge Level 2 ===========================================-
| Card: side.SOL .. track VI .. GEMINI RECORD: "The Brothers" |
| Approach Options: Proficiency or Guts |
| Conditions: Clumsy - Proficiency Down L1, Hard - Understanding Down L1, |
| Shuffle - Draw 1 Minor Arcana., and Stupor - Academics Down L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The chamber that follows is a cascading series of vaulted archways, leading
through a narrow hall before branching out onto the main floor, a pristine
space of black and white. It seems to be lit almost entirely from below, the
floor a pulsing, preeminent white. Overhead, the deckhead is pitch black,
its contours shaped by thready scarlet pulses of light, tracing overhead
pipes and superstructure in the black.
He stands between two stone pillars in the center of the chamber,
leather-wrapped hands gripping the pipework lining them.
The figure is humanoid but not human, a titan of a man's silhouette
standing at almost twice the size of any normal person. He is a machine,
made of brass and wearing the armor and helmet of a samurai. Powerful, the
bushi stands in self-imposed bondage between the twin pillars, only barely
aware of your presence.
Between the light-sucking black above and the preternaturally bright below,
the machine samurai and the two pillars around him are the only things
capable of casting shadows dark enough to be seen. As he notices you, two
searchlight eyes lift, and an ominous growl rakes across the stone around
him.
'KAZUHIRA,' it seems to say.
Despite the feral, iron sound, it is not him who comes for you. His shadow
bifurcates, pulled in twain by the shadows of the pillars, separating into
two smaller silhouettes, less than half his size. The machine presses
together two leather-clad hands in an arcane gesture, and the silhouettes
come to life, rising from the floor in flickering black figures.
It's then you will realize that those vague silhouettes are not duplicates
of the machine, but young boys -- its children. And yet, it is those
creatures that draw their shadowy blades and come for you when summoned all
the same. Defeating or escaping them is the only way that the machine will
concede the path to you.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
GAME: Maria Sakurai flips a coin! The coin comes up tails!
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
"Eh? You don't know who I--"
Realization cracks over her like dawn over the horizon. "Oh! Yeah! I'm Cherry! Your super-cute superhero!" Cherry cheers at him, making a heart with her hands.
And he says he doesn't know what the string's for. "Realllly? If you're wearing it not to forget... maybe you need another one to not forget that you had something to not forget?" Cherry wonders, quite seriously. "Well, my grandmother always said, if it's important, it'll come back again! I'm sure it'll come back. Hey, you want to take a look around, right? This place is super pre~tt~y~"
And then as one they went and broke open a door. It's fine. It's probably fine.
"Wow!" chirps Cherry, checking out this place as if she were a tourist in Paris. "Look at this! How's it fit down here? How do they do the lighting? Oh, maybe it's an illusion, though? I saw something like this on a show once, about mirrors? You know, in haunted houses?"
She natters on even as she draws ever closer to the figure that looms like a towering mountain in the chamber, indeed, who is the only real thing in here other than the pillars.
Its shadow splits and comes for the both of them as soon as those searchlight eyes fall upon her -- and him.
"Eh...?" Maria utters, gazing at the shadow that lunges for her. She hops back as it swings, a bladed polearm manifesting in her hands.
"You know," says Cherry, suddenly dead-serious.
"I don't think you're being very nice."
She swipes at the shadow-child herself, this time, reaching up then to touch her hand to her visor -- her mask -- and then pull it and her face away.
"Persona!"
One way to make a Shadow stop existing is to drown it in darkness.
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has acted with Go Loud toward side.SOL .. track VI .. GEMINI RECORD: "The Brothers"! Bravery and Focus!
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"...Nope, still don't recognise you." Hyousuke saw little point in pretending. He knew just enough to know he wasn't exactly an exemplar when it came to acting. But that didn't mean he had any intent of making her feel unwelcome. "Well, Cherry-your-super-cute-superhero, I'm Hyousuke Suzuki. Dunno where I helped you, but I'm glad I did. Maybe you could help return the favour and help me figure out what this string's for?" Evidently, he hadn't been keeping up with the message boards as much as he should have. A fact he would find out later on, perhaps.
Hyousuke's outfit was far less recognisable than Cherry's. Dressed in a simple ensemble of a t-shirt, some well-loved navy jeans, and trainers that were long past their best years, he looked more like he was dressed for a late-night walk than a drawn-out exploration and brawl (though that was mostly because that was exactly the case). Even so, he pressed ever onwards, waiting to see what the depths of the place held for the both of them.
"Or maybe it's some supernatural stuff. Maybe it's demons lightning things up. Or the bulbs *are* the demons. Or maybe-" He responded, just loud enough for Cherry to hear, though giving precious little for anyone - or anything - else to latch onto. Her nattering was matched by his idle musing, only stopping when they came upon the next room.
The very moment he saw that figure, Hyousuke balled his fists and threw them halfway towards a fighting stance, his feet ready to dig in and stabilise at a moment's notice. Yet still, he observed, jaw clenched and nails digging into the skin of his palm.
"I don't like this..." He muttered, slowly slinking around the outer edges of the room. "Feels like we're walking right into something trying to get the jump on us." He darted his gaze from side to side, but even then, little more than the figure and that which it was lashed to revealed themselves.
"KAZUHIRA." It seemed to say, and though Hyousuke wanted to take a moment to try and wrack his brains for a memory, two enemies - shadows massed into the shape of children - rose to meet him and Cherry. Now fully in his stance, Hyousuke's mouth split into an ever-so-slightly-maddened grin, and he readied himself for battle.
"Gonna be like that? Fine! Cherry, let's do this - Persona!" With that command, something else creaked from the dark, this time from behind them. A mass of battlescarred bronze tore its way out of the void, forcing itself upon reality with the shrieking of grinding metal, the heavy clanks betraying how the figure strained under the weight of its own titanic armour. Achilles had entered the fray, and with a single command, burst forward as a streak of screaming bronze.
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has acted with Bravado toward side.SOL .. track VI .. GEMINI RECORD: "The Brothers"! Bravery and Focus!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side.SOL .. track VI .. GEMINI RECORD: "The Brothers" - Round 2 =======- Hyousuke Suzuki Guts Success Bravado Bravery and Focus Fatigue: 0 Morale: 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maria Sakurai Guts Success Go Loud Bravery and Focus Fatigue: 0 Morale: 4 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Clumsy-1, Hard-2, Shuffle: Sword-0, and Stupor-1 Final Conditions: Hard-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 2/6 |== | ===================================================- (|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
She laughs. "It's just Cherry, silly!" she tells him, giving him a wink from behind her visor. "A superhero needs a special code name! Or else, they can't protect their secret identity and the people close to them. Riiight~? But don't worry, don't worry! You definitely helped me out! It's ok if you don't remember, because I do!" she continues, flapping her hand in a dismissive wave. "Oh, maybe that's what you're wearing the string for?"
Cherry pauses for a long moment.
"...Just kidding," she tells him.
Her own outfit is loud and bold, exactly like... she is? Or at least, that's the impression someone might well get.
"Oh, maybe! Maybe! We should find out, for real!" she answers him in kind, before their questions are quite rudely answered.
To that, they can only reply in kind.
Kazuhira. Peace, perhaps. It's not something Cherry thinks about for particularly long -- no, not when there's a shadowy child intent on her pain to handle.
In this, she and Hyousuke are of similar mind: destroy that which assails them, and then, once they have defeated their opponents--
"If you do that again, I won't be nice, either," Cherry says to the samurai statue, pointing her weapon at it. Her eyes narrow, her Artemisia ready with blade at her side.
But though it had moved once, it does not do so again, not with its shadow crushed.
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 3 - Challenge Level 2 ===========================================-
| Card: side.SOL .. track XVIII .. AQUARIUS RECORD: "Legacies" |
| Approach Options: Academics or Understanding |
| Conditions: Box - Add 1 Item/Money/Gear., Educational - Academics Up L1, |
| Hard - Understanding Down L1, and Soft - Understanding Up L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
'I was but a boy
Seeing him, peerless tensai
Hidden legacies...?'
The iron space in the belly of the ship is a labyrinthine network of
compartments, conduit and piping running overhead with the near constant
drip of water into the partially flooded compartments. Many strange
phenomena run rampant over the ship, but here there is subtle beauty. A
quiet beauty, in the way the overhead lights scatter across the flooding
basin below the catwalks, casting the harmless, entrancing shimmers of
dappled and caustic light filtering through the pipes and against the inner
hull walls.
Fireflies made from origami flit through the space you come to, a
convoluted tangle of passageways and bulkhead doors, all stacked up on top
of eachother in a physics-defying gallery of wheel cranks and safety
interlocks.
Not that he pays it any mind, the aging machine on the deck in the center
of the knot of doors. He wears a smooth, featureless mask, and sits on his
knees before a low shosai-ki writing table marked with the three leaves of
an ancient clan. He has earned the right to silk, to kimono, to a
comfortable cushion to sit on, but still he works. The machine is made of
lightly tarnished brass, glass lenses and leather-gloved hands to hold the
ink brush.
He is hard at work, drawing the sleeve of his haori up the length of his
arm, revealing the elaborate gearing and springs that drive him as he ties
the sleeves back with an ornamental cord.
There is a heavy, locked tome on the table beside his inkwell, but he works
on an open scroll before him, dipping his brush into the ink, his scribe
exact. Attempting to interrupt him during this time -- or really any other
-- will result in the paper fireflies that encircle him unfurling into
massive walls of paper that absorb force like steel, pushing violently back
away from the aging, faceless samurai and his work. The air of decades of
experience and centuries of history separate you.
Instead of saying anything, he presses his ink seal down twice, first on
the corner of the scroll, then on the silk ribbon he uses to seal it.
'MOTOMARO,' it says. This scroll is what he presents to you.
At first glance, the scroll is a musing of a shinobi's life and death, and
of protecting secret knowledge, but hidden deep in dense meter of poetry and
allusion is hidden information on the door and path to the next compartment.
The automaton's writing uses ancient ciphers, and deciphering it will reveal
the right door. Any other invites danger from the waters and worse outside.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke looked as if he seriously considered that *that* was what the string was supposed to be for. He certainly didn't have any better ideas on what it was supposed to be about, after all. Still, she dismissed the theory, and he was inclined to do so as well - though it still left the question of who exactly Cherry was.
"If you say so." He said, shrugging nonchalantly as he ambled through the ship, hoping something would help clue him in on where to go, what to do, or what had even been transpiring in the depths. "You just seem like someone I'd remember meeting."
"Kazuhira... what do you think that meant? Someone's name?" Hyousuke said, more thinking out loud than actually asking. "Might've been that guy's name. Or one of those weird things we fought." Hyousuke's face visibly contorted with the effort required to form a coherent thought, but he dismissed it before too long. He needed to focus on the here and now, rather than the ramblings of some strange, chained, thing that had once stood in his path. It was just as well too - his train of thought was interrupted quite suddenly.
"You hear that? Sounded like a poem or something. Dunno what it was trying to tell us though, it's pretty damn cryptic." Hyousuke asked, casting his eyes around the area, trying to figure out a source. None made itself apparent, but that automaton in the centre of the room seemed as good a thing to ask as any other denizen of the realm. Hyousuke stepped forward, his shoes beating out steady footfalls as he closed the distance between himself and the unharried artist, hoping to glean some knowledge about the realm he and Cherry were in.
"Hey, you, you know anything about-" Hyousuke never got to finish the sentence. Stunned at first by the fathomless centuries and the mastery they granted a man, he could only numbly accept the scroll pressed into his hands. Somehow, despite being a sheet of something light with nothing heavier than silk to adorn it, the scroll weighed in his hands like an anvil. Unfurling it was a tentative affair, but he did so anyway, callused fingers working slowly to make certain that the thing remained intact.
"MOTOMARO..." Hyousuke repeated, scanning his eyes over the available material before handing it off to Cherry. "Can you look at this? Feels like I'm missing something on this, but I can't tell what."
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has acted with Understanding toward side.SOL .. track XVIII .. AQUARIUS RECORD: "Legacies"! Base!
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
Cherry considers this for a moment.
Then: "I dunno. Sometimes it's just like that?" she supplies, helplessly.
----
"Maybe? I think it's a name?" As a word, it'd probably be pronounced 'wahei' if it's written the way she supposes, she thinks; she might be near the bottom of her class in grades (as of the last exam period, RIP) but this is the kind of stuff even she can figure out. So, it's probably a name.
But whose name?
"Don't know," Cherry says, at last. This is way above her paygrade as it stands. "If we continue... maybe we'll figure it out, though?" she muses, folding her arms over her chest.
There's a sound, he claims. She pricks her ears and tilts her head, listening in as if straining to pick up what he's hearing. "...Yeah," she says at last. "I hear it too. Is that haiku?" There are other forms of poetry than that, but it's the first one that came to mind. "Where's it coming from?"
This is the point where they both come across that new machine, this one in the guise of a scholar as it carefully writes out, character by character, the contents of a scroll.
"Wow... that's really good, even for a machine," Cherry gushes, watching the brush as if transfixed. She doesn't interrupt: she just gazes on as the brush moves across the paper, watches as it stamps the scroll... and then recoils as the scroll is offered to both of them. "Ehhh? For us? I mean, sure! Thanks!" she chirps, accepting it along with Hyousuke as she leans over to see what it says.
"...Oh, wow... even the stuff in literature class isn't this dense..." she laments, her shoulders slouching. "This is really deep... and I don't know some of these characters..."
Taking the scroll from him, she works more slowly to re-read the passages again. "It's really... ornate here," she says, her gaze following a few characters of the text. "It's really... wow. Yeah." She pauses.
"But, there's all these numbers in here, too? I wonder if they mean something."
Weren't the doors they passed numbered? It can't be the whole of the puzzle, but perhaps it's a part.
"And... there's this part about the passage of the seasons. Maybe... you have to turn around? You know? Like the seasons?"
It's the best she's got. Neither of them may have been made for this sort of puzzle...
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has acted with Understanding toward side.SOL .. track XVIII .. AQUARIUS RECORD: "Legacies"! Base!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side.SOL .. track XVIII .. AQUARIUS RECORD: "Legacies" - Round 3 ======- Hyousuke Suzuki Understanding Failure Understanding Base Fatigue: 2 Morale: 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maria Sakurai Understanding Success Understanding Base Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Box-0, Educational-2, Hard-1, and Soft-2 Final Conditions: Educational-1 and Soft-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 3/6 |=== | ===================================================- -==== Loot So Far: ==========================================================- Items: 0, Money: 2, Gear: 0 (|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
It was fair to say that Hyousuke didn't quite get it. Before Maria took the scroll, he'd been twisting and turning it, craning his neck around like a perplexed hound. In the end, he could make neither heads nor tails of it. Simply reading the page aloud seemed to havehim stumbling here and there, but to parse the meaning hidden deeper within the work itself? He was visibly frustrated when he handed it off to Cherry, and even stole peeks at it while she surveyed whatever text was on it.
"You got all that from just that scroll?" He asked, as he made his way to (what he hoped was) the correct door. "You must be pretty smart if you know how all that poem and decoding stuff works. I could barely read the thing." There was a slight edge to his voice when he said that - not jealousy, but frustration. It wasn't directed at her, but it was there all the same, before being blunted by his need to refocus and continue onwards. "So if we're going off of seasons, it should be... this door!" With a flourish, Hyousuke pushed open the door, and stepped through.
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 4 - Challenge Level 3 ===========================================-
| Card: side::LUNA > The Hierophant; Taurus > BARRIER |
| Approach Options: Proficiency or Academics |
| Conditions: Annoying - Charm Down L2, Educational - Academics Up L1, |
| Educational - Academics Up L1, Ineptitude - Proficiency Down L2, and Soft |
| - Understanding Up L1 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
(BGM: https//youtu.be//puLnIQ-plR8 Toshio Masuda - "Shinen")
The corridor is plain: dark wood flooring and steeple ceiling contrasting
with white plaster walls. It's lit with natural indirect light, cast in from
narrow openings between the wall and roofing. The air feels crisp and chill,
like late fall.
A red thread spools on ahead of you towards a far off exit, but the moment
you step on the horizontally-laid floor boards, you hear an oddly melodic
creak. A wooden door suddenly slams down, sealed with a simple lock. Simple,
right?
A lock is just a barrier with a cheat called a key.
Alas, when the door is opened, there's another door a few meters away,
made of thicker wood and a more complex lock. After that, there will be a
metal door, with similarly tougher lock.
The pattern will continue to escalate, with one added complication: fall
has turned to winter, and the air is now frigid with the touch of snow. As
fingers become numb and exhaustion threatens to set in, you'll hear a young,
bell-like giggle, as if someone finds your effort hilarious. Nonethless, you
must persevere to get to the end, no matter what.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
"Well... kinda?" she tells Hyousuke, tilting her head slightly like a somewhat baffled dog. "There's just a lot of number mentions and... I noticed them? I'm not that good at this stuff, really, but... I just noticed it. That, and the seasons stuff. It just came up over and over." She shrugs, as if feeling awkward about it just now, far from the confident and cheerful girl who'd greeted him without hesitating on entry to this place. "I don't really get the poem. Or what it's trying to say." Even a broken clock is right twice a day, as it's said.
And it just so happens that they're the right clues to follow.
"But I guess it worked out, right? So that's good!"
She's back, ladies and gentlemen.
The door branches into a plain corridor. Speaking of the seasons, in here it seems as if it were the late fall in terms of temperature and mood. "It's kind of nice in here," she remarks, before stooping.
"Look! It's red thread like yours!"
This is when the first door slams down.
"..."
"...Rude," Cherry remarks, getting up on her feet. Tilting her head, she could swear she hears something, just now. "A lock, huh... and there's a lock here..."
She brandishes a hairpin, pulled from somewhere on her person with a flourish. "Luckily! I can pick locks!"
It goes swimmingly with this one.
And the one after that.
And after that.
And--
Then, it's when nature pulls its cruelest trick and it starts snowing. Cherry, jogging in place in an attempt to stay warm and keep her temperature up, stretches her fingers before the next attempt.
"How many more are there? They're getting hard," she complains.
And it's getting cold. So very cold.
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has acted with Warm-Up Stretches toward side::LUNA > The Hierophant; Taurus > BARRIER! Specialty!
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"Sounds like smart people stuff to me." Hyousuke replied. He didn't even blink when he said it - the words came as naturally from his mouth as breath. "Noticing patterns and stuff and making links... that kinda stuff doesn't just happen." Well, it sometimes did, but chalking it up to luck felt rather disingenuous.
The corridor was plain, but Hyousuke had learnt not to trust appearances by that point in time. There was no telling what strange things lurked in the shadows, what traps waited beneath the floorboards, or what manner of strange beast might have had its eyes on them. Sharp eyes of emerald green darted around as he moved down the corridor - that, at the very least, he could manage. Certainly better than trying to pick apart the themes of something that he could barely begin to read, let alone fully understand.
A creak was followed by a slam, and that slam heralded yet another obstacle to bar their path.
"Seriously, what's up with this place?" Hyousuke grumbled while leaning in to take a better look at the lock. "I get it's all about supernatural weirdness and people's thoughts and stuff, but man... This is just rude." He echoed her sentiments without much hesitation, and let her get to work. There was only one lock, after all, and an extra set of unpractised hands was bound to make things far more difficult than they had to be. Especially since there was another.
And another.
And yet another.
Over and over again, the number kept ramping up. Only when it felt like they'd been plunged into the depths of winter did the most complicated of them all come crashing down like thunder, but it was only the lock that bothered Hyousuke - the cold never even seemed to touch him. It crept its way in slowly and insidiously, but he was an athlete at heart, and he knew how to keep warm.
"Here, you gotta do it like this." He said, looking to Cherry as he spoke. "Put your feet about as wide as your shoulders, and start moving your arm around..."
Even if he couldn't help with the lock, he could help her help herself with the lock. That was just as good, right?
Perhaps he needed to ask Tsubasa for some lessons in thievery later on...
Huh? (Type "help" for help.)
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has acted with Warmup toward side::LUNA > The Hierophant; Taurus > BARRIER! Diligence and Focus!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side::LUNA > The Hierophant; Taurus > BARRIER - Round 4 ===============- Hyousuke Suzuki Proficiency Success Warmup Diligence and Focus Fatigue: 2 Morale: 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maria Sakurai Proficiency Success Warm-Up Stretches Specialty Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Annoying-2, Educational-1, Educational-2, Ineptitude-2, and Soft-1 Final Conditions: Annoying-1, Educational-1, and Ineptitude-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 4/6 |==== | ===================================================- -==== Loot So Far: ==========================================================- Items: 0, Money: 2, Gear: 0 (|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
"Eh... eh, no way," Cherry protests. It's too embarrassing to mention where she'd landed in the last exam period, so she's just not /gonna/. "I just, I dunno. Numbers, right?" she says, coupling it with a nervous laugh. "I think I just got lucky!"
She's not /that/ stupid. She knows people don't think she's all that bright.
Still, it's a point she can only argue about for so long. It's onwards and outwards (or something like that) eventually, and before long... even that passage is curtailed by those seriously rude doors.
It's a good thing that she'd decided to start picking locks last year, and it's an even better thing that Tsubasa taught her how to pick them properly. At least in a place like this, it's not like she's going to get in trouble for this, and...
The cold, while biting, is soon abated by proper warm-up stretches.
"Hm! Like that? We used to do it like /this/ when I was on the team," she remarks. But he's got a good point, it's a little easier to do like /this/ compared to like /that/, and before long she's not feeling so much of the ache in her fingers or the numbness in her joints.
There's another door after this one, and then... then, blessedly, they're free!
"I wonder what this place is about. I saw a post, you know, so I figured, I'd check it out and tell everyone what I found?" she remarks to Hyousuke. "But, it's really weird, isn't it? It's like we're in a weird boat... that's way too big."
She pauses, then nods as if to agree with herself. "Super weird."
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has drawn a new Challenge!
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 5 - Challenge Level 2 ===========================================-
| Card: side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized" |
| Approach Options: Understanding or Charm |
| Conditions: Annoying - Charm Down L2, Bothersome - Charm Down L1, |
| Educational - Academics Up L1, Hard - Understanding Down L1, and |
| Ineptitude - Proficiency Down L2 |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
The flooded spaces in the ship's corridors apparently drain through this
chamber, an idyllic water garden running through the ship's cargo areas.
Despite the ostensibly utilitarian space, beyond the ship's bulkheads and
partitions lays a spread of basins, water tables and fountains, all draining
into one another and filling the room with the omnipresent sound of
trickling water, and the distant, serene clack of noise-maker sozu bamboo
pipes.
While the footpath is both overlooked and overlooks multiple basins, the
vast below drops off into lush forever, brush and greenery swallowing up
lower basins and water tables in a nonsensical drop further down the
suggestions of an artificial mountainside. Most of the flowers this high up
are types of waterborne lotus, all serene and white, however many of these
flowers are toxic to the touch, paralyzing whosoever tries to touch them.
He doesn't wear armor, not like the others. He is a boy cut from
refracting, shimmering light, an apparition standing on the other side of a
compound lens folding out of the floor. The complex assortment of lenses,
rocker arms and focusing arrays channels a single lonely beam of moonlight
from above to project the boy at play, a boy in a lavishly patterned kimono
and a white lightning bolt shot through his shock of black hair. A sword,
far too large for the boy, is tucked in a sheath at his back. The mechanical
lenses portray him in shimmering, liquid relief, as if on the outer edge of
an event horizon. He bounces a colorful ball -- the only thing real -- on
the ground, focusing on the play.
Every so often he looks up, as if searching for someone to play with. Every
time he looks up, he finds no one in the lonely garden. Ignoring you at
first, the boy sighs, and continues.
At even junctures, the footpath shifts, the apparition shimmering. Folding
into the floor, the entire apparatus disappears only to unfurl somewhere
else, projecting the shimmering boy and his lonely game somewhere else. The
ball bounces from place to place, following his path and play.
Slowly but surely, he'll find his way to a gravestone at the center of the
garden. On it is written a name: 'ISATO.'
A dangerous place, a lonely game. The boy will only be here for a short
time until he is gone, disappearing at the grave. Though the boy does not
speak but for the click of the complex machinery around him, understanding
why he is here or getting his attention off of his doomed dream may prompt
him to point you to the way out of the chamber.
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
With the cold kept at bay long enough for Maria to work her magic on the lock, the two moved forwards through the ship. Not content to let their only company be the sound of rushing water, creaking metal, and an assortment of other distant noises, Hyousuke nodded along and responded in earnest.
"Figures there'd be a post about this place. But I'm guessing the ones you've seen didn't tell you anything worth thinking about." He pulled a face, trying to draw a link between all he'd seen, and perhaps even pick apart the symbolism. However, rushing through everything had not left him with a lot of chances to soak in the details. "...Probably something to do with samurai and ninjas and stuff. Real old history - the kind you get in textbooks. I dunno - I was out for a walk and just stumbled into this place. Walked through a torii gate in some Sumaru backalley."
Middling as his grades were, Hyousuke could not offer much more than that at first blush. What he did seem to take the time to drink in the sight of, however, was the cargo hold's rather expansive water garden. Rushing waters, once muffled by the walls and barriers that had barred their way, at once grew louder and more serene. He was exposed to it all directly, thatmuch was true, but it was organised into a symphony rather than a discordant cacophony. Water tables, streams, and noisemakers all came together in aligned harmony, drowning out the blare of hammering waves and tides.
There was as much elegance to the scene before him as there was danger. The mountainside, no matter how artificial, was still a work of art. It being carved by man, nature, or the tides of thought, was irrelevant. He couldn't help but gaze down, distracted only when his eye caught on a lily.
"Flowers? Here? Didn't know they'd grow in water like this." Hyousuke said, internally chalking it up to supernatural weirdness, or a species he'd not seen. Before he could make the questionable decision to reach out and touch one to investigate, the faintest graze of a petal met with his skin. It only took one look at his hand, flopping and unresponsive, to show why that would have been a bad idea. "...Shit. Poison. Maybe don't grab those."
He was fortunate, at least, that he didn't need his hand to watch. He let it hang uselessly by his side as he observed the child, staying silent and distant at first, cautious that it was another lure to bring him to his death. He gazed on as that child, wrought from rays of light carved and sliced until it took the shape of something human, played amidst the garden. He even held his hand out, signalling for Maria to hang back, and not to trust it - though how he expected to be taken seriously with the hand not working right was another story entirely.
"This... It... He looks..." Hyousuke squinted. He inclined his neck forwards, trying to get a better view of the boy before he stumbled into what could have been another trap. But, as ever, curiosity got the better of him - though it was helped along by a vague sense of recognition. Hyousuke took one small step forward, then another, and then a few more, until he was close enough to the child that he had no doubt he could be heard. Crouching, in the hopes that a six-foot slab of athletic muscle topped with blonde hair and a scarred face wouldn't scare him, Hyousuke beamed a warm grin at the child.
"Hey, kid, are you doing alright?" He asked, though got little more than whirring and clicking of mechanisms firing off around him in response. Nevertheless, he pressed on, fresh out of better ideas. "Looks to me like you knew who's in there. Did you wanna talk about 'em?" He had questions. More than he could ever hope to ask in one sitting, and mos the doubted the childlike figure could answer. But he and Cherry needed out at some point, or directions through the ship at the very least, so he pushed past that in the hopes his efforts with the boy would not be in vain.
MONAD: Hyousuke Suzuki has acted with Brush it Off toward side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized"! Friendliness and Focus!
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
"Nope!" says Cherry, cheerfully. "I saw a post that said they found an interesting place but that you needed a black kifuda? And then walk around the torii gate three times with it. And, it worked, you know?" she tells him, nodding as she explains. "But that's all. Just, a place that shouldn't exist, and how to get in. I figured, it sounded pretty interesting, so..."
She shrugs. "I used the ones at Alaya, of course. You know, they didn't let us go there on our own when I was little..." She pauses as she works on the lock, glancing up at him.
"A little boy was killed there, once. But I didn't know about it back then."
But they're through, after that, and they're onwards into the depths.
"Wow..." Cherry gushes, looking this way and that. "Those flowers! They're lotus, I think? Pretty~" Her mother works in a flower shop part time, and while lotus don't lend themselves terribly well to arrangements, it's not as if she hasn't seen them for herself.
That's before Hyousuke reaches out to touch one. "Ah! Your hand! Are you okay?" she frets. "You're not gonna die, right? I can't do anything about dying!" She's not kidding, her Persona can't do healing or even deal with status effects at all.
But they're not alone down here, as it were. Halted by his outstretched hand, Cherry holds her position until further notice.
"He's just a kid."
He's probably not even real, like the statues above had been. But, that doesn't mean...
Trailing after him and the child, she watches on intently as he approaches the grave and then--
And then that's when Cherry strikes.
"Hey, what's your name? Do you come here to visit often? I saw that ball you had. It's pretty!" she chatters, as she proceeds to go on and on.
"It's pretty nice weather today, isn't it? Hey, don't you like it when it rains, though? The sound of the rain on the roof just sounds so comforting. And it makes the world pretty afterwards! Though, the nice thing about sunny days is that you can go out and play, right? But I also like it when it's overcast sometimes, because it's kind of nice when it's got that grey feeling. Oh, and when there's a storm, and you have to hunker down..."
Behold, the power of chatter, featuring Cherry.
MONAD: Maria Sakurai has acted with Girls' Talk toward side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized"! Patra and Efficient!
(|============================ Monad - Results =============================|) -==== side.SOL .. track X .. JUPITER RECORD: "Unrealized" - Round 5 =========- Hyousuke Suzuki Charm Success Brush it Off Friendliness and Focus Fatigue: 2 Morale: 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maria Sakurai Charm Success Girls' Talk Patra and Efficient Fatigue: 0 Morale: 5 -============================ Party Conditions: =============================- Starting Conditions: Annoying-1, Bothersome-2, Educational-1, Hard-2, and Ineptitude-1 Final Conditions: Hard-1 -====================================== Party Result: Success: Reach Up! ====- -==== Reach: 6/6 |=====| ===================================================- -==== Loot So Far: ==========================================================- Items: 0, Money: 2, Gear: 0 (|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
(|================ Monad - The Inscrutable Region: Mizunagi ================|)
-==== Round 6 - Challenge Level 1 ===========================================-
| Card: side::LUNA > World; Earth > THE ORACLE SPEAKS |
| Approach Options: None |
| Conditions: Chest - Add 2 Item/Money/Gear. and Revelation - The best |
| result. |
-==== Challenge =============================================================-
(BGM: https://youtu.be/m3ewe2uF6O4 Toshio Masuda - "Kotowari")
This machine is not one to give its secrets in one visit, but this visit
has proven fortuitous. In the distance, you can see and hear the click-clack
of many rooms moving around, blithely working to protect a 'treasure' that
has been already found.
In watery fields lie a steep hill with a stone stairway, crossed other
with red torii gates. At the top is a gnarled old apple tree, covered in a
lush carpet of pink blossoms. Rain falls from a distant hole far up,
sparkling against vibrant beams of moonlight.
Stepping stones allow you to access the foot of the stairs, but even if
you did step into the water, it is clean, cool, and clear. You can see many
red threads lazily undulating in the waters before running up the hill's
sides.
At the top of the hill you see where all the red threads end. At the base
of the apple tree is a slumped doll the size of a young woman, her eyes
open, her expression blank. The layered, heavy silks she wears are faded,
covered in old petals. From carefully modelled hands tumble five origami
shapes, settling on the petal-littered stone below.
Each origami shape will hold some kind of significance; you'll know which
one is meant for you. Unwrapping it reveals a fortune that will strike close
to home, like it was made for you and you alone.
(OOC: Your fortune is up to you. You can derive it from the major
tarot/planet/elements in the title of the rooms you passed through, or make
up your own! The only rules are that it is something that will be 'truthful'
in some way. In addition, send a @mail to Shiryuu if you need help deciding
what random loot you get!)
Final Loot: 3 boxes of Money and 1 Pieces of Gear! That could be... Gear:
Mysterious Accessory, Money: Mysterious Art, or Money: Mysterious Gems!
(|=========================================================== Monad 1.2 ====|)
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke regarded Maria with calm, composed, interest when she relayed her story about Alaya. He remained neutral throughout, never offering more than a slow nod to show he was listening.
"A little boy? Poor kid... I had no idea. I only got to Sumaru at the start of the school year, so I got no idea about stuff like that. Feels like people just kinda assume you already know it since you're here." He shrugged, not particularly bothered by it, and soldiered on.
"Nah, don't worry, I got this. I'm probably not gonna die. Not unless it's got some of those neurotoxins or whatever."
Hyousuke held his hand up - or, rather, his wrist - and studied his hand as it fell numbly to one side. He seemed a lot less worried about it than Maria - indeed, much less worried than he realistically should have been - before fishing a skill card out of his pocket to heal whatever minor damage had been wrought. The numbness did not subside, but any scratches and aches vanished along with the glow of green light, so at least he didn't have to worry about cleaning it up.
The boy didn't speak. He never spoke - not unless the subtle sounds of machinery working away in the surroundings counted as his end of a conversation. But between Hyousuke's attentions, and Maria's chatter, he at least seemed to understand that there were people around him. He looked between them, silent as the grave that he stood by, the ball held loosely between two hands. Whether he understood or cared what either of his visitors had to say, he did not show nor say. His face brooked no discernible expression, and his lips never parted. But he did grant them the response of pointing towards an exit, some ways off in the distance.
The space's secrets were bared for all to see as soon as the pair transitioned away from the gravesite. A steep hill of lush green stood as the place upon which the foremost of them rested, its surface pockmarked with the red of torii gates, and meandered through by stone paths of a plain grey. The climb was a long and arduous one, but it was hardly one that he could not make - his hiking experience saw to that. Rather, his slower pace was partly from caution, and partly to take in his surroundings, feeling as though there was something he was supposed to take from it all.
His slower pace came to a stop altogether when he came to the top of the hill. Moonlight passed through the thin curtain of rain, silently piercing the pattering veil to cast its gaze upon what lay at the gnarled tree's base. Nestled atop a bed of pink blossoms lay a doll, propped idly up against the trunk. No expression had been crafted onto her visage, no pose had been enforced with which to glean context. All that remained there was her, and five origami shapes scattered into the petals below.
"Geez... This isn't gonna be something else that gets up and attacks us, is it?" Hyousuke asked, once he'd gotten over the initial awe of seeing the scene laid out before him. Picking his way carefully through the blooms - and taking care to expose as little skin to them as humanly possible - he kneeled down and peered into the doll's eyes. But there was nothing there that he could discern as notable. It was a well-crafted piece - eerily so, now that he looked at it - but nothing that he found to be actionable.
The origami shapes, however... Those spoke to him. Or, more specifically, one did. A sheet of blank paper, white as the driven snow and folded crisply along each edge, it had been folded into the shape of a hound. There was no telling what breed or any other details apart from the general species - in fact, he only 'knew' it to be a dog because of the gut feeling that entered him the second he held it to the pale light shining down upon them. But his mind was firm in its assertion, and he unfurled the piece to see what lay within.
'Do not be bound to time. Strength cannot be found in the chains of the past that hang you, nor should it be sought in shacking yourself to a future. Forge bonds with those you love, and in that you shall find your freedom.'
Hyousuke stared at it a while, blinking and wondering what it was supposed to mean. He angled it, held it up to the light, looked upon its back, but found nothing. Yet, despite how odd he found it, something seemed to stir in the back of his mind, and in the depths of his gut. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and he wished to cast it out, but it lingered like the numbness in his hand. He sighed, folded the paper, and slipped it into his pocket to study later.
"Come on, we should get out of here." He said, turning to face Maria. "I don't want to get caught out by the doll coming to life or something."
<Pose Tracker> Maria Sakurai has posed.
Cherry shakes her head. "You've gotta get to a doctor, though, okay? It's really bad if you die!" she fusses. "And I can't do anything that helps with my Persona!" He's at least not looking unsteady on his feet, so it's /probably/ a localized problem, but...
Still, no grave danger rises to meet the two of them as they pick their way through this floating world of automata threaded with an echo of the Japan that had been. The boy cannot of course speak however many questions Cherry might pepper him with, but neither is he apparently ill-affected by her relentless chatter. Perhaps, if anything, he'd found it endering? Or perhaps even familiar in some way.
He points the way ahead, and Cherry doesn't need to be told twice to go and follow.
There's something there under the tree. A person?
Oh. No, it's a giant doll. "Oh, she's pretty!" she gushes. "--Eh? No! ...I hope not?" she says, as if in reaction to Hyousuke's own wondering if it's going to attack them now, too. But it's just a doll, it seems, and stays under the tree as if asleep.
Here she picks up her own fortune with care from the lap of the large slumbering doll. "Look! It's a turtle! ...I'm a little sad unfolding it..." she sighs, but does to see what her own fate holds.
"From the stars, from beyond the dancing field of debris and through towards the cradle... be wary of unwise attachment and delusion, young one, but ware also the order the world would have from you. A coin is flipped: here it lands on edge at the ends of the world."
So she reads it aloud. She stares at the fortune. She squints at it.
"I don't get it," she complains, her shoulders sagging.
Her gaze lifts soon enough, though, and she notices there's fruit among the boughs.
Reaching up, Cherry picks an apple from the tree. Then another, and another. "They look so good," she tells Hyousuke. "But I guess I can't take a lot, since I don't have a bag?"
They /should/ get out of here, though.
"Yeah! This was fun, wasn't it?"
She thinks it was.
"Oh! Don't forget! You need to see a /doctor/!"
She can't let this one slide.