2026-02-23: The Hunt Begins
- Log: The Hunt Begins
- Cast: Hyousuke Suzuki, Fuuka Yamagishi, Ririka Kawase
- Where: Iwatadoi City
- OOC Date: 2026-02-23
- IC Date: Fri Sep 14 2012
- Summary: Hyousuke meets with Fuuka and Ririka to share new information on Jun's whereabouts. While the veracity of said information is called into question, it's the only lead they have, and the two Navigators make ready for trip to Sumaru.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Cafe chains had the resources and the knowledge base to manufacture a certain air to their interiors, be it classy or whatever a corporation interpreted as 'comfy.' Smaller shops tended to by those with passion for their work would often take on an air of their own over time, shaped by their patrons like a stone carved by waters running across it. The cafe that Hyousuke had chosen for the meeting fell into neither category.
It was by no means dingy. The linoleum floor was clean enough, and resembled a pale hardwood enough that few gave it a second glance. The furniture was wrought from cheap metal, but the padding on the seats was comfortable enough that it was not noticed. The decorations hanging upon the wall were inoffensive, but in that same vein, were so bland as to fade into the walls painted an innocuous shade of eggshell white. Even the drinks themselves seemed to be as soulless as the cafe itself, with coffee that was the barest step above jars of freeze-dried granules, and tea that was only just strong enough to be considered more than vaguely-flavourful water.
Naturally, it saw little foot traffic, with only the curious and the desperate seeking refuge within its walls. That suited Hyousuke fine. The information he had was as important as it was sensitive. Too many people around risked drowning out whatever hushed tones he might have chosen to adopt, and risked unwanted parties overhearing what he had to share. He just wished that they could serve a half-decent cup of green tea, as evidenced by the frown he wore as plainly as the brown Harrington-style jacket he wore, or the forest-green t-shirt draped across his torso.
Hyousuke cast his eyes to the door once again, watching and waiting.
> got a lead on kashihara
He'd texted to Ririka and Fuuka, before arranging a meeting spot he deemed isolated enough. All that was left was to tell them what he had - and to figure out a plan.
<Pose Tracker> Fuuka Yamagishi has posed.
Fuuka is a local, and she considers herself fairly familiar with anything of interest in Iwatodai City, particularly those around where she lives. ...And yet, when Hyousuke sends them the location of the meeting spot, Fuuka realises - she doesn't know this place at all. And when she arrives... she finds that there's a reason for that, maybe.
Fuuka settles into one of the seats across from Hyousuke with her own order - something that can only be technically called tea and a slice of sponge cake that's more 'sponge' than 'cake'.
"Suzuki-san. Thank you for reaching out to us." Fuuka greets with a nod.
She's too polite to make any negative comments about their current surroundings.
<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.
Ririka had been... pretty upset by the fact that Jun had just sacrificed himself for the sake of the civilian Sudou had been about to take. Both for its own reason that she didnt want to see someone without supernatural powers caught up in supernatural business... but also for the fact that she considered Jun a friend.
So when she'd gotten that text...
> TEll me where you want to meet.
She looks around the coffee shop for a moment as she steps in, but she's a bit too distracted to take it in--she focuses instead on Hyousuke. She was dressed in an anime t-shirt, a vest, cargo patns, and sneakers.
A moment after Fuuka sits down Ririka slides in next to her, with a cup of something that was at least coffee-like and a slice of cake with frosting that was just a tad too stale.
Ririka is also too polite to comment on the place. "Hey, Suzuki-san. What's up?" She's got one hand on her cup, but the other one is quietly tapping a rhythm on her thigh.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Though he tried to stifle it and keep a calm, level, expression plastered across his features, there was only so much of his relief that Hyousuke could subdue. His whole body seemed to sag a little as the tension left his shoulders, and the quietest hint of a sigh filtered out as he finished sipping at his tea for the time being. The mug was only half-full, but he doubted it would taste much worse at room temperature than it did now.
"Yamagishi-san, Kawase-san, thanks for coming on short notice." He said, his voice a little hushed, but not so much that it became a murmur. He doubted the bored-looking staff members were in any way interested in eavesdropping, and the few other patrons seemed preoccupied with their own business, or finishing their orders.
"Hope you don't mind if I skip the small talk for now." Hyousuke said, pushing the mug aside a little, as if its very presence was a distraction. Though he did his level best to present a calm and restrained front, subtle tells screamed of his own feelings. Tension in his fingers, the firmness prevalent in even his lowered voice, the sharpness in his eyes - all spoke of a man focussed on a mission, yet sick with worry. "Like I said, I've got a lead on where the Joker Killer took Kashihara."
Briefly, his mind wandered to how Umie had referred to the man. 'Old Maid,' she had called him, but the implications were lost on Hyousuke.
"Me and some colleagues managed to get some info from a demon the other night. He's being kept in an abandoned apartment building somewhere in Sumaru. But getting there's not gonna be the problem."
From the bag to his side - a cheap thing, though with remarkably little damage for how old it seemed to be - he drew a sheet of paper, a list of bullet-pointed notes printed upon it. Chief amongst them was what the Fairy had told Hyousuke that fateful night:
> "The Old Maid isn't the 'true' Joker, and the pretender has spirited away the original to 'awaken' from this dream we all reside in."
> "A tall building, but an abandoned flat. Many people used to reside there, but the Old Maid plans to fill it with new nightmares given form. What better way to wake up again than by a terrible fright?"
"If what that thing told us was true, we're looking at a building full of demons. And if we're getting him back, something tells me we're gonna have to fight our way through them."
<Pose Tracker> Fuuka Yamagishi has posed.
Fuuka looks between Ririka and Hyousuke. The tells are subtle, but she can tell that they're both worried. ...She is too, of course. She may not know Jun that well, but he had come to her and Yukari to tell them about his experiences with Strega before and exchange contact information. It was as much a request for help as anything. She feels like she owes it to him to try.
"Of course." Fuuka replies with a nod, as Hyousuke thanks them. She's a naturally quiet person, so she doesn't have to lower her voice that much. She nods, about skipping the small talk.
"An abandoned apartment building...?" Fuuka repeats. But then, Hyousuke produces a sheet of paper. She frowns, her brow furrowing as her eyes trace their way down the page.
"The 'true' Joker... And, what does it mean by this 'dream'...?" Fuuka repeats. That's something she can chew on later - right now, there's the direct issue.
"That must be awful... I hope Kashihara-san is alright." Fuuka murmurs. It's not his physical health that seems to be the biggest concern right now, but that isn't much of a relief.
"That... will be dangerous, though. If we simply try to approach it head-on, we might only just get hurt." Fuuka considers.
<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.
Short notice. Ririka nodded to that. "Of course. Thanks for reaching out." Like Hyousuke, her anxiousness wasn't too hard to read, either. (The finger tapping is a pretty big giveaway.) "Yeah, that's fine," she says of skipping the small talk.
Ririka frowned. "From a demon? Are... you sure it's good?" She knows demons can be bargained with, at least. She just doesn't know if they're also, as a rule, truthful--or if that's something you have to bargain them for.
An abandoned apartment building. "Do you know which one?" She glances to Fuuka. The two of them are Navigators--if the building needs to be found, then... that's their shared specialty.
She frowned as she looked at the list. "The 'real' Joker... I wonder what that's supposed to mean..." She glances to Fuuka about the dream thing. "Not sure..."
Tall building, abandoned flat. Hmm... "Full of demons... Maybe... he's trying to make Kashihara-san Awaken or something? Think that's what the demon meant? Dreaming, Awakening, maybe they were just... being poetic?"
She frowned. "... wouldn't that make it harder on the Joker Killer, though?"
"Yeah, it'll be dangerous, but... maybe the two of us can find a safe way through." She looked to Fuuka. "What do you think?"
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
A slight shrug was the first answer Hyousuke gave Ririka upon her questioning the veracity of the information.
"Doesn't matter if the info's good. It's the only lead we've got right now." He didn't sound particularly happy about it. He did not so much say the words as let them fall out past his lips, pushed out by a sound that fell halfway between a grunt and an exasperated sigh. "We're running out of time, and I don't even know where else we'd go to start looking for clues. Cops are probably still at the gallery, and I doubt there'd be anything left that'd help. Killer's a murdering piece of shit, but he's slippery." He shook his head slowly at Ririka asking after the specific building shortly after. "No, we've got nothing. Can't exactly go kicking doors down to figure it out either. If the police didn't get us first, I bet he'd know we were onto him, and we'd be back where we started."
Hyousuke's slight look of frustration at the 'dream' made his answer clear before he even spoke it, to those perceptive enough.
"I've got nothing for that one. I'm guessing it's got something to do with why the Joker Killer took Jun, but I don't know what the hell it's supposed to mean." He sighed, the exhale tinged by a rumbling in his throat, before looking back down to the sheet. He scanned his eyes over the words, hoping that another examination might force the phrases to make sense, but all he could do was nod slowly at Ririka's summation. "That might be it. Like you said though, why would he bother trying to force an Awakening?"
Hyousuke clutched at the table a little. His knuckles grew paler from the effort, and his mouth curled into deeper frown, and he considered the idea further.
"Whatever he's doing, it sounds like it has *has* to be Kashihara-san for it to work. I don't know why, and I don't even know either of them well enough to guess, but maybe it's something cognitive?" He spoke the last word slowly, as if growing unsure with every passing syllable. He shook his head not a moment after. "I don't know. Whatever it is though, it can't be good, and I bet it's gonna get a lot of people hurt."
When it came to the topic of strategy, Hyousuke took a long few moments to think, then offered his own - albeit tentative - alternative.
"That's *if* there's a safe way through. Joker Killer's got what he wants, and he's not gonna let him go easy. Might need a distraction to draw most of the demons away. Might even make it easier for someone else to catch him with pants down and grab Kashihara-san." He didn't sound particularly confident about the plan - brute force and intimidation was his bread and butter, after all - but he was loathe to sit back and nod dumbly when the situation was so precarious.
<Pose Tracker> Fuuka Yamagishi has posed.
It's a good question. Is information from a demon trustworthy? They might have their own motives for lying... but at the same time, like Hyousuke says, it's the only lead they have.
"The police don't know anything about... this sort of thing. I'm afraid even if they found something, it wouldn't help." Fuuka comments. Fuuka meets Ririka's glance, though. If it's information they need to find...
He doesn't know the specific one.
"Well... we may not need to kick down any doors. Kawase-san and I, we're Navigators. Our Personas specialize in analysis and gleaning information from our surroundings... I may not be much of a fighter, but I'm good at finding things." Fuuka explains.
Ririka and Hyousuke are as lost as she is about what the demon meant - though Ririka suggests that he might want to Awaken Jun.
Why, though?
"Kashihara-san told me that the Joker Killer had an interest in him, though he didn't know what... It seems like it's been that way for a while. Whatever his goal may be, it's likely connected to that." Fuuka comments. That's the reason his gambit worked, before.
If there's a safe way through.
"A distraction might work, if there isn't an opening already... We just need an opportunity. The Joker Killer is dangerous... If we're too exhausted fighting our way through demons, we may not be able to stand up to him." Fuuka comments. "Who else knows about this?"
<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.
Ririka frowned. "I'm preeeety sure it matters if the info is good. If they're lying, they could be trying to get us to waste time, or go to the wrong place... I'm... pretty sure the Joker Killer can summon demons. Or someone in Strega can."
She nodded. "Probably best to avoid the gallery,yeah. And I get that there aren't any other leads, just... we can investigate it, but we shouldn't trust it blindly."
Ririka nods as Fuuka starts to explain about the two of them being Navigators. "Yep. And under the right conditions... we can sense things pretty far out, too... Though... unless we can find a supernatural space to summon our Persona in, we'd have to do it in the Dark Hour..."
Fuuka mentions something Jun told her. "He had an interest in him...? That makes sense, I think. The Joker Killer was willing to make a deal with him, and Kashihara-san knew his real name..." She snaps her fingers. "Oh, right--and when the Joker Killer and Strega attacked Kasugayama, they were messig with Kashihara-san there, too. So it really has been a while..."
"Yeah, it's still gonna be dangerous, path or no path..." Ririka frowns. "We can probably ask the others for help..."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Ririka rebuffed his argument with no shortage of answers, and Hyousuke didn't even attempt to hide his growing consternation. It wasn't directed at her, of course. Rather, it was at the fact that he knew she was right - even if he hadn't the words to admit it. He wanted to shout, or to break something, but settled for clenching a fist tight enough that his roughly-cut nails threatened to carve a reddened path into the skin on his palms. His knuckles paled from the tension there, and it took him a moment to compose himself enough to speak.
"Damn it... I know, you're right, it's just... We've got nothing else to go on. I'll ask people to keep looking, but until we can figure it out, this is all we've got."
Then the topic turned to Navigators. Hyousuke simultaneously looked like he'd stumbled into a goldmine of information, and like he wanted to kick himself for not thinking of such a solution sooner. He eventually managed to settle on relief, however, and looked between the two with determination beginning to spark in his gaze.
"Then if you can, please, let me know if you find *anything.* Or if there's anything else I can do to help." He wanted to tell them that he couldn't just sit back, and that he'd go mad just waiting for news. But he'd already lost enough of his composure already. He couldn't lose his cool in front of people when he needed them to work with him - not again.
"The attack on Kasu...?" Hyousuke said, trailing off a little before blinking suddenly in recognition. "Oh, right, I heard about that one." He then realised that he'd inadvertently raised the question of why he seemed so unfamiliar with something so brazen, before offhandedly mentioning "I thought that was just some gangs getting into a fight? If it really was something to do with the Joker Killer, I could probably ask around and see if anyone heard anything, but it's a long shot..." Between his reputation, his blunt nature, and the possibility that nothing worth mentioning had been revealed, Hyousuke wasn't confident that an investigation on his part would lead to anything. But he couldn't just stand around and wait.
He had to do something.
Then the topic of who else was - or could be - involved arose, and Hyousuke took a second to think.
"Everyone at the gallery. You were with Aragaki-san, and it looked like Uchida-san recognised some of the people fighting the Joker Killer too." He hesitated, and began to organise his thoughts. Dull as he may have been, even Hyousuke recognised the importance of opsec, and how carefully he had to tread with what else he chose to reveal. "I told Ogre and Phoenix about Kashihara-san. They don't know I've got a lead, but I'll be telling them later too. Knowing them, they'll probably call in backup as well." He didn't forget Eikichi - the Death Boss had a way of making a lasting impression on people. But he was reluctant to reveal that Eikichi was awakened, and so kept his lips sealed.
<Pose Tracker> Fuuka Yamagishi has posed.
Fuuka listens as Ririka explains how information can be dangerous. It's a difficult situation, when they don't know how much time they have...
"It just... means we need to proceed with caution." She says. She nods, too, when Ririka provides additional context about Navigators.
"If there are demons present, we may be able to sense it from further away, even without the Dark Hour... but that would probably be the easiest way." Fuuka replies. "We'll let you know if we learn anything, Suzuki-san."
Ririka provides additional context. She wasn't there for the battle at Kasugayama, so her knowing these things is helpful.
"I see..." Fuuka considers thoughtfully. She looks toward Hyousuke, then, as he recounts people who might know.
"I don't know who 'Ogre' and 'Phoenix' are, but... it seems like we won't be alone, at least." Fuuka replies. If Hyousuke told them, Fuuka assumes that means they can be trusted.
<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.
Ririka can see the tension, and she sits up a little. "H-hey, Suzuki-san. We'll figure this out, okay?" He admits she's right, though, but also that they don't have other leads. "I know, I know. And we should check it out, okay? Just... we need to be ready, just in case." She nods to Fuuka. "Yeah, we'll just be careful, that's all."
Ririka nodded to the request for information. "We'll keep you in the loop, right Yamagishi-san?" But as far as demons... "Yeah... that might do it, Yamagishi-san. If there's a lot of them in one place, that might make their Resonance easier to detect."
But the attack on Kasu... Ririka shook her head. "Yeah, 'gang violence' was just... the cover story or how non-supernatural people interpreted it, I guess... Um, I was there, so... I can share what I know."
But when Ririka mentions 'others', Hyousuke, understandably, starts listing people. "Oh, I mean--sorry, I just meant, Yamagishi-san and I have some backup we can call, that's all." She looks to Fuuka. "I know Ogre. I trust her. And I think Phoenix is pretty trustworthy, too."
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke couldn't switch it off. The reality of the situation had its claws deep into his mind - the reality that they had vanishingly little time to spare, a single tenuous lead with which to work, and the time they had to investigate it grew shorter every moment. But while he could not keep himself from being fraught with worry, Ririka managed to at least shake him out of it enough that he could focus that manic burst of energy into something else. Training, impromptu investigations, spreading word to anyone that might have been able to help - he didn't know what he could do to work it off, but he at least had the presence of mind to not waste it on fretting there in that soulless little establishment.
"Careful. Right." He said, managing to at least let the physical signs of his tension ease. His mind still raced, but some colour returned to his hands, and not the red marks of nails carving into his palms. "Kawase-san, if you tell me what you know about the attack, I'll keep digging and see if I get anything else. Otherwise, I'll counting on you two." What seemed on the surface to be an affirmation that he needed their help was, at the same time, an admission to himself of powerlessness. That all he could do, with what limited skills he had, was wait.
Brute force and savage strength... They were good things to have, and potent weapons of war. But the situation called for a scalpel, while all he had was an axe.
Even so, it was a building full of demons, and a wretched killer amidst them all. Brute force would have its place, sooner or later.
"Good. That's good." He seemed to exhale the words, rather than speak them. "If that demon's right, we're gonna have one hell of a fight on our hands. But we *will* get our friend back, no matter how many of them we have to go through."
<Pose Tracker> Fuuka Yamagishi has posed.
"Yes... We'll do what we can." Fuuka agrees, as Ririka says they'll figure this out. Is this how people felt, when preparing to go to her rescue? Uncertain if it was safe, or what state she'd be in when they found her...
It's a difficult situation. She wishes she could be more reassuring... Ririka does better at that, though, she thinks.
Ririka knows Ogre and she trusts Phoenix, and Fuuka nods.
"If you trust them, then I will, too." Fuuka replies. She nods, too, when Hyousuke says he'll be counting on them.
One hell of a fight...
"Yes..." She agrees. "Even if I didn't know him, I couldn't possibly just leave someone in that position without doing anything..."
<Pose Tracker> Ririka Kawase has posed.
Ririka nodded. "Yeah, I can do that. They had someone cloaking things in the air raid shelter, so I don't know everything that happened there, but... I'll share what I can."
For there are Navigators, and there are also Anti-Navigators.
She nodded firmly to Hyousuke. "Right. We'll do everything we can to get him back, promise. I... I consider him a friend of mine, so... I'm worried, too."
Talking about what happened with Fuuka's rescue is something perhaps best saved for another time, though Ririka might be willing to share if asked.
She nods to Fuuka. "Yeah, even if I didn't know him..." She signed up to go help search for Fuuka, after all. She takes a deep breath, figers still tapping on her thigh. "... guess we'd better take a trip up to Sumaru when we can..."