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Between Success and Failure; Karin recuperates (Kira)
Topic Started: Apr 1 2012, 04:01 PM (221 Views)
fsteak
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Karin was hurting. Quite frankly, that was the only way to put it. Her ribs had been pulverized by whatever had knocked her out. The forceful removal of her mask from her face, as well as what must've been the mask's very malignant presence had left quite a number on her face as well. By now, most of the burns and scars on her face had mended and were almost gone. The use of healing magic probably played no small part in their lack of severity. Her ribcage was also on the mend, and she had been given the go ahead to consume solid foods a couple of days ago.

What hadn't mended, though, were the scars within. Even though it wasn't physically a part of her, Karin could swear she could feel her battered and broken pride smoldering and refusing to heal. By her own standards, she was worthless. One's competance - and by extension, worth - were dictated by their successes and failures. What had happened to her could only be described as a failure of the absolute highest regard. She obtained information regarding the kidnappings, as she set out to do, but the information she had gathered was rendered archaic, old news shortly after she had been retreived. All she had succeeded in was making herself a target. She allowed herself to be captured, her lack of competance led to her being experimented upon. And then those experiments turned out to be a forceful awakening of a phenomena that had previously only been attributed to persona users who were of weak self-control or experiencing traumatically severe emotional turmoil. She had used her Persona with no ill effects literally seconds before the transformation tried to come about. Thanks to those experiments, she was - and perhaps still is - suspect to succumbing to the greatest and most disastrous personal failure of any Persona user... at the hands of an outside trigger.

"Worthless..." The girl muttered under her breath, her fist clenching as though trying to grasp for a weapon out of thin air. Of course, there was none to be found. To the girl, there was simply one option left. She'd have to make up for her failures. It would be difficult, but only the most flagrant of idiots would be content to let their shortcomings be. She'd have to recover first, but from there she'd throw herself at the problem. Karin's confidence silently started to surge back. Of course, this was like any other conundrum she had encountered during her life. She could crack it open, it'll just take time.

A quiet grumble stopped Karin's train of thought. Sighing, she looked down. She was hungry. It made sense, she couldn't remember when she last ate anything worthwhile. The student's gaze strayed over to a box beside her bed. She reached out for it, ignoring the get well soon card beside it as it fell on the floor. She grabbed a paper plate that had been set aside, as well as a plastic fork and spoon. There was a strawberry cheesecake in the box, already sliced evenly with a serving spade waiting to be used. Karin set a slice of the cake onto her plate and set it down in front of her.

...something felt wrong about it.

Sighing, Karin reached over to her bedside again, rummaging about until she found a single small candle. She put it on the cake and then very carefully lit it using her powers. That should solve the problem, but... it didn't. Karin sighed once again before very quietly starting to sing to herself in a rather somber tone.

"Happy birthday to meee...."
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UserShadow7989
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A quiet knock on the door interrupted the recovering girl's song. "Suzaki-san?" Kira paused, trying to collect her thoughts. "It's me, Kira. I wanted to drop by and see how you were doing." Part of her wanted to leave; the girl had been rather testy during the rescue, but a more logical part of her pointed out that was hardly the best set of circumstances to get to know somebody.

She shuffled her feet, adjusting the grip on the small box underneath her arm. I hope the get well soon gift isn't too paltry, but money's a bit tight... Still, grabbing something from one's own workplace was considered cheap, wasn't it? Maybe she could just hide it or something?

Relax yourself, Kira. So long as you're confident and composed, everything should go smoothly. The persona chuckled in her normal motherly manner. You've faced down shadows ten times your size, and here you are afraid of a girl in the hospital. Relax! All signs of stress seemed to vanish at the encouragement, and the brunette waited quietly for a response.
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fsteak
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Karin gave a surprised gasp at the unexpected knock. Her singing was immediately cut off and replaced with frantic attempts to dispose any exidence of the pathetic display. She wetted her fingers with her mouth and promptly extinguished the candle. She then removed the offending piece of wax and tossed it aside. Why did she make such a fuss like she was actually going to let her in? Why would she do something stupid and illogical like that? She didn't know this girl, she certainly had no reason to like her...

Because you're lonely Kacchan.

"Shut up inner Hikari voice..." Karin grumbled. She sighed in defeat, briefly taking her anger out on her slice of cheesecake before speaking up. "It's open, feel free to come in." She said, successful at biting back the urge to add "it's not like I could stop you" to the end.

The girl's hospital room was so sparse it was practically despressing. The only signs that anyone was even residing in it was a folded up bundle of clothes with a large, crude looking metal band resting on the nearby table and the single, solitary gift box and the get well soon card lying forgotten on the floor. "You must forgive me, entertaining guests has never been something I've done." The girl said, gesturing towards a chair beside her.
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"Okay, then..." The room was a sharp contrast to the one she had stayed in- empty, if not for its lone resident. Kira ignored the urge to shiver. It reminded her of some of the nightmares she'd had not long ago. If she hadn't felt a pang of sympathy for the girl before, she did now.

The brunette gave her best reassuring smile. "Don't worry, I've never gotten the good host thing down. You're doing better than I am." A bald-faced lie, but at the moment it was the best she could think of. Kira took a seat at the indicated chair, holding the box in her lap. "I grabbed some things- tea blends, coffee blends, hot chocolate packs, cake mixes... I wish I could have gotten something more personal, but it seemed like a good get well soon gift."

Karin didn't seem the type to enjoy long conversations, so she took her time picking her words to avoid launching into a rant. "I was impressed. During the rescue, you were a lot more composed than most of us would have been after what you'd gone through. I don't think I'd have the guts to try and gather information like that."
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fsteak
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Karin didn't quite know what to think of the display. If she picked up on Kira's lie, she didn't show it. Instead, she stared at the gift in the girl's hands. "I..." She quietly took the present, continuing to stare at it. "I... I work late into the night on projects a lot, sugar and caffiene are practically my lifeblood. This is a very pract-" Karin stopped herself with a cough. "I mean... thank you. The only other people that brought me anything were my foster parents." The girl looked back over at the box beside her. "Strawberry cheesecake. My favourite. If you want a slice I suppose I could get one..."

The science student scoffed and shook her head at Kira's continued praise. "Composed? You thought that was composed?" Karin began to cut at her cheesecake, frowning at it intensely. "I had been cooped up in a vat for weeks, I was in pain, I had been starting to get nightmares, my contacts were missing so I couldn't see a thing, I was caught in the middle of a strange lab with enemies all around, I had been flitting in and out of conciousness for so long it was all starting to blur together, and then some weird little man started taunting me about it being my birthday. I wasn't composed, I was mad as hell. Anger, fear, hatred, sadness... some people see them as a weakness or flaw, I see them as focusing agents. Hate someone or something enough, and you'll go through Hell itself to get at it. And I wouldn't call my investigation very effective... after all, the community found out what I did before I was able to share it. If I had done a good job, we'd be done by now." Karin sighed and took a bite of cheesecake.

"Disappointment isn't one of those feelings I've been able to use yet... Screwing up like this gnaws at me."
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"I... a small slice would be nice, thank you." Kira nodded. Chocolate was her preference, but cheese cake was delicious on its own merits, and she had been burning calories like crazy. There was some concern at learning the girl had only gotten two gifts, but she did her best not to let it show too much.

"Composed for the situation. Most people would have been borderline catatonic." She decided not to press the point, cringing at the description of what she went through. The big hit was the point at the end- the feeling of screwing up. She shook her head at Karin's claim that she failed to end it. "It takes more than one person to stop something of this size. You can't blame yourself for not singlehandedly taking down an organization like that."

Feeling the need to connect to the girl, she continued. "It took me a long time to learn how to deal with my failures." She confided. "I'd always berate myself for the smallest misstep or if I felt I could have done better." Kira sighed. "The best thing you can do is try to figure out what went wrong and vow not to do it again. Mistakes are human. There are people who have done worse in the past, and there will be more in the future. The important thing is you're smart enough to acknowledge it and adapt."
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fsteak
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"I'm not saying I expected my efforts to singlehandedly crack this problem wide open. I know I have some limits." Karin said, slicing off a portion of cake that was smaller than her own, but nonetheless fairly generous, especially considering what seemed to be the girl's generally unsociable nature. "But there is the matter that by the time I was rescued, my findings have all amounted to nothing. Nothing truly new was revealed. Not to mention, there's the fact that those people did... something to me." The girl shifted uncomfortably.

"You were there, I had used my persona to no detrimental effect mere moments before I started to turn. There was no shocking event during that time, no will-shattering trauma or emotional catalyst. All of a sudden the symptoms I felt whilst in capivity were amplified to an outright horrific degree... my persona started whispering. Nothing new there, he always whispers. But then he started getting louder, angrier, more vicious, more dominating. It felt like with every bit of strength that was being sapped from me, he was getting stronger. And eventually, I was the one stuck whispering." Karin handed the slice of cake over to Kira, leaving a fork stuck in it for her. "It mocked me. It taunted me. It tried to make me feel like the most pathetic, worthless little piece of trash the world had ever seen, not even worth the air I breathe. It was like I was a little girl again, except far more poetic. In fact, that was probably the entire idea."

"But you're right." Karin said, shrugging off the rather negative statements. "The only way I'm going to be able to redeem myself for these failures is by isolating how they came about and rectifying them. I guess the most important aspect would be to eliminate the nightmares where Ixion makes his presence known..." A pair of tired eyes were suddenly staring right at Kira, flicking here and there as they studied almost everything about her. To the telltale shaking of her hand to the darkening rings around her eyes. "You don't exactly seem like you've been getting all that much sleep yourself. Is insomnia a common symptom for Persona Users?"
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Kira accepted the slice with a soft thanks and took a small bite. "It... I'm not sure if it's specifically common to us, but I have seen several persona users with insomnia, yes. It makes a lot of sense- most of us are young, fighting for our lives on a regular basis, and we have voices in our heads that may or may not want us to be miserable."

"In my case, it's nightmares. I never did sleep well, but recently I've been doing much worse. I just hope I don't have post traumatic stress disorder." It wouldn't be surprising. She had witnessed two people die in front of her before, both of them having a very direct connection to her. The constant cycle of seeing friends lose their minds only to just barely be brought back from the brink had begun to wear on her, as well. She drowned the worries in more cheesecake.

"I just got released from here not too long ago; passed out from exhaustion and went into a coma for two days. I've been trying to take better care of myself, but the root problem- nightmares- still remains."
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"PTSD is certainly plausible, but I don't think it's likely..." Karin said. Her calm, quiet voice seemed like it was actually trying to be reassuring. "Psychology isn't my field of study, but I'm fairly certain that has waking effects as well. If it's just nightmares, well, that could be explained as the building stress..." Karin frowned down at the floor. "But I think our Personas play a large role in it. I've been having nightmares as well... not for very long, mind. In fact, the first one was right before I woke up to find you..." The girl said, waving a finger at Kira.

"The subject matter always draws a recurring theme, there's always the same old, tired song. And it's about nothing that shouldn't have anything to do with my current issues..." Karin frowned angrily. "And when I compare the dreams with the symptoms I felt when my Persona was trying to take over and various testimonies on Bedlam..." The girl nodded towards the crude looking bangle resting on her clothes for some reason.

"I'm not sure... but I think whatever the problem is is related to Hoculus..."
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