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Volta; [Bog, Exo, Fish, Kuuji, Prince, Wands, NS; All others ask first.]
Topic Started: Nov 21 2013, 09:44 PM (3,729 Views)
Czernobog
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Best Influence.
[Connected to URGENT: Strange Activity.]

Rio was curled up in the back seat of Hanako's car. She didn't know what she had expected from this person -- "NoHalfMeasures" first, and then "DontLoseYourHead" -- but Hanako Ito had always come across as more than a little unhinged. She turned out to be a careful driver, though. Which simply meant that there was bound to be some explosion of irrationality later on, Rio figured.

Sitting next to her was her laptop bag, and she had put a folding chair in the trunk, along with a blanket. It was getting colder out, and the beach-visit setup she had used the first time a new area of the ruins opened up wasn't going to cut it. Soon she would have to find a way to bring a space heater along. Or at least a bonfire.

When the car stopped, she retrieved her things and prepared for the trudge up to the entrance, briefly glancing at the others. She had been so out of it that she hadn't bothered to look at who else had been in the car. With a yawn, she waited for the others to go on ahead, casting her perceptions down through the ground.

Whatever it was, it was still down there. She could feel it.
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FirebreathFishslap
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I'm the best! I'm the king of me! I'm gonna eat chips out of the garbage!

Manabu had, some way or another, found himself sitting in the front seat of Hanako Ito's car. He didn't know how to drive; he was too young to and his father never would have supported it anyways. Not that he had any interest in piloting a 50-ton death machine, anyways. Really, more concerning was the fact that the car belonged to Hanako, who'd been acting rather creepily attached to him ever since he'd accidentally asked her if her silver hair was the result of a banshee or something like that.

He yawned and stared blankly out the window. Part of him wanted to take a nap, but he doubted he could fall asleep if he tried.

Sitting on his lap was a knapsack full of everything Manabu had determined he'd need for this trip. It included the notebook he kept his Shadow notes in, a few pencils (one was never enough, and pens always broke in the ruins), a bat (the handle sticking out of the bag rather prominently), and, most notably, improvised explosives. He hadn't needed to bring those along since they'd gone raiding Russian bases, and back then he'd just intended to use them for blowing up buildings, not Shadows. Luckily, translations of the Anarchist Cookbook were still as easy to find as ever.

When the car stopped, he stepped out, pulling the bag over his back as he did so. Manabu yawned again, and turned toward Rio. "Are you going to come with us, or are you just staying up here as usual?"
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
"Thanks a heap, Hanako!"

Kyo hopped out of the car with such energy in her movements that it was almost as though she were trying to make up for Manabu's obvious fatigue. She stretched her arms, then her legs, then she reached for the small towel-bundle on the floor at the feet of the seat she'd been sitting in. With a flourish, she unwrapped it, tossed the towel back into the car, and voila! It was her sword harness, which she set about strapping to her back as usual. It didn't look particularly well-made: really it looked kind of makeshift, although it was also sturdy. In essence it was just a pair of leather belts strapped together with a third leather belt, which wrapped about her torso between where the base of her ribs ended and her bustline began, and around both shoulders. On the back, her two kodachi and their lacquered sheaths were on prominent display, and in easy teach. It probably wasn't a setup that would have worked if she had opted for full-length katana, but as it was she could unsheath either of the blades without a fuss.

Beyond that? She was wearing a light jacket, and she had a small satchel of first aid shit on her belt--Shizuka, bless her absentee heart, had been ever the practical little sword maiden.

Kyo patted the chest-pocket of her jacket as she stepped away from the car to give others the room they needed to disembark and prepare. "Anyway, once we're inside I've got somethin' t' show y'all. I think you'll like it!" she said. There was a pause, and then she added in a flat voice. "A trinket. In my pocket. I--y'know what, never mind."

The girl turned to face the entrance. Then she asked, "Y'got any sorta better sense o' what we're lookin' for yet, Rio? Or is it still just 'something strange?'"
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
"Oh, sure Kyo."

Hanako was actually a very good and conscientious driver. It helped that the car itself was very precious to her and she didn't want to much as a ding on it if she could have helped it. There was also the fact that it was several tons of unforgiving, unyielding metal moving at high speeds and driving like an asshole was only going to end poorly for someone. There was that, too.

After they safely parked at the ruins, she leaned against the wheel and stared at what for about a year was the only entrance to the ruins, until new ones were recently found. This wasn't just another run, and she knew it. They had a specific objective in mind, and the implication was that something big was down there. And the showing was not overall that impressive. One person who couldn't even use his Persona. A pair of overzealous new people-three counting herself-and Kyo who could certainly take care of herself but not herself and babysit everyone else present.

She got out and went for her weapons in the truck. "Don't do anything you know, ill-advised, Kaeuruma-san." Hanako had stopped really caring about even needling Manabu with the act of feigned unsettling devotion in response to unwanted familiarity a long time ago. She had more important things to have dealt with. Near death experiences, new siblings, etc. The usual. She was neutral and subdued towards him, almost to the point of Apathy. Her job was to get him out of trouble as needed, nothing more and nothing less.

"Yeah, Kyo. No one's gonna make any lewd innuendos." Belt of knives? Quiver? Bow and arrows? All check. She donned her mask, which amongst other things gave her eyes an unearthly green glow.

Whatever happened, she just had to keep up and not hold everything back. That was simple enough, wasn't it?
Edited by Nonsequitur, Dec 18 2013, 03:53 PM.
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Czernobog
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Best Influence.
Rio retrieved the folding chair and blanket from the trunk, and grunted under the weight. It wouldn't have been much for anyone else, but she was not a terribly strong individual.

"No, I'm just going to be mission control," she said to Manabu. "If you need extraction, I can do my armored form thing and come after, but I can only scan and evade. I'd need a guard of my own if I were to come down."

She began to head up the hill, and considered Kyo's question. "It's hard to figure out what's going on down there. It's like...you know that high pitched sound that you only find in completely empty rooms? It's like that. But sustained. All other shadows feel like something, and nothing feels like nothing. This is like someone walking around with a megaphone, shouting 'ignore me!' at the top of their lungs. I just can find out anything else about them over that."
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Exodin
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MAHHA
Daichi had been quiet so far. Quiet the entire car ride here. Why he had been put in the back of all places was a question he couldn't answer. Not that it mattered. He unzipped the duffel, retrieving his kampilan from within. Before opening the car door and stepping out. He left the bag on the floor of the car, it would be unnecessary now.

"What should I do?"

Really apparently they had three Ascended users, and a boy without a persona. He was precisely on the lower end of the spectrum in this predicament.

"Just let me know."

The statements were told to no specific individual. Hopefully they could find him something where he would be of at least some use here.

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FirebreathFishslap
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I'm the best! I'm the king of me! I'm gonna eat chips out of the garbage!

Manabu didn't respond to Rio's response, only deciding to put his bag on the ground and taking inventory of everything. Bat was check, bombs were check. He looked up at Hanako, a sealed bottle of liquid in hand, and raised an eyebrow. "Ill-advised? Ito-chan, you clearly don't know me very well." He grinned. "Doing ill-advised things is my job. I'm doing something ill-advised right now, in fact."

He paused in his rummaging as Rio described the shadow she was sensing, then shrugged. "Sounds like a tulpa," he mumbled, and then immediately got back to rummaging.

After making sure everything was in order, Manabu retrieved his baseball bat and swung the bag over his shoulders. He turned toward Daichi and shrugged. "You can help make sure I don't die. Are we ready to go?"
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Kyo sighed quietly as she followed Rio uphill, glancing back at the others. "Hanako, ain't no need t' baby him or nothin', yeah? He knows what he's doin', so--you and Daichi just hang back and make sure nothin' gets to him before it gets t' you, easy as that. I'll take point."

She couldn't really make much sense of what Rio said--that ringing sound in empty rooms? You mean the sound life makes when I'm alone with my thoughts instead of either with one o' my friends or with some sorta distraction thing? Kyo couldn't help thinking. Of course, she didn't say that; she did barely catch Manabu's mutter of "tulpa," and paused, trying to remember where she'd heard it before.

And then she did: the idea that something can become real just by pure belief in it. In longer terms, materialized thought that has taken a physical form. Manabu had mentioned that on Bedlam in the thread about the Cult of Nyarlathotep. Well, when she thought about it, Shadows to begin with weren't that far off from that, right? Even with those documents found that suggested the black goopy stuff they were made of had been around for centuries or something. There was no way a sheep with a pillow that made clothes go "poof" would exist unless it had emerged from the deepest recess of humankind's dirty, dirty minds. Besides which, it kind of reminded Kyo of a videogame--Catherine, actually.

"Well, maybe it's a Shadow that actually is an empty room," Kyo said in a flat voice. "Anyway it don't look like we have much of an artillery squad with us today and I'm just a measly li'l up-and-comin' tier-2, so if this turns out t'be somethin' big, like a humanoid Shadow or somethin'? We're prolly gonna be runnin' like our buts caught blue fire. In the spirit o' that, let's all sound off what we can and can't get hit by! I'm immune t' dark and light. Fire and wind don't like me, though. So leave Hama and Mudo spells t'me, yeah?"

She looked back, and pointed to Daichi. "And don't you try bein' a hero, y'got me, Daichi? If I say stay back, stay back."
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
"Yeah, why don't we keep it that way, Kaerunuma-san?" She said quickly in direct response to the jest. "Well fine, don't do anything that will get your limbs blown off, your guts spilled all over the ruins or anything else that will make keeping you alive tougher than it has to be just wandering around the ruins."

When the question of what they could do. "Nothing special, but you know, darkness spells have no effect, I absorb water and still week to light, that's about it."
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Czernobog
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Best Influence.
"Sounds like weird shit, and weird shit tends to be bad shit," Rio said to the "tulpa" comment, sticking her empty cigarette holder in her mouth.

At the entrance, she unfolded her chair, and then took out her phone, queuing up the Blotter and then sticking it into a drink holder on the armrest of the chair. From her laptop bag she took four walkie-talkies, and held offered them to the others.

"I've got these, and I'm also going to hand you all a new map I got laminated. That Taiwanese guy who's always making trouble sent it along. Apparently he comes down to explore whenever I slap a temporary ban on him, because this is extensive. Not sure about the accuracy, but it could be correct."

She prepared the mojo wire, casting it on each of them as they took a walkie-talkie.
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