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The Hanged Man; [Chika Nakadachi - Single Post]
Topic Started: Jan 21 2014, 08:17 PM (76 Views)
The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
This post occurs the evening after Letters from the Heart and happens in parallel with The Devil.

---

She was alone in the ruins. Chika was alone in the ruins and for the first time in a long time, she just didn't care.

Part of her had hoped the urge might have subsided--that horrible need to inflict pain, to take out her anger and frustration and sadness on things that could feel something like it themselves. It was like siphoning her feelings off, letting out the waste--except for how it made her feel horrible afterward.

Her sword was in her hand, the sword that Naoya had made for her. The cell phone strap that Nana had given her was attached to her phone. She knew she could heal herself by blasting her own body with a Mamudo spell if it absolutely needed doing, but she didn't want to do that, not if it would damage her brother's watch, or the strap. The sword was probably safe--it seemed to have gained some resilience against dark magic from her blood.

Chika knew that prudence would have said to leave the strap and the watch at home if she wanted to protect them so much, but she found herself unwilling to detach them from her arm and phone. Whenever her fingers got to the point of undoing them, she just...

...couldn't.

She was already starting to feel like the strap and the sword were equal to the watch and the knife. The knife itself was strapped to her belt in its old makeshift sheath, now. She didn't want to damage that, either. But mementos of people that she'd lost--that was what the knife and the watch were. And now the sword and the strap felt the same to her, and the people who'd given her those weren't even dead. Not yet anyway, but it was only a matter of time No, not dead yet and they never would die, they'd be fine. Nana was amazing and Naoya was super-smart, Nana would beat back anyone who tried to kill her and Naoya would deal with his Shadow and be back looking all bashful and apologetic and probably regretting that he'd spilled his secrets in that letter that Chika hadn't been able to bring herself to read
(i'm sorry to say this)
and she would tell him tell him she didn't know what but he would come back he would be alive and they would talk and she would still be able to talk to Nana too and eventually she'd be able to get Nana smiling without that fucking Izanami screwing it all up--

Chika probably shouldn't have gone into the ruins with her head in such a state alone, probably should have asked for someone to come with her, she knew that, but as she stalked the corridors with her sword held out in front her, eyes focused forward and mind nowhere near where her eyes were looking, she couldn't care about that. She needed to find something alive so she could rend it to pieces and make it feel the bubbling agony of its insides being ripped out.

The first Shadow to cross her path was a sheep walking on two legs, with a necktie and a pillow.

That ended quickly. Her knee-jerk reaction to that was to activate Kizuna's Sukukaja spell, speeding her reflexes and her perceptions. The sheep charged her straight on, swinging its pillow, the pillow she did not want to be hit with because it would take her clothes away, and she recalled that this thing was probably born from human thoughts and it was probably those kinds of thoughts that some part of her was always afraid all the boys around her were thinking and--

And Chika had only the vaguest memory afterward of what happened. She'd seen red, she slashed the pillow-arm clean off the sheep with a Mudo-infused swing of her sword. She'd descended on the monster before it had a chance to retaliate, taken one hand off her sword, infused it was darkness and shoved it onto the Sheep's face, fingers digging into its eyes. It had flailed, it had blasted a spell into the air, she'd driven it down with the full weight of her body, unbalancing it. There had been bright light and pain as the Mahama spell exploded around her, white-hot, stinging pain. She'd closed her eyes against it and countered by pressing her hand harder into the monster's face. At some point there was an irksome inclination to see the Stray Sheep as her friend, but she had ignored that completely and continued pumping dark magic into the Sheep's brain until it had died.

When the red haze passed, she'd knelt there in a pool of melting Shadow-gunk, the knees of her denim pants and her left hand flat on the floor, coated in black slime. She'd let herself shake for a bit, eyes still shut. She felt like every nerve was on fire. Light magic. Weakness.

She fumbled in her jacket, and brought out the phone, which she dangled in front of her tear-streaked eyes by the strap. The strap was fine. So was the phone, but the phone could be replaced. This couldn't...

Stuffing the phone back in her pocket, she glanced over the sword, which seemed to be undamaged, though there were odd signs of bleached spots on the parts of the handle that her hand wasn't covering. She looked to the knife, and set the sword down long enough to extract it from its sheath. The sheath was visibly scorched in places, just a little, but the knife was fine. That was fortunate...

She put the knife away, and checked the wristwatch. The wristwatch was--fine? Perhaps her jacket sleeve had shielded it...

Staggering to her feet, Chika tried to move. It hurt worse than the worst sunburn she'd ever had. She couldn't go on like this, so Chika looked around. There were rooms left and right... she moved toward the nearest one.

No Shadows. None that she could see... nothing on the ceiling, no openings...

Quietly, she crept in, and closed the door behind her, silently locking it for good measure.

---

When she emerged, she was healed. It was a simple process: she just had to undress, set her clothes aside, along with the sword, knife, strap, and watch. Once she was completely nude, she moved as far away from the items as she could and just summoned her Persona to bombard her with magic until she couldn't feel the pain of the Mahama spell anymore. It was simple, easy. It made her nervous, but the door was locked and there weren't any windows or anything, so she was fine...

Everything was healed but the usual things--her hands, and the scars she had always had. She heard a noise in the distance as she healed herself--a gunshot, it sounded like. There was probably another Persona-user fighting Shadows in here somewhere, but that was fine.

She dressed as quickly as she could, put the watch back on, the knife back on her belt, the phone and strap back in her pocket. Once she was ready again, she stepped out. Despite the healing, her left hand still tingled from being forced into the Stray Sheep's face...

At that moment, her phone went off: the ringtone was one that Kyo had given her. It was the beeping sound a communications device made in a game called Metal Gear Solid, which both she and Kyo had set their phones to make if there were any posts to the Bedlam Blotter. She pulled it out, a bit annoyed that this couldn't have happened before she put it back in her pocket, and checked it. There was a message on the Blotter from "GunsNRoses..."

Chika wanted to put her phone away and ignore it, but she was calm enough now that she could resist that impulse. She picked the "View" option and read the notice on the screen:

red-eyed shadow
 
Post By: GunsNRoses
Date: XX-XX-XXXX at 20:67 [posted via mobile]

charinko is fighting a duplicate of herself
assistance requested tier-2+


Kyo... a duplicate of herself. The Blotter app's GPS locator--she needed to know where--fumbling with her phone (Damn this small, cheap screen!), Chika didn't even post a response before checking the location, and breaking into a run, out the door and into the hall, running for the place where her former best friend was fighting some copy of herself. As she ran, Chika summoned the mask to her face again, and summoned Tisiphone, who drifted along just ahead of her--

The next Shadows to cross her path were a pair of Slipping Hablerie.

Their severed tongues were still wriggling on the floor when she disappeared around the next bend.
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