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Knock, knock, get the door.; Rinko gon' give it to ya. [Kyo, others ask.]
Topic Started: Aug 2 2017, 12:36 PM (568 Views)
JacobSteakfries
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Driven by Pure Spite
Rinko's mind was kind of a blur. When you push yourself past the point of mental exhaustion, it's almost funny how hard it is to remember even the most notable details. She did recall being stirred awake in the backseat of someone's car, but didn't remember who was the driver or when she ever got into said car. When she tumbled out of the backseat and refused any help she spent God knows how long trying to figure out what place it was Chika gave her.

Eventually though she was pretty sure she found it and didn't waste any time getting inside. She also couldn't remember if the door was locked or not. If it wasn't then it was probably fine as she rammed her shoulder into it while turning the nob at the same time. If not she'd...probably have to pay for a new lock on that door one of these days.

Whatever the case, Rinko would unceremoniously stumble into what was hopefully Kyo's place before dropping onto one knee, grumbling something unintelligible, and then falling flat onto her face with her rear sticking into the air. Her bag and bat holder began sliding down her back and propping themselves atop of the back of her head, exposing her lower back as it dragged her uniform with her. Other than that, all she had was the address Chika had given her in her left hand.

Despite how uncomfortable of a position Rinko would end up in, she gave off a soft snore every couple of seconds. Signs pointed to her being out for a while.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
It was lucky for Rinko that Kyo had been expecting her. Kyo's apartment was, normally, not only locked: it was double-locked. The green-haired teen who lived alone with her boyfriend at that address was well aware that she had a number of enemies who might one day intrude on her place of residence either to do her harm or look for some item or information that she had obtained — she'd reached a frankly inconvenient level of infamy in the Persona-user community by now — so the door's knob was not the only lock that needed to be opened. There was also a bulky bolt-lock on the interior of the door. Had it been secured, Rinko would have achieved nothing apart from the dislocation of her own shoulder joint.

As it was, the door opened without a fuss. Kyo, who'd been pacing the living room impatiently for almost thirty minutes and wondering if the girl Chika had warned her of wasn't going to show up after all, whirled around and glared at the uninvited intruder before wincing as she flopped to the floor and passed out. The girl matched Chika's description, and as she settled into a decidedly undignified position on the floor, Kyo set her bottle of beer down on the sitting-room table and strolled over to her, folding her arms over her chest and staring down in exasperation.

"...This is like the kinda way I'd've made my entrance t' someone's place before I met Hiroko," she mumbled irritably to herself. "Fuck, do I even wanna know what you're runnin' from, girl?"

Without any further delay, Kyo bent to roll her over and pick her up. After all, Rinko sort of had her ass sticking out in the direction of an open doorway, not a position any self-respecting girl would have allowed her to remain in, and if Kyo respected anything in the world, it was her self. She set the bat and bag to one side, rolled Rinko over, and heaved her up bridal-style without much difficulty, despite being short even for a Japanese girl, and strolled on over to the hallway connecting the sitting room to the respectably-sized bedroom she shared with Hiroko and the little storage room that had previously served as Kyomu Monto's temporary bedroom. She'd set out the spare futon already, so she laid the girl on it as comfortably as she would go and pulled a blanket over her.

From what Chika had relayed to her of this person's temperament, Kyo figured she would quite likely react poorly to waking up without her belongings in easy reach, so Kyo strolled back out to retrieve them, and also to lock the door. When the newcomer woke up, she would find both bag and bat in plain sight, tucked into a corner of that small, narrow room. Kyo herself, figuring it would be imprudent to not be awake when this girl came to, decided to spend the rest of the night working on a college paper instead of sleeping. Less chance of bullshit happening that way. Better this chick had someone to talk to when she got up...
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
The situation was uncomfortably familiar to Hanako. This wasn't the first time she'd been used as a no questions asked ferry service to drop someone off at Kyo that was clearly in no condition to make the trip of their own. This one was fairly benign, all things considered, but the parallel was enough to summon up a few hard feelings in Hanako. At the least this time her charge wasn't the mutilated shell of a person who she thought it would have been better to have instead tied to a large rock and deposited somewhere in the river, in retrospect.

But such thoughts left her as easily as they came to her lately. Especially when she had more important things to focus on than her own embittered ruminations. Like making sure this gal would make it from the back seat of her car to her intended destination without getting turned around due to disorientation or passing out short from exhaustion, or something. The last thing Seiji told her was she was one of the delinquent types who didn't like being told what to do and wouldn't take well to someone carrying her in.

So she let her handle it her way and trailed behind a respectable distance to make sure nothing went wrong. Thankfully, she got there without a hitch. Kyo was expecting her evidently. That was good, made her job all that easier. When mystery girl tumbled in, Hanako still waited for a bit to let the situation get settled, but not too settled. She stood at the portal and then made her presence known with a knock against the now opened door as she peeked her head inside.

”Yeah, hi. I don't think I ever got her name, but here she is.” She said, flatly. ”She probably would have been here a lot sooner, but she got waylaid to the ruins on the way. That's where Seiji and Gwyn found her.” Well, on the plus side, that meant she wasn't in nearly as bad physical shape as when she wound up there. Seiji was the thorough sort with treating other people's injuries. On the other hand, she just kind of wandered from one messy situation into a completely different and far stranger debacle.

…and now it was entirely up to Kyo to explain that too her. Hanako had done her part, and she was quite content to file the remainder of the plight of unnamed girl under 'not my problem anymore.'
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fearjunkie
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Oh my God, I LEFT THE STOVE ON AT HOME!

Hiroko thought high school was bad, but college was proving to be a nightmare. He'd taken up a serious coffee habit since he started classes and was in the middle of pouring his third cup since noon when the girl walked in- or more accurately, fell in.

"Kyo, you have company." he said dryly as he put some sugar into the coffee and took a long sip. As Kyo walked in, he went back to the textbooks he was studying. "There's fresh sheets and pillow covers in the closet if she needs 'em." he said drolly. Hiroko's eyes went back to the textbook- and completely refused to focus on what was written there. Even with the amount of caffeine he was putting into his system, the task at hand felt insurmountable, requiring more effort than he was able to put out. He sighed and tossed the book aside. It slid along the table and fell to the ground with a thud.

"Oh, hey Hanako-san. Been awhile since I've seen you." said Hiroko, trying not to look overwhelmed with...well, everything in general. "What's up?"
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Kyo heard Hanako walk in as she retreated with Rinko in her arms, glancing back with visible surprise to see her there. Chika hadn't mentioned anything about Hanako, and this girl Rinko looked much less beat-up than Chika had made it sound. When she heard Hanako's words, Kyo paused, hissed out a swear that was fully audible from the front door, and it was as she stepped out to retrieve the sleeping girl's belongings that she met Hanako's eye with a harried, exhausted expression on her face.

"Her name's Rinko, I think," Kyo answered exasperatedly. "Never met her before. From the sound o' what Chika said when she sent her my way, my first guess was that she's on the run from some kinda yakuza or gang trouble back in Osaka! 'Cause I so needed more o' that in my life. You're tellin' me the butterfly swooped in and took her sometime between then and now? What the hell, man, it never fuckin' ends in this town!"

Kyo didn't think she knew anyone named Gwyn, but she made a mental note to thank Seiji for his help. She picked up the bag and bat, looking over at Hiroko.

"Chika says she's not in any state o' mind for your jokes and has a bad temper, Hiro-kun," the green-hair said. "So lay off it until it seems like she's got her head on better. Chika says this girl's dealt with some kinda recent trauma, and if there's anythin' that girl knows on sight, it's trauma."

She turned back to Hanako, smiling awkwardly.

"Thanks for makin' sure she got here... why don'tcha come in for a bit, Hanako? Have a drink, or a snack, or somethin'."
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
She responded to Hiroko with a wave. She wasn't exactly in the most sociable of moods lately, and it seemed like he had his hands full as it was. They weren't exactly bosom buddies, but at least a proper greeting was in order. ”Hey, Hiroko.”

She got a name to go with the face that was sprawled all over the back seat of her car. After reporting the situation, and Kyo's reaction to that she simply shrugged. What was she supposed to say? It was well past being common knowledge that whatever process that dragged people into it was indifferent as to how inconvenient it was on those involved.

The couple was going to discuss the new living situation and Chika had her own commentary. Evidently that was how Rinko got referred to Kyo. Truthfully, she was mostly just filing it away as background information. She wasn't really needed for anything further and where things went from there depended entirely on the girl in question right? She was mainly still on autopilot until she caught up that Kyo thanked her for her part in the process of getting her safely there.

”If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.” She said simply, it was almost a personal mantra of hers. She almost declined her request to stay offhand. Whenever she was around most people it just felt…off. But it might have been worse to simply retreat at every first sign of social interaction.

After a very obvious bit of hesitation and holding an expression that didn't speak of much enthusiasm over the idea, she finally softened up a bit and relented to the offer. ”Well, not too long. But okay, I'll have something to drink. Nothing hard, of course.”
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fearjunkie
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Oh my God, I LEFT THE STOVE ON AT HOME!

"More fucking yakuza?" Hiroko said in between sips of coffee. "Good God, why? Is there a yakuza convention in town?" He took another sip when Kyo told him to lay off the jokes in front of Rinko. "Got it, lips are sealed." he said. When Hanako asked for something to drink, Hiroko looked over to the pot of coffee. "We've got coffee, if you like that."
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Hiroko's response drew a deadpan look from Kyo; it was obvious that her boyfriend either hadn't been paying attention or was too tired to do so.

"I said she's probably runnin' from somethin' t' do with the yakuza or the gangs back in Osaka," she said, looking back to where Hiroko sat. "Hiroko, get Hanako whatever she wants. I'm gonna put Rinko's stuff in her room with her so she doesn't freak out when she wakes up... Chika says this one's got some fire under her butt."

And so Kyo disappeared back into the hallway with Rinko's bag and bat in tow. Kyo kept the refrigerator well-stocked with drinks: though both Hiroko and Kyo liked to have some beer on hand, Kyo had, some months back, begun making sure to watch over both his health and hers. Learning to cook well thanks to Edward Keller had been just the start of it. At some point, the green-haired teen had become a blackbelt-level master of wielding thrift in perfect harmony with nutritional balance and had been able to budget out an impressive stock of healthy drinks to go with the alcohol and soda, to say nothing of the ingredients she bought in order to cook as many wholesome meals as she could manage. Hiroko would often find dinner just about ready whenever he got home from work. Though keeping themselves afloat as a pair of working teenagers was a hell of a lot of stress, keeping themselves adequately fueled for it was no problem at all with Kyo around... and as Kyo had pointed out, all the exercise that came from ruins expeditions made sure they were in better shape and had higher endurance levels than most of the Japanese workforce, so fatique wasn't even as intimidating an enemy anymore.

That might have been truer for Kyo than Hiroko though. Her jobs were scattered across smaller day and night shifts, and she had found every opportunity she could to integrate the ruins and her budding neighborhood watch project into the routine of commuting to and from the mundanities of day-to-day life. More than once, Hiroko had been at home on a day off only to have Kyo walk in a few hours after a work shift had ended, looking very much like she had come in from the ruins. This was the main reason that Kyo was rarely seen in the ruins alongside her boyfriend, though: he was usually either at work or resting, and she was usually at work herself during those times when the ruins seemed like a viable proposition for him. Instead, Kyo just kept her boyfriend informed of the many incidents that came up. Sometimes she felt a little guilty about how many times she came back to the apartment and immediately blew off all her steam by, say, going on for ten minutes about how the ruins had just pulled in Nana's mother or about the latest new killer Shadow that had given her a hard time on floor three (it seemed that, even at third-tier, going deeper than three floors on one's own was just not a very doable thing). If always having dinner ready for Hiroko's return home from work made her feel most like the wife of the household, coming back from the ruins when Hiroko was already home made her feel like the husband.

Kyo emerged from the hall, stretching her arms over her head and cracking her knuckles. Presumably, by this point, Hanako would have her choice of drink in hand already.

"Well, that's that," she announced. "Rinko'll be out like a light 'til mornin', I bet. I'm off from work tonight, but I'm usedta bein' up at these hours anyway. So I'll stay up and make sure she gets adjusted when she comes to. I'll take some o' that coffee, I think. And thanks, Hanako, for makin' sure she got here alright. I dunno this one from Adam, but if we can help her settle in discreetly, it might just mean one less angry, vengeful new Persona-user runnin' around and I think that's less stress for everyone in this case. Ah..."

She lowered her arms, as if she'd suddenly realized something uncomfortable. This was about the point she came up next to Hiroko, and more importantly, his coffee-pot.

"...I know last time y'were here it was 'cause o' Kyomu," Kyo said, biting her lip in an apologetic way (it made her look almost disturbingly girly compared to her usual manner), "and, uh, I keep meanin' t' say I'm sorry for draggin' you into that. At the time, I couldn't think of who else t' call. But it feels like it's been a sore spot between us for a while, and feel like... I shouldn't've imposed... it's, uh, it meant a lot to me, that you helped me anyway..."

She turned to go retrieve a coffee mug from the kitchen cabinet. There was a flash of guilt on her face as she turned away: she was far less interested in the coffee right now than she was in hiding that expression from Hanako.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
”Coffee's fine.”

She took a seat and poured herself a cup when the pot was offered. A tentative sip told her all she needed to know. Coffee had a lot of different flavors and dimensions depending on quite a lot of factors. The reality of budgets on time and money meant most people opted for the cheaper and pre-ground end of it. The more exotic bean types, fussy grind styles and painstaking brewing methods were reserved for businesses that expected to turn a profit after all the trouble and expense and enthusiasts who gladly swallowed the costs for just the right cup.

Hanako leaned towards the latter, but she never turned down a cup. It was too acidic and nothing really stood out to her with the cup, but that's what creamer and sugar were made for. With a teaspoon she calmly measured a precise amount of both and stirred them in. Then took a second sip.

”We don't know anything about her, Hiroko. Just because we've had a lot of that kind of spillover from Osaka in the past doesn't mean it'll happen this time.” That wasn't so much optimism as the law of averages. Osaka was a huge city and there was a lot more of the rest of Japan than locally, eventually that place was bound to spill over it's excess refuse somewhere other than their back yards.

She poured Kyo a cup as well, since the pot was still close at hand, then set it aside. Rinko was going to be fine, and that was all well and good. She really didn't have any sort of input into that other than taking her from one point to another. She took a long sip and Kyo breached the subject of the last time she was there. It shouldn't have, but it really irritated her. Heavens forbid someone have time to quietly reflect on a thing while Kyo was around.

Her eyes never left her own cup. Gaze downcast and lips curled down in a look of resigned serenity. ”Doesn't matter. It's not like you owe me an explanation or anything. I was the first convient avenue to get her here and you took it.”
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fearjunkie
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Oh my God, I LEFT THE STOVE ON AT HOME!

"I get that," said Hiroko. "But it feels like everything bad eventually finds its way into this city..."

He sighed, draining the rest of his coffee. "It's just so stressful, keeping tabs on all this stuff. The Black Hoods, the stuff with Aleksandria having a long-lost twin, the Reaper...it's just so much shit hitting the fan 24/7..." He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Ugh, I don't wanna talk about this kinda shit." he said grumpily, refilling his coffee mug and quickly draining it. He was starting to get sick of Nagashima, and had been thinking about moving a town over. But, he and Kyo were both enrolled locally, so that was out of the question.
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