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Dancing at Dawn; [Invitation Only - see associated Plotting thread linked in first post]
Topic Started: Dec 24 2017, 01:26 AM (988 Views)
Ket
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Well, his little stunt hadn't been as stupid as he thought it might be. Still, the resulting smoke and spray of battery acid had him stumbling back, coughing while he tried to keep the enemy still in sight. Unfortunately, he didn't have to look to hard as an enemy came out of the smoke and rushed him.

Alan instinctively rose his arms to block a hit that never came. His eyes widened as the man suddenly dashed back and, with the others in tow, make a mad dash away from the area.

At the same time, he heard a woman begin screaming from the building. The most he gave it was a brief glance. He couldn't unpack everything she had said. He didn't want to consider the implications at a time like this. Right now, he needed to focus on keeping those hoods here. If not all, then as many as he could.

He quickly dashed after them, summoning his mask at the same time. The ghostly image of Will o'the Whisp floated above. She looked incredibly excited to have finally joined the battle. She raised a hand and with a little flourish launched a mudo at the hood carrying his downed brethren.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
"Acceptable!" Eri all but shrieked, whirling on Maki Yamada with eyes ablaze with incredulous fury. Even the Persona outside froze and spun to look at the office it had emerged from, remaining where it was, waiting, it seemed, for the situation to resolve itself. "Are you insane? You can't honestly think I'd let—!"

"...Oi, radio guy. Doctor Claw. Whatever the hell your name is," a deadpan voice spoke up, familiar yet different: none of the weirdly half-assed Osaka-ben was present, that quality that made Kyo Charinko's voice sound like an imitation of the dialect that got even her fellow native Osakan folk's hackles up whenever they heard it. No, because Kyo didn't remember the event that had prompted her to stop hiding it. She remembered Hiroko Tachibana, her boyfriend, and remembered her feelings more than well enough. But several of the biggest memories were lost and unaccounted for, and the day he offhandedly called her accent "cute" was one of them.

She disregarded the possibility of being attacked through the window, stepped over to the man that Shin had half-dragged through it.

Kyo glared in the direction of the radio, then, teeth gritted.

"It wasn't some random Persona-using jerkass that attacked me in that alley, was it? It was you," she said, her voice calm and quiet, with a quality of realization in her tone, a near-murmur that nonetheless carried out the window. "...You know, it's funny. Ever since then, my mom's acted different than my brain tells me she should. Shin here I don't know from Adam, but I feel like he knows me and I sure don't know him. And Little Miss Self-Sacrifice over here's a whole lot colder to me than I expected, since the only thing I really remember about her is her helping me after a drunk policeman tried to molest me and then stepped on my head. That was, eh, what? A few months ago? Sometime last year, I think."

A derisive snort escaped at that, but then Kyo said:

"You know the weirdest thing, eh? The weirdest thing is that I could swear I remember that I'm supposed to do certain things today, but I don't remember deciding 'em, or even why I decided on 'em. Take this for example."

She unceremoniously reached around the broken glass, felt her fingers along the Black Hood's ears, searching for any sign of earplugs or ear protection. If there was none on this guy, there was unlikely to be any on the others, which would save them a step... and Kyo had a feeling she understood what the endgame of this plan was now, and a plan it most certainly was: a plan that made her blood simmer and boil beneath her flesh, all the more because it had to be her plan and never in a million years would she do something this bleeding-heart ridiculous!

"...It's real funky, you apparently havin' the ability t' set people on fire and make 'em forget shit," Kyo said casually as she did this. "Doctor Claw, you're a real piece of work. Now why the hell would a Persona-user rally a bunch of non-magic people to go around killing the only people who can get into those ruins and maybe put a permanent end t' all these troubles? I feel like I've heard this story before. Something about a high school girl and her gang doin' the same thing... seem to remember it didn't end so well for her when they found out she was one of the very people they were out to lynch. Feels like, uh, feels like there's some kinda funny pattern developing here."

A pause, Kyo's fingers slowing to a stop ticklishly over the Black Hood's ears.

"...God dammit, and why the hell can't I remember that girl's name? You'd think that'd stick in my head," Kyo observed out-loud, obviously frustrated. Then, she awkwardly grinned and leaned over to looked the cuffed Black Hood in the eye. "Hey hey, Hood Man, help me out here... can you hear what we're sayin' right now? All this stuff about your boss secretly havin' powers like us? Ain't some random-ass machine he's using to track us, that's for sure. Though I guess you should just thank high heaven he does have the ability to do that. It would, uh, it would suck, you know, if you killed just random people. Be a regular witch hunt, it would! I can see the headlines now... 'Nobody Expects the Nagashima Inquisition! Another Random Unlucky Housewife, Murdered!'"

Eri's teeth were on edge by the end of this ramble, but she realized that she had made a grave error. She'd blurted out what happened to Kyo, and there was no telling what Kyo would do now that she knew it. It was as Kyo had said: all of the people in the office with her were behaving differently than her brain told her they should. And if that was that case, from Kyo's point of view, was there any reason to accept anything they tried to do, or go along with any plan they attempted to cook up? Or would Kyo just act on her own? Eri looked sharply at Maki.

It was hard to read Kyo. When Kyo was honestly angry and panicked, she tended to express it through through actions, not her face or her voice. She would outwardly behave as if she was fine, but only as long as it meant keeping authority figures out of her hair. That had been Eri's experience as Kyo's mother for the handful of years leading up to her move into and then out of Nagashima.

She seemed stable now, but Eri was sure that she had to be anything but. There was no telling what she might do, but the fact that Kyo had interrupted this exchange between Control, Shin, and Maki had to be significant.

Kyo was stalling, and Eri thought it could only be for one reason. Far from wanting to expose Control's little secret, she wanted to stall while she thought of a way to stop Maki and Shin from taking Control up on his "arrangement." Eri was sure of it. That had to be what Kyo was doing...

---

Outside, Violet Rose peeked out from around the van and had to put a hand up over her eyes. The glowing figure... a Persona? ...that hovered above them just below roof-level, it was a dazzling, near-blinding sight. Looking up at it directly was hard, and Violet had to be thankful for that, as she was quite certain the Persona would not show well on any sort of camera or video-recording device. Light imbalance tended to play havoc with such things. But more importantly, it was a distraction... as was the cloud of smoke, acid, fire extinguisher fuel...?

...Shit. That man was in danger. Violet growled softly under her breath, and ripped a stretch of cloth from her shirt beneath her bustline, exposing her abdomen as she wrapped it around her mouth and nose. Then she sprinted out from the front of the car, running to kneel next to the injured man as fire-extinquisher gas. She paused, wary eyes on the Black Hood who was also moving to collect him. She pointed down at him, and without speaking, gestured to indicate that she wanted to move the man away from the cloud, to safety.

Then she pointed up at the roof, to the Persona-users, and shook her head. She didn't want to involve herself in the battle.

Though the violet hair, exposed tattoos, and exotic half-foreign look of her made it clear she was no ordinary Japanese teenager, there was no sign whatsoever of her having extraordinary powers. She moved to feel along the downed man's body quickly, hands light and searching, looking for injuries. She squinted her eyes as the chemical cloud from the fire extinguisher neared them. She needed to act quickly, quickly... was it safe to move him? She had to figure out if it was safe to move him...!

She had been planning to find some way to help, but it was clear now that she had no real way of doing so. She didn't have a Persona, nor a gun, and without either of those two things, she had no real way of fighting a group of adversaries. The best thing she could do was try to limit the damage, take care of anyone who incurred a serious injury. Maybe, maybe then, she could make sure no one died because of this craziness.

Maybe. From where she was kneeling right now, it was all starting to look just a little too big for her... especially with all those magic spirits flying around.
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Exodin
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MAHHA
Daichi had actively stopped himself from pacing while he waited to see if the recording went up. His earphones had been in already and he was waiting to hit play and start sprinting to the building located next to what was apparently Kyo's office space. At the least he was able to press the play button and begin to book it as soon as he saw it was ready. He could feel his scowl deepen as he listened to the introductory period of it, Kyo idly chatting and thanking people that she knew for whatever it was. It felt like she was trying--however vain it was--to get him to irrationally think that Samurakami and Fyodor were worthwhile human beings. He had to keep in mind that her bias was apparently incredibly strong when it came to people she cared about. Whose wasn't though? Just who were the Morinaga even supposed to be? They had something to do with the yakuza girl and her family? He wanted to mentally block out the noise. To focus on where he was headed in some attempt to feel like it would make him get there faster than the speed he was running.

It wouldn't though and he couldn't afford to miss out on when Control started speaking. At last he could make out what the voice--evidently a man--sounded like. Well that eliminated a fair chunk of people in Nagashima. Daichi could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he continued to race through the alleyways and side-streets to arrive at the destination.

He just hoped that he would make it in time for his presence to mean something.
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