005 - Eclectic, with Minako

[otakuro]

[May 16th, action, Aquarius Ward]
[Atsuro's job at Monoceros Community College wasn't exactly stimulating. 90% of the time, computer problems could be attributed to students trying to download things they weren't supposed to be downloading; the other 10 percent were generally students trying to play things they weren't supposed to be playing. Melted motherboards could be replaced, viruses and worms could be purged. This was all pretty run of the mill and he spent the majority of his hours at his job playing gamend s and programming apps for his own amusement. ...He had managed to make a very sleek Solitaire simulation, if he was allowed to brag a little bit.

As he awaits issues in the repair center, Atsuro boots up Solitaire and idly begins to play for no special reason other than to playtest his own creation. His left hand, idle, begins to tap against the tabletop.

...2 of Hearts. Ace of Diamonds, yesss. 2 of Diamonds, whoa. Q of Spades. ...F sharp major chord. 3 of Hearts. ...Didn't he already get the 3 of Hearts? D major 7th chord. Inverted 4th. A7 -- No, Ace of...]

...

What?

[He stares at his left hand for a few moments before abandoning the laptop and placing both hands square on the table top. ...CEGEGCGCECEG holy crap.



...Late that night, the sounds of tortuous piano playing can be heard wafting out of the open-access music room in the college. Anyone who investigates will find Atsuro staring at his fingers as if they're possessed while semi-competently playing what sounds vaguely like a polka.]

[May 20th, text, public]
[By the fifth day or so, it has become patently obvious that something is wrong. I like your hair! It really suits your style. Do you dye it that color? He is quite certain that his grandfather never featured terribly prominently in his life, despite that his parents were never around. Not that he would have minded having some expectations to live up to, but he liked to think he had done a pretty good job of raising himself with minimal assistance. Jet propulsion activate. ...Did he even have grandparents? They were dead, right? ...Pretty certain. ......Vaguely certain. No, there were two sets of grandparents, of course. His mother's had passed away in -- No. No, they were the ones who had ...I'm sorta like you. My dad died an accident when I was little... You're all alone too, right?

...

Persona...?]



Hey, everyone! I've got a question for you all. It's kind of hard to explain, but... anyone else just have this feeling that something's not quite right? I guess the best way to say it is, I'm pretty sure I didn't have three sets of grandparents. ...There's probably nothing to complain about, though! Free family members; there are much worse things that could happen. I'm pretty sure it has to do with those fortunes we got last week, heh; I got the highest one for 'family'!  But... let me know if something similar has happened, OK? Don't worry, guys, I don't think it's anything serious! (≧ω≦)ｂ

Oh, and hey, Kazuya...  I've gotta talk to you about something.  ...I think there might've been something like Persona already in our world.

[May 22nd, private video to Minako Arisato]
Hey, Minako... I think we probably need to talk.

[Shinjiro-senpai...!]

I'm not sure if I have to explain or not, but... We should probably meet up in person.

[No way... why?]

Is that OK with you?

[Wait, please... we've been through too much together...]

Don't worry; we don't have to talk about any specifics or anything. Well. Let me know!

[Don't cry... Minako. This is how it should be...]

Comments

[otakuro]

...The thing is, if there are Persona in my world...

[The text breaks off for a few moments as Atsuro tries to struggle this through.]

Well. Maybe since the lockdown was only in the Yamanote Circle... Still. You'd think someone would have used it at some point to fight back against the demons.

Anyway. This world is a little different, isn't it? That person - Philemon - is giving them to us... a bit like it's artificial, right?

[otakuro]

It seemed like a good thing to keep in mind!

[Honestly, he hadn't thought about Shadows in a long time, but it had just leapt back to the forefront of his mind the moment she mentioned it.]

Have you seen any here yet? I remember back when we were wondering if the Shadows and the demons were really one and the same thing...

[otakuro]

...Ah, well. It doesn't matter so much. Human or something else - We've seen already that what you are isn't as important as what you do.

Anyway. If it's not the fortunes, then... I don't know what else it could be. It's too soon for another bizarre attack, isn't it?

[voice]

[themortalhalf]

[He switches to voice to follow the conversation—better than typing, honestly—though Shinjiro's voice lacks some of its usual rigidity, fluctuating slightly in force and volume at times before flatlining into normalcy again.]

It ain't that easy to summon a Persona. [A pause.] Or an ability you never knew you had.

These ones are natural enough.

[otakuro]

((Whoops, that was actually a html error, sorry, but this works, too!))

[Atsuro's voice, in contrast, is much perkier than it usually is. Though he's cheerful much of the time, anyway, this isn't quite his normal timbre.]

True enough.

...We got out of fine in the end, anyway, so there's no need for complaints. ...It's just a bit strange to think we could've had Personas and demon powers at the same time.

[Not that he wasn't wielding both now.]

...Hey, uh... Shinjiro, right?

Do you remember when the the first time we met here was?

[themortalhalf]

(...Never would have caught on.)

Over the network. [Though Shinjiro's sure he probably saw him on the day they all arrived. Not that it particularly mattered, since his interests that day lay elsewhere.] After the mess the first Zodiac event left.

Why?

[otakuro]

Right.

...Yeah. You were the one who told me to think about the relationships between the signs. And then we... we didn't really meet in person until the Trapezohedron, right?

[His tone is questioning and uncertain. When had that happened, then? When he'd run into Shinjiro during a festival - the cherry blossom festival? No way, that was just a week or two ago. ...It couldn't have happened then.]

[greatseal]

There are some at night... but it's hard to tell if they're normal, or like those other monsters that show up from people's worlds.

[themortalhalf]

Yeah. [He snorts. So much for that.]

That's about it. [He doesn't get where Atsuro's trying to steer the conversation, but he figures he might as well go along.] Guess we were both in that damn tower.

[otakuro]

[Uh-huh, yup, everything matched up, totally. ...After a few moments, Atsuro sighs, though, and asks a question he feels like he'll probably regret.]

Did we ever run into each other at a festival of some kind? You... You fixed someone's geta?

[otakuro]

Right. And they followed you into Hinoto-Ri, like some of the demons I've seen here.

...Do you think it follows that wherever there are Persona, there'll be Shadows? Or is it totally separate?

[andcarryabigknife]

*Gale acknowledges Atsuro's words with a nod, even if they can't see each other.*

I have only begun learning about the thing you call "zodiac", but I do believe you are correct. Unless our enemy wishes to strike while we are down, which is also possible.

[otakuro]

Well... The memories, as strange as they are, don't seem like a very effective way of incapacitating us. If they can already control our minds to force us into attacking our friends, this seems... tame.

...Maybe it's Nyarly.

[greatseal]

I don't know if Personas being around means there have to be Shadows close by... but Shadows and Personas are definitely connected. Only Persona-users could even fight them.

[otakuro]

[Atsuro frowns some more at this response. Only Persona users could fight Shadows... But that was a word she had spoken that day, too, wasn't it?]

I almost feel like I've heard that term before I came here, too. ...Shadows. Maybe it's all just some bizarre coincidence. I don't know. ...I wish there were more people from my world to ask about this.

Anyway, thanks for answering my questions.

[themortalhalf]

[There's a long pause. Had he seen Minako's geta break a couple weeks ago? Sounds possible enough, but he hadn't seen anything. ...But then again, wouldn't Atsuro recognize Minako when he saw her? They talked enough, didn't they? She was hard to miss.

The only other alternative, besides Kihara flat out being wrong, is impossible. He hadn't even heard of Port Island before now, had he?]

...If you were at the festival two weeks ago, I didn't see you.

[otakuro]

I was. But I don't think I saw you there, either. ...And I'm pretty sure this happened a lot further back than two weeks.

[He didn't like where this was going.]

...There were a lot of girls involved.

[What were their names...? That girl had been there. ...Yukari.]

[greatseal]

No problem! Let me know if you figure out where you heard it from. Maybe you could ask Kazuya what he remembers?

[But as soon as she mentions his name, a memory surfaces in her own mind. Going shopping together? But that couldn't be right.... She'd only met Atsuro's friend once or twice, in Hinoto-ri, and under pretty weird circumstances.

...Right?]

[otakuro]

Sure. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and ask him if he remembers any of this...

[There were some things he needed to run over with his bestest buddy first before he said anything more to Minako.]

Honestly, though, Kazuya doesn't even really use his Persona that much, I don't think. Thanks again, though!

[May 22nd]

[greatseal]

Yeah... I think so too.

[The big memories weren't the hard part. Demons. Fear. Uncertainty. She knew those things. The emotions fit with her own. That was probably why it had taken her so long to notice the change. Borrowing games from Junpei hadn't interrupted her routine. Neither had her sudden idle interest in coding a program on her computer to more efficiently manage her music library. The foreign memories slipped in and integrated themselves without her awareness.]

In person's fine. I'm free when you are.

[No, it wasn't the lockdown memories that alerted her. It was a simple conversation. "Good luck with your work, Mom. Tell Dad I said hi."

That didn't belong to her. It couldn't. And even knowing that, the thoughts tied to the scene won't fade. She had memories of parents, and - they'd made her disappointed.

It hadn't taken much longer to figure out whose disappointment it really was. The other memories suddenly stood out, once she realized they weren't hers. But still, there were a lot of uncertainties.]

There's a meeting room upstairs here at the dorm, unless you wanted somewhere public.

[...But he might already know that now.]

[otakuro]

Thanks. The meeting room sounds fine. ...I'll meet you there in about 10 minutes?

[The power of Persona didn't belong in his world. Demons didn't operate in secrecy; there were no secret clubs, no missions taken in the space between hours to fight off Shadows. ...No Persona awakenings that landed him in the hospital for weeks. Yukari, Aigis, Shinjiro... These people and memories belonged to someone else, someone whose identity he had come to suspect as the days had passed.

Someone whom, he realized, he had never really ever known at all.

Atsuro makes his way to the Iwatodai Dorms in short time and heads for the meeting point.]

[themortalhalf]

Here?

[He doesn't exactly hang around with a lot of girls—or anyone, quite frankly—here in Hinoto-ri. Back home, things had been different. Though he had never actually spent much time with them, there had been a few. Yamagishi and Takeba. Mitsuru.

He frowns.

...And Noire and Cynthia and Lucina.... now that he thinks about it. Guess there were more than he thought. But that's not here. It's different.

Why is he suddenly so interested, anyway? What does he want?!]

[greatseal]

[She's sitting on the couch in the command room when he arrives. She'd had to stop herself from bringing her computer up here or fiddling with the equipment to see what was still working. Those were his interests, weren't they? Not that they were bad interests to have, but it's hard enough to try and pull her real memories away from the implanted ones without going out of her way to behave like Atsuro.

And because of that, she smiles brightly when he enters.] Hey, Atsuro-kun.

[otakuro]

You know, I'm really not sure.

But... ah, never mind. Don't worry about it; I think I'm just rambling.

[Atsuro is suddenly quite cheerful as he decides not to pursue the topic any further. Whatever was going on... it wasn't fair to drag Shinjiro into his bizarre hallucinations.]

[otakuro]

Hey, Minako.

[While Atsuro had never been bad about keeping a stiff upper lip for the sake of his friends back home, he had nothing on Minako's ability to plaster on a perfectly genuine smile at will. He returns her smile with one of his own as he gently closes the door behind him.]

Thanks for meeting up.

[He'll take a seat - not one next to her, but close enough for conversation.]

So, er.

...I've got yours and you've got mine? Is that how it is?