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Akemi Plays An Arcade Game(Log7)

Apr 25th, 2015
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  1. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  2.  
  3. Akemi wandered, aimlessly. The light of scientific excitement had drained from her eyes, replaced with a sort of morose weariness that was completely uncharacteristic. Was she still going to experiment on the phenomena? The rolled up and slightly worn posters in her bag said "yes", but her general apathy said "no". Maybe she would put one up- this was, at least, the place to find disaffected and unemployed experimentees. And yet- maybe she'd go back home, focus on neurology again- forget any of this happened, never contact any of her new... friends, maybe?
  4.  
  5. She probably didn't even realize she was muttering this aloud while wandering down the street, probably looking for the world like a slightly better-dressed bum.
  6. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  7. Katsura lives here, in the slightly run-down end of Sumaru -- a far cry from Fra Mauro, but a place she's come to be fond enough of to call 'home' over even Inaba. Accordingly, going to and from the school involves a whole lot of back and forth along the streets... and accordingly, a lot of running into people /on/ those streets. Sometimes, they're even people she knows!
  8.  
  9. By comparison, Katsura seems downright enthusiastic when she runs over to the muttering Akemi, a big grin across her face as her eyes meet the older woman's. "Hey!" she says, the blunette getting herself directly in Akemi's path. "What're you all muttery about?" And there she goes, poking her nose into whatever business she can manage.
  10. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  11.  
  12. Akemi jumped, and swore in something esoteric. "Oh! Uh-" Akemi says, trying as much to remember who was talking to her as she was trying to come up with a credible explaination.
  13.  
  14. "Tsurya-san! I, uh, I- Science! Right, just thinking about... testing. Do, ah, do you live here?"
  15. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  16. "Science?" Katsura frowns slightly; even she can tell a lie when she sees it. "That sounds kinda fishy..." Her frown deepens and she says, "So... nope. Not science. Not for you, not today." She forms up with Akemi, a grin on her face.
  17.  
  18. "Yeah, I live around here," she finally answers after a moment, starting to lead Akemi down the street. "I live, uh... above an arcade." Despite her mild embarrassment, there's nothing in her posture that would indicate a lie. "You ever been?"
  19. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  20. "I mean it! Sort of. I was.. considering, the experiment, I mean. And whether or not I want to perform it. I mean, that's the short form," Akemi sputtered. Sauve. "But, to answer your question- no. I haven't. Uh. I spend a lot of time studying, if you understand the implication," she continues, glancing down at her feat. "If you live right above it you probably spend a lot of time there, right?"
  21. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  22. "Ehhh... I like to spend most of the day /out/, y'know? But... yeah, enough time, I guess." Katsura wobbles a hand, explaining, "There's some... awkwardness. It's a long story." Waving it off, Katsura keeps right on pressuring Akemi, curiosity now deeply piqued. "What kind of experiment?" She reaches out for the other girl's arm, attempting to hook it with her own. /No escape/.
  23. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  24. Katsura's arm took Akemi quite by surprise, and she made no effort to resist it. "Ah- um. So... okay, it's not like anyone's going to /care/ unless I'm naked and gyrating in the street, so I might as well explain. Basically, I've been studying attempts to invoke Personae through technology. Only, the first subject nearly burnt down my appartment and cost me a first-edition copy of Dune, and the second subject nearly killed me. It worked, they just didn't have any control over it. So I'm strongly concidering shelfing the project," Akemi explains, exhaling deeply. "I don't suppose you know of some secret trick? If you don't, then... then it's probably better to forget about it. Right?" she asks, looking helplessly at Katsura.
  25. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  26. "... yeah, you might want to let that one... go..." Katsura says, a little helplessly at first. As she really starts to turn this one over in her head, though, she starts to look less helpless and more terrified; she adds, with a little more force, "Trust me, that kinda approach to this stuff doesn't... usually go well. Don't overthink it. Just... feel."
  27.  
  28. Something seems to catch up with her at this point, and she teases, "Is the gyrating naked the /next/ experiment, then?" as she turns a corner with the other girl, the arcade now in sight.
  29. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  30. Akemi blushes. "I-it's something a friend said. Before conjuring up a dead Persian man in public. I, uh, I assure you that that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me. My point is that we're talking about this and yet the Japanese Paranormal Police haven't shown up to cart me off," Akemi explains, the long-winded explaination sufficing to give her time to adress the real problem. "I- I mean- you're right, but I don't see how I can just /feel/ my way around this! When there's a problem, I solve it through science- it's how I've always done things! And I /need/ to get a Persona- I- I mean, I don't think I can just sleep through this while there are monster roaming around and there's a tappable source of magic in the world!
  31.  
  32. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  33. "Hey, /relax/," Katsura says; for a moment, the sensation of feeling like 'the senpai' in this dynamic makes her feel very acutely weird, but it passes quickly. She /has/ been doing this for a long time, she realizes; perhaps it's not so weird after all.
  34.  
  35. "Look... you're going to drive yourself nuts with that kinda stuff. Don't think of it as something you can /tap/, think of it as something you can /do/. If you start chasing it, it's gonna get weird, so just... let things come as they come." She shrugs a little helplessly after delivering /that/ piece of advice.
  36.  
  37. "Anyway -- we're here," she notes, turning Akemi slightly to face the building. "C'mon -- let's go in. Do you play anything?"
  38. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  39. "I, uh, I'll take that into account. Let things come as they may. That," -sounds a lot like drowning, she thinks- "is very wise, Tsuruya-san."
  40.  
  41. Akemi blushes, again, luminiferously. She curses slightly and rubs at her cheek with her free hand
  42.  
  43. "N-no, I- uh. Maybe? I've never been inside one of these- do they do triva? I'm not very athletic, and, uh, my reflexes are terrible, but I'm pretty knowledgable! Ought to be, concidering how hard I've worked at it!"
  44.  
  45. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  46. "Trivia? No, like -- are you for real?" Katsura almost bursts out laughing as she leads her charge-slash-friend-slash-compatriot into the arcade, which is... well... a Japanese arcade. At least the wiring's nice. "We're going to get you started on something fun. I do... mostly fighting games, but..."
  47.  
  48. Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she says, "... Ugghhh, I hate the way arcades smell," with a frown. Waving that thought off before too long, she says, "Anyway, uh -- we have fighting games, there's... air hockey I guess... there's pretty much everything that /gets played/, basically. Or we could just... sit and talk, I /guess/."
  49. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  50. "W-well, if I were going to sit and talk I would probably chose a more... appetizing locale, right? So, let's do one of these, uh, fighting games- although, I'll probably just input random controls and hope I get something that works. So, uh, lead the way!"
  51. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  52. Sure enough, then, Katsura leads the way, shepherding her compatriot to one of the cabinets. "So -- basically, the secret is to pick a character you like because if you don't you're not gonna be motivated to play," Katsura says, fiddling with the machines for a moment. "I wired most of this, so... one sec..." She manages to put it into Free Play for the moment, cracking a grin at Akemi.
  53. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  54. Akemi grimaces slightly at the wanton illegallity of it all. "I- well, I guess it's not like anyone else is using it. So, you set this up yourself? That's pretty cool!" she says as the takes the controls in her shaking hands. "Ahhh, let's see here, then," she murmers, looking for someone smart, or, baring that, a cute girl. She can't be all science, all the time, after all, and if she's going to have to watch herself lose she might as well look good while doing it!
  55. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  56. "Yeah, me and the owner are... uh..." She wobbles a hand. "It's complicated. This used to be just a boarding house but I figured we could do better for the bottom floor..." Given this is a fighting game, there are, sure enough, both cute girls /and/ smart folks, and indeed both!
  57.  
  58. Katsura leans slightly closer to Akemi, asking, "So, like -- have you been okay lately?" as Akemi makes her selection. "Besides the... blowing stuff up, I mean."
  59. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  60. "Y-yeah, although to be fair "lately"" has consisted a lot of finding new and ingenius ways of getting myself blown up. Uh, I haven't been able to track down my friend Hideyori, and my brother's been acting super weird- but, all in all, yeah, still on top of my classes, everything's good," Akemi says, her cursor settling on a reletively nondescript blonde with glasses.
  61.  
  62. "You'd better bring it, Tsuruya-san, because I! May have, once, heard my brother talking about a game similar to this. Prepare to lose!"
  63. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  64. Hearing about the /extent/ of Akemi's lack of experience, Katsura chooses a different character. She /also/ pretty purposefully plays a little poorly, and seems eager to keep on talking through the match. It wouldn't really be fair to take this seriously, given... the circumstances.
  65.  
  66. "Well, hey, good! I'm glad. And, uh -- if you ever want, like, backup on an experiment... even if they're kinda a bad idea, you know, I'm no slouch in the science department, so..." At this stage, she /really/ wants to make sure this doesn't get her killed.
  67. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  68. Akemi planned to mash buttons through the entire experience and hope that she put up a credible enough threat that the occational bystander wouldn't suspect that her home computer ran Windows 98. She had forgotten her skill in pattern reckognition.
  69.  
  70. "So, if I just, press these with a half-circle counter clockwise, then-" Akemi muttered, gasping for joy as her character unleased some sort of energy beam encorporating no less than three mecha. "Yes! These are fun, Katsura!" she says.
  71.  
  72. "I- I mean, don't get me wrong, I appreciate your extention of assistance, and I'll totally call on you if something comes up, but my current method is a failure and I don't really have any alternatives not involving extensive brain surgery. I've been trying to poke around for more info, but of all the Persona users I know, one of them's you, two of them are high-school punks from Inaba, and the other one's a cagey asshole who won't help me out unless I already /have/ a Persona, which really defeats the point as far as I'm concerned," Akemi explains helplessly even as her chosen character performs much better than expected. She bites her lip and refrains from mentioning Tall Guy, concidering that she met him all of once. "Unless- Katsura, have you ever heard of a place called the Velvet Room?"
  73. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  74. Katsura is perfectly content to more or less throw this one to make sure Akemi enjoys her first run. She has nothing to prove, after all. Accordingly, she instead decides to /start/ by diverting the conversation a bit. "Hey -- are you saying there's something wrong with punks from Inaba?" she asks, taking a second to clearly 'put her country accent back on,' then laughing again for a moment.
  75.  
  76. Then the question of the Velvet Room comes up, and Katsura... plays it cool. "Yeah, I've heard of it. Why do you ask?" There's so many reasons she /could/ be asking -- best to let her explain herself, rather than overextend. That eagerness could be a real problem...
  77. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  78. And so it came to pass that Akemi actually /won/, much to her shock! "Yes! Skill in these sorts of games clearly has a very high heritability!" She said. "That was fantastic!"
  79.  
  80. Akemi calms down a little bit before continuing the conversation. "The punk part, not the Inaba part. Although... shit, I guess that's all of you from Inaba, then? What's up with that town?" she muses idlely. "My friend- Hideyori, the one I can't find- he mentioned that the guy who gave him his runs it. I've been looking for it, but my punks haven't mentioned it either, so I guess it's a loose end. What've you heard of it?" she continues, begining to get that spark in her eyes again.
  81. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  82. Reaching up to her cracked schoolboy's cap, Katsura pushes it up to diminish the effect of its presence on her face, and reaches up to adjust her glasses. "My hypothesis is that it is a quasi-real superblue..." Katsura starts, before she bursts out laughing. "... sorry, easy shot. Anyway, seriously, uhh... it's... a weird place, basically? I think you can only get in if you're a Persona user... or with one...?"
  83.  
  84. Wobbling a hand, she says, "I don't know, exactly. But I guess it's your best bet... or you could play the game, I guess? Like -- it's kinda silly, you just run around a room with some other people trying to 'call out your Persona,' but..."
  85. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  86. Akemi Ohashi- give her an inch, and she'll take several miles and convert it into a state-of-the-art laboritory, resplendent with centrifuges. "What's this game? Silliness isn't an object- but I need to know how this thing works, Katsura."
  87.  
  88. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  89. "Okay. As far as I know, it's... you take four people, have them each stand in a corner of the room, and go 'Persona, come out' and then walk to the next corner of the room. Each of you do it." It's how /she/ got her Persona... though it didn't exactly manifest right away.
  90.  
  91. "Seriously, though, like... are you sure you know what you're getting into? I don't wanna talk down to you but I'm kinda worried."
  92. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  93. And there, she had it. The solution that didn't involve huffing chemicals. "Yes!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, not even trying to contain herself. "Thank you so much, Katsura. I have the answer now!"
  94.  
  95. Her face falls, just a bit. "I- well, no. I don't know, hardly anything. What I do know is that there's monsters prowling the outside of my very expensive and irreplacable Port Island appartment that want nothing more than to kill me, that I could die quite easily at the hands of a seventeen year old street punk, and that there's someone wandering around here, the city in which I live, and in which my beloved and sickly brother lives, killing people with the same power that could let that seventeen year old kill me. I also know that these... this power actively defies the known laws of physics and could represent a road to a massive increase in the average human lifespan and quality of life. So, no, I don't have any idea what the hell I'm getting into, but I know that I have the imparative to get into it anyway," she declares. She's not manic, like she was during the experiments. She's determined, the spark in her eyes trasmuted into flame. "Please, Katsura, I'm trying to be brave here. I want to hide in bed and lock the door every night come midnight, or, fuck it, move out and never ever ever speak to anyone about this again. But I'm not going to- I'm going to do the right thing, and I'm not going to let fear stop me."
  96. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  97. "... well... you've got your head way better on your shoulders than I did when I started out... so I'm not gonna try to stop you," Katsura says, a little lamely. "But... just... keep yourself safe, okay? I know you're gonna say that's what you're trying to do, but.. really."
  98.  
  99. She looks at Akemi with clear, sincere, blue eyes. "Don't do this because you think you have to, and don't be dumb about it, okay?" Reaching up, she pinches the bridge of her nose a moment, sighing. "Ugghh... now /I'm/ the adult. Bleh."
  100. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  101. Akemi blushes again, seemingly cognizant of how theatrical she had been. "T-thanks, Katsura. I'll be careful, I promise- more careful than I had been, even! And, if it makes you feel better, I could lecture you about whether or not you're /really/ prepared for class tomarrow, if being an adult so bothers you!" She says teasingly.
  102. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  103. "Ahahaha... no thanks," she says, with a small shake of her head. "I'm trying pretty hard not to think about that right now." Readjusting her hat finally, she continues, "So anyway, uh..." She looks up to gaze into Akemi's eyes again, suddenly seeming a little more nervous. "... having fun?" she asks, weakly.
  104. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  105. "Yes, really! This is fun- I can't believe I've never been to an arcade before! Beats cafés any day! Oh, and, uh, the solution to a problem that has plagued my every waking hour for numerous months is pretty great, too. I mean, I'll need to get some people together, but that's solvable," Akemi says cheerfully. "Honestly, thanks a million, Katsura. I mean, for all of this."
  106. <Pose Tracker> Katsura Tsuruya [U] has posed.
  107. "Sure thing!" Katsura replies, smoothly. She hates being the responsible one here, but... what else is she going to do? "So... you wanna go another few rounds, or do you wanna get started on your... thing?" This seems like such a mistake to let slip through her hands, but... then again... Katsura has made a lot of her /own/ mistakes to get where she is -- why not let someone else make a few for a chang
  108. <Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
  109. "Well, unless you've got two other people hiding around somewhere who'd be willing to play the game, I don't think that's going to happen tonight. So, I think I'll settle for beating you at this. Again!" Akemi says.
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