Akemi Tries Not To Die (Log10)

        Three. Two. One.

        Like natural clockwork, the unnatural hour is something which seemed to affect Port Island as well as the mainland. Time stops, the black ichor substance begins to climb and caress over people caught out in it. Shadows, and people whos hould not be out are out.

        How, precisely did Hideyori know when it struck? Simple. He had a late business meeting in Lunarvale with a potential client and was trying to head to the train to catch a ride home. Drinking from his Mad Bull, he spat out copious amounts of red fluid when his mouth had a coppery tange in it. "Fuck me" he growled. "Why the hell.." he looked at the blood from the can then to the surroundings. "Ah..hell."
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Generally speaking, Akemi tried really, really hard not to be in Port Island or Yumezaki Ward by midnight. The Dark Hour chilled her veins and made her want to vomit. That said, given new regions of inquiry, she needed to round up Persona-users. The tall boy who frightened away monsters with his mere presence wasn't far from the front of her thoughts. Moreover... the things Hideyori said, about gateways, and what would happen if she did something selfish with her abilities- she had to see. And if it meant wandering around the Yumezaki Dark Hour with nothing but a satchel full of books and a penlight, so be it.

 The hour struck, and the few people who still milled around at night were locked in coffins of ebony. She felt her knees buckle. Maybe if she just sat down for a second,and then got up to look around- nothing bad would happen, this was Shizuka and Katsura's haunt, and they seemed tough enough.
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
It's gone much better for Shizuka, now that she's switched away from the portable loggers. Or, rather, switched away from porting them; it's all the same hardware, but other than the sensor bars, it's under the counter in this closed-down corner shop.

She'd deny it, but she definitely does haunt Yumezaki, even outside of the thirteenth hour. This particular stretch of it, she's been spooking about the place for years at this point, but her project here isn't one that ends. She doesn't /actually/ need to come out here during the scary hour to swap disks and check cables, but she likes to /see/ what's going on, too.

What's going on today, as the clocks strike? She hears someone choking on his soda, up the street. That merits investigation.

Sounds carry, here and now, so she's careful as she creeps under the shutter, and more careful yet as she peers around the corner of the next shop to see who she's dealing with.

No one familiar, and on her turf.

(Don't let SEES hear her calling it her turf, they get so /very/ annoyed.)
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai cants his head. Strike one. The soda turning into blood. Strike two. When he turned to see what was going on, he spotted one other person who was not in a coffin. This, naturally, concerned him as there could be one of two things. Either someone who could beat his ass, or someone who was on his side. Approaching, spotting the familiar form and figure of Akemi, he sighs. Damn that girl.

        "What are you doing this far from Port Island!?" he called out to her, concern in his tone.

        His skin is crawling as he doesn't yet know who else is out here, but it can be heard muttering. "I hope I don't run into that creepy feeling guy"
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Akemi jumps- litterally, rockets into the air. "Looking for, uh, someone- rather, a certain class of person," she explains, wheeling to face Hideyori. Obviously, of all the strange Persona users to be wandering around Yumezaki at night it was somebody she already knew. "I guess, uh, Yumezaki is less monster-ridden, and I know some people here, so it made more sense than Port Island," she continued. "What are you doing here yourself, then?"

 Half a beat later, "Did you want to explain what the hell you were talking about last time?"
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
Oh, /wonderful/. Absolutely perfect.

It does, at least, confirm for Shizuka that Akemi meant what she was saying. All of what she was saying, unfortunately. 'Less' Shadow-ridden, that's a comparative, remember. Not that it hasn't been quiet on all fronts for months, now, but...

The monsters are still out, it's just a different sort. Even saying that, though, there's not a whole lot of difference between a Persona and a Shadow. Ask her about it some time.

Perhaps she wasn't heard, or spotted yet, but they've rounded the corner now and her hiding spot has vanished, and there's no way she's getting back into the shop without a racket. Shizuka waits, a shadow in the shadows, but if either of them glance across the road, she's there plain as day. Not even an alley to slip down.

Well, it'll be okay. Probably.
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai sighs, truly sighs as he looks at Akemi. "Why I am here is to deal with some business which had happened in Lunarvale. I had a client who wanted to hire me to put in some security for his home office." Left unsaid was the fact he would likely put in a back door entry in case he ever had to take a snoop. Something he did with all of his products, for lack of a better term.

        "I'm more concerned with you being out here as.." and with that he did dodge for a moment longer. Not a shadow, but something rather twisted in and of itself. Black in shape, cubical in appearance, with a small ring around it. Attracted, to a manner of speaking, to both Akemi and Hideyori.

        "Shiit! Get behind me!" he barked out to Akemi as he turned to face it. Not recognizing much about it, though knowing he had to do 'something' he pulled out his Tarot card and held it in his hand.

        A flash of momvenet, and he did decide to put what he saw there as something else. Though he could not spot Shizuka as a Person, he was aware nontheless. "And this is why being out here in the dark is a bad thing!" he barked to Akemi, snapping the card in two to 'summon'.
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Akemi jumped back, frightened and lacking entirely in confidence. After a short delay, of course. No matter how she flexed her brain around the vital part that she /knew/ to be her Persona, it wouldn't come out. Only after she was resigned to failure did she take up point behind Hideyori, seeking the shelter of his tall dead man. Feeling utterly useless, her eyes swept the scene, spotting Shizuka Taniguchi. "H-hey! Taniguchi-san!" she yelled as loud as she could.
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
/Oh, ~wonderful~./ Absolutely /perfect/.

Shizuka actually does wave Hideyori and Akemi off, not that she's hidden from them any longer, but because the Shadow may not have noticed her yet.

Her summoning is more subtle, particularly because she's trying to be. You can't hear her speak the word, but if they're watching, our protagonists can see sort of the opposite of a flash, and...

It looks an awful lot like Shizuka herself, stepping out from behind Shizuka to peer around the corner at their assailant.

She knows the general type, but the dice are all dice in their own ways. Her Persona, satisfied, smiling-- smiling wide, far far too wide-- evaporates, her work complete, and Shizuka signs 'strike, no' over at Hideyori and Akemi.

That's what she thinks she signed, anyways. What you saw is your own business.
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai cants his head as he looks at the woman herself. And doesn't say much, for now, among other things. His idea is mainly focused on the dice in front of him. That, and of Akemi shouting out to someone else. Great. Another person in the gods cursed area is here. The Persian behind Hideyori opens up the censure of incense, and a burst of light can and does zoom out, illuminating the area, and covering the dice itself with it's light.

        "Huh. It seems that this doesn't like light" he replied, more to himself. The Persona is still summoned for now, as he turns to face the person who..

        "Pardon me. What precisely did you just say?" he called out to Shizuka.
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Failing miserably to understand Shizuka's hand gesture, Akemi paniced. Just a little. She quickly reached into her bag and withdrew a heavy textbook, which she threw with all her might at the somewhat-menacing little figure in the streets. Somewhat ineffectually, of course, given her weak, ropey arms and the heaft of the textbook. "Uh, Hideyori, probably- more killing the thing, less talking!"
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
"Don-- no, yes! Keep doing that!" Shadows do hear, and they're not mindless, and Akemi and Hideyori have both been shouting to her, so Shizuka's probably out of stealth.

"I don't think I can help much," she calls back, but she can try. She... what did she do, it looked like she pulled something out of her pocket and flung it at the Shadow, something metal. She hit, with whatever it was, and there was another flash of darkness, another glimpse of that black-haired girl, and a spray of cracks spreading across the cube's dull, painted surface. Akemi's textbook thunks off the corner of it, and leaves a dent.

"You stay back! Please." Now that she's actually taken a shot, Shizuka steps into the street, hoping to be a more interesting target than Akemi.
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai looks at Akemi. "You need to stay back. This is one of the reasons with your fucking research you could wind up dead!" he barked, a bit more vocal than what he wanted to. The girl who said something was helping, as far as he knew. Even if she had meant him harm, to him, humans outweigh what lives in the night.

        So his attention focused on the shadow, on the dice, which had the crack on the cube's dull, painted surface. With Akemi's textbook thumping hard against the corner, and the dent is given, Hideyori closes his eyes. Letting Melchior work, the ghostly manifestation of himself. Censure of incense is tossed this time toward the dice, and myriad beams of light eminate from it, dousing the shadow with the conflagration.

        Then, and only then, if the shadow is faded, does he turn his attention to the woman next to him.
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
"E-excuse me for not having honed combat reflexes," Akemi barked back, "Yakuza-san!"

 She was pretty severely out of practice with putting people down, as it turned out. She stepped back behind Hideyori, extremely reluctantly, eyes burning a hole in the back of his head.
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
On the one hand, well done. On the other hand, Kagutsuchi on her turf.

Or, well, she's in Kagutsuchi's turf, really, but she has an understanding with Irie-sama about that.

She watches the Shadow fade, and she watches Hideyori watch her. She's not much to look at; someone's math teacher, out at the wrong time of night, you might guess. And, to be literal, there isn't much of her to look at, either. She returns, though, the sort of look that you might get from someone who has an understanding with Irie-sama.

"Well handled."
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai looks back at Akemi a moment longer as he shrugged. "I am not Yakuza-san. I just work for someone from time to time. As Wantanabe-san is related to someone else in the same manner" he replied to Akemi before he turned to face the woman. He felt Akemi's holes in the back of his head and he just snorted. For now.

        Her words seem to reflect with the stranger's arrival as he bows his head. Familiar with the fact he may be on the wrong turf anyway, he looks at the new arrival. "Are you familiar with my friend?" he asks, nodding behind him to Akemi. "My apologies but I am trying to stress to her the dangers of her pursuits."
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
"I, uh, I don't know who Wanatabe-san is, b-butut your appeal to authority's not going to work! Criminal association is a binary condition!" Akemi said. Trying to cow him with intelligence, probably- she's slight and not very forceful.

 "Taniguchi-san!" Akemi said, entirely like someone too out of the loops to realize that there maybe should be some awkward tension in the air. "He, uh. The monster just came at us, and, uh. Juding by how infrequently I'm attacked when I'm alone, I could hazzard a guess that he brought it upon us somehow. And, uh, Hideyori, if t-this is your way of trying to teach me a lesson, i-it's not very good, uh, at all! I mean, it was hardly even intimidating!" Lying, obviously.
GAME: Save complete.
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
Akemi presents her usual shotgun spray of points to address, so Shizuka picks the amusing one. "The association is binary, but you've got one for every criminal. You're already flagged positive, yourself."

She nods to Hideyori. "She mentioned you," and her tone is not particularly hostile. "You probably heard about the same thing from us, I suppose." She wanders a few steps over to retrieve something from the asphalt where the Shadow died. "That was a practical demonstration."

She-- it was an arrowhead she threw? Huh-- checks the arrowhead's edge on her thumbnail, and pockets it. "You," she shifts aim to Hideyori, "it was just a bad time to walk home, wasn't it, I guess. Not that you can't handle yourself."
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai cants his head. "I had someone else tell me I had to choose a side" he replied to the new woman before turning back to Akemi and shrugged. "No, woman. I work as my own independant computer programmer. I offer security services for people. Tried to land a SDF contract before I told you about what happened" he added.

        Then and only then did what was said connect. "Why did you tell her about me?" he asks Akemi in a bit of an annoyance. "Did I not mention there are people in the world who have their own agenda and people who have.." he waved his Tarot card about. "This ability are either ont heir own or serve someone for their purposes?"

        He turns to Shizuka a moment and gives a respectable bow. "I do thank you. I have heard of you some. But not much. I just know someone else with a leonine appearance claims this area as his own. And he was moderately grateful I dispelled a Fae and Shadow attack in Port Island"
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Flustered, Akemi takes out a notebook and flips through it. Either the storage density of Hungarian shorthand was ludicrous or she had at least of those nodiscript books in her cavernous bag. "I, uh, I don't think I, I talked about you at length, or, mentioned your name. B-but, uh. Katsura and, uh, and Taniguchi-san are both, uh, I think they're trustworthy! M-maybe you're just being paranoid- given the common enemy, I'd think that, uh, that most of us would be roughly on the same side. Maybe some minor disputes, but, uh. It's not like any of you c-can defect to the side of the enemy, or even reliably claim neutrality, given their, uh, t-their mindless nature?" she chokes out quickly. Smooooth.

 Akemi's uncharacteristically unbothered by Shizuka's deft fingering of her as a criminal. Instead, she looks at Shizuka. "Uh, you-you are trustworthy, right? I mean, of course, uh, you think you're trustworthy, but, uh- I mean, I don't think you're, uh, you're working on some shadowy agenda. A-are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
"I'm working on my own agenda. I'll tell you about it if you want, only, not in the middle of Yumezaki in the Dark Hour." Shizuka has always found it good policy to be honest and forthright; they lose interest quicker that way.

"Leo," the lack of an honorific say a bit, "will have appreciated your assistance here, too." She nods to Akemi. "Like she said, we do at least have a common enemy."
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai nods his head. "Leo?" he asks. A small shrug as he makes a notation of that for his own internal record. Turning to Akemi, he shrugged. "In regards to shadowy figures, demons and other threats, I strongly believe that Humans have a right to the planet, and unless I am proven wrong I will help those, even if I have issues with. If Leo.." he paused as he nods his head to the woman. "If he were injured, I would, as my ability has the function to heal, heal him" he added. "But in the future unless you know there are issues..advertising things are less than.." he sighs. "Ideal."

        To Shizuka, he nods his head. "He would. He was grateful but when he and I had other discussions, he was rather blunt" he advised. A small shrug. "I will ask if you want to relay one thing to him. And when I see Irie-san I will talk to him as well though things conern me" he added. "Ready for it?"

        And with a deep breath, he nods. "I am planning on leaving where Leo and a few others recognize me and will be looking for a better fit for myself"
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Hideyori was finally speaking Akemi's language. "Damn straight this planet is ours! And, uh, and I guess any other advanced sapients', but I don't see robots wandering around, so, uh," Akemi exclaimed, tappering off hard. This was her idea of "inspirational".

 New information prompted new explaimations. "H-Hideyori, I-I can't believe you never managed to mention b-before that, uh, that your stupid dead man can heal wounds! This is the sort of function that, uh, that I need to know exists!"

 She ignored all the talk about "Leo" and the like. It sounded political, and she couldn't care less about politics when there was science to be done. Instead, she looked at Shizuka quizically. "I, uh, I'll take you up on that offer, one day soon- I mean. Uh. There's lots of things to do about all this, and, well. It'd be good to see your answer, and, uh, and whether or not it's a good one."
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
That was really pretty coherent for Akemi, and that was far more articulate from Hideyori than Shizuka expected. She gives them both nods, that's about what she has for them.

"Relay my thanks and respect to Irie-sama." Always respect. You don't get anywhere without respect.

To Akemi's various points, "I'm out of here myself, I think. If you aren't going with him, I could walk you back." She'll also be grabbing her disks-- especially with what she just logged. "It's a bit late for explanations," said literally, which never happens, "but I'd be happy to if you came by again."
<Pose Tracker> Hideyori Arai [K] has posed.
Hideyori Arai turns behind him and shrugged. "It never was brought up. The incense you smell can record as of two effects for offensive. And I have mild defensive capabilities as well, for the healing" he replied to the woman. "The problem comes into play.." he sighs as he turns to the woman. A small bow to her as he nods. "If I ever see him. You will relay to Leo I heard the words and am choosing a side? Where I may be..leaving Irie-sama's branch for now?" he asks.

        Before Shizuka leaves, he called out. "Maybe you can help her out" he added, pointing to Akemi. "If you are ever in Inaba. If you are familiar with the television..I will need others to help drag her out of it if I have to shove her into the Television to awaken her"
<Pose Tracker> Akemi Ohashi [U] has posed.
Akemi blushes, scientific indignation at Hideyori briefly forgotten. "U-uh. Y-yeah, what he said. Apparently, the TVs in Inaba will swallow you up, and, uh. If you're capable of fighting, uh, the antropomorphic personaification of your repressed, uh, I guess your issues, mostly, then you can get a Persona. So, uh. Since nothing else works, and this might, I'm going to do this one," she explains hastily. "And, since I can't leave the Dark Hour until it's over, I, I think I'll take you up on that offer, Taniguchi san. Uh, no disrespect, Hideyori."
<Pose Tracker> Shizuka Taniguchi [NWO] has posed.
It sinks in, finally, what Hideyori's been meaning. Shizuka nods, but it's a bit more serious now. "I'll see to it that he knows." Really, she's about as good a person to tell as the man himself, but that's hard to explain in front of Akemi right now.

Also, getting Akemi out, right now. Away from people who are suddenly pushing people into TVs. Yes. No wonder she's got ideas. "I am, actually. But I'll be keeping you in mind either way. You take care of yourself."

The streets are clear, and she happens to know it, so there's no actual harm in leaving Akemi for a minute while she heads back into the store to do something inscrutable, and emerges with a messenger bag.

"Come on, then. It's not a long walk."