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From Death, Life; [Single Post Part 1 of 2 - Kyo Charinko]
Topic Started: Jan 13 2015, 12:50 AM (77 Views)
The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
This series of posts takes place immediately after Devil's Mirror.

---

Kyo remembered.

During the dream, in that strange maze, with those people there with inhuman powers, she had consciously tried to avoid recalling the details. She knew she had drowned; she did not have any desire to recall the sensation of water pouring into her lungs, the plastic tube tied to her mouth preventing her from closing it off to prolong her life. She didn't want to recall the way her back had been arched almost to the point of breaking, her forearms and shins tied tightly together behind her in a way meant as much to humiliate as restrict--the kind of position one might see in a BDSM porno, which no doubt was Sadako's intention, even if she hadn't gone so far as to undress Kyo on top of dumping her in that lake.

There was no stopping what happened as she plunged into the whirlpool at the center of the Hall of Mirrors, though. Eyes closed or not, feeling gravity take full hold of her and the simple knowledge that there was "water" beneath her feet, caused her body to snap stiff and her mind to jump straight to everything she had, until that point, managed to keep her mind from looking too closely at. The shame, the loathing, the fear, the hatred, and the helplessness.

Also what she had seen just before all had gone dark. The thing that had been swimming straight at her, the woman-snake... creature. She had vaguely thought it must be some demon come to take her to whatever Hell was reserved for girls like her, before thought and awareness and even the memory of them left her for what should have been the last time.

Kyo opened her eyes. The first thing she realized was that she was laying... on something that wasn't actually a bed.

She jolted upright, looking left, looking right, but it was pitch-black save for the tiniest sliver of light... a vertical sliver. A curtain? A curtain. Kyo shifted under the blanket and sheet that had been draped over her, and instead of her legs falling over the edge of a bed, they hit what felt like a wood-paneled floor, mere inches below the "mattress" she lay on.

The girl threw the blanket off, noting the completely dry feeling of what was probably the nightgown she'd worn in the dream. Was she awake now? She probably was. Her first instinct was to yell, to shout, to demand to know where she was or what was going on. But she had a sneaking suspicion that whoever had brought her... wherever here was, they had been connected to the snake-woman creature she'd seen before "dying."

She wobbled as she jumped to her feet, and had to duck her head for a few seconds to wait for the dizzy spell to pass. It felt like she'd been laying down for a really long time... her legs, her back, her arms, it was all stiff. Not exactly atrophied, but...

...she looked up, eyes centering on the sliver of light. Walked a few paces forward, reached out, and wrenched the curtain aside.

Except it was not a curtain. Her hand met something solid that slid aside, rather loudly, causing her to his a swear: "Shit!" It was a sliding door, apparently left open just a little to let in the cool Spring-night air, and as moonlight poured in, Kyo recoiled at the sight beyond the door. It was a balcony, overlooking water. Sparkling, beautiful, colorful water across which she could see an unfamiliar city skyline, but it was a lot of water, and Kyo felt instantly sick looking at it. She whirled around, closing her eyes, clapping her mouth shut, and beginning to breath, slowly, through her nose. Then she removed her hands from her mouth a second or two later, breathing in through her mouth and out through her nose, slowly and rhythmically. That was how it went, right? Well, she wasn't sure. But it calmed down enough that she was able to open her eyes.

The moonlight illuminated an expensive-looking room, one that looked so oppressively Japanese to Kyo's sensibilities that it almost made the girl (who was very Japanese but didn't need to have it shoved down her throat, thank you very much) want to vomit all over again. There was a folded-up sliding screen on one side, a closet... the "bed" she'd slept on was some kind of futon mattress... in the corner there was some kind of plant growing.

Very oriental. How... nice.

After a few seconds of collecting herself, Kyo turned back to the sliding door and stepped out, averting her eyes from the water--it was a river, she could see a bridge out the corner of her eye--and trying to make sense of the backdrop. But this definitely wasn't Osaka, she didn't know these buildings from Adam. She looked left and right, and found herself disheartened to see that this was the third story of a very expensive house. The Mizuta house, she guessed, if the ramblings of those other kids in the dream were true. More to the point, it looked like the house was walled off, and... surrounded by water on at least three sides, since that bridge trailed off into the abyss over yonder rather than hitting any sort of visible mainland.

A mansion on an island. The kind of house you only ever owned in Japan if you pretty much owned the city.

Unwilling to spend any more time than was necessary looking out over the water, Kyo turned back into the room and quickly walked over the chill wooden floor, stumbling exactly once, making a beeline for the door. It wouldn't budge. Damn it all! She thought to force it, but she didn't want to alert anyone outside the room that she was awake just yet, so she turned from the door and looked for other things to interact with... her eyes fell on the closet.

She looked down at her own chest, and the nightgown that covered it. Yuck, she thought. I'd almost rather go naked...

She stepped over to the closet and slid it open, blinking at what she saw inside. Why, what was there in the closet but... clothes! Not just any clothes, though. Jeans, and t-shirts, and was that a leather jacket on a hanger? There was also a folded slip of paper on the stack of shirts... Kyo reached for it, holding it up and squinting in the dim light.

It was a short note, written in Japanese but signed with initials in English lettering:

I took the liberty of having the family maid take your measurements, and bought you some clothing in the style I noted you preferred when I observed you in your hometown.
- J.J.


"...Jay Jay?" Kyo whispered, narrowing her eyes at the note. "That someone I should know?" She looked to the locked bedroom door, trying to place the letter into some kind of context, because that was a thing she was missing. She could only assume this "J.J." person had intended to introduce himself to her and explain what the hell was going on before she found the clothes. Well, not to look a gift horse in the mouth... Kyo folded the letter back up, set it on the closet shelf, and didn't bother messing with the folding screen before tossing the nightgown onto the floor, finding to her dismay that she was... completely naked underneath. "J.J." didn't sound like a girl's kind of name. The idea that some creepazoid might have been able to do whatever he felt like with her dead inert body for however long she'd been here...

Kyo resisted the urge to check herself for signs of "tampering," because the moment she thought it, she realized she actually felt very clean. Had she been bathed while she slept? Hopefully by the "family maid" and not the mysterious "J.J."

A few moments later she'd picked out an outfit she liked. The jeans were boy jeans, the shirts and jacket on the other hand, fitted to a female body. She would have preferred a completely masculine ensemble, but it would have been creepier if "J.J." had known that. Whatever the result, Kyo instantly felt more herself once she was dressed. Short or not, knowing she could look badass and in-control and not like she'd crawled out of a very fancy hospital bed instilled her with confidence.

This was the point where she turned toward the door, gritting her teeth, and striding forward. There was nothing to be done now except to confront whoever had brought her here, and to find out why.

She lifted her fist, drew in a breath, and pounded on the door.

"OI! YOU, OUT THERE! WHOEVER YOU ARE! IF YOU DON'T UNLOCK THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW, I SWEAR WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU I'LL RIP YOUR BALLS OFF AND FEED 'EM TO YOU!"

It didn't take long for a light to come on, visible through the cracks around the door. Kyo stepped back, just a little, from the sliding door, glancing to the left and noting a distinctly ornamental (and also oriental, of course) light switch by the door. Quickly, she whipped her hand out and switched it on. Better to let her eyes adjust to light than have her host's first impression be that of a girl blinking and unable to make a proper angry face.

When the door opened, she stood there in dark-gray jeans, a jacket, and a deep-red shirt bearing an appropriately broken cartoon heart on the chest, wrapped in thorny vines with an arrow piercing it from the lower-right. Not that this was visible, because her arms were folded over her chest... and the person she was glaring at looked like a French maid. How distinctly... not oriental! The maid blinked at her in disbelief, mouth partly open, unsure how to react to the sight.

"You're the one who took my measurements?" Kyo said flatly, letting her left eyebrow quirk upward. "I need a word with whoever 'J.J.' is. Now."

"...Um--y-yes, Miss Charinko, at once--" the maid stuttered, backing away from the door in a way that barely managed to avoid being called recoiling from the door. "You've... been asleep for months, ma'am. Would you like something to... to eat, or drink, or...?"

"A cheeseburger. Two of them. With bacon, ketchup, pickles, and french fries. From a good restaurant and not some fast food place," Kyo snapped out without missing a beat. "Assuming that was a serious offer."

"It... was, Miss Charinko."

"How do you know my name?" Kyo asked, unfolding her arms and letting her voice soften a little bit. Seemed like this maid wasn't really up to anything. "Also: no one touched anything inappropriate while I was 'sleeping for months,' did they?"

"G-goodness, no!" the maid said, sounding repulsed. "I've taken care of you on Janeway-san's orders, miss."

Speaking of things that aren't oriental, Kyo thought. So this Janeway person was the one who'd left the clothes, and probably also the one who'd brought her here. Then he was the one she needed to give the stink-eye to hardest, since he was the one probably up to no good.

The maid went on: "He was the one who told me your name, and brought you to my master's home. I'll go wake him up and order your food... it may take time to bring you your meal, but I know one establishment that serves what you ask for which would be open at this hour, if you do not mind the wait."

"Which is?"

"An all-night bar not far down the--"

"No, I mean what hour?"

"Oh. Four in the morning, miss. It's very fortunate that the guest suites are so far from my master's chambers, or you might have woken him. He's very busy these days, and needs his sleep, so... please keep your voice down while I'm away."

"And your master would be...?" Kyo prompted, folding her arms over her chest again and squinting suspiciously at the maid.

"Ichigo Mizuta-sama, miss. He is the family head and C.E.O. of the Mizuta Financial Group... the most influential family in Yumegawa."

"Yumegawa, huh..." Kyo echoed. Nope, that city name wasn't ringing any bells. "Right, well go get 'Janeway-san' and my bacon cheeseburgers, please. Thanks for, uh... taking care of me. I guess." A pause. Kyo felt a twinge of awkwardness as her obligatory polite response brought an awareness that she might just owe this maid quite a lot, for all she knew. So she said: "Thanks," again.

The maid bowed low. "It is my pleasure to serve," she said, sounding relieved that there wasn't any more hostility or suspicion forthcoming for the moment. With that, she turned, and quickly walked away, leaving Kyo in the doorway to stare after her, frowning and feeling a strange, disquieting uncertainty about this whole situation, which felt somehow more dreamlike than the damned maze of mirrors she'd woken up from.

Had that even been real...?
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Underlined text is in a different language... English, unless otherwise specified.
Regular old dialogue is supposed to be spoken in Japanese 'cause this RP takes place in the land of the rising sun, don'tchaknow.


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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
The maid had given Kyo quite a bit to think about, so much so that when she thought back on it later, Kyo would wonder how she hadn't lost all momentum and become a blustering, stuttering mess halfway through--she supposed after drowning, and sharing a dream with a bunch of kids that all had magic powers, and all that... well, it was likely she'd just developed a temporary immunity to curveballs. That was as good an explanation as any, and Kyo never had been the type to super-analyze herself, so it was good enough for her.

Asleep for months, though. That seemed to fit, given that Kenshin's father had apparently croaked at some point, and Kenshin and Chika had both had time to get themselves foster parents in the meantime. It was hard to believe she'd been "dead" that long, though. Kyo noted the very conspicuous lack of any coma-care gizmos in the room. How had she been fed? There wasn't any intravenous thing going on, and she didn't have any marks anywhere on her body that might have come from such a thing. She'd given herself a once-over while getting dressed, even if it was in the dim light from outside, and her body was quite as unblemished as it always was.

That was the disturbing thing. How does one die, and come out looking like a barely-legal porn star? More to the point, if she was in fact missing rather than dead, if her family hadn't had a body to cremate, then, what kind of dumb lie was she supposed to cook up to explain all this when she went home?

Do I even want to go home in the first place? Now that was a question. It wasn't like Kyo felt any attachment to her family, but on a more practical note, Nishiyo Sadako had tried to kill her: Nishiyo Sadako, daughter of a local Yakuza clan, if the rumors were true. At this point it might just be better to cut and run.

Ugh! The annoying thing about these stupid Japanese-style rooms was the lack of chairs. Kyo liked chairs, and she wouldn't have minded this room's stylings if she just had a good old fashioned chair to plunk her butt down on. You could sit on them and hang your legs over and there were like three or four different ways you could relax on a chair. When all you had was a dumb floor-bed you had a choice between laying down or sitting and there weren't many ways you could sit comfortably on what was essentially a softer piece of floor. In the end she just took up a position against the wall, arms folded under her chest and head slightly bowed, glaring vaguely at the door and feeling a bit like an emo shonen anime character.

When someone finally stepped into the doorway, she looked up, that vague glare not shifting in the slightest. Her first impression was of the kind of Spaniard flirting machine one usually saw in videogames or shows produced by people who were pointedly not Spanish themselves. A few more seconds of non-casual examination told her this guy was a mix of white and hispanic. Tall, with dark-brown hair tied neatly in a ponytail, a carefully-trimmed thin mustache and triangular soul patch. Well-built, too. A bit old for her, but... Well, I wouldn't exactly do the guy, but I might watch something with him IN it, y'know, in my off hours...

Mental asides about the desirableness of guys were like breathing to Kyo: they just happened as part of her mental process whether she paid attention to them or not. She didn't give it a second's further thought, simply letting her mouth curve into a smirk before the man--who was likely Janeway--had a chance to speak. Getting the first word in was important for making a good impression if the impression you wanted was for someone to be scared shitless of you (or anything in the neighboring spectrum, really).

"So is this the part where I declare my undying gratitude and swear I'll repay you for my life and all that?" she said, careful to inject only a hint of dryness into her voice, wanting to sound--for now--more casual than aggressive.

Janeway paused, blinking a bit, seeming put off by the sarcasm. He stepped into the room, sliding the door shut behind him, only speaking once it was closed. "...Gratitude isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but it would make me feel better, yes," he said after a moment's pause. Kyo had to give him credit, he was pretty smooth. Kind of the sort of smooth she expected from people who were used to impromptu conversations and maybe public speaking. The sort of thing high-self-esteem folks did but most average Joes would stumble over. "How are you feeling?"

"Top of the world," Kyo said, a slightly shrug, maintaining the slight dryness she'd answered with before. "I drowned, I had a crazy dream about mirrors and monsters, and now I've woken up in the wrong city and apparently months have flown by while I've been down and out. But sure, I'm feeling like afterglow right now. Absolutely wonderful."

Janeway paused again, eyes unmoving from Kyo's, but he moved away from the door before answering, taking a spot closer to the blankets bunched at the side of the bed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I realize this is a... strange and difficult situation, but I only stepped in to help you." His eyes flicked down and then up again. For a moment Kyo thought he was checking her out; but then he said: "You found the clothes, and my note, I guess."

"Yeah, and the part about you 'observing' me back home," Kyo said, a bit more waspish now. "Sounds a bit stalkerish to me."

"It's complicated, but don't worry," Janeway said, a slightly lopsided grin coming to his face. "It's not like that. Tell me... do you remember perhaps... seeing something before you lost consciousness?"

"Creepy monster-woman snake thing," Kyo answered, her voice and face now completely deadpan. "I'm guessing that's a... Persona, right? Like in the dream I had."

Janeway looked like Kyo had slapped him in the face, and she had to suppress an urge to grin in victory, even though she hadn't really been aiming to one-up the guy by appearing more informed than he wanted her to. He recovered within a second, though. "Yes," he said. "It was one of mine... Meretseger, actually. So those girls I spoke with before were right... you've had the dream. I didn't think you could while you were in stasis, but I suppose you must have passed into natural sleep without anyone noticing."

"You're gonna have to explain that one," Kyo said dully, letting her arms drop to her sides, and pushing away from the wall. "You're also gonna have to explain what you were doing watching me, why the hell you were even there when I got thrown in that lake, and why you brought me here of all places."

Janeway held up his hands in a warding gesture. "I mean to," he said simply. "But the short version, since you're understandably impatient for answers... is that I have the power to sense the 'potential' to awaken a Persona, and I happened to notice it in you. I need... help, from people with this particular talent, so I was trying to determine whether you could help me or not."

"Sounds like the start of a really fun autumn anime," Kyo answered irritably. "I still don't really know what this Persona thing is, let alone whether or not I should trust you about it. So, what, you put me in some magical suspended animation, didn't tell anyone I was alive, and dragged me off to another city, kept me asleep for months so I can't go back? So I've got no choice but to rely on you and do whatever you tell me? Is that it?"

"Goodness no!" Janeway said, looking appalled by the very idea. "I... I'm sorry for that complication, but I'm afraid saving your life wasn't as simple as just pulling you out of the lake. I was able to send Meretseger to you in time to prevent you from drowning, but unfortunately, I... had no means of retreiving you from the bottom of the lake. By the time I did, you had already been found, and presumed dead. The months of stasis were necessary so that you could recover from... additional damage inflicted on your body during the investigation and afterward."

Kyo blinked. Oh, she thought, suddenly feeling vaguely sick. Autopsies and cremations and... fuck...

Something of the queasiness must have shown on Kyo's face, because Janeway stepped forward and placed a tentative hand on her left shoulder. She looked down at it, frowning slightly, undecided between appreciating the gesturing and sweeping it away with her hand. Janeway spoke softly: "I realize this is a lot to take in. Why don't we wait until you've had time to think a little, and until Tsubaki-san has returned with your food?"

"Tsu... oh, the maid's name. Yeah," Kyo said, shaking her head a little. "Yeah, okay. But you better damn well tell me everything, got it? If you think saving my life was doing me some kind of big favor--"

"I would have thought you'd be glad to be alive," Janeway said, cutting across Kyo, and sounding a bit perplexed. This time Kyo really did brush the hand away, turning back to the balcony door on the far side of the room.

"Well, I'm not. So don't think you can use that to get anything out of me."

She saw Janeway nod in understanding out of the corner of her eye, and watched him step back. From this far back from the balcony, Kyo realized she could see the skyline, but not the water. Without the water, the view was quite pretty, and calming...
Player Character Log - Plot Character Log - Social Links - Internet Usernames - Recap Episodes

Underlined text is in a different language... English, unless otherwise specified.
Regular old dialogue is supposed to be spoken in Japanese 'cause this RP takes place in the land of the rising sun, don'tchaknow.


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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
"Simply put... I had to jump through a few precarious hoops to recover you before irreversible harm was done," Janeway began. "Having access to magical means of subduing relatively powerless humans helped, but if everyone in the room gets knocked out and the body in the fire is inexplicably missing when they wake up, that would raise much louder alarms."

Kyo sat cross-legged on a mat at a table, with Janeway sitting directly across from her. He had led her to lounge, every bit as Eastern in its stylings as the rest of this place. The maid had brought in a large Styrofoam container and placed it on the table in front of Kyo, bowing and taking her leave as Kyo thanked her and opened the container. It wasn't good diner food, it was pretty obviously bar food--but beggars couldn't be choosers, and if Kyo appreciated one thing about not being actually dead, it was being able to eat.

She liked food. All those other girls worrying about their weight with every third breath were sissies.

"So," she said dully, her first burger half-eaten by this point but now sitting untouched in front of her, as the present topic of conversation did very little for her appetite. "at some point they opened me up, and not in the fun way. And then I got stuck in a furnace. Since I'm pretty sure no stasis magic that makes any kind of sense at all could save me if I'm ashes, I guess you... pulled me out before I got burned all the way?"

"Yes," Janeway said with a sigh. "I had to replace the body with something to avoid arousing suspicion, though... fortunately, one of the girls who participated in your--murder--was about the correct body type, and most other features don't matter after cremation."

Kyo didn't know what sickened her more--the idea that she had been on fire or that her survival meant someone else had died and burned in her place. "Well," she said evenly. "That don't sound like a nice thing to do, but I'm not about to pity a murderer for getting murdered. As long as it wasn't the one who sounded like she had an actual conscience... I know it isn't Sadako herself, she's too damn tall."

"No, but I think you'll be gratified to know they eventually caught her," Janeway said. "All the news told me was that there was an anonymous tip, but she was convicted of murder. Yours and... various others."

"Huzzah," Kyo said in an uncaring voice, though a viciousness in her eyes betrayed that she did find this a little gratifying. She pinched three french fries between her thumb and index finger, popping them into her mouth, swallowing after only two chews. "At least I've been given justice. And my tits grew back. That's nice. How the hell does a girl survive cremation, anyway? Apart from the obvious 'magic' answer, I mean."

"You only suffered surface burns," Janeway said in a delicate voice. "The stasis magic itself kept your body from functioning or... ceasing function. You could say it froze your body in time. Your internal organs weren't treated delicately, I imagine, and most of your body was charred black by the time I got to you."

The man sighed, shaking his head.

"You had to be... scrubbed rather thoroughly of excess burned flesh to make sure you wouldn't be horribly scarred for life," he said evenly, looking a bit sick himself. "But once you were clear to mend, nothing short of deliberate harm could cause more damage with my Persona's magic in effect. Not even the usual concerns of infection that accompany burning."

"That's a little too much information, but I guess I did ask for it," Kyo sighed, brushing her unease away with a show of exasperation. "...Handy trick, you have there. You could do a lot of good with that if the government's first answer wouldn't be 'let's cut that guy open and see if his guts glow.'"

Janeway laughed, though there was a distinct lack of humor in the sound. "Yeah," he said. "In any case... welcome to Yumegawa. It's a nice city. It seems to be suffering some troubles of a supernatural nature lately, so it's good that you've woken up."

"Is this the part where you tell me what you're hoping I'll do for you?" Kyo asked. "With the vampire in my head and all that? Shared dreams and monsters and blue butterflies and stuff?"

"I could use help investigating the cause of these events," Janeway said unabashedly. "But whether you decide to help or not is up to you. Either way, you're free to stay here at the estate with me for as long as Ichigo-san is my patron. You can't very well go back to your family, unless you want to be on the receiving end of questions that might end with you being cut open... again."

"No kidding," Kyo said. Despite her previous indecision over going back at all, there was something unnerving about knowing that the option was cut off completely. She wanted to keep this from showing in her face, but the slight tremor in her voice and the way her eyes flicked down and to the side gave it away. "That's nice of you. Still not sure I trust you enough to take that offer."

"Ichigo Mizuta-san owns the local private school, Tenshihishou High School," Janeway said, in a tone that implied an offer. "I could ask him to pull some strings... enroll you with a false identity. With time, I'm sure we could acquire other vital documents for you as well. Consider it something like an unofficial witness protection deal..."

"Great," Kyo said dully. "I'll have to think about that one. Not really sure I want to kick off my remorseful second chance at life and happiness by cheating the government like a terrorist or something."

"Understandable," Janeway said. "I won't do anything to keep you here... if you really want to leave, you're free to."

Kyo looked down at her food. Abruptly, she grinned, and reached out, closing the lid and slipping the tabs into the slots, securing it shut. Then she looked up, and said, "Now that, I'll take you up on. Right now. I need some air. These stuffy rich-people places hate me."

Janeway's eyebrows went up. "There's still a lot I need to explain--"

"And if I decide I give a shit, I'll come back and you can do that!" Kyo said brightly, picking the Styrofoam container up and hopping to her feet. "Got any pocket money you can lend me? I might want to stay a night at a motel or something while I make up my mind."

The man frowned, and slowly stood up. "If that's really what you feel is best for you," he said slowly, reaching into his pocket and producing a wallet. He opened it, flipping through it... and after a few second of counting, he slipped a sizable stack of bills out of it, and handed them to Kyo. "I don't have charity enough for more than a few nights, so don't spend it all in one place," said Janeway. "It won't be hard to find your way back to the estate, if you change your mind."

"We'll see," Kyo said, taking the money and unceremonously stuffing it in her pants pocket, before turning away from the man. "Later, Janey-man, it's been fun--"

"Wait, one more thing."

Kyo stopped and sighed, and then turned to look... and froze when she saw what Janeway was holding out for her. It was a gun. A handgun! He was holding it by the barrel, meaning her to take it, also coincidentally pointing the barrel at his own belly. She could easily reach over and pull the trigger, damning him to an agonizing death, were she the kind who did things purely because she could.

Well, she was the kind who did that, but not when it came to physically hurting people. Hell no. Even the village bicycle had standards, jeez. She just narrowed her eyes at it and asked, "Are you trying to get me arrested?"

"It's not a real gun," Janeway said. "It's a tool, an Evoker used to summon a Persona into the real world. And to anyone without a Persona... it's simply a model gun. 'For self-defense.' That's what I tell people on the rare occasion I need to explain why it's in my pocket."

"Huh." Kyo reached out without hesitation now, taking the gun. She felt a tingle on contact, one that connected to the presence she could feel in her mind, the one she'd awoken in the mirror-dream. Turning the gun-thing over in her hand, she could tell now that it wasn't a real gun; the hold in the barrel was far too small for a bullet, and there was no place for a magazine or, for that matter, any other parts to be assembled, disassembled, or cleaned. It was a gun-shaped hunk of metal with a trigger as the only visible moving part. It looked convincing until one was allowed to examine it from all sides.

She looked up. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but why give me something like this?" the girl asked dubiously. "It don't sound like the sort of thing that you can just mass-produce..."

"With Mizuta-san's help, I can manufacture more if need be, even if it takes some time," Janeway said, lowering his hand as soon as the Evoker was clear of it. "I just want to make sure you can take care of yourself, whatever happens. There are other Persona-users in the city, now. So whatever you'd normally do to defend yourself might not be enough."

"Well, thanks," Kyo said with a shrug, turning from Janeway again without a second glance, shoving the Evoker into the inside pocket of her jacket--it just barely fit, but fortunately the way the jacket hung beneath her breasts prevented the lump from appearing too obvious. "Maybe I'll see you, maybe I won't. Which way to the front door? And the bathroom. I need a bathroom."

"There's a toilet in the room you woke up in. The front door is out across the way... I'll show you out."

The rest of the house was as fucking fancy and Japanese as the two rooms she'd already seen. Living here wasn't looking all that appealing, but maybe she could turn a guest room into her own little slice of America? Or Canada or the U.K. or maybe Sweden for all she cared, she wasn't picky. Something not so feudal lords and samurai.

If she decided to come back here at all, that was. By the time Janeway led her to the front gate, she still hadn't made up her mind about that. As for the people who'd apparently decided it was their duty to check in on her at the estate later in the morning? Well, she hadn't made any promises to them, either.

Getting out of that house and away from the suspiciously benevolent Janeway seemed far more appealing than meeting any of them, right at the moment.
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Underlined text is in a different language... English, unless otherwise specified.
Regular old dialogue is supposed to be spoken in Japanese 'cause this RP takes place in the land of the rising sun, don'tchaknow.


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