entranceway | video/action;

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video/action;

[Souji is, surprise surprise, in the di-- Actually, this time he's in the kitchen. For a change of pace. He's got the device propped up on something so that he can talk at it hands free. Sitting in front of him is a piece of the rainbowiest rainbow cake a person could possibly make.]

Today is my sixth anniversary.

[He nudges the cake a little toward the camera.]

So I made cake. There's plenty of it, so I'll leave it here in the kitchen in case any one wants to have some.

[With a smile that seems quite tired, he shifts the cake to one side, and glances after it. With his gaze still cast away from the camera, he asks:]

How long have you been here? Do you want to go home? [He looks back at the camera again, his expression more thoughtful than tired now.] I'm kind of...doubting myself in that regard.

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[Well this response doesn't remind him of someone at home at all.]

You run at school?

[Little does he know clubs aren't a thing for these young uns. Clubs are just part of life.]

Used to. Not anymore.

_{[#long story]}

But being a phantom thief was even better. There's plenty of free time here, though, so I still run when I get a chance. Makes you feel like this place isn't as small, like you're gettin' somewhere.

Yeah, I can understand that. With so much time, you have to feel like you're making progress somehow.

[So he doesn't run at school anymore. There's definitely a story there, but Ryuji didn't volunteer it. Souji can pursue it later--or pursue it indirectly.]

I like running pretty well. I played soccer at school and we ran way more laps than necessary.

_{[Ryuji and track had a rocky relationship--had, because in recent months he'd taken great strides (no pun intended) to assigning some closure to it. He didn't mind talking about home life if someone was really interested in what a workout junkie gets up to in his spare time, but it didn't seem fair to go about blathering on about himself on today of all days, Souji's anniversary.

That said, he can't help but light up at mention of one of his favorite sports.]}

Oh yeah, you play?

_{[Present tense. He doesn't feel as divorced from those hobbies and interests.]}

Edited 2017-08-05 09:10 (UTC)

Not much here. I'm not sure I will when I get home, either.

[He'd normally leave it at that, but after a second decides to elaborate a bit.]

I was living with my uncle in a little town for a year, and I'll be going back to the city when I get home. I'm not sure what I'll do at my new school.

Edited 2017-08-05 21:31 (UTC)

Are you into it? I mean, the sport--like, in general. We should get a game goin' sometime when we're not off on random ski trips.

_{[Ryuji should know better than anyone that it's possible to love something and not be stoked to carry on with it at school, or in a team setting. At some point it's just time to move on.]}

Ha, you sound a bit like Akira, except the other way around. He's a country boy who moved to the big city.

Where are you from? Must've been strange, leaving all the trains and the shops behind for small town life.

Organizing a game might be fun. It'd give us all something to do.

[But he's not that enthusiastic. Soccer was more about the people he played with than the sport itself.]

I don't really know Akira. I've never actually met him in person.

[They'd had one conversation over the network, but after that, Souji only knows what the other Phantom Thieves and Minato have told him.]

I'm not really from anywhere. We moved around because of my parents work. But we lived in Tokyo a lot of the time. [He smiles to himself.] It was a big adjustment, but I think I liked Inaba better than the city.

Yeah! And it's the season for beach volleyball. Something good's gotta come out of havin' an ocean view all to ourselves.

_{[It's okay, Ryuji can be enthusiastic enough for the both of them. He's always in the market for new people to get physical with. IN THE PG SENSE, YA PERVS. Though maybe in the other sense one day.]}

We gotta change that. Sounds like you guys would have a lot to talk about.

_{[But another Tokyo transplant, huh? He smiles. Somehow it's heartening to have so many of his countrymen around, even if technically they could be from different universes.]}

Inaba? Why does that sound familiar?

Familiar? Most people have never heard of it.

[Souji looks at him in interest.]

But it had weird weather for a long time. Maybe it's from that. Or the murders. I'm not sure if any of that would have made the news in Tokyo, though.

_{[It definitely sounds familiar in that nagging way like he's heard it before but can't place it...]}

Murders?

_{[Why is it always murder.]}

[Souji nods, one hand on his hip.]

There were a series of murders in Inaba in 2011. Me and my friends were involved in finding the culprit.

_{[Ryuji can barely remember what he was doing last month, let alone what happened back in 2011, but that nagging sensation gets more insistent.]}

Whoa, seriously? I thought you said it was a small town. How many small towns have murder sprees?

_{[It's a rhetorical question. The answer is not many that Ryuji can recall hearing about.]}

At least one. [Souji shrugs. He's not making light of what happened, though--he's serious.] Those happened before the kidnappings. Well, two of them did.

That doesn't seem like why you've heard of it, though. [Or Ryuji would probably have remembered something like serial murders.]

No, it definitely sounds familiar.

_{[He's positive of that--his gut certainly is, and it's rarely led him astray.]}

Like I remember hearin' somethin' about it before...? But I can't remember where. _{[Ugh. He rubs a knuckle against his temple as if that'll somehow jar loose the stray thought.]} What's this about kidnappings?

The guy who was responsible for the killings convinced another guy to kidnap people and toss them into the TV world. Namatame thought he was saving them from something, but they all could have died.

[Just like the murdered women had. Souji's still pretty unhappy about the whole thing, but knows that Namatame really isn't to blame. Still the fact that he kidnapped Nanako is enough for Souji to keep Souji from warming up to him.]

_{[Souji's TV world... Television... It strikes a vague chord until the association his brain is struggling to make hits Ryuji all in a flash. Telephone poles. His hand slams the table hard enough to jostle his camera.]}

That's it!

_{[He snaps his fingers in an aha moment.]}

Inaba! That's the town where they found people strung up on poles, isn't it? Those freaky murders that detective copped to. I remember seein' that dude on TV!

[Souji winces inwardly. So Adachi ended up on TV...]

Yeah...that's Inaba. And that's Adachi.

[He wonders if he ought to say more than that. Talking about Adachi is...complicated for him. It's a couple of seconds before he does speak up again.]

Adachi was my uncle's partner. We got along pretty well. [Up to a point.]

_{[If there's a life lesson here, it's don't trust the fuzz. Especially detectives whose names start with 'A'.]}

So all that stuff on the news--you mean to say it connected to the Metaverse? No wonder the details sounded like somethin' out of a paranormal flick.

_{[Sorry for your ears, but his voice is definitely rising a few decibels. It's enough of a revelation that he forgets to substitute a broader term in place of "Metaverse."]}

And you knew that douchebag detective!? They still post articles from time to time. Everybody just thought it was some fetish killing. It had to do with Personas all along... I can't believe it.

_{[That's a lie, though. After what he'd seen and done in Tokyo? He can believe it better than most.]}

[Well if there was any doubt they're from the same world before, there isn't any now.]

Yeah, he could access the TV world, the same as me. He--

[He had a very similar Persona and a similar connection to Izanami.

...]

I'd rather not talk about him.

[It bothers him. It bothers him that Ryuji knows Adachi and the murders. It bothers him that Akechi reminds him of Adachi, if only a very little bit. It bothers him that Akira's Mirror has Adachi's fucking Persona.]

_{[If the killer could get to that other world the same as Persona users, that must mean... he'd had a Persona, too?]}

Wow, this whole time you guys were involved in that...

_{[Who would've thought such a connection was there all along? Absorbed in processing that news, he crosses his arms and leans back, eyes considering the ceiling contemplatively.

Jeez, now he knows where Akechi gets it from. Watching Neo Featherman and Adachi interviews must have been a lethal combination in Akechi's childhood or something.]}

I don't blame ya, pal. Your uncle's partner? _{[Damn, son.]} I bet that clusterfuck is one thing you don't miss about home.

Things turned out the way they had to.

[That's not really a confirmation or otherwise. He's pretty sure it was hard on his uncle, or would have been if he hadn't had so much else to think about with Nanako being sick and crazy things happening around town.

For his part, Souji actually wouldn't mind getting to talk to Adachi again. He's not sure what he'd say or if Adachi would even care enough to listen. But the bond he has with Adachi is unbreakable.]

My uncle had a lot of other stuff he was dealing with at that time.

I feel for you and your family.

_{[Nothing like a little betrayal close to home to shake the scales from your eyes and make you see you don't know as much as you thought you did. With luck Wonderland only has room for one civil servant-slash-serial-killer at a time.]}

Still, I can't believe I saw that stuff online and didn't know it was about the cognitive world! What the hell. It's like I shoulda connected the dots after we stumbled into the Metaverse for ourselves or somethin'. _{[He's not sure how, but it feels like he should've.]} I guess the circumstances were pretty different.

_{[With this small concession, he relaxes into a smile to lighten the heavy subject matter.]}

But hey, both our groups got our guy, and made the world a little better than how we found it. We're pretty damn awesome.

Edited 2017-08-21 09:16 (UTC)

It's easy to miss a lot of stuff like that. My class visited Minato's school on our class trip and I had no idea why the place was important.

[In retrospect, there was much more of a connection between them than he could have guessed without the information he has now.

His lips quirk in a smile that's only a little sardonic.]

Of course we are.

Hell yeah, you can say that again!

_{[Boasting and fist pumping wards away the chill of contemplating more murder, more senseless death.

Like a fly trapped in amber, Souji reflects how similarly young him and his friends must have been at the time of those incidents; not for the first time Ryuji thinks this is insane, why does this crap keep falling on us, we're just kids. Just kids. But the answer is there within the question, he supposes. It fell on them because it hadn't fallen on anyone else.

And maybe it takes someone too young to be used to the status quo to shake things up beyond conventional means.]}

You'll have to tell me the whole story sometime--with the shit that went down in Inaba and the other world.

[Souji would have agreed with Ryuji--for his part, his team did what they did because they were able to. And they were able to because they had chosen to be. Whatever Izanami had done to Souji to make it possible, everything after that point had been chosen by their own free will.]

Yeah. Sometime I'll do that. In exchange, tell me more about the Metaverse.

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