It was a dark, if not stormy, night....

[press_start]

Who: Nanami and Takakage
Where: Some deserted street at the 13th Hour 
Summary:  Tutorials are terrible, but maybe skipping it for this game was a bad idea....
Warnings: Hints of SDR2 spoilers for Nanami I guess, but nothing much? 

Blink. Blink blink.  She felt her mind slowly come back online- to extend the metaphor, her mind was unfortunately a dusty terminal that was years out of date and coming to her senses felt like having it kicked several times.

What happened? Where was she, there was something very inconsistent in this situation right n-

For one, the sky was red. For two, where was everyone else? There was no log of this place in her databases- empty street, the flickering glow of a streetlight illuminating small darting shadows. Rats, cats, and the light fluttering of feathers muffled by distance. Something out of a comic book, maybe. A Film Noir movie. Places she'd never been to, thought about once in a while but often dismissed quickly enough-

But she was here now, so now what?

Nanami reached out, half-expecting a thread of mainframe to reveal itself to her- her arms felt strange, heavier-but-not-heavy, the cool night air on her skin sending nerve signals ricocheting through her nervous system (a strangely exhilarating feeling.) No, no mainframe to be found. There were so many signals to process at once all of a sudden, the novelty of re-connection- (no, something more than coming back online this was-) casting everything into a sharpness that was almost disorientating. Okay. Okay. She'll.... she'll figure something out. She'll just.... stop for a while, taking everything in. 

......

That unearthly howl-snarl didn't seem like it belonged here. 

Also the sky was red. She almost forgot.

The lack of a command sequence was beginning to be concerning. She'd do something, but what, proceeding forward always required at least an understanding of where you were supposed to go, what the win conditions were for this game- Nanami blinked once, twice, then got herself off the middle of the road. That was probably a dangerous place to be. It was good that she did, because as she turned back to gaze up the road there was what she assumed to be a vehicle approaching through the darkness.

First goal, figure out setting and plot and win conditions-

Wait, was that a car? That looked like a really strange car, it- 

That's not a car.

Comments

[[spoiler tag again for any casual readers lmao]]

[press_start]

Was she of schooling age? Technically, she- was not very old, about a year if you wanted to be strict, this iteration was, but longer if you wanted to be more lax with identities. But no, these technicalities were not the details Takakage-kun was looking for. Her musings looped around her mind like a search command sourcing for answers, the metaphorical search engine of her memory banks ran its programming and decided that "Mmm, I'm supposed to go to school."

Not technically, but then again, technically...

"I guess. I'm .... sixteen, the last I checked." Nanami blinked, seeming quite unaware that this was a very unusual answer to give to a fairly straightforward question.

[thirdarrow]

... the way she phrased it was... interesting. Did she forget her birthday? Or was there some other underlying reason?

He let it slide, though he did file the question away for latter investigation.

"Well, it ought to be reasonable to suppose that the government will give you a place in the schools." Hopefully. The thought of Nanami having to fend for herself is... a little worrying, to be honest.

[press_start]

"So I'll go to school?"

What would it be like, going to school here, she did wonder. "The government here's really accommodating, finding places for people that come in and things...."

You didn't find a lot of government presence in many games. It generally wasn't a particularly exciting thing to grapple with, after all, but one did wonder how the system worked sometimes....

Interesting, interesting. When you're the playable character things get a lot more detailed than you expect, huh.

Well, Nanami supposed this was simply how Real Life went about doing things.

".... I'll... keep that in mind and ask about arrangements soon. Thanks....!"

[thirdarrow]

"Well, they do need to keep us alive." Takakage tilted his head a little. "For one, we Visitors are Persona users. The people of Hinoto-Ri need us to help with the demon infestation."

Pause.

Is she going to leave soon?

"... do you know where your apartment is?"

[press_start]

"Oooh." It was unsurprising that only the game players, so to speak, would get how such game mechanics worked. "So many of the people here don't actually use Persona?" She had a surefire way of identifying 'Visitors', then. Interesting tidbit of info filed away for future reference.

"....apartment?" Um. Right. About that.... "Ah.... I only just got here, so I'm not really sure.... ...where do I check up such information?"

and the award for slowest rper goes to me

[thirdarrow]

"Well... the ability is not exclusive to Visitors, but the population of resident Persona users is not as prevalent as we hope it to be." Something like that. "After all, the more Persona users there are, the easier it will be to manage the demonic threat."

Ah yes, checking. He focused for a moment, and the COMP popped into existence.

"Each Visitor has access to a database management device. I believe it is colloquially called a computer. With it, you can navigate the information available to us."

Will she be able to call it out, though?