[Game Opening, Part 4 : Mission 1 - Take Out the Bull by the Horns]

[stringmods]

Who: Yu, Akihiko, Kanji, Minako, Guybrush, Link (Ocarina of Time), Shinjiro, Margaret, Yosuke, Kotetsu, Barnaby, Daichi, Gentarou, Mitsuru
Where: Middle of the F1 in Taurus; Nyx's Night Club.
Summary: Taurus Sector Mission
Warnings: Drinking, Smoking, Swearing, Brothels, Naughty Persona, Implied Everything.


You might feel a little out of your league. After they took you into a room where a series of robots cleaned and dressed you up, you were all put inside a limousine together. There appears to be a lot of drinks inside, but go easy on the rum! You need to keep your wits about you soon. Your driver is one of the many men in black from the Government. You are all members of a rich family; it says so on your fake entrance cards. No need to wait in line like the other peons, oh no, you get to come in as guests of honor.

Your mission is Calculated Infiltration.

And not just anywhere, but Nyx's Night Club! The hottest nightclub, it also requires a strict dressing code. According to the Government's Task force, the source of the disturbance detected in the sector is in the lower levels. Unfortunately, it is heavily guarded and with a lot of civilians nearby, quite possibly drunk, you cannot just waltz in. First step will be locating your double agent and contact who will supply you with a password. Using your COMP system, you should be able to locate them in the large crowd that has gathered tonight. No name, and no clue or idea who they are. Simply that your audio function will register a match when you do find them.

Of course, this is Nyx's Nightclub! Like everything else here, it's got a rather shady side. The Brothel and Drug Cartel below are your true targets. Word is that one of the heads of Anoli is a honored guest, and that the bar's owner is a sympathizer.

As in every city, there is a fine line between tolerance and allowing your foes to go around as they please. Whatever they are conducting down there, it had the sirens going off. You need to find out why, exactly.


Lucky you.

As you enter the Club, music starts blaring into your ears, as lasers, lights, drinks, and people dancing in cages surround you in a visual and audio orgy. It's hard to see, but you need to stay in character, and find your contact. Once one of you does, you can proceed on.

[OOC : For now, you can start threads trying to find their contact, OR there reaction to being there. MINGLE AS A TEAM IF YOU WANT :3. As with every log like this, ONCE THEY GET TO THE LOWER LEVELS, you are free to start your own thread and have your characters stop swarm of monsters on your own. Don't forget to write your character's Persona awakening later on as well!]

Comments

[greatseal]

He doesn't need to explain. Even if she doesn't understand it fully, she can sense enough of the feelings behind his words to answer.

"It's forgotten." She doesn't stop there, though. It wouldn't be Minako without giving him some kind of catch. "But in return... you need to pick out something you do want to do together later. Deal?"

This... is actually dangerous. The flirting, the teasing... She knows she's moving into territory she's likely going to regret. There's still things she hasn't told him about what happened after he went to the hospital, things he deserves to know before he gets himself involved with her again. Things that she's afraid might hurt him. But she still can't stay away.

She may have ignored it for four months but her heart still knows everything she'd told him before is true. Everything, including those three important words. The question was... when everything came out, would he still believe that? Would he still want to?

Maybe she really is still stalling for time.

[themortalhalf]

There's always a catch.

Hell if he knows if there's actually anything decent to do in this city. He doesn't have any of his old failsafes to fall back on. If the rest of Hinoto-ri is as seedy as this place, he'll be taking her to see movies about baby demon puppies.

He half laughs until series of coughs cuts it short. You would think that being dead would have rid him of that. He had been looking forward to not having to feel like something was ripping apart his lungs. "….Guess I don't have much of a choice when you put it like that." She'd probably force and nag and badger her way through his door again. In fact, she'd probably would just skip the pleasantries and break the damn thing down this time around. "I'll think of something."

[greatseal]

The sudden coughing fit concerns her more than any future plans, so she tugs his sleeve slightly. "It sounds like you need some water. The restrooms are over there..." She doesn't think going to the bar to ask for just water would work well for their cover story.

[themortalhalf]

No, it wouldn't. But that won't matter too far into the future once Kanji and Yu fight their way into idiocy. And there are others he's been keeping an eye on.

"Don't need it." What was he going to do, anyway, stick his head under the tap? Wasn't going to chance trying anything the bar offered either. Didn't trust it, and it wasn't going to help. What they needed to do was find the contact, but all his COMP was doing was bring up bold, red-colored negatives.

[greatseal]

Wow, Shinji, way to totally disregard your health! "Well if you choke, I'm not going to perform CPR."

Except she would. Especially when he's not actually choking.

[themortalhalf]

And no one was surprised.gif.

"Good. Because you're not supposed to worry about it."

He also hopes you'd try the heimlich first before trying to break his ribs and coerce him into breathing.

Hugging is, after all, the first step of foreplay. And he'd actually be conscious for it.

[greatseal]

"I don't think you can stop me."

She makes no promises.

[themortalhalf]

If he's learned one thing during his month's stay at the dorm, it's that stopping Minako from doing anything is pretty much an exercise in futility.

He sighs, starting to walk. "Do what you want. It's still nothing you should concern yourself with. Like I said, it ain't anything contagious."

Worry about something else. Like whether or not your brother is a narcoleptic.

[greatseal]

"Hmm...." But, she leaves it at that, for the present. She's no doctor, but she doubts there wouldn't be some side effects from being pulled out of a coma into another world. But, he's not falling over at least, and she doesn't actually know about his little pill problem. Akihiko never saw fit to explain it in her presence...

But she still has room to deal with Minato's issues and yours too.

[themortalhalf]

And she's not going to find out about his little pill problem because he's never going to tell her about it. It's just one of the many things he hopes stays buried this time around. It's something that isn't going to change, because he can't let it change.

He has half a mind to just let some well-deserved silence take the helm, watching her out of the corner of of his eye. He's sure he's seen that look before. One of those prying things, like it was a bullet that had every intention of piercing through steel.

"Look," he says, "they want us to fight for them, don't they? I doubt they'd bring in a defective product that couldn't do its job."

[greatseal]

"That's not what I meant. I know you're strong." But strength doesn't really mean anything against a bullet. Against an accident. If he's reckless again...

Pushing things now over what's probably just a cold isn't going to help. She squeezes his arm to forcibly change the subject. "Come on, let's keep looking."

[themortalhalf]

I know that's not what you meant, is what his grey eyes say as he drops the topic without another word.

He leads her through the demon-infused crowd that’s mingling beneath the harsh, strobing streaks of light. He weaves past some, circling behind others, while carefully avoiding a handful altogether. He scans their faces for anything that might be a hint of unpredatory interest, eyes flickering to the COMP to see if the voices register.

Nothing.

In the silence he thinks that this is why he had tried so hard to keep things as they were back home—platonic and uninvolved. The more attached you became to someone, the harder it was to accept the less desirable things life had in store. The more difficult it was to accept that one future you had seen coming a long time ago, wondering, perhaps for the first time, if maybe there was something you could do to change it.

He looks up at the multi-colored lights that threaten to blind him, all of it suddenly as surreal as the racing undercurrent of music that seems to pulse beneath the floor like a heartbeat. At the demons that aren’t quite Shadows, at the cages, and the humans that co-exist in the space between. And then it hits him, harder than in the moments after he first opened his eyes, that he’s alive, for whatever reason. It’s September again (didn't he hear someone say that it was the first? Or is it the second by now?), and October 4th is still more than a month away. It’s almost like he’s been sent back to live that one month over again, except the world's a little more screwed up this time around.

“...I’ll think about it," he says. "The dancing thing.”

[greatseal]

She looks up, genuine surprise in her face. That wasn't what she was expecting him to come up with next. But then she smiles, brightly and without any trace of the earlier concern.

"I'll look forward to it, if you decide to. ...But we can find a better place for it."

[themortalhalf]

"Anywhere would be better than this."

He's not offering to put on a show in front of a hundred demon spectators. That idea can go to hell.

[greatseal]

She's not going to laugh. She's not going to laugh.

....Sorry, Shinji, she's laughing. His expression is just too much.

[themortalhalf]

"What?"

[greatseal]

"It's nothing!" That's all you're getting from her, Shinji.

[themortalhalf]

Nothing his ass.

"If you have enough time to laugh in this damn place, you can spend it looking for the contact. See anything?"

[greatseal]

Why do you have to be so serious... "Not yet.... do you think we should split up?"

[themortalhalf]

That came out... harsher than he had intended it to. Another old street-tempered tendency that would probably only truly die when he did.

It had been nice to hear her laughing though.

He sighs, looking across the crowd at the question. They would cover things faster that way. Just how much of a needle in a demon-infested haystack was this contact trying to be? At least the club's floor isn't as big as it could be. It won't be difficult to locate her—or any of the others—if he needs to. He all ready has several of the animal-stuck-in-headlights kids from earlier that he's keeping an eye on, because if they actually know how to handle themselves, he'll eat his hat and cover it in Aki's protein shit while he's at it.

"You fine going alone?"

Probably a stupid question. She had looked like she had grown up with that dress wrapped around her the moment they had all been shoved in that limo.

[greatseal]

She just smiles back at him, although one eye is already scanning the crowd for a good direction to head in. "I'll be fine! Just be careful with the demon ladies, all right?"

She's not sure she could compete with a succubus when it really came down to it.