Redi Domum

[stringmods]

Who: The missing visitors and you. Open to everyone.
Where: MAGI Labs
Summary: After being violently removed from the Tower of Animus, everyone is returned 'home'.
Warnings: None

There was a tight clench behind your navel, the sensation of something dragging you through the fabric of time and space itself... it was an unpleasant sensation, almost sickening. Those of Hinoto-Ri had vanished from the tower completely when the clock struck midnight from what had just happened, removed from that reality. It had happened with such abruptness that it was downright disorienting to observe. There was no chance for a hurried goodbye, no chance of even letting out a surprised scream...

Those of Hinoto-Ri were dragged back to their own world with very little grace, and for a dizzying and wild thirty seconds, they suffered from the sensation of thick tentacles grasping and yanking their bodies this way and that through a swirling blur of matter. Where were they going? What had caused this?

After those sickening moments that seemed to last far longer, they were unceremoniously shoved out of the Shining Trapezohedron in a stream of bright lights, and into what looked like a giant room filled with computer screens. At least it didn't appear to be the Mictlan, like when the other group had returned.

Pray that you weren't on the bottom of the pile...

Now there was a quiet hum, as an alarm went off. Lights shone brightly upon you as scientists outside were running scans to determine you weren't harmful from your trip. That left you time to think.

You had finally met him...

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. He'd taunted some of you, shown you another world you had been sent to save...but in the end, nothing much had changed. Perhaps there was small solace that it was still standing and not completely obliterated as had been his plan. The questioned remained, however...

Where was He now? ...you could figure that out later. There were reunions to be had first.

[OOC - Anyone can start threads.]

Comments

[themortalhalf]

He tilts his head. Shinjiro had wondered if that was the case, but he couldn't be sure.

At her question, he nods. "He was waiting for us in one of the floors." Inside the damn maze with the mirrors. That was one floor he was glad to get out of. He didn't need another presence inside his head that he sure as hell didn't want. He wasn't some toy to be played with. None of them were. "Just been biding his time, I guess. That was yesterday." Or at least he thinks it was.

[greatseal]

Minako considers the remains of her food, debating taking another bite... and then sets it aside. Maybe she'll finish it later, but right now she has no interest in eating.

"...So, what happened?"

The way he's not said it already makes her worried.

[themortalhalf]

Because he's mulling over what to say. He could go into detail of what the bastard did and said, but what good would that do except make her upset? It was obvious that it was all just a game to him, weighing a person's reactions like you would rate an actor's performance. The details didn't matter here. And it's nothing he'd enjoy bringing up. "He talked shit mostly," he says, finally, pausing for a short span of seconds, "...probably to see what we'd do. We eventually we found our way out."

He lapses into silence again, trying to piece together the final hours. There had been a lot of chaos and confusion during the last little while. It had been hard to understand exactly what was going on for sure. He knows what he saw. There are things he can guess at, but can't confirm for certain now that they're gone and out of the Animus. There hadn't been time to make sense of anything. He had seen the build-up from the terminal screens, as had many others, and was limited to what it showed him.

"Not long after, I think he tried to destroy the tower. He didn't manage. One of the heads runnin' the place stopped him, far as I could tell. Then about an hour later, we were kicked out and ended up back here—at least, that's what I'm guessing is what happened. Don't think any of us chose to leave, and I don't think anyone magically found us a way out. It felt different."

[greatseal]

"So, basically..."

Running over what he'd just said...

"No one was able to do anything at all."

So the entire trip had been a waste? They'd spent all that time climbing the tower for nothing?

She wasn't blaming Shinjiro, or anyone, for not being able to defeat Nyarlathotep themselves. From the sound of it, they hadn't been given much of a chance. What had Philemon actually been hoping for, anyway? Wasn't Nyarlathotep some sort of godlike being?

There are some parallels she could draw here, but right now, that's about the last thing she wants to do.

[themortalhalf]

He sighs. "More or less."

They couldn't even hold their own against the administrators there, let alone take down something akin to a god. They hadn't even had the "honor" of finding him, really. At best, they had all been bait to flush him out, but he's not even convinced of that. He's sure Nyarlathotep only surfaced because he felt like it. It wasn't because of anything they did. In the end, their actions were small and insignificant in the long run. They couldn't save the people in the tower, and they certainly hadn't done a damn thing to Nyarlathotep.

"But I don't think us accomplishing anything was ever the point."

[greatseal]

"Then what was the point?" She's thinking back to what Tatsuya had said about Philemon. He ruins your life. Anytime he gets involved, things become worse. Philemon had probably meant them to accomplish something with this move, but if it wasn't defeating Nyarlathotep, what were they supposed to have done?

[themortalhalf]

He answers with a question. "Didn't your brother say somethin' about a bet?"

[greatseal]

"That's right..."

She sighs. "I heard something else troubling about them while you were gone. Eikichi-kun's friend, Tatsuya, was talking about Philemon on the network. He said that both Philemon and Nyarlathotep are aspects of humanity in general."

[themortalhalf]

Great. More psychological talk.

While the revelation might have been unbelievable years ago—as if an aspect of humanity could take on physical form—there was little reason not to take the explanation at face value. In the end, it probably doesn't even matter what they are. They exist, and that's all there is to it.

"He say anything else?"

[greatseal]

"Well, that Philemon already ruined his life..."

Which doesn't bode well for anyone, if she has to be honest.

[themortalhalf]

Unless Tatsuya was being overly dramatic, no, it didn't.

He just wishes he could be more surprised about it, like he isn't used to things going wrong, or there suddenly being strings attached to something, strings that have the potential to strangle you if you aren't damn careful. But he can't, so the best he can do is grimace some more. He's not particularly happy to be and the beck and call of some entity that didn't mind treating them all like lab rats. That's what they had been in that tower, rats for him to observe and take notes on as they responded to the inhuman circumstances present there, to wait and see if the rats behaved like he had bet on. If they reacted like he theorized, he got to go home with bragging rights.

"Not sure if there's much we can do about it."

And that wasn't pessimism talking. Just a statement of fact. They were already here, and the most they could do is deal with what was thrown at them as best they could and be cautious about it. Maybe an opening would surface sometime, but the fact didn't change is that they were only here because of Philemon. Some could back out and go home, quit the game, but that option wasn't much of an alternative for plenty of people here.

[greatseal]

"We just have to work hard and do what we can."

She says this matter-of-factly, despite all the questions they still have, about Philemon and everything, really. Fighting without really knowing what's going on is nothing new. She won't let it bother her. "Persona is our power, after all. We choose what to do with it."

[themortalhalf]

He could hear that response coming. He smiles a little again, witholding a small, fond chuckle. Not that he found what she said funny, but the words were familiar, and was the sort of sentiment he had learned to expect from her.

"So basically life as usual." Doing what they had always done. He pokes at the remainder of his food thoughtfully with his chopsticks, capturing one of the pieces. "...Guess I can do that."

[greatseal]

"Mm-hm!"

She smiles, now back to her cheerful self with most of the serious talk behind them. "But success or not, I'm glad you're all back. That tower doesn't sound like somewhere anyone needs to stay for long."

She can't really imagine staying in Tartarus for more than an hour at a time, and yet they'd all been living in a similar place for weeks.

[themortalhalf]

His smile abruptly vanishes, and he grips his chopsticks a little tighter.

"No, it's not."

No one deserved to stay there. Didn't matter how long.

They weren't 'all back.'

[greatseal]

She can't really miss that mood shift. His normal expressions are so stoic that small changes are obvious to anyone who spends time around him.

"Senpai? What's wrong?" Was it something she said?

[themortalhalf]

And it takes seconds for his expression to steel itself into something impassive.

"Nothing." And he takes the few seconds of pause following to swallow down the piece of meat held between his chopsticks. "Just tired."

Which, at least, isn't a lie. He is tired. The exhaustion had settled in over the past three weeks and hadn't yet gone away.

"In fact," he says, pushing back his chair, "I think I'm gonna go to bed."

He didn't want to think about Aki anymore. Or any of them. Not like that would ever happen though.

[greatseal]

"All right..." She's not sure she completely believes the answer, but then again, he's been through a lot and has to be tired. Maybe he was just thinking of Nyarlathotep and what he may have said. "That's probably a good idea."

Then she hesitates. She'd told Akihiko before that she'd show off the new room to Shinjiro when he got back, but right now, she's not sure he's in the mood for her inviting herself along. Instead of moving to stand as well, she continues awkwardly sitting.

[themortalhalf]

And it's easy to see that awkwardness as he stands, knows the source of it. He looks her way for a few seconds, and his expression softens into something a little less unreadable.

"You can come if you want."

He had spent the last three weeks without her, and he had missed her more than he'd care to admit. He isn't about to push her away and add a few more hours to those three weeks. Even if his mood had made him visitor resistent, he wouldn't have been able to turn her away, so he isn't going to. She can come if that's what she feels like doing, or she can wait for her brother.

[greatseal]

She looks a little more sheepish at being called out like that, but she leans the chair back and stands up.

"Okay. There's something I need to show you, anyway."

He can just feel unsure about that sentence the entire way up to his room.

[themortalhalf]

He raises an eyebrow as he picks up the now-empty bowl and throws it away in the trash.

"All right."

And Shinjiro will continue to feel unsure as he ascends the staircase. He almost expects her to stop him at some point, maybe take him somewhere different than let him continue his habitual path towards his room. It's more of a half-hearted hope, really, because her saying she has "something to show him" means she's been up to something while he's been gone. It ain't a surprise, because that's what she does, gets into things, but he has every right to feel terribly unsure about it when she feels the need to give him a subtle warning.

It doesn't take long to reach his room, opening the door, and flips on the lightswitch...

And it's... not what he expected. At all.

He's just tired enough he has to fight back the urge to take several long steps backwards into the hallway to see if he had just maybe made a mistake, because his room sure as hell never looked like this. It has stuff in it. He's pretty sure those are curtains. ...Why the hell does his room need curtains all of a sudden? It wasn't like he had been waging war with the sun every morning.

He's also not going to even ask about the bed. He's past that point of questioning her motivations on that one. He knows better. He will glower at it, however.

After a moment of bewildered silence, he turns to stare at her for a few long seconds, accusingly.

What. Did. You. Do.

[greatseal]

She did warn him. That doesn't mean she feels at all bad about what she's done. Her smile is sunny and completely unrepentant.

"So, what do you think?"

She can read it easily enough on his face, but making him translate that into words is half the fun.

[themortalhalf]

What does he think? He thinks it looks like she had just gone and decided declared war on his perfectively practical sense of lifestyle while he was gone, and had seen fit to invade his room like a dictator would on an helpless country. She looks about as repetent as one, at any rate. Clearly she hadn't been lacking for things to do during his absence.

What was that saying? When the cat is away... Well, more like when the mice are away the cat will lay claim to her damn territory, and the mice will just have to deal with it.

"I think that I don't need curtains." He doesn't need any of it. It maybe wasn't anything extravagant when compared to a normal teenager's room, but he had lived his life without any of this just fine, so having stuff suddenly invade his private space certainly threw off his sense of aesthetic spartan equilibrium.

[greatseal]

"You don't need them, but you can use them. We're only on the second floor and this building faces another one." She puts one hand on her hip and points at the bookshelf with the other. "Everything I added is useful. The shelves are for storing your books." 'Your books' somehow seems to include a lot more than the magazines she'd found in the desk. It looks like she raided a used bookstore, because there are several shelves of cookbooks... and a couple hidden books on cute fluffy animals. Those, she will have to admit if pressed, are only there for his reaction.

Anyway, continuing. "I didn't get a TV for the TV stand yet, but when we do you can watch what you want up here without having to bother anyone in the lounge. The carpet's for Koro-chan, so he doesn't have to sleep on the floor when you bring him in here. And the bed -" Here she stops, and actually has the decency to turn slightly pink. "...Well, like I said, everything's useful. And the most important thing is, now it looks like a real bedroom."

[themortalhalf]

If it had only been the bed that had undergone an upgrade, he would have been content to pretend that it had always been there, rather than question its sudden existence. The other things are harder to ignore. Cookbooks were useful, but that didn't mean he needed so many, even if he would enjoy reading them. Nothing he needed shelves for. He didn't need a TV when there was one downstairs he could... sometimes clandestinely watch. It's money that she could probably put towards worthier causes.

His eyes are, however, quick to notice his old magazines and where they're placed, and there's a brief flicker of uncertainty that flashes across his face. She hadn't just redecorated his room, but had gone through his room, and though he had precious little to hide, there still was something that deserved to stay hidden. Things didn't need to be found. He's not sure how to interpret that and what to expect, but if she doesn't bring anything up, he's certainly not going to. He doesn't want to. For all he knows, maybe she found nothing, or by some miracle wasn't going to question what he needed pills for.

"You could've used the money for your room."