Shinjiro Aragaki (荒垣 真次郎) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
themortalhalf) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
destinystrings2013-04-18 05:06 pm
themortalhalf) wrote in destinystrings2013-04-18 05:06 pm
Entry tags:
Freedom can be frightening if you've never felt it [OPEN]
Who: Shinjiro Aragaki (themortalhalf), Minako Arisato (greatseal) and whoever else they run across [Open]
Where: Around Hinoto-Ri, though it finishes in Capricorn.
Summary: After wandering around Hinoto-Ri, Minako and Shinjiro finally arrive in Capricorn to try and attempt to resolve the issues with Shinjiro's persona.
Warnings: Shinjiro is his own warning. Otherwise, will add as needed.
Notes: Feel free to use action tags or prose.
Funny, how quickly things start to settle in routine. Blink, and you'll miss months as easily as you lived them. It had been September not so very long ago, and now they're a little more than a week away from stepping into May. Burgeoning chill has changed into a blooming warmth, and the weather is surprisingly tolerable—it's nothing compared to the damn bipolar mess that had characterized the past December.
It almost feels normal.
Almost.
Of course, things will never be normal here, but Shinjiro will take what semblance of normalcy he can get. There are things he still doesn't like—even some mundane things that, to most, have little in them to dislike—but there's a part of him that that welcomes the new routine, even going to far as to somewhat appreciate the annoying, mundane things that make him feel a little more like the older teenager he's probably supposed to be: get up early, head to school. Finish, go back to the dorms.
Today starts out little different. By mid-afternoon he tells himself he's sick of hearing damn shitty lectures and being told what to do (everything he's told he could probably figure out on his own), yet finds himself back in his desk a half hour later, and listens far more attentively than some of his sleep-minded peers.
When school's over, things continue on as normal life would perhaps see fit to orchestrate on its own. Which means, of course, he gets saddled with a familiar tag-along as he heads out into the city, a tag-along who, perhaps, far more people would recognize on the streets and not feel so reluctant to associate with. He and Minako wander around for awhile, and it wouldn't be difficult for a visitor to spot them wandering around the city somewhere. They stop at a shop or two—and Shinjiro has to pretend to not be interested in the pet store on the other side of the street—and move on, stopping at a small coffee shop briefly on their way towards Capricorn.
After that, they might spend a minute or two briefly checking in to make sure the Naganaki Shrine is still being maintained—and that it, perhaps, has not disappeared unlike some of their universe's inhabitants—before going out into the open fields, away from the main attractions and to where people are sparse and few, though perhaps not uncommon.
And that is where routine ends, and it serves to remind Shinjiro about how abnormal everything still is—how abnormal he still is. He's not in the field completely because he wants to be, but because he said he would, and he knows how to keep his word despite the that he still dislikes it. He's still as wary and doubtful as he had been back in March of any of this working at all—like training will magically fix his problems; he'd rather a pill—but has conceded to giving in to this inevitability.
themortalhalf), Minako Arisato (greatseal) and whoever else they run across [Open]Where: Around Hinoto-Ri, though it finishes in Capricorn.
Summary: After wandering around Hinoto-Ri, Minako and Shinjiro finally arrive in Capricorn to try and attempt to resolve the issues with Shinjiro's persona.
Warnings: Shinjiro is his own warning. Otherwise, will add as needed.
Notes: Feel free to use action tags or prose.
Funny, how quickly things start to settle in routine. Blink, and you'll miss months as easily as you lived them. It had been September not so very long ago, and now they're a little more than a week away from stepping into May. Burgeoning chill has changed into a blooming warmth, and the weather is surprisingly tolerable—it's nothing compared to the damn bipolar mess that had characterized the past December.
It almost feels normal.
Almost.
Of course, things will never be normal here, but Shinjiro will take what semblance of normalcy he can get. There are things he still doesn't like—even some mundane things that, to most, have little in them to dislike—but there's a part of him that that welcomes the new routine, even going to far as to somewhat appreciate the annoying, mundane things that make him feel a little more like the older teenager he's probably supposed to be: get up early, head to school. Finish, go back to the dorms.
Today starts out little different. By mid-afternoon he tells himself he's sick of hearing damn shitty lectures and being told what to do (everything he's told he could probably figure out on his own), yet finds himself back in his desk a half hour later, and listens far more attentively than some of his sleep-minded peers.
When school's over, things continue on as normal life would perhaps see fit to orchestrate on its own. Which means, of course, he gets saddled with a familiar tag-along as he heads out into the city, a tag-along who, perhaps, far more people would recognize on the streets and not feel so reluctant to associate with. He and Minako wander around for awhile, and it wouldn't be difficult for a visitor to spot them wandering around the city somewhere. They stop at a shop or two—and Shinjiro has to pretend to not be interested in the pet store on the other side of the street—and move on, stopping at a small coffee shop briefly on their way towards Capricorn.
After that, they might spend a minute or two briefly checking in to make sure the Naganaki Shrine is still being maintained—and that it, perhaps, has not disappeared unlike some of their universe's inhabitants—before going out into the open fields, away from the main attractions and to where people are sparse and few, though perhaps not uncommon.
And that is where routine ends, and it serves to remind Shinjiro about how abnormal everything still is—how abnormal he still is. He's not in the field completely because he wants to be, but because he said he would, and he knows how to keep his word despite the that he still dislikes it. He's still as wary and doubtful as he had been back in March of any of this working at all—like training will magically fix his problems; he'd rather a pill—but has conceded to giving in to this inevitability.
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Minako is distinctly less sullen during the trip, trying to keep up a conversation and make him fixate less on his pessimism. This is a good thing.
When they eventually make it to Capricorn, she leads him off into the woods, to a secluded area she'd found made a good Persona training ground. She'd used it several times before, including during practice fights with Minato.
"We're here! Are you ready to get started, Senpai?"
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"Guess so."
Not like he's got much of a choice. It doesn't matter how he feels about it. He will, however, exercise his right not to go first. It might be wariness or caution or cowardice on his part that he doesn't need, but he's not going to question it.
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"Since what we're training for is control, I think we should start without Evokers," she says. She's not sure how he'll take this suggestion, or how necessary it is in reality, but it makes sense to her. "They're another kind of shortcut."
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But that doesn't change what's possible and what already is. Persona don't always wait for an Evoker; if they did, plenty of problems besides his would have been solved. And her suggestion makes sense, regardless of whether it'll affect anything in the long run. He thinks he can count the number of times he's summoned Castor mentally on one hand. The response, then, had always been slow and initially sluggish.
He just nods. "That's fine. We can do it how you want."
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She briefly closes her eyes. This is as much an exercise for her as it is for him. She's rarely tried to summon without the Evoker, and it's a slow process for her as well. But the process is helped along as the Persona she chooses to bring out comes very naturally to her.
Thanatos isn't pretty. He is the Death arcana and shows it, from the grinning skull and coffins to the black robes that mirror the Reaper's. But for Minako, having him back is almost a relief. It's also a sad reminder that Pharos has vanished. It was a little ironic that she'd been able to summon Thanatos only after the 'child' had disappeared, but maybe the coincidence wasn't coincidental at all.
But Thanatos is an important piece of her; maybe even more directly than Orpheus. He's the piece that died ten years ago. And although he likely won't understand the connection unless she says it, that makes her want to see Shinjiro's reaction.
"This is Thanatos," she says, not opening her eyes just yet, though she can still 'see' Shinjiro clearly. The Persona merely hovered, waiting. "He's weak to light but blocks physical, dark and fire. So you don't need to worry about your attacks."
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He does, however, understand a few things. He understands her connection to Death now, and can easily understand her having a new, conscious affinity towards it and the representatives under its arcana. He also knows that each Persona is a manifestation of their user—he'd have been an idiot to not to notice it in the first place—and there's no reason why all these extra ones wouldn't have some meaning to the person that summons it, though he certainly never stopped to analyze every Persona he's seen Minako use, or question her choice. He doesn't think he needs to. Shinjiro doesn't need a Persona to tell him about her any more than he needs Castor to tell him about himself and just what kind of person he is. He all ready knows. Though Castor's presence now has a sort of irony to it that Shinjiro hadn't seen before.
So, to him, Thanatos is just one of the many Persona Minako uses. He isn't pretty, but neither is Castor. Thanatos is just a Reaper wearing a grimmer cloth, more haunting and otherworldly than he is ugly. But for all the different Shadows and Persona he's seen, Thanatos does certainly grab his attention. It's easy for his eyes to catch the chains and see the finely etched effigies (of martyrs, perhaps, or saints) on the circle of coffins, and wonder, maybe, about what they mean. He feels suddenly uneasy and on edge, and though his face betrays faint surprise, as usual there's not much to his expression. His muscles stiffen defensively, and he roots his stance firmer into the ground and stands up straighter.
Maybe it's because he can feel, somehow, that he's clearly outclassed—though that's almost more of a comfort than anything else, really, to know he doesn't really stand much of a chance if any at all; he's never really wanted anything to do with power.
Though maybe he's uneasy because he subconsciously knows what Thanatos is and what he stands for—and that, on some level, they've met before. In a way. Crossed paths, at least. The veil between Shinjiro and death has never been all that substantial. Shinjiro's not afraid of what he sees, just cautious, and wary. But for all that caution, there's still some aspect of familiarity to the Persona that's not half as cold. Maybe it's because Thanatos is still her somehow, or maybe it's something else. It's nothing that Shinjiro can really define or say.
He doesn't call out Castor yet, just watches Thanatos hover from where he is above the ground. "He's new."
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And in the end, it's actually a bit relevant to the situation.
"I don't know if Akihiko-senpai or one of the others ever told you, but my Persona went wild the first time I called it. Not long after I transferred the first big full moon Shadow attacked the dorm and Yukari and I were stuck on the roof. She dropped her Evoker so I used it to call Orpheus, but as soon as the big Shadow appeared, Thanatos broke its way out of Orpheus and attacked it."
She lets that hang for just a second, then smiles wrly. "I ended up asleep in the hospital for a week after all of that. Of course, the 'Thanatos' then was actually Death trying to get back its parts, but we didn't know that until a lot later."
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He takes the new information quietly, and when she lets her words hang, Shinjiro wonders why Aki hadn't told him something like that had happened. It might have been something Aki would have seen worth mentioning—in hopes, maybe, that he'd understand. Though, in the same vein, Aki respected other people's privacy in matters like this.
Then, when she continues, his surprise vanishes and his expression turns into something equally wry in return, because, for as much as her situation echos his own, there is still a loud "but" hanging over it. It might be relevant, but that had been Death inside of her, not a Persona reacting to a stressful situation. Thanatos had been a fragment of something that Aigis had sealed inside Minako when her parents died. Death was something as foreign to her as the Persona Strega had possessed had been to them. He doesn't have that excuse.
"No, he didn't mention it."
Though now that he thinks of it, Shinjiro wonders if any of them had even really understood then what had happened on the rooftop that night. Had they even seen the incident as Minako's Persona going out of control, or if they had just viewed what had happened as a consequences of a difficult and stressful evoking process.
"So that's it, then?"
The source of goddamn everything.
Not that this is the real thing—Ryoji and Pharos are—but it's still a reminder of that history.
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"Sort of. I only got Thanatos as a real Persona after Pharos became Ryoji-kun. He said that a little of his power was left over, so that's probably why."
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Still, it's a pretty grim reminder of everything that had happened, things none of them can change, even if there are still somewhat positive associations, like that kid and Ryoji. She was fond of them. But if Shinjiro had a choice, and he was in her place instead of his own, he's not sure he would have wanted to pick Thanatos up again—even though that might have been an eventual inevitability he would have been drawn to—but Minako's different from him.
"Makes sense." The explanation seems legitimate enough. "It'd be a hard thing to completely get rid of." If you had something like that inside you, existing like that for ten long years years, it'd be strange if it didn't leave some sort of mark, invisible or otherwise. Every little thing does.
He sighs. He falls quiet then, concentrating as he reaches for Castor. It doesn't take long to find him, not like it used to when he had been taking the suppressants. Castor's no longer dull and caged and quiet. And every day he—it—becomes a little more noticeable, a knife-sharp presence in his mind where there hadn't been much of one for so long. Gives him headaches, sometimes. Headaches instead of silence, which seems to him to be an unfair trade off, but at least it speeds up the process. He finds him, and calls him, mentally pulling the Persona out until he materializes.
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But now he summons, and she shifts her stance, stepping back out of the way and letting Thanatos come to the forefront. Now they'll see how well her training strategy pans out.
"I won't attack back. I don't think you'd want me to anyway..." It's framed as a mostly pointless joke, but it's also true. None of her Persona's attacks are really appropriate to use for training like this - especially the ones that inflict Fear.
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Which is also true. It's not like he has many tricks up his sleeve. His purpose had always been clear-cut. Focused. And limited by that focus. He notices it even more here. He has no elemental balance. Can't heal. No weaknesses, no resistances. And he's not really much of a support—only marginally better than what he had been back home.
He feels Castor's held-back restlessness as he finally sends the horseman in to attack with a Fatal End—not that the attack matters. She's seen him fight before. See one attack, and you've pretty much seen them all. The only difference is in power and whether it's widespread or honed in on a single target.
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Thanatos holds up his swords, and the attack deflects harmlessly away. "Try again!"
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Though, then again, lots of things people say do now.
He keeps Castor moving, turning him in a half-circle before sending Castor lunging forward again, hitting into Thanatos' imposing form, though he feels the attack's complete ineffectiveness—like trying to scratch a damn brick wall. He backs off, reigns Castor back, though he's hardly idle, letting Castor charge in the respite and allow his health to regenerate.
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"Not all his ideas are reckless," she counters. And he's not here to push Shinji himself. "And as the leader I'm counting on your abilities too." She'd never liked leaving any one member to lag behind the others, even if it meant a lot of trips to Tartarus.
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Not that Shinjiro considers their current situation reckless, but precautions don't render unlikelihoods obsolete, even though he recognizes that nothing probably will happen here. He might not like it, and though he has his nagging pessimistic doubts underneath his rationalizing, Shinjiro at least understands that there likely had been a trigger. You had to have fuel to start a fire. Somethiing has to make you go crazy. He just has to act like everything will; otherwise, he's not being careful enough.
He lets Castor go again, tries something different with a wider range. Makes him feel a bit less like a man with only one trick up his sleeve. The impact is harder, but still as inconsequential as it had been, though and some of the trees aren't so lucky, long marks marring their branches from where the assault's power strayed.
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Just having her Persona sit there as a semi-sentient punching bag isn't particularly interesting either, so she lets Thanatos move, trying to dodge Castor's attacks despite not needing to do so. She may not be worried about her own control like Shinjiro is, but she may as well practice manipulating a Persona without the help of an Evoker. It's conspicuous to carry everywhere, even in her purse.
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His eyes, however, track Thanatos' movements as the Persona starts to move. His expression thins. Thanatos staying rooted in one place might not have been very interesting, but it was at least consistent. A stationary target. Though he knows that's not the point of the entire exercise, but when he doesn't even know what he should be aiming for, besides the vague goal of control, he almost prefers it. Hell if he knows any of this will constitute much improvement. Or if he'll get that even if he does. Or doesn't.
He pulls back Castor's pursuit after the next attack falls short of its target, then charges so that he keeps to the careful balance he has to maintain if he hopes to pretend to have any endurance to him. Though it also buys him time. It makes reservation look productive. Then he lets him go.
He might not know what he's looking for, but he'll at least fulfill his end of the bargain, even if he wants to do nothing more than dig his heels in and stay where he is. He'll participate. He's not going to be accused for not even attempting to try. He lets Castor follow the evasive pattern Minako is setting, and surge forward when he thinks he's aiming right, then he abruptly pulls back and tries to sever the connection instead of maintaining it or letting Castor's presence fade like he's used to doing. The attack still goes through, along with an unfamiliar mental strain. He feels the energy go out of him as the horsemen bear downs on his target and meets familiar resistance. Then Castor vanishes like a light suddenly gone out.
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And then Castor lunges again, following Thanatos. Minako watches as the Persona abruptly disappears. That's actually a good idea. "Were you trying to stop the attack?" she asks. "How about, I tell you when to make him vanish? That way it's spontaneous."
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He nods at her question. "That was the idea." He concentrates, calls Castor out again, and sends him charging forward. "...Your call, then."
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If Castor's attack continues, it will plow harmlessly into the grass, but it's a good exercise for what might happen in a fight when the Persona-user is closer to the Persona.
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And, just as soon, he calls him out. "Again."
A later from the first post, but when they are still together?
"Hooooo!" He recognized Minako, of course (how could he not, she had kicked his ass, and Eikichi never forgot someone who got the better of him) and gave Shinjiro a small nod. Of course they'd both know who he was too. He wasn't face anyone forgot, heh heh heh...
"Good afternoon! And what are you two doing exactly?"
Re: A later from the first post, but when they are still together?
Unfortunately.
(Scram, loser.)He gets a brief nod in return, and were Shinjiro alone, there might not have been much more to say except goodbye. But that, obviously, is not the case. He has to pretend to be social. Or, you know, maybe he doesn't.
"Could ask the same thing of you." But he shrugs his shoulders. He had been planning on walking around for just a little while longer and then grabbing food (or eating out) somewhere on their way back, because he's just tired enough he doesn't particularly feel like cooking something decent, but he'd not going to mention that. It'd sound too much like an invitation, even if he didn't mean it to be one. "Just walking around."
The sakura are starting to bloom, anyway, so that part's entirely plausible.
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