The almighty persona play thread

Hikaru shot the little shitstain a stern glare, then sighed and rolled her eyes, still rather irritated at the shredding of her reading material earlier in the day. "Don't think that's cute. That's stealing." She hissed into her bag before flipping it shut again, heading off to grab a quick lunch, now for herself and Edogawa - and a little something for the shitstain, who despite being an irritating vandalizing thief with no respect for other's things was still kind of cute maybe just a little bit fuck off okay - drop Edogawa's off quickly and anonymously at the teacher's lounge, and get to the library.

Lance had a good idea what he wanted to find having finally gotten his headings to the library straight. He stepped through the doors and instantly set eyes on Hikaru who appeared to be rummaging aimlessly through some magazines at the front. He quickly and quietly skirted past her and headed toward one of the catalogues and searched for the term "Fortune Telling". He tapped his foot slightly impatiently while it ran its query, eager to see all zero results he was expecting. 'If it's not here I'll have to check a municipal library.' he thought to himself.

Hikaru paused as Lance came in and bee-lined towards the computers. She cocked a brow, continuing to watch him as he tapped away at the keyboard and groaned - apparently whatever he was looking for wasn't here. God damn it. He was involved in this crazy shit, just like she was. She supposed she could go ask what he was doing, maybe offer to help. Maybe.

"Oi." She tapped him on the shoulder. "It's too early in the year to be researching that hard, y'know. Save it for fuckin' later in the year when the actual papers happen."

Lance let out a huff of a laugh, the sort that was half between a very neutral 'what do you want' mixed with a begrudging 'you have a point.' He was slightly annoyed that he wasn't finding quite what he wanted, and he mused to himself that he must have really looked the part if he was getting attention from Hikaru of all people. He quickly gathered his thoughts, took a short breath, and turned to face her. He kept his conversation at a whisper, both for the sake of the library and for the sake of keeping people from overhearing.

"I'm just looking for a book about cards. I was thinking about it and there's at least one thing I can look up. The cards we get when we call on those things. I have the feeling that I've seen or heard about them before in the past, and I wanted to see if I could get more information on them." He gave off a sharp burst of a sigh. "I might just have to see if I can find a different library after school to hit and search through as well, unless you had any other ideas for search terms?" he wasn't above asking for help.

"Oh, fuck, those things? Yeah, I think those are tarot cards. Here, hang on a sec." She turned her hip, flipping open her satchel and digging through it. "God, I hope that little black shitstain hasn't shredded that too... oh, no wait, here it is!" Pulling out a plain white box, about double the length than the width, she popped it open and upended the contents into her hand. "They're commonly used for divination. I had a tutor in middle school who would teach me about stuff like this when we finished our lessons early." She blushed slightly, cocking a crooked smile. "He wasn't half bad-looking, either. Makes this deck mean a lot more to me - he gave it to me when I moved away before high school."

She took a seat next to him, spreading out the deck, separating the major and minor arcana and fanning each out in two arcs. "Have you ever learned how to use one? What the cards mean and such?" she asked, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. Her hand settled on the Hanged Man. Twelve. She flipped the corner with her thumb absentmindedly, considering its meaning. Contemplation of the paths of life, the need for another point of view... she had no idea how that fit her at all, but she was taught to have faith in the cards. And so she did.

Lance glanced at the cards in interest as she sat next to him and fanned them out.

"No, I've never really looked into it. In most other situations I wouldn't put much stock in them, now would I?" He grimaced in spite of himself. He watched the smaller group of cards with more interest than the larger ones, especially when he saw the card that most resembled his in the grouping. He quickly jutted a finger towards the card with a hushed but hurried 'wait.'

"That one... number... six. That's my card." He had to think about the numeral on the card for a split second.

She nodded in understanding, pulling the card out and setting it on the table separate from the others. "The Lovers. Nowadays it's often misinterpreted to just mean random fuckin' shit about romantic relationships, but originally it represented two splitting paths - a man choosing between two women, one young, one older," she began, "The women represent two paths able to be taken in a life: one easy, and maybe beneficial in the short run, but it very well could fuck you over in the long run, and one hard that has to be soldiered through at first, but is far better for you in the future. There's also a good bit of communication implied by the Lovers, what with being, y'know, fuckin' lovers and all. It can mean communication and connection with others, or even with one's... true inner self, I suppose, is needed to find the right path."

She paused in contemplation, her hand sliding over to the Hanged Man card again. "Honestly... it's a lot like the Hanged Man, in a way. A transition, a fork in the road of life that needs to be studied and scrutinized before choosing. A lot of the cards in the Major Arcana are like that really. Did you know they tell a story?" She placed them in order again, setting them side by side in a line down the table. "When viewed in numerical order, it shows a story that's an analogy of the journey of life. We start as the Fool, the blank slate, the wanderer. We move through life's paths, the choices, like the ones represented on the Lovers, and when we back off and get a different point of view, everything becomes clear, in the Hanged Man. Death is in the middle because Death represents a transition, the 'death' of the old and, in turn, the birth of the new. The journey continues through the Devil, which is viewed as a binding to the material or an imbalance between order and chaos in life, which leads into the Tower, a great fall from grace. After our fall, we find hope in the Star, contemplation in the Moon, and true enlightenment in the Sun, and in Judgment we finally realize the Great Answer that we sought as the Fool, which transforms us into the enlightened World. I'm glancin' over a few, but that's the general idea."

She paused, seemingly in deep thought. "Or at least, that's what Edo-kun taught me." With a shake of her head and a heavy blush, she gathered the cards again, sliding them swiftly into the box again. "The Lovers. Yeah. Listen, I've gotta keep researching this Fo bullshit. I've already hit the entire fuckin' mythology section, ain't shit in there. I'm takin' stabs in the dark at this point." She grumbled, then added in a harsh growl as she scooped up the deck and held it to her chest, walking away quickly, "Or at least I fuckin' would be, if I still had my goddamned knife..."

Lance almost regretted pointing it out the moment he mentioned his card was The Lovers, but it was already too late. He could feel the embarrassment starting up on his features before Hikaru started her explanation. The Lovers were a card representing the need to listen to and connect with others for guidance. He smirked in spite of himself. Of course he would need to open up about the past, that would be just the punishment, to relive that hell once again.

The Hanged Man supposedly held a symbolic link in some way. Both were a crossroads, both required a decision, however they were different in one way. Where Lance needed to rely on others, apparently Hikaru had a decision to come to on her own.

"So we all start as the fool, seeking knowledge. At this point in time I'm supposed to confide in others and seek guidance, and you're supposed to... what, contemplate?" He let out a small huff of annoyance. "I'm not sure I buy into this, Hikaru. I mean... I guess I can't really come up with anything better to explain any of this utter tripe, but it all seems a bit too cut-and-dry for me." He gave off a sigh of exasperation.

"Still... I asked. Thanks, Hikaru." He gave her a smile. He gave her the smile that made him so famous, the smile that he hadn't been able to muster up for over a year now. It was his sincere smile. This smile soon slid into a grimace of understanding when she mentioned her tireless search for information on Fo. He quickly uttered a goodbye and made his way out of the library and into the hallway proper.

Straight into a group of girls from his class. Fuck his luck.

"L-Ladies...! A-Ahhm... uh... e-excuse me..." He fidgeted nervously and sidled away from them as quickly as he could.

Hikaru offered a dismissive wave over her shoulder as she moved to another section of the library, beginning her devouring of the entire damned library to find some damned information.

Search index? Fuck that, it's better to find it the hard way. Why better? Fuck if she knew.

She pondered Lance's words for a moment, considering the options. Backing off, taking an objective look at the forks in the road... but what fucking forks? Such was the challenge of what she liked to call the 'fateful choice' tarot cards: Sometimes you know you have to take a path, but you don't even fucking know what the paths are... or that there was even a second path. Her fate was known to her. Family is family, after all. Blood is thicker than water. But that contract she signed, 'I take full responsibilities for my actions'... hrm. It required contemplation.

But she didn't have time for that inaction shit right now. She went back to reading through the book in her hands, but turned her head and snickered slightly when poor Lance ran into more of those fawning airheads. He had a bad habit of accidentally catching all the fish in the pond, it seemed. She almost considered helping him out of it, but when he managed to get away on his own she once again quickly returned to her rabid search. She spent the entire rest of the lunch break in the library - and in fact a bit longer, as she was a couple minutes late to the beginning of afternoon classes.

Lunch posts closed, the time is now 3:01 pm same day. This time frame goes until midnight.

This post will close on the 1st (have a good christmas and new years!)


Sadly, it seems the weather has taken a turn for the worse and has begun to rain.

Throughout the afternoon, Hikaru was slightly distracted. Her time in the library had gotten her no closer to finding what she was seeking - although she was very knowledgeable about general psychology now.

Not that she wasn't before, but, well.

As the end-of-day bell rang, she packed quickly, wished Mr. Edogawa a good evening, then rolled out the door towards the front doors. She glanced around, looking for any of the other... Shrine Children, she supposed she would call them, then backtracked her way up to the third floor, slipping quietly into the science club room and taking a seat as far back in the corner as she could. No one needed to know she was here. It was bad enough she had talked to Lance in the library. She didn't like people knowing she was smart. That leads to being labeled a 'teacher's pet'. They expect you to be a goody-goody and do well then, and put you in your place when you don't. Indifference to success, anger to failure. If that's what being smart in the eyes of others is, then why bother with it? Much more fun to let them think you're dumb. They expect less from you then, which gives you more time to do as you damn well please - and more of a response when you decide not to 'fuck up' on something.

She pulled out a notebook and a pencil, then doodled a bit, occasionally glancing at the rain pattering against the window. She liked rain. It was soothing. She smiled a bit to herself, then closed her eyes, shutting out everything other than the sound of the rain.

Lance shuffled out of his classroom and into the hallway, determined to make his way to the drama room with as little mishap as possible. He knew he could go either to this or to swimming club and while he thought it would be interesting to get into the swing of things with swimming he found himself drawn more inexorably towards acting. He dodged past a few of the girls in his class, fully aware that it was quite likely that he was going to run into a few of them that could be in drama club as well, but he preferred to wait and see rather than get himself worked up about it.

Reaching the club room he quickly walked through the doorway and attempted to prepare himself for the upcoming activity. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down and get his level of alertness back up to normal after a long day of barely paying attention to lecture. He still also mentally cursed as he remembered that he was completely out of his... 'medicine'. He would have to get more of that soon.

He sighed softly and rubbed his temples with one hand. "Anyone else around yet?" he half-muttered-half-stated to the air.

Hikaru doodled away, first it was of random things that took her fancy, then it went towards the things she saw last night. She stared at the drawn mask for a while, at the blank look on its mask, the roman numeral II on its forehead, before hearing a cough from the far end of the room. "Um, excuse me, but your name?" said a deeper voice. Hikaru looked up to see a handful of students from various grades all staring at her and a large, almost brutish like student staring at her, holding a clipboard and pen. Hikaru couldn't really believe how big he was, this guy must be at least 6' 9 if not more and had as much muscle on him as a professional football player that she had seen on TV once.

"oh u-um, name is Hikaru Isayama." She murmured a little embarrassed, but doing her best to not show it. He glared at her for a moment, before quickly writing something on the board. He stepped to the side and pointed at what she now noticed was her name in both Kanji and Romanji. Who the fuck was this joker?!

-------


He got no response. He opened his eyes to see the room was empty, save for a note on the board. "Wow, all that suspense for nothing." Lance mumbled. He walked up to the note and read it.

"It is my apologies that we are not having club today.
My duties to student council have kept me busy.
Tomorrow will have a new schedule up of times for new club meetings.
If you have any questions, please ask Sabina or myself.
Thank you for your patience."

Lance let out a small huff of annoyance, but quickly his features relaxed a bit. He was looking forward to his first day of drama club but if it wasn't to be, it wasn't to be. He surmised it was also a bit too late to head to the swim club meet at this point anyway, so he quickly pulled his skateboard from the slats on his back pack and headed for the exit of the school, ready to board his way back to the dormitory.

She cocked a brow, slouching back in her seat, watching the new man with a wary eye. She was never very fond of the built fellows. She realized it was a personal bias, but she always tended to find them pushy and dumb. In fact, she was rather curious as to how such a meathead became the leader of the science club - or at least, she assumed, since he seemed to be doing the general duties of the mind-in-charge. She was silent, waiting for him to continue with his routine and get to the introductions.

He continued to glare at her, the look in his face growing sterner by the minute. "HIKARU HISAYAMA, HAVE I SPELLED YOUR NAME CORRECTLY?!" He shouted after another minute of staring. Hikaru thought she could see a vein pop on his neck.

"Oi, yeah, you're good," she winced at his voice, adding under her breath, "don't pop an aneurysm over it."

"Thank you." He said curtly, quickly writing it down on his clipboard. "Don't worry," he continued, "I haven't had one yet, but be faster in answering next time please."

After collecting names from the remaining students, he introduced himself as Gamon Finch. It seemed club would meet weekly on tuesdays, instead of tuesdays and thursdays as some other club needed the room during that time and science club lacked the members to do anything about it.

The day was mainly introductions, before ending 30 minutes later.

Hikaru huffed on her way out the door, a bit aggravated by this Finch fellow. Little birdies always have the most to prove, she thought to herself as she glanced over her shoulder at him. She rolled back to the dorms, where she stayed for the rest of the night, flipping between reading the latest issue of Tentacle Schoolgirl, setting up her phone again, and actually doing her homework - occasionally checking around for that little Yurt shitstain, as he seemed to have taken a shine to her. She made a note to ask any of the others if they'd found him in their backpacks yet before she went to sleep for the night.

It is now evening, the dorm is quiet with people doing various activities in either their room or in the main lobby. Ivan is missing currently, but its barely passed 8 pm so its nothing too strange. Yurt is nowhere to be seen.

Lance is sitting in the lobby with his laptop plugged into the wall. He's tacking away at the keys, his eyes focused intently at the screen and darting to and fro as he writes line after line of code.

using System;

namespace inventory_screen
{
class Item
{
public const double MarkupRate = 1.055;
private int count;
private double calculatedPrice;
private string name;
private double basePrice;
}
}

He was just sailing along defining the basis for a quick and easy inventory system. He smiled softly as he continued his definitions and setting up the code for calculating an item's true value when he felt his phone go off. It was that time already? He sighed and clicked the lid of his laptop closed. He scooped his stuff up and headed towards the stairs, climbing however many stairs present themselves to him before he reaches his room. He quickly sweeps into the dark room, flicking a light on, plopping his laptop onto the bed, and grabbing his longboard, making a bee-line to the door.

He was curious to see what was going on at the shrine they had all been dealing with for the past couple of days. Each time something happened it had been at night. He figured as long as he was careful and didn't do something obviously stupid it wouldn't hurt things to just spend a little time observing the place...

Hikaru entered the dorm, glancing around suspiciously before entering herself. Bull shit was that little shitstain not around. Seemed he was always around. She rolled over to an unoccupied couch in the main lobby, cracking out her homework and finishing that (with a few of her usual purposefully wrong answers) before moving on to setting up her phone yet again. She was still royally pissed about having her phone wiped; she really kind of needed that damn video, let alone her contacts. Well, at least people with cell phones still had her number; she'd probably just wait to receive calls from them. Although she sincerely doubted she wasn't going to get a call from the most important number that was in her phone... at least not any time soon.

She spied Lance in the lobby with her, ticking away at his laptop. Admittedly she would have been doing stuff on her laptop if she wasn't busy with her phone, so she didn't bother him, noticing how absorbed he was in it and noting that she would have been furious if she was interrupted in that state of focus. She put no mind to him going up the stairs... but coming down with his longboard was a different story. "Oi, pretty boy," she called out, waving her hand to get his attention. "Where are you going at this time o' night?"

Lance looked as though someone had just stomped on his toes. He clutched the board closer to his chest and spun on his heels to face the bruiser. While he didn't like lying, he also didn't feel like having company at this venture. He thought about his answer for a few moments before finally answering.

"I'm just going out to board for a bit. It's decent outside for the most part, and I was just going to ride around the block, maybe a bit towards the school, nothing interesting. Just needed some fresh air."

He turned back to the door and reached for the handle.

She stared at him, cocking a brow. "Just around the block... ya sure about that?" She wasn't really sure he was telling the truth. After all, would an innocent man jump like that when he's called out?

...okay, maybe, but still. "...listen, hey, just... be careful out there. This fuckin' shrine bullshit is... those notes... that thing can reach past the boundaries of the shrine itself. Don't let yer guard down." She was serious now. When she didn't know about something that was happening to her, she dove into learning about it, and she had learned practically nothing about the shrine. This was unusual for her. And she didn't like it. She didn't like it one bit.

For a second Lance thought he'd been completely called out on his lie and he quashed the panic that was forming in the back of his heart. He really didn't want to bring anyone along for this, especially if it wound up being a waste of time. He was about to deflect when she came in with the rest of her lecture. His face relaxed a bit and he gave a small smile. It wasn't often that he felt a sort of protective or nurturing mentality coming from her.

"I appreciate the concern, Hikaru. I'll be careful. To be honest I have the same feelings about that damn shrine that you do. There's something really shitty going on here, and I really just want to be done with it." He sighed softly and made to turn towards the door once more before a thought crept into his mind.

"We should really have a way of keeping in contact with each other." He looked back at her phone for a second before he pulled his own out of his pocket. "We're in this together after all, it makes no sense to not at least try working together... I probably could have worded that differently." He shakes his head slightly and offers Hikaru his phone number.

[[OOC: feel free if Hikaru accepts to just say she enters it.]]