Outside Shinjuku Station
09:30
"Takeba says she'll be another few minutes," Kato said.
Amu looked up, nodded, and went back to staring dully into the air.
Shinjuku train station. It was—should have been—one of the busiest in Tokyo, packed to the gills with travellers. Should have been. It wasn't empty, and trains were still running, but only those filled with military personnel or emergency workers. It was half-dead, doing only the business that absolutely had to be done.
It felt like a microcosm of what had happened to Tokyo, and by extension Japan. She hadn't gotten this impression from inside JPs, but Tokyo was
her city, and she knew what it was supposed to be like. Throngs of people, shouts, traffic noises… all of them were absent, and even the sky was a dull red. The few people they'd seen while driving to their meeting place had walked in small groups, sometimes running from streetlight to streetlight. It didn't add up to a tenth of the normal population. There was no real danger here, Kato assured her, and yet…
She wanted to help, itched to bring back the life that was supposed to be here. She didn't want to
stand still, waiting, even just for a few minutes. Maybe following Nyarlathotep's instructions hadn't been such a good idea, since it meant she wasn't doing something else, something more directly useful. She didn't know. Maybe her mood was because of the way her body ached, whenever she wasn't distracted by something else. Pattern damage, Exa had called it.
She'd heal, but what about the city?
Pattern damage…
That felt right. The pattern of the city was disrupted, but not fatally so. People weren't dead, they were just hiding at home. The city could heal, and would, if she gave it the chance; millions of people called it home, all of whom would be helping.
And then she'd feel happy again.
Her face went through a variety of expressions before settling on determination. Dia had just about outright told her—
"Dia," she said, catching the eyes of her youngest chara, a girl who even now looked more upbeat than Amu could manage. "Sorry, but this is a little harder than I thought. Maybe, if… do you think you can…"
Dia blinked, and nodded, a slight smile on her face.
It took her several minutes to adjust to the character change. It felt so odd; almost like transforming with Ran had used to feel—before she apparently got stuck that way—but instead of her body, it was her mind that felt lighter, like the things she'd been worried about didn't really matter.
Oh.
Because
Dia didn't worry about might-bes or what-ifs. She just did the best she could, then let the world take care of itself. She didn't need to worry, she already knew what she was after.
Amu (
not Dia, Dia sat leaned against her neck, but she almost felt jealous) drew a deep, shuddering breath, letting out all the tension that had built up in her body. It was
okay to relax, that's what Dia had meant. At times like this… she'd already decided what to do, so she could stop worrying for just one minute. It felt good, trying to be herself again.
— — —
"—Meet you. Hinamori-san, I take it? You're a little younger than I was expecting."
She looked up, blinking. That hadn't been addressed to her.
"Well… no, actually," Io said, slowly. Her eyes darted up and down the apparition in front of her. "I'm… Nitta Io. Nice to meet you. Hinamori-san is…" Her eyes darted to Amu. "I guess you're…" A deep breath. "Takeba Yukari-san?" She asked, weakly.
For Amu, further blinks failed to clear her eyes, as she stared disbelievingly at the being that had to be Takeba Yukari. Auburn hair and eyes; check, that matched the profile, although she'd grown it out somewhat. Motorcycle helmet? Okay. And there was a motorcycle parked nearby, which she somehow hadn't noticed driving up.
Her eyes shied away from the rest of Takeba's outfit, and her underdeveloped sense of style screamed for mercy as she forced herself to accept what she was seeing. It looked like someone had taken a perfectly good motorcycling outfit, made of leather—dyed it hot pink, and white, and gold—sewn in a hemline, so it looked like a dress even though it was all visibly a single piece—found a pair of shoes that reached most of the way up to her knees, dyed
those white and gold—
'Do not call it unsightly,
do not call it unsightly,' she chanted internally. Even
Ran, who—before her recent "twin" binge—would have worn just about anything so long as it showed plenty of skin, wouldn't have been caught dead in an outfit like this. Even if you cut away half of it.
But she was
ten, and Takeba was
twenty, and Takeba's outfit looked like it belonged in a sentai show!
The oversized bow that rested over her shoulder seemed like a footnote by comparison, but of course it was also white, and pink, and gold, with unnecessarily sharp protrusions for anyone who got close to cut themselves on.
So why was Takeba the one giving
her a startled look?
"A
total kid?"
— — —
"Well, as I said, I'm Takeba Yukari. Sorry about that." She bowed formally to Amu, a gesture the latter awkwardly returned.
"Hinamori Amu."
"—Dia."
"More things between heaven and earth, eh." Takeba looked with interest at Dia, backing up as the latter gave her a disapproving glare. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you a kid. I know how it is; I've worked with young 'uns before. I'm glad I came, though. You've actually talked to Nyarly, recently? What's he like? I've never had the chance, myself."
"Nyarly?" Amu repeated, trying to collect her thoughts. "Nyarlathotep? That's… hard to say."
A shadow that blotted out the sky. A presence that threatened to crush her sense of self.
She shuddered. Nyarlathotep was all of that, but it didn't feel right; it wasn't all there was to him, or even the most important.
"Desperate," she said. "Frustrated. Grasping at straws," and she shook her head. A guess. "I'm not thinking he's trustworthy, in case you're worried. But it's funny, even
he told me not to trust him, so I guess he's split against himself, too. He actually warned me about Nyx."
"Oh?" Takeba's eyes light up. "Interesting."
And then he'd told her about the shrine, which just happened to be the same one her family had always visited whenever they felt the need. Tenman-Tenjin, the god of learning, literature and calligraphy—Amu had felt some disbelief at JPs' claim that he was a
minor god, with hundreds of shrines all across Japan, until she realised they cared about little other than combat potential.
Amu told Takeba that, and everything else she could think of that might come in handy, while they walked to the shrine. Fifteen minutes was just enough time to cover it all.
— — —
"How do we do this?" Takeba asked, looking up the short stairway to the shrine. "I hate to admit it, but this'll be the first time I talk to a god. What do we even do, walk up and pray for him to appear?"
The shrine was a tiny piece of pre-unification Japan in the middle of a modern city, dwarfed by taller buildings on every side. Empty of people, naturally—or was that natural, Amu wondered? Wouldn't people gravitate to anything that'd give them hope, at times like this?
She guessed not.
She'd dropped the character change with Dia, but now that there was something to do she was just about able to keep up the same mindset on her own.
"If it was that simple, there'd be a lot more stories going around," Io said.
"Io's right," Amu said, worrying at a seam in her shorts. Ran had insisted; 'makes it easier to jump around.' "If it was that easy… and he's supposed to be sealed, too. I have some thoughts, but—Lt. Kato?"
"Call me when you want something killed," he replied laconically. "No, seriously. I wouldn't know where to start. All I can say is—if JPs was responsible for sealing the god away then there'd be visible seals, and there aren't; we don't usually have the opportunity to hide them very well. Too large, you'd have to rebuild the shrine." He eyed the ground they were standing on. "Nothing like that here, that I can see."
"So there might be something in the structure of the shrine," she said. "Then again, there might not be anything physical, or if there is, it might be hidden inside the walls or underground."
I do not sense the presence of a spirit, Exa contributed.
However, there is something odd about this place. I am attempting to pin it down.
"Want me to poke around?" Takeba offered.
[ ] Sure, let her do that.
[ ] Try it yourself. (Perception + Investigation)
[ ] Why not try a prayer? What's the worst that can happen?
[ ] There are no people here today, but maybe there's a caretaker? Or even a shinto priest?
[ ] Write-in
A/N: I'm not dead. And to the more literal-minded amongst you, I wasn't close either, but that was the nastiest cold I've had in years. Let us never speak of it again; I'll try to catch up a little instead.
The Unsightly Pink Sniper. I'd like to think she has a good reason for this.
As if I didn't have enough reading material...
