Goddess' Shooting Star (Black★Rock Shooter X Persona 4)

With a deep sigh, you turn back to your homework and start scanning over it, catching yourself up with what you've already done. Your movements are slightly jittery, filled with a nervous energy in every stroke of the pencil that stems from that place at the back of your mind, a tension as you perceive that muted roil of feelings that are not your own.

The work is more time consuming than actually difficult however, and while it takes the better part of an hour to finish your distraction doesn't really hamper your ability. A quick check on the answer keys at the back of the book and then you close things up, packing everything back into your schoolbag and getting ready for bed.

Getting to sleep proves more difficult.

From the start, the nervous energy at the back of your mind makes it hard to slow your own thoughts, and as you do slowly clear it, the strange sensation of drifting between wakefulness and slumber, that normally-forgotten space between the click of the light and the start of the dream takes on a quality of its own as you dance back and forth across the line.

-Flicker-

Dancing back, the fading ring of steel in your ears-

-Flicker-

You jerk in bed, your heart suddenly racing as you try to will yourself back to sleep.

-Flicker-

The air pulses with emerald light and energy lashes out towards you-!

-Flicker-

You can't keep from gasping as you're startled back to consciousness. It happens again and again, your mind capturing snippets of a battle so real and present in the moment that the adrenaline shatters sleep's tenuous hold. You see Black Knights like before, flashes that make you think there's just one at first before you start to realize that there's more of them, two or even three at once, fighting together against you.

Then you see Yosuke's face, lips peeled back in a snarl even as his eyes show naked fear, his knives interposed in a cross block against your black sword. The vision catapults you upright in bed as wakefulness crashes into you, that fear making it harder to get back to sleep even as it makes it all the more urgent you do so.

-Flicker-

Narukami exchanging blows with you, moving the blade with a surprisingly skillful economy of motion as he focuses.

-Flicker-

A knight's horse fading away into smoke, the black-armoured giant stalking towards Chie on foot as another one pursues you at a full gallop, driving you away from them.

-Flicker-

You do not look back as the white noise of the shadow's dissipation fades away. Blade held loosely at your side as the wind generated by the explosion dies down. You look at the others, Teddie at the back, his suit scratched and scuffed, all three of the others bruised and sporting cuts. Yosuke is leaning heavily on Chie while Narukami stands slightly ahead of them, his Katana wavering with each breath.

"Stop!"

You blink.

Or rather, you spoke, but then you felt yourself blink. Narukami's eyes narrow and you try to speak again.

"Just stop, go back." The words are not your own, the world distorts, you are there, you are not there, you are not speaking.

Narukami does not lower his sword. His expression is evaluating, wary. I'm not your enemy!

Black Rock Shooter does not respond, but you can feel her jaw tighten.

"We can't stop here," Yu insists, his eyes looking past you at the door beyond

If you continue, you will die, you're in no shape to fight further.​

"Leave, I'll force you if I have to."

Please… ​

The silence stretches out as your mind races, the shape of the situation becoming more and more clear. You aren't really here, just a fragment of consciousness that should be dreaming. Is this what it's like for Rock when she's in your head? Experimentally, you cast that question out, but outside of a little twitch there's no answer.

"Guys… I think maybe… I'm sure Yuki-chan will be alright for one more day, we'll come back tomorrow, right?"

Chie twitches as Teddie speaks up, looking down as Yosuke tries to pull away from her to stand back on his feet only for her to pull him back into leaning on her. Then her eyes come up, looking into yours, glaring from behind her glasses. "You promise?"

"I can't promise that." Rock's words are bitter and Chie bares her teeth.

"Why not?!"

"Because I-…" Rock cuts herself off and takes a breath as you feel her switching gears in her mind. "Does it matter? You can't get past me as you are."

The tone is arrogant, taunting, and Chie almost steps forwards but for a yelp from Teddie and an outthrown hand from Narukami, waving her back. Rock(You) feels disappointment and relief all at once. All this talking is tiring, frustrating, it's hard to get words across the way you want.

[ ] Rock… Doesn't want them to go on because they would get hurt?​

"She's right, we're all hurt." Narukami's grey eyes pierce the burning blue, a sense in them that approaches understanding, wary but accepting. "Just one question, before we go."

Rock sighs, "what is it?"

"What is your relation to Kuroi Mato?"

You blink again, her disquieted thoughts becoming a chaotic roil in the question's wake. Her attention turning upon your presence in her mind for the first time coming as a shock, almost like a barrier being thrown up.

"I'm not a shadow, if that's what you're asking."

"Then what are you?"

Her jaw tightens again, teeth gritting together as her face twists into a grimace.

"Black Rock Shooter."

She speaks the name in English and you feel a certain dissonance there even as you utterly fail to understand why the wrongness appears. A resonant sense of not-quite-true and not-quite-false at the same time.

Narukami's eyes narrow, and for a moment, you feel as though he sees you. Or he sees you.

"Kh-… Go." Your head hurts, or Rock's does. You can't tell any more. The dissonance rings in your ears-!

You come awake again, panting with a nameless ache in your chest as your eyes manage to focus on the clock face blinking [23:55] at you.
The feeling of being all alone in a crowd.
It takes a little while of tossing and turning before you manage to get back to sleep, but when you do it is blessedly free of dreams, otherworldly or otherwise.
Why does that sense of relief still bring with it an ache of wrongness?
In spite of the night's confusion and uncertainty, you woke in the morning refreshed and ready to go. Rock's presence in the back of your mind was oddly quiet and subdued when your nervousness rises as to the states of Narukami's group you felt strangely assured that they were fine, no words in your head, but a sense like a nod perhaps.

It was difficult to describe.

Still you checked with them in the morning and while Yosuke is moving slightly stiffly, none of them appear hurt. Unfortunately, between their homeroom teacher's yelling and the undisguised wariness on Yosuke and Chie's faces, you didn't manage to approach them before homeroom started.

With the bell now signaling the start of lunch hour however…

[ ] [Lunch] Go talk to the Naru-tachi and check that they're okay. You might have to answer some awkward questions about how you know though…
[ ] [Lunch] You'll see Narukami and the others after school to go into the TV World again, you can talk then. For now, you'll…
-[ ] Go find Kanji, there's still something about him that doesn't make sense and you want to know why.
-[ ] Poke Rock in your mind, she's normally chattier than this.
-[ ] Just go eat your lunch alone, ahh blessed solitude.
-[ ] Who's that blue-haired boy(?) and why do you keep seeing them eyeing you in the halls?
Along the way, your phone buzzes in your skirt pocket…



[ ] [Text] Uh… I don't see why not?
[ ] [Text] No! There have been murders here!
[ ] [Text] (Write In)