I wonder what the thread thinks Utau should train? (Talking about Hikaru and Ami training is currently pointless given their low or zero amounts of personal arc XP)
Assuming plans haven't changed, half of all earned XP is going into a common pool that any PC can draw from, so Ami should have enough common XP available for a decent amount of training too. (For Hikaru, I don't know if he's actually playable.)
It seems unlikely that we have crafting projects actually able to help for the upcoming scenarios, so do we have any uses for Lore 3 other than Chaos Repelling Pattern?
I think crafting is largely going to depend on us learning what our options even are. We can probably have Miki learn to make anti-fog glasses easily enough (and it probably won't take Lore), but beyond that, I don't know what we'd go for.
By the time Chaos-Repelling Pattern is an option, the situation is going to have changed massively. Non-charm uses for high Lore are going to depend heavily on what the situation actually looks like. We don't know enough to make projections out to that point.
I want Utau to train Pyroglyphics and RC myself, the former because it's cool and the only skill she has 0 dots in (and because it ties in with her already established skills very well), and the latter because it's an very good Investigation aide if she knows what she is doing.
Would probably boost both her Lightsmithing effectiveness and Empathy, which is her best psionic skill. Pyroglyphics seems useful, but she has no dots in it, it will take more XP and weeks to buy it than the things she already has dots in. And that includes Illusion, which is always useful and highly versatile.
Her need for immediate Level 2 in Illusion is less pressing than for Amu, because she has the Dumpty Key to boost her dots in it - but just like Amu we might wind up in a situation where we can't use the key.
Utau is also our current best option for large-scale non-lethal riot suppression in a fight, if it ever comes down to it. Because she can use Eru to put people to sleep with her special attack. I assume the greater her Mental Range, the larger this area of effect this would be.
Depending on how things go, we might actually need to do that if we run into one of Hikawa's demon summoning rituals. Since I have a suspicion that trying to fight him with violence might end up feeding the demons regardless and actually help him compete the ritual.
Does the current solver assume all these developments start with no training time in them yet? And if so, does it include the first week where Amu was still at home could have had 8 hour training a day?
Also, what does an integrity focused build get us? Integrity is the longest lead time of them all after all, so if how the other skills solved in that was ok it could be an interesting choice.
Does the current solver assume all these developments start with no training time in them yet? And if so, does it include the first week where Amu was still at home could have had 8 hour training a day?
The current version lets you plug in a fractional starting rank to account for pre-existing training time, but none of the outputs posted have used that functionality.
The current version has no support for weekends, time out of school, or anything else that would cause day-by-day variation in training time. Every day is a school day as far as the solver is concerned. The solver could be augmented to handle this - it already tracks dates, so it could use a different schedule for weekends, or for before and after a specific date. (It looks like the Task::At thing may already be a half-implemented attempt at support for changing the training config partway through training.)
Also, what does an integrity focused build get us? Integrity is the longest lead time of them all after all, so if how the other skills solved in that was ok it could be an interesting choice.
2009-10-17: Chapter 2.1
2009-11-07: Amu has reached target rank of 2 for Dreamwalking
2009-11-22: Amu has reached target rank of 1.5 for Lore
2009-11-27: Amu has reached target rank of 2 for Illusion
2009-11-30: Amu has reached target rank of 3 for Integrity
Total ROI: 216.00, ROI/day: 4.80
Total Wasted Time: 6.69 hours, Wasted Time/day: 0.15 hours
Note that none of the outputs entirely reflect what our training results will look like, since we're probably going to change our training setup after Dreamwalking 2 finishes, if not sooner.
Basically. The idea is to treat the training input as append-only; we'll eventually need to continue onwards, and I don't really want to rewrite the baseline to match a new starting point. Which means it being deterministic is fairly important.
The current version lets you plug in a fractional starting rank to account for pre-existing training time, but none of the outputs posted have used that functionality.
Basically. The idea is to treat the training input as append-only; we'll eventually need to continue onwards, and I don't really want to rewrite the baseline to match a new starting point. Which means it being deterministic is fairly important.
Determinism is going to be messy and fragile, unfortunately. It's bad enough trying to get consistent output for a single config. Trying to get consistent output long-term, with the config changing mid-run, without unexpected changes as the solver code evolves, is going to suck.
The current outputs begin training at the beginning of chapter 2.1 (which skips two days between Amu waking up and chapter 2.1 starting, either on accident or because Amu was still recovering). The solver assumes that every day is a school day, including for this week, and including weekends.
We really need to resolve the current situation before we can finalize our plans going forward.
What happened here? Where are the other Scavengers? Who's even still alive? How is Kana's mental state looking after this? What is Naoto going to do? Who did Hikaru call? What is Hikaru going to do, given he's probably going to show up during an intensely emotional conversation and/or fight? What do we tell JP's (or do we try to convince Midori not to call them)? How much do we tell our parents about the final revelations, since Midori isn't here to hear them? How much is Naoto going to tell people?
Right.
I wonder where on the priority list you think getting a Mental Range Specialisation with Utau is? Would allow us to have a emergency contact where necessary, but it is still one week of training time.
Right.
I wonder where on the priority list you think getting a Mental Range Specialisation with Utau is? Would allow us to have a emergency contact where necessary, but it is still one week of training time.
It's two comms only dots for 1 XP and 1 week though? (Currently we are at 15-20 meters at 1 base dot for both Amu and Utau, this would turn it to 375-500 meters for comms, with the option of doubling the range and slowing down things by sixty times if we just need a low bandwidth SOS signal)
Or do you think that's still too small for emergency comms in daily life if neither Utau nor Amu are expecting anything problematic to go down?
It's two comms only dots for 1 XP and 1 week though? (Currently we are at 15-20 meters at 1 base dot for both Amu and Utau, this would turn it to 375-500 meters for comms, with the option of doubling the range and slowing down things by sixty times if we just need a low bandwidth SOS signal)
Or do you think that's still too small for emergency comms in daily life if neither Utau nor Amu are expecting anything problematic to go down?
Way too small. We can't count on Utau being within 500 meters in an emergency, especially the kind of emergency where we can't just pull out our phone, or fly away or something.
5x range for general psi effects is a big boost. (Ideally, I'd like to get some Clairvoyance dots so we can work without line of sight or a spotter, but the range boost is still good without Clairvoyance.) 25x range just for comms, with a very short base range, when other communication options exist, isn't as appealing to me.
We do know there are potential non-comms uses of a mental link - for example, using a link as a teleportation anchor - and I imagine things like long-range healing would also be possible, but 5x range on everything is still much more useful than 25x specifically for interacting with one person.
Right.
I wonder where on the priority list you think getting a Mental Range Specialisation with Utau is? Would allow us to have a emergency contact where necessary, but it is still one week of training time.
For the specialization to be worth it, it the function would need to be something really, really essential. Contacting other people isn't it, not when phones currently still work fine.
One -maybe- that I can think of is for augmenting Lightsmithing. Not for the defensive/investigative use, but for the offensive purpose of blinding enemy precognition and clairvoyance, in the event that we are going up against a extremely potent and deadly precog/clairvoyant (something like the Simurgh from Worm) and we need blanket denial over a substantial physical or metaphysical area for a prolonged period of time.
But for that to be the case would also require us to know we're going to be going up against one, far enough in advance to actually train the specialization. And would need the enemy to really be deadly on the level that if Utau doesn't shield the whole of Tokyo, they can and will engineer the demise of one or more party members who isn't lucky enough to be within range of her or another anti-clairvoyant.
I imagine it would be similar to trying to train Amu and Miki in 2 different things simultaneously before Miki got her own character sheet.
It wouldn't have made Amu train 2 things at once.
It would just have made Miki split off faster and then all the training that Miki did would have been removed from Amu and given to Miki instead (if it ever counted as being associated with Amu at any point).
Akkun is seemingly on the cusp of becoming a Chara, which is something that is not precisely Ami but an offshoot existence. Going by what we've seen with Miki, this means having different abilities/skills than their owners until they are re-absorbed over time and if they aren't, you get this situation where Miki has a dot in playing instruments that Amu does not have and takes that dot with her when she splits off completely.
So I suspect that if Akkun and Acchan tried to train different things, Ami (Acchan) would get a Chara specializing in the thing that Akkun was training - it wouldn't be added onto Ami's (Acchan's) character sheet, it would be added to Akkun's and it wouldn't be available to her outside of Chara-Transform or Chara-Change.
And if Akkun were to take a leaf from Miki's book and further split off, access to that dot would be lost to Ami entirely and only had by Akkun.
I imagine it would be similar to trying to train Amu and Miki in 2 different things simultaneously before Miki got her own character sheet.
It wouldn't have made Amu train 2 things at once.
It would just have made Miki split off faster and then all the training that Miki did would have been removed from Amu and given to Miki instead (if it ever counted as being associated with Amu at any point).
Sure, that's a possibility, but that on its own wouldn't explain the training rate getting worse. To explain the training rate getting worse, there would have to be some other factor. Perhaps whatever cognitive resources they share being unable to keep up with the extra load, or the strain of manifesting Akkun distracting them.
Or possibly, Akkun might end up taking more than just what she was set to train when she leaves Acchan.
Which would result in negative training for Ami, as she might be losing a dot in Dreamwalking or Overgrowth or something that is currently on her character sheet, when Akkun leaves.
I want to bring Ami for this. Naoto sees Ami all the time, but what she sees is Dream Ami. I want Naoto to meet Awake Ami.
Naoto might meet Awake Ami when we go home today, but I also want Ami's perspective available for the interview. Plus, if possible, I'd like to take a look at Nanako - just for diagnosis, not a treatment attempt yet. Ami has more of the relevant dots for that. (Kana might have even more dots, but she has traumatic experiences failing to help Yui, and a lot less of Naoto's trust.)
Plus, if possible, I'd like to take a look at Nanako - just for diagnosis, not a treatment attempt yet. Ami has more of the relevant dots for that. (Kana might have even more dots, but she has traumatic experiences failing to help Yui, and a lot less of Naoto's trust.)
I have a suspicion about this - 2 suspicions, actually.
The first is that we're in a timeline where Persona 4's party never hit a good ending. In the good and true endings where the Investigation Team realizes Namatame isn't the real mastermind, Nanako doesn't stay in a coma, she miraculously regains consciousness (the miracle is implied to have involved Teddie in some way). It's the "neutral" ending where in the Investigation team thinks Namatame is the sole mastermind and doesn't identify Adachi where Teddie runs away and Nanako stays in a coma (while she dies if they try to kill Namatame).
In this scenario, the Investigation Team has work left to do and Nanako is probably best helped by finding Teddie.
The second suspicion is that, assuming the Investigation Team got their good ending, Nanako didn't get her miracle in this quest because she actually had a Shadow or a Chara/pre-Chara that made whatever damage she took in the Midnight Channel worse. In this case, she might need Tsukasa or the Humpty Lock to sort it out.
"'Counting on it?'" Amu echoed dumbly, as if she couldn't quite wrap her head around the idea. "She wants to-? What… does actually happen?" She looked up at Shirogane, then stumbled to her feet. "When you kill your Shadow?"
Kana shrank back into herself, but didn't seem inclined to reply—though Amu could still hear her thoughts clearly enough to know that Kana had no desire to continue the conversation. Amu would have liked to oblige her, but this was something she needed to know. Her friend knew that, right? That she couldn't let this go?
Utau certainly did. Her best friend let her mind brush against Amu's, offering unspoken comfort. And, besides, letting her know she was looking out for Kana's other half. That was good. That let her focus.
"Nothing good," Shirogane replied. She sighed, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest, seemingly reluctant to continue—as if she'd rather do anything but say what came next. "It isn't common knowledge," she said, turning to look at Kana, rather than Amu. "So I'm quite curious why you know."
"Mom told me," Kana replied quietly, staring down at the floor. "When I was ten."
"I see," Shirogane said simply.
Turning back to Amu, she explained.
"I only saw it once," she said. "So you shouldn't take this as a given. It's possible your friend thinks it would work differently for her, and it's even possible she's right. However, that one time, I saw a boy reject his shadow—his 'true self', although that seems to be more about truthfulness than behaviour—insistently enough that it disappeared. After that..."
Shirogane trailed off slightly.
"After that?" Amu repeated dumbly. She dearly wished she could at least see Shirogane's emotions, but the older girl was still a black hole! A complete blank slate.
"After that he acted like a shell of himself. A parody, even by his low standards. He only lived a matter of months afterwards, but spent most of that in a psychiatric ward. Few people regretted his death. Even so…"
Amu could imagine what Shirogane had left unsaid all too easily, but Kana seemed flabbergasted.
"Huh?" Kana looked up at Shirogane, squinting at her suspiciously through red-rimmed eyes. "Really? Well, I guess? If you did nothing at all to stabilise their mind, you'd get apathy syndrome?" She blinked at Shirogane a few times before hesitantly continuing. "You saw that happen? ...I—I mean—my other half isn't planning to die. Killing your shadow and then doing nothing to fill the gaps would be an elaborate form of suicide. I mean..."
She trailed off, feeling lost and confused. She was talking about herself. Not about some faceless boy in a hospital bed. If Kana killed her Shadow—if the girl she was looking at died—then...?
"It'd change her," Kana whispered after a second or so, her eyes glinting suspiciously in the light. "Even if she gets it right. It's an insane risk. And I..."
'I don't want to die,' Kana finished mentally. 'I just want things to be normal again. I want to go home...'
"I can't fight," she said out loud. "I just can't."
Kana's thoughts were a bleak well of despair. Not because she physically couldn't fight—she could. She wouldn't, but she could. She'd become a monster, but she could. No, the thing that hurt her most of all was the certainty that even if she did, somehow, convince herself to hit back against Other Kana—even if she won, which Amu privately thought would be easy, with four of them against a single Kana...
That would be the end of everything.
In Kana's mind her 'other half' was an evil murderess with no moral compass beyond 'save Yui' and no qualms about killing whoever she needed to—even if it meant murdering complete strangers whose only crime was being in the way. She could no more fuse with that than she could take a bath in boiling oil and like it! It would be like Amu asking Utau to kill people for her own benefit.
So it didn't matter if Amu believed Kana could win—it would make no difference to the outcome! And Kana...
She couldn't ask them to stay. She loved Amu too much for that. That was too big a part of her core.
Amu recoiled from the thought like she'd been slapped in the face, floundering for a response as Kana's mind closed off in response to her shock—a small, quiet part of Amu noting numbly that at least Kana hadn't meant the last thought romantically. She hadn't, right? She hadn't. But Amu had somehow, accidentally, slotted in where Kana's family should be and-
"Hey," Amu blurted out before she could stop herself, feeling lost and helpless and wishing there was something more she could do besides stretch out a hand in hopes that-
"She's here," Shirogane told them sharply.
⁂
Maybe there had been a better way to do this.
Amu knew she wasn't the most proactive of girls. She'd gotten better, honest, swear to god. But that was 'better' from a baseline of 'spent months reacting to hare-brained scheme after hare-brained scheme from Easter, never so much as considering if she could try to get ahead of them.' And where had that gotten her?
Into an evil corporation's evil lair while a building-sized marshmallow man tried to squash her flat, was where. It hadn't been remotely as cute as the one from the movie. They'd won, thanks only to Utau, Ikuto, Tadase and Yaya being way more go-gettem than she had given them credit for. Maybe she'd been projecting. But the point remained, she hadn't noticed...
Any of this.
She'd spent a week playing games at home, despite knowing Kana might be in trouble. Hadn't really... thought about the sort of trouble, she supposed.
⁂
Now the walls were screaming.
The place they were in, the Abandoned Laboratory, was a cramped space that looked like it had once been a mad scientist's lair. It had been creepy from the start, what with the child-sized cages in the corner and the bloodstained dentist's chair in the middle of the room—but now it seemed actively alive, and that was really freaking Amu out. The entire room was heaving and pulsating like some kind of living thing, and she had no idea how or why or what, only that her footing was suddenly unsteady.
The room felt like a living thing, one in a great deal of pain. That was something she could understand and relate to—and it was an explanation for why the walls were abruptly radiating pain, yes? So distracting she was barely keeping on her feet?
No.
She took half a step backwards, raising her hands defensively in front of her as she looked around at the room; at the bloodstained chair and the tables with their empty syringes and the cages on the other side of the room that had-
Had not had children in them. Now they did, little silhouettes that were thankfully dark enough that Amu couldn't tell the details. Small shapes pressed up against the bars as if the wall behind them was burning them alive, wailing in distress at something beyond her comprehension. Their emotions were simple, insect-like, and in that they were easy enough to tune out—but the screams made her feel sick to her stomach. They also made it hard to hear. Shirogane shouted something-
'Get back'?
She was more than happy to oblige. The wall behind those 'children', the far side of the room when she'd first seen Kana, was abruptly boiling. There was a noise like an oven in the background, a low whoomph as air heated well beyond the point of safety. Not happenstance, nor fake. The actual wall glowed red-hot and began evaporating, vaporising in great slabs even as Amu took another step back.
-and the place smelled like burnt toast and warm socks and cotton candy, except worse.
Then something slammed into it from behind—something big enough to make the walls crack, break, and slough off in great chunks that crashed into the room.
Kana reacted instantly, leaping back with a quiet shriek as she scrambled to get away from it, pulling Amu with her by the hand. Shirogane stepped between them and the intruder, as if that would help.
Utau scrambled backwards, ending up next to Amu with Iru on her shoulder.
Amu thought she was feeling scared.
She could barely tell. The din, mental and otherwise, was too loud for her to make sense of anything from Utau past the loudest and most obvious of Utau's emotions—but 'fear' should have been at the top of that list. It was at the top of Amu's. She took another step backwards, in unison with Kana's. Their minds had stayed halfway meshed, despite—or simply ignoring—the nauseating feedback she was getting from everything around her.
But as the dust settled, Amu couldn't help but gape at the thing that had smashed into the room in stunned disbelief. She'd been expecting it to be Kana's other half—her 'real' half?—but this... this was something else entirely.
No.
That was Kana in the middle, wasn't it? That's what her eyes were saying. Kana, surrounded by a nauseating penumbra of colour-flecked shadow that rolled like fog through the still-glowing hole in the wall before spilling into the room like an avalanche of grey ink; a sea of tar that congealed on the ground, surrounding Kana's tiny form as it ate away at the room around it.
It touched one of the child-shadows in passing, and the thing's scream went up a few octaves before falling silent entirely as it evaporated like dry ice on a hot pan—one second there and the next not, torn into ribbons that burned themselves into nothingness, a few lonely threads joining Kana's aura before the latter surged inwards and devoured those too; leaving nothing behind but ash and an acrid, metallic taste in the air that made Amu's eyes water and her throat burn.
-with her eyes, that's what she saw. To every other sense she had, that wasn't Kana. That was an awful monster, a colossus of roiling, hungry and misfit scraps of void with too many limbs and too many mouths, held like iron by bonds that stretched in towards an unseen centre. It felt like Kana had flayed herself, torn out her insides and weaved them into something new and alien—something *wrong* that incorporated nightmares as though they were lego blocks, and yet-
And yet!
She recognised parts of it. Felt... 'parts'... of Kana in it—and those parts made no sense whatsoever. Kana's sense of humour was detached from her laughter, the former orchestrating a group of mental tentacles to wrestle for dominance with nothing to show for it, the latter giggling happily to itself as if everything were perfectly normal; she could feel Kana's loyalty and desire for food in its heart, but those were mixed in with a tangled, all-consuming love for someone Amu couldn't name.
Her friend had, somehow, found a way to generate appalling quantities of heat. But hadn't found a way to control it. The mental construct that surrounded Kana stretched across a third of the room, and inside it the desks and lab chairs were melting, but deeper inside it—if she ignored everything her other eyes were telling her—Kana's normal, grade-school-aged form stood with burns across her legs and forearms as if she'd rushed in without thinking twice about the heat.
Amu wanted to throw up. She didn't. Su reached inwards and suppressed the urge. Her most happy-go-lucky chara, most of the time; now she was more serious than Amu had ever felt her—though 'furious' was probably closer to Su's mood than 'serious'.
Amu couldn't blame her.
This wasn't just broken or scary or wrong—this wasn't Kana. This was-
Kana—Shadow Kana, the only real Kana remaining, whatever that meant—let out a hissing cry of what was definitely horror, her hands tightening on Amu's back as she pulled herself in closer, pressing against Amu for safety in an embrace Amu would have been only too happy to return, in normal circumstances.
Her clothes had changed. When was that?
When Utau's wings had grown?
Must have been habit.
She'd landed on an outfit far more protective than usual. A facsimile of a soccer uniform, even if there was enough leather on it to stop anything short of a rocket launcher. And with a collar that high, wasn't it more a coat than a uniform? It should have been hot—but Amu could barely feel it against her skin, felt mostly the aura that radiated off Kana's remnant in waves.
It took a few seconds for 'Kana' to speak, her... mouth? One of many mouths? Speaking without any movement from any part of the whole—its voice emanating from everywhere, as if...
"Hinamori-san?" she said, her voice shockingly normal. "Why are you here?"
⁂
Days before all this started—in an empty alleyway on the outskirts of Tokyo city, miles away from everything—a girl of about twelve with shoulder-length brown hair and a loose-fitting outfit sat down on a convenient bench, clutching her left shoulder as blood leaked through the clothes and stained her sleeve an ugly, rusty red. She'd tried to ignore it at first, but now...
Now it hurt too much to do that. And blood loss was no joke.
Nanami Akane waited patiently as the last of the red stains faded into nothingness, retreating beneath her skin and mending wounds that should have been lethal—should have left her lying dead in an alleyway for someone to find tomorrow, or never…
Had she been the her from last week, she might already be dead. Her eyes remained shut the entire time, lost in thought—she did not want to see the results of today's experiment. Did not want to think about what she'd done to herself.
"I told you, 'mom'," she whispered quietly after a second or two, once the pain had finally subsided. "I told you I can't."
But her mother hadn't listened to her then, and wouldn't listen to her now. Her mother was monomaniacally focused on saving Yui-neechan, which might have been fine—Kana wanted her sister back as well, after all—except her mother was doing so regardless of the cost to herself, to others, and really to Kana as well. Kana knew, in her heart of hearts, that Mom would never harm her. That was true, as far as it went. Her mother would never deliberately harm her, which didn't quite line up with 'never harming anyone' or even 'not destroying Kana's life'.
The latter because if you pulled your daughter out of school to help you indoctrinate children her age, whose parents couldn't be found? You were ruining her childhood. And the former because, well...
There'd been a lot of kids in Manticore for Kana to befriend. There were only five of them left.
Kana's stomach growled at her. She didn't acknowledge it, instead curling up on the bench and hugging herself tightly to try and suppress it; trying to ignore her hunger pangs in favour of deeper issues. Mom was gone, or might as well be. Naomi and Aoi had been captured, which was the exact opposite of what they'd been trying. Yuna was still missing, wherever she was—a Manticore cell somewhere—and Nanami Kana had run away from Manticore again rather than rescue them or go along with mother's plans.
It had seemed like the obvious thing to do at the time. If Mom was willing to do anything except hurt her, then Kana could escape by taking herself hostage. Simple! Logical!
Except now she felt very, very alone. At least she could be pretty sure mom wouldn't harm the two. Not if she was still hoping Kana would come back and help her... which she probably still was! Mom was, at heart, an optimist! But that wasn't making Kana feel any better at the moment, nor any less hungry.
"Mom," Kana murmured to the empty air, her eyes still screwed shut as she buried her head in her knees. "Why?"
Yui-chan was still at the safehouse. She really ought to check on her.
With a sigh Kana opened her eyes and got back to her feet, shivering slightly at the cool autumn breeze as she did so; its touch still not enough to quite erase the lingering heat from... whatever had happened to her when she'd hurt herself fighting that demon. Rather fitting. Amu-chan kills two demons, becomes a household name and gets the best treatment money can buy... and Nanami Akane tears a scarier monster apart, hurts herself, and nobody except the bad guys find out?
That hardly seemed fair.
"Is that what you wanted?" Kana asked the empty air, addressing her mother with a laugh that might have been on the verge of becoming a sob, its sound echoing through the empty alleyway. "To keep me safe? By taking away everything I care about? Did you think I wouldn't do what I did to Naomi to myself, if I had to?
Just like Mom had told her all those years ago when Yui-nee broke her leg. Mom had said-
W̶h̶a̵t̶ ̵h̵a̸d̶ ̵i̴t̸ ̵b̶e̸e̷n̵?̵
She couldn't remember. That wasn't good.
Kana pushed herself up off the park bench and limped homeward through the winding alleys and deserted streets. The safehouse she'd spent the last six months in wasn't actually that far away from this park, when you got down to it. Normally an hour's walk. But now...
Now every step was a battle against sheer exhaustion; against the weariness that threatened to knock her off her feet and send her crashing into the pavement. She'd healed all the obvious injuries, but there was still a bone-deep fatigue permeating her body. A growing irritability and absent-mindedness that Kana knew was a very bad sign indeed. Grafting something else's mind-parts to yourself was unsafe at the best of times. Doing it with a demon was...
...was maybe perfectly normal? Or the opposite.
The contradiction should have scared Kana more than it did, but by this point she was so far beyond worry that it seemed pointless to even try. Maybe mom had overestimated her. Or forgotten how she worked. She'd tried explaining it, but that was years ago.
Blocks passed by in a blur as Kana limped home, an itch growing in her mind. Until, eventually, it was less of an itch and more a throbbing pressure, something nagging at her from inside her head; a persistent demand that wouldn't leave her alone even for a second as she stumbled into another alleyway, heat radiating off her skin—the night air warming in response as she collapsed against a brick wall and slid downwards to the ground with a hiss; the back of her hand against her forehead as she panted quietly for air, the dizziness and nausea threatening to overwhelm her even through her attempts at suppressing it.
Yui-chan needed her.
But if she didn't get this infection under control, she wouldn't last a day! And-
"I need you," she whispered to herself in an empty alleyway in the dead of night. "Naomi. Yuna. Amu-chan." She could imagine all of them at the moment, each in their own way.
There was silence from the alleyway in response as a few distant sirens whizzed by in the background. It was very late at night; past midnight for sure, and long past the time when any sane person would be out on their own in these neighbourhoods. Let alone a twelve-year-old.
Small fires crackled into life around her as Kana's mental hold on the demonic fragments slipped—each one lighting up for a second or two before fading back into darkness, all save for a tiny flame in her outstretched palm which hissed quietly as it flickered and danced. The molten remnants of her cellphone oozed out of her shorts, through a hole burned into its side.
A phoenix. She'd killed a phoenix with her mind. And thought she could control it.
She'd been out of her mind.
The thoughts wouldn't stop coming as she sat there with her back to the wall, sweating silently in the empty alleyway as her breathing grew laboured. 'Breathe! You need oxygen!' At least part of her did. The regenerating phoenix? Not so much. She let herself sink into those memories as she hoped for the throbbing in her head to pass; for her thoughts to reintegrate themselves. She was more than the sum of her parts, but she'd damaged herself too much too quickly and-
'Quit messing about,' said the Yuna inside her head. 'If you want to survive, then don't stop fighting.'
'There's no room for people who can't pull their weight,' said Naomi.
But it hurt!
Aoi wouldn't say anything. She'd just reach out and do, as only Aoi could—and then the burning would be gone and Kana would be able to move again, push herself up off the ground and take another few steps down the alleyway. Amu would probably eat the damn thing. Or would have known better than to tear an aggressive demon into chunks of equally aggressive mind-stuff when she had better options, like big fast-moving rocks.
Kana was Kana, and so Kana did Kana things. Big, floppy comatose bird, Kana things.
And, uh. What was it again?
Mental. Kana things. Like searing the infection into little disintegrated pieces. Do unto it before it does unto her. It's a phoenix, Kana. It regenerates, that's all. Make it regenerate into you, instead of itself.
She surveyed the infection with a critical eye, not daring to feel anything.
It was all shades of black and white and grey, a twining mass of colourless fog that congealed in on itself in knots and tangles that reminded Kana uncomfortably of snarls in her hair—something that only got worse as time passed. It had invaded a lot of her mind already. It was hard to tell, from this perspective—but a lot of the stuff invading her thoughts and emotions had its roots in memory; had attached itself to Kana in the most literal sense and was steadily chewing away at everything that made her who she was, but hadn't done much to stop her fighting back. Dumb fire-chicken.
She hovered over it. Then she turned her thoughts into knives and, gritting her teeth against the pain, tore into it like a madwoman with a cheese grater and an egg salad sandwich, determined to root out every single last shred of-
An hour later it was almost gone, and Kana was slumped down in a puddle of her own vomit as she stared into empty air and laughed a hysterical little laugh at how very...
Her...
It was so...
And she was...
Dammit.
She'd recover.
Her breathing was rapid and unsteady as she forced herself back to her feet, kicking at the nearby wall with one leg as she scowled at the streetlights above and cursed at herself for ever accepting Naomi's plan. She'd recover, she thought. It'd take time. A month or two? Maybe more. But she'd get there—her brain was intact—and she'd get help, which would make it faster. Remind her who Kana was. Who she wanted to be. Or should she stay away? She was so, so glad Amu hadn't tried to reach her-
So long as Yui hadn't had an episode while she was gone-
It was no more than fifteen minutes later, as she stumbled in through the front door of the safehouse that served as her home base that she saw a wall of fog hiding the stairwell, a wall that had 'Yui' written all over it—and realised she'd decided to go find them. And that if the fogbank was still here-
That Yui had opened the door, then immediately failed to contain herself.
"Crap," she whispered to herself.
Kana hoped she hadn't gone very far.
⁂
Shadow-Kana's hands were tight on Amu's back. She'd given Amu the fastest explanation possible, after Kana had stumbled in embedded in a monster, and Amu couldn't blame her for not explaining this earlier—but that left them somewhat blind-sided. And besides-
'That's a phoenix?' she asked Shadow-Kana telepathically, staring at the conglomeration of mental fragments in dumbfounded amazement.
'It was,' she said. 'I think. I'm sure we tore it out. She must have-'
She cut herself off mid-sentence as Kana turned towards Shadow-Kana, her mien morphing into something akin to frustration as she glowered at the ordinary-looking girl who hid behind Amu. Shadow-Kana's grip on Amu tightened again; a surge of-
'-replicated it with shadow-stuff,' Shadow-Kana finished, sounding queasy. 'That's… insane.'
Of anger. Amu had seen enough of that to recognise it. But also something more complicated than simple anger at herself—and so Amu stayed still where she stood. Utau stepped closer, hiding Shadow-Kana entirely from sight.
A beat.
"Hello," said Shirogane to Kana. "I'm not certain I understand exactly what's going on, but-"
"Hinamori, get out of the way." Kana said irritably. "I've spent more than enough time on this already." Her attention shifted to Shirogane, giving her a cursory look, then back to Amu. "Did she tell you?"
"She told us what happened," Amu replied hesitantly, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. "Some of it, anyway."
"And... Hoshina-san, was it?" Kana said politely. "Could you move as well? I don't want to attack either of you."
Utau shook her head curtly.
"It's Nikaidou actually," she said, giving Kana a tight smile in return. "These days. And I'd rather not attack you either."
She didn't move, however. Kana waited a moment, then let out a noise halfway between a sigh and a growl before turning back to Amu and speaking again.
"I don't want to do this," she said bluntly. "But I will, if I have to. I won't say this again. Get. Out. Of. The way!"
"I don't think so," Shirogane interjected quietly. She stepped fully in front of them, arms crossed over her chest—an absolute wall of calmness; one that neither Utau or Amu felt up to matching. "You can't win here."
"A Blank?" said Kana after a moment's pause, cocking her head slightly to the side as she spoke; a gesture that seemed very unlike her to Amu. "Well, you do know how to find them, Hinamori-san. You must have worked hard for this one." Her eyes narrowed slightly as she spoke; her tone becoming harsher and colder as she did so. "Acquiring an ally with immunity to mind-control was a good idea, if you were already expecting to fight me. But unfortunately..."
She didn't finish the sentence aloud.
Instead the heat surrounding Kana intensified to the point where the floor she was standing on started boiling; a feat lightyears beyond the teacup heating trick Amu had once figured out. A pillar of distorted air rose up around her, blurring her silhouette as everything within several metres started to evaporate. The bloodstained surgical chair transformed into a bubbling puddle that hissed quietly as it boiled away into nothingness.
Amu jerked herself backwards in response, pushing Shadow-Kana towards the door she'd come in through even as Shirogane stepped towards the heat, rather than away—and felt Kana's mind lock onto Amu's again, this time with vicious force; a sword that hacked towards her core without a single shred of remorse or hesitation.
It happened faster than Amu could react, a manifestation of psionic power that could truly be called an attack, rather than a power used for combat.
There were no twists of intent from a generalist root, no build-up of emotion. Kana looked at Amu and lashed out with telepathic daggers without a moment's preparation, the shadowy mass that surrounded her almost purring in satisfaction at having found an outlet. The blood-hungry attack screamed towards her, shredding what few probes Amu had put there while she struggled to put something, anything in its way-
Only to be shattered as it collided with Shirogane's intercepting hand, the power having about as much effect as the wind on a boulder.
Even that didn't stop her. Kana simply refocused on Shirogane, the heat ballooning to outlandish heights as she attempted to burn through her resistance with brute force. From where Amu was standing, it was like a furnace—and that was behind her! The rest of the room was now well and truly destroyed. The floors were warping beneath them, everything closer to Kana than Shirogane was nothing but puddles of bubbling goop that ate away at everything they touched—including the walls!
Except-
Shirogane was fully in motion now, racing towards Kana without any visible effort at all. There was something frightening about that, about how small she looked as she stood between Amu and Utau and-
And their attacker-
Except the heat was having no effect on her at all. Kana hammered at Shirogane with mental blows that did no more damage than a pebble dropped from a table might—powerful strikes that hit with enough force that Amu could feel them, but did no damage at all. Like hitting a statue. The heat seemed to be nothing more than a summer's day to the detective, even the more physical attack failing to slow her at all.
Through the wavering air, Amu saw Kana—now alarmed—pull a large knife out of nowhere and lash out at Shirogane with it—a last resort, except Shirogane caught it effortlessly as Kana tried to slice her throat open. And then they were moving too fast for Amu to follow. She saw Kana stab Shirogane again and again and again; saw Shirogane parry each blow without so much as pausing even for a moment. And then-
Kana dodged backwards, but hit a wall. Shirogane slapped the knife out of her hands before pinning her to the ground, holding Kana down with one arm even as the latter wriggled and writhed beneath her in an effort to free herself—the temperature plummeting almost as fast as it had risen. Bolts of lightning struck the penumbra around her, each strike shredding another layer of shadow-stuff and peeling it away from the monster that Kana had wrapped herself in. And Amu-
Amu could do nothing but watch from across the room as Shirogane bullied- thrashed Kana into submission, pinning her body and smashing down her mind with overwhelming force. Kana's tendrils reached out for Shirogane and died before they could touch her. Their core—the part that was actually Kana—didn't die, but seemed almost limp; frozen in place like an animal faced with a larger predator which wasn't sure what to do next.
She was a kid, not an adult! And-
Amu slid sideways into Utau, not sure if she should be shouting for Shirogane to stop, or just let this play out. If-
Before she could even think that through, it stopped. Kana slumped downwards onto the floor, letting out a groan. The monstrosity had mostly dissipated. Now there was just Kana again, a real Kana; still battered and bruised, but Kana nonetheless. And Shirogane-
"I told you," said Shirogane, shaking her head slowly back and forth in gentle disapproval. "That wasn't going to work." She had a small cut across her forearm and nothing else to show for Kana's efforts; a tiny black-red line on otherwise perfect skin. She lifted herself off Kana, helping her up in a manner that seemed utterly at odds with what Amu had just seen her do—as if this were just some kind of misguided kid who needed some scolding and a nap, not someone who had attacked them with intent to kill!
Amu wasn't sure what to say. Or do. She felt very cold all of a sudden. And wished Kana hadn't attacked them. That was probably childish. But Amu didn't care! It… it wasn't fair. She couldn't even keep up. She'd done nothing useful. If Shirogane hadn't been there, then Kana would have torn right through her. What would have happened, if those knives had struck home… she was only slowly starting to integrate it. It wouldn't have killed her, no. But that was just because her mind was, uh…
Was larger than Kana's, she supposed.
"Kana?" she whispered, a hand seeking out Shadow-Kana's behind her. She wanted comfort, and got it. A familiar set of fingers laced themselves together with hers. "Are you... okay?"
Kana—the real Kana—no, was that really true? Or was the beaten-down one the real one? The one that had called her 'Hinamori-san'?
Shadow-Kana nodded, then shook her head a second later.
"I'll live," she said bleakly.
Kana glared at them, Shirogane's hand holding her by the collar like a cat; looking furious and hurt and betrayed as she almost hung there, trembling with what was almost certainly exhaustion; her entire body flushed pink as she panted quietly for breath.
"Utau?" Amu tried.
Utau just nodded in response, apparently having decided Amu was checking if she was alive. The look in her eyes was as lost as Amu's, her hand squeezing Amu's a little too hard. And then Shirogane spoke again.
"This is completely backwards," she said bluntly. "Nanami Kana, was it?" Kana nodded curtly in response, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Good. I'd like to say you're under arrest..."
Kana laughed at that; a bitter laugh that sounded nothing like the person Amu knew. "Would you now?" she said sarcastically. "Is this where you try and make me see reason? I don't know how much the traitor there told you. Or who you are, though I imagine you aren't part of Manticore. They wouldn't dare to hire someone of your type. But if you think you can make me-"
"Hush," Shirogane said icily. "You're in shock. Don't make it worse." Her lips thinned into an annoyed line. She crouched, placing Kana down on an un-melted section of floor, and started checking for wounds. Kana bucked and thrashed in her grasp in response—but couldn't move an inch against Shirogane's strength. And then-
"Stop moving," Shirogane told Kana softly. A quiet order that held no ambiguity about it whatsoever. "Like I said. I'd like to say you're under arrest, but it's more complicated than that, isn't it? For now, let's make sure you live long enough that we can figure this all out."
Kana shuddered, then went limp.
"Good," Shirogane said idly. "Nikaidou-san? Hinamori-san? Do either of you have anything that would work for bandages? Your clothes will do, if necessary."
Amu swallowed nervously, then nodded. Shirogane had the situation under control, but Amu still felt sick to her stomach looking at Kana lying there on the floor, caged under Shirogane's knee like an animal pinned for dissection.
"Is she hurt?" Amu asked in a small voice. Shadow-Kana pressed in closer as she did so. "Or is-"
"I'll let you know in a moment," Shirogane said shortly, lifting Kana's shirt up over her head and examining her chest. Shirogane grimaced. Kana's entire front was heavily burned, blistered and angry and painful looking.
"Bad," said Utau in agreement, looking slightly green in the face.
"Might be fatal," Shirogane agreed. "We need to get her to a hospital. I don't see any blood, but the burns are worse than they look." She frowned, her fingers ghosting over Kana's midsection as if she were searching for something.
"Um," Amu said, raising her hand. "I could.. just heal them... I think?"
Shirogane froze. Then raised her head to look at Amu properly. "You think?"
Amu shrugged awkwardly. "I've done it before," she admitted. "At the school."
'Su, please help,' Amu thought at herself.
⁂
Kana had made mistakes in life.
Not a lot of them! She'd never been the kind of person who thought 'might as well commit every crime you can!'. More 'might as well figure out your limits and work from there.' As she laid there, her body held in place by a high-school(?) girl and her mind a kaleidoscope of confused and terrified emotions, she thought that this probably qualified as one of those mistakes.
And yet, despite being utterly defeated and exhausted to the bone, she wasn't dead or all that badly hurt or... actually, she didn't know what she would have expected a Blank to do with her; Mom had just told her to never under any circumstances get in the way of one, and lo and behold, getting in the way of one had ruined her. She'd known, deep down, that she wasn't a match for that sort of power... but hadn't had a choice except to try it.
And hadn't factored in the pink-haired weirdness magnet.
Then the Blank—'Shirogane' apparently—said her burns were potentially fatal, and...
Kana hadn't felt like laughing at that point. But she hadn't felt afraid either. 'Well, that sucks' had been more what she'd felt when it hit her; more than a little disgusted with herself for having rushed in without thinking first. Shutting off her sense of pain hadn't been a good idea either. She'd thought she'd be able to replicate the phoenix's regeneration, but...
Apparently not!
Her injuries hurt, when she let them.
And if they were really fatal then...
Well, then she'd get to see Yui-neechan sooner than expected, and probably have to take it up with God as to why he'd thought this was a fair deal. But that was it. No weeping and wailing or cursing at herself. She wasn't sure there was enough left of her for that.
Off there, in the distance, was her Shadow. The thing she'd wanted to break apart so she could fix that.
Forget 'fine'. Forget 'safe'. Yui-chan was missing! Except finding her had failed spectacularly and now everything was a mess and…
…and the Blank—Shirogane?—was leaning to the side so Hinamori Amu could kneel next to her, asking her how she felt in an annoyingly compassionate tone of voice, reaching out a hand towards the burns covering her chest.
Kana's mental powers weren't dead, exactly—but they might as well be, with a Blank physically touching her. It was all she could do just to hold herself together. Still, Hinamori somehow got a thought through anyway.
She considered, for a moment, if she should answer.
Might as well.
'-you -to yourself?'
'I was afraid,' she thought back tiredly, not having the energy left to lie. 'It wasn't my best idea.'
And if that wasn't an understatement. Kana was tired of taking stock of her wounds, but she did it anyway. Her entire body hurt, she was tired and hungry, and that wasn't considering what the churned-up bits of shadow-stuff and phoenix-stuff was doing to her mind. If she'd been in full form she could possibly have handled it, but then she wouldn't have done it either. She could admit that much, at least with her shadow in the same room to ping off of.
Not that she could tell if she was doing it.
'Do you regret it?' Hinamori asked.
What did it matter?
But there was the rub! Yes. Kana did regret it; regretted it so badly she thought she'd still be crying if she weren't so exhausted. She'd known from the beginning that Yui wouldn't thank her for this—that Yui-chan wanted Kana, not a Kana-shaped demon to protect her. And she'd known that breaking herself like this would hurt Yui as much as it hurt her. But she'd done it anyway! Because—because—because... because she didn't know what else to do! She'd been caught in a shadow fight, she knew what they were but she hated what she saw inside her other half, she had no reason to think anyone would come here—and Yui needed help right now, she told herself.
So... yes. She did regret it.
But...
But so what? There wasn't a way back. There wasn't anywhere else to go from here except down, and…
'I made mistakes,' Kana admitted at last, closing her eyes as she felt the beginnings of Hinamori's touch on her skin.
Oh for fuck's sake. Apparently Hinamori could also fix burns, on top of all her other tricks.
= = =
Would the real Nanami Kana please stand up.
No vote this time. I'm stopping here because chapter 2.12 became entirely too long. However, chapter 2.12.2 is already in its final editing pass and will be up in approximately one day.
Virtual editing cookies go to... @Nero200, @Quickshot0, @ShadowAngelBeta and @Quine this time. Sorry it took so long, but at least it's... hefty. This was about half the chapter.
