Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Laniakea
I suggested Utau both to give Amu an excuse to tell Utau she was visiting, but also because Kana knows what Utau looks like and there's a decent chance she told the rest of her group what Utau looks like as well (especially since she knows Utau has a vague idea of their circumstances).
If Amu dressed up as someone else, there's a chance nobody among the Scavengers would recognize her from a distance - at least if Amu did the job right. Being fair, that's the whole point of it.
Kana herself has a chance of recognizing her if she tried to read her mind, but if she's not there (or is incapacitated) and it was any of the other Scavengers, they might just run away when they see a stranger coming. OTOH, looking like Utau might get some recognition from them.
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Timeline check:
There's no story text for the 19th. Apparently nothing significant happened that day.
Amu went to bed on the 20th, then "kept grinning for most of the day" on the day after, so it's now some time in the afternoon or evening of the 21st. It's supposedly been "four days since she got out of hospital", although I think 6 might be a more accurate number. (It's been 4 days since the most recent check-up, but that wasn't even the last one - there's one final check in a few days.)
October 21st, 2009 is a Wednesday. School is supposed to restart some time this week, but apparently it's restarting pretty late instead of at the start of the week - that, or Amu's been going to school off screen.
Training status: we seem to have gotten started on Dreamwalking, Illusion, and maybe Lore, from that mention of reading a textbook. No mention of Integrity yet, although Eru was in a few scenes.
The rift incident was on the 5th. That knocked her out for "about a week and a half", according to the chapter 1 epilogue. October 17th is "two whole days after getting home from JPs", so it sounds like the end of the chapter 1 epilogue was on the 15th.
There's no story text for the 19th. Apparently nothing significant happened that day.
Amu went to bed on the 20th, then "kept grinning for most of the day" on the day after, so it's now some time in the afternoon or evening of the 21st. It's supposedly been "four days since she got out of hospital", although I think 6 might be a more accurate number. (It's been 4 days since the most recent check-up, but that wasn't even the last one - there's one final check in a few days.)
October 21st, 2009 is a Wednesday. School is supposed to restart some time this week, but apparently it's restarting pretty late instead of at the start of the week - that, or Amu's been going to school off screen.
Training status: we seem to have gotten started on Dreamwalking, Illusion, and maybe Lore, from that mention of reading a textbook. No mention of Integrity yet, although Eru was in a few scenes.
If that was the whole story, Kana would have just contacted us with her new phone, or borrowed a phone from one of the others, or visited.
I don't know if we can do a good enough job of looking like Utau for that to work - she's way taller than Amu, for one thing. Even with 1 dot of Illusion, we've got 0 dots of Larceny. The sight of someone poorly disguised as Utau is probably more worrying than the sight of some generic rando coming down the street.
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- Location
- Laniakea
These are people who are being hunted by a government conspiracy and Amu just got carted away by a government conspiracy. Them running away from a stranger coming is the benign possibility. I expect that if she knocked on the door without anyone recognizing her, they'd be getting ready to jump her before thinking about opening the door.
Doubly so, if the stranger was calling herself Amu while looking nothing like her.
Kana is the only one who has met Utau and if she were there, she would be able to read Amu's mind. The rest haven't, unless they have recent photos of her, all they would have to go off is Kana's description.
And I also argue that if they knew Amu had been taken for "treatment" by a government conspiracy, I'd expect them to be less worried if she showed up in a shoddy disguise (that was obviously a disguise) than if she was completely undisguised, or worse - looked like a stranger claiming to be Amu.
My guess is, they either botched a job and/or got a very narrow escape from one and had to go completely off-the-grid while waiting for the heat to die down. So if their phones are broken, they haven't dared to go out to get a new ones and if their phones are fine, they are deliberately staying out of contact from anyone (including Amu).
And if this is the case, they are going to be highly on edge to anybody they don't recognize showing up at their safehouse - even Amu, if they were hoping to keep her out of their messes.
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Utau is a public figure. Photos of her are easy to find.
I don't think showing up in a shoddy disguise would actually be less worrying than the alternative, but showing up in a shoddy disguise of Utau doesn't seem to be better than a shoddy disguise of "generic definitely-not-Amu middle schooler".
You seem to be making some very specific assumptions about how Amu will approach the Scavengers by default, and how they will respond, and how they would respect differently to Amu disguised as Utau. I don't share those assumptions, and I also think this is the kind of problem we can trust Amu to solve without voter supervision. Just like we don't need to tell Amu what to pack for school in the morning, we don't need to dictate to her the exact protocol for making contact with the Scavengers.
- Location
- Laniakea
Photos of Utau were easy to find (and might still be in canon Shugo Chara). In this quest, she's apparently been semi-retired for a while and not a big time celebrity anymore. For disguise purposes, whether or not she just looks like a someone pretending to be Utau or is good enough to be mistaken for her doesn't really matter, so long as she doesn't look like anything Amu and just roughly resembles Utau.
Moreover, if she didn't have someone specific to disguise herself as - with the exact person to help her do it - I suspect it might come down to rolling dice on how well she can disguise herself. And Amu has 0 points in Stealth, Performance, Larceny or any of the skills that would normally be associated with wearing disguises.
This would be a bad idea for reasons I'm sure you can envisage.
Moreover, if she didn't have someone specific to disguise herself as - with the exact person to help her do it - I suspect it might come down to rolling dice on how well she can disguise herself. And Amu has 0 points in Stealth, Performance, Larceny or any of the skills that would normally be associated with wearing disguises.
Let's face it - Amu handling the approach by herself would be to rock up to the front door without any disguise whatsoever - there is nothing to indicate she would even have thought about disguising herself before leaving, media or no media.
This would be a bad idea for reasons I'm sure you can envisage.
Yes, I think we should tell her to change her hair colour or similar first, but she not going to suddenly lose her general problem solving abilities because we did that.
The relevant factor there is "getting help from someone else" not "disguising herself as Utau specifically"
- Location
- Laniakea
Since you have such faith in Amu's problem-solving capabilities, I'll adjust my vote to more broadly just have Amu ask Utau for help with a disguise, without specifying what the disguise should be.
Would be funny if they dressed up Amu as Kana herself, though that would also be a terrible idea, as it would invite her to get jumped by people who are after the Scavengers.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Plan: My Friend Is Making Me Worried
Honestly, they're probably avoiding her because she'd bring scrutiny to them. If Amu wasn't such a worrywart, it might be wiser to wait out the fame a little bit. That said, they could probably communicate that somehow, even if the phone is insecure!
Honestly, they're probably avoiding her because she'd bring scrutiny to them. If Amu wasn't such a worrywart, it might be wiser to wait out the fame a little bit. That said, they could probably communicate that somehow, even if the phone is insecure!
I don't think they'd think that any more at this point. The last time Amu visited them they had their TV on a lot, so pretty likely they'd seen her case come by on the news then. So it would be a little strange if they'd missed her becoming a person in the media spotlight.
Now admittedly that might be a reason to avoid her then, if they don't want that kind of attention on themselves. Or they could be paranoid over a possible connection to the org they are fighting.
But another option I guess is that there last 'adventure' didn't go well and they or quite a few of them are actually captured instead.
Hard to know with out visiting them I guess, and some of the options might make them a bit trigger happy, assuming anyone is there at all of course.
Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
This is very worrying.
Hopefully we're still having that talk about psionics, and Amu didn't just get distracted by dreamwalking/isn't about to get distracted by Scavenger business.
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- Location
- Laniakea
The bigger thing I'm worried about in regards to that is actually this little exchange:
One of the big themes of Shugo Chara is about "being who you want to be". Charas more or less get born from a kid wanting to be something or someone, but being unable to for whatever reason. The English translation calls them "would-be selves", but "would-be" in this case actually means "want-to-be", which is what the Japanese term ("naritai jibun") literally translates to.
Amu Hinamori, of all people, should know not to tell someone that they are not allowed be something they want to be. That's just asking for Ami to either birth a Magical Girl Chara or worse, have her Heart's Egg turn sour and become an X-Egg.
Even with that said, I could still see Amu in-character having a decent chance of saying all that to Ami anyway, as she would admittedly be a pretty bad big sister if she didn't try to dissuade the younger from getting into trouble. On the other hand, Miki being a Chara has absolutely no excuse, except for the fact that she's also tied to Amu, apparently spends more time with Ami than Amu herself and presumably shares enough of her worries to also forget the circumstances of her own birth.
Sadly, in this case, I don't think there's any real magic solution to this problem. This being a crossover with Persona/SMT and not just Shugo Chara, there's no guarantee she'll spawn an X-Egg from Amu trying to crush her dreams, but then that's also the sort of thing that gets Social Links reversed in Persona.
As far as I can tell, the healthiest course of action for everyone is probably letting Ami learn her lesson the hard way in exactly why it is a bad idea to saunter around in a frilly skirt starting fights with demons or other people, while making sure Amu still stays close enough to bail her bruised buttocks out when things inevitably get pear-shaped.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Hmm~
While this is all very well reasoned, and I'm glad you're putting this much effort in… Uhm. Amu and Miki could tell that Ami was joking.
A few paragraphs later Ami suggests growing up to be a stone.
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- Location
- Laniakea
She does genuinely want to be whatever Amu is, though.
Amu might not call herself a magical girl and Ami might not think of her as one either exactly - but she does go around in a frilly skirt fighting other people and now demons.
So Ami is going to want to do the same and I don't see Amu wanting to encourage her doing it. Don't see it really being possible to stop her though. At least, trying to do so would probably be worse than letting her and inevitably having to bail her out.
Amu might not call herself a magical girl and Ami might not think of her as one either exactly - but she does go around in a frilly skirt fighting other people and now demons.
So Ami is going to want to do the same and I don't see Amu wanting to encourage her doing it. Don't see it really being possible to stop her though. At least, trying to do so would probably be worse than letting her and inevitably having to bail her out.
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- Location
- Laniakea
The question is, what kind of takeaway they would have gotten from it (assuming they weren't complete off-the-grid or kidnapped and actually got a chance to tune in to the news).
We've been given a large number of the headlines circulating the media. The stuff about aliens and gas explosions will almost certainly be written off by them as bullcrap, because one comes from the government and the other is an obvious cover-up. They would, however, know full well the "Psychic Children" headline is true. Amu is one, after all.
So they now know Amu attends a school full of psychics. And that she killed something there, whether it's demons or aliens or rogue biological weapons. Depending on whether anybody from JP's got photographed there, they may or may not know the government got directly involved with the whole thing (beyond covering it up).
Kana would probably still trust Amu regardless. The rest? Some might have gotten apprehensive if they saw a picture of her smeared in blood and believed she had a body count - not exactly a harmless civilian anymore.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
You passed all but one, and 'passing' means nothing exceptional happens.
That bit where Amu acted completely drunk? That was the fail, except it ended up mostly off-screen.
It can! Though Ami made a hole in the floor, and there's no mention of hitting crawlspace, insulation or anything else messy. The walls of the 'rut' were in fact stone. I'll leave you to your own guesses on whether or not she broke the in-floor heating at the time.
That being said, she did take over an hour to do it. Not exactly combat-time.
Amu thinks they'll believe her if she says Kana is like Utau, and misunderstand to think that means she's in the same sort of bad situation as Utau. Only thing is, it'd be a lie. She'd be making them think something that's false.
<Amu> I was stuck in a hospital under the Diet, again, for two whole hours while being poked and prodded at.
<Amu> The doctors think I'm missing a part of my mind, and should be insane! They didn't say it, but I'm not deaf.
<Amu> Then I talked to Saaya.
<Amu> Then I got home.
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- Location
- Laniakea
So that would've been the Dreamwalking vs Integrity roll.
Meaning "full success" for that must have required either 2 success dice (6>) or else the criteria for success was different this time and was based on the roll total rather than individual dice, needing at least 11 to pass. Considering that the Integrity vs Integrity roll only had one die land above 6, I'm suspecting it was the latter.
Barring the bizzare circumstance that all training in general requires a roll against Integrity, I'm guessing that Amu actually was training Integrity offscreen (despite it not being apparent) and basically runs the risk of going temporarily crazy when both pushing at her Integrity and also trying to train something else at the same time.
Hmm. This consequence wasn't so bad that it would seem cause issues combining Integrity training with other things, but one event isn't exactly the kind of sample size you can reliably draw a conclusion from.
I'm not sure how much Utau actually knows about Kana's situation - they had some telepathic exchange back in chapter 1.4 that we weren't actually privy to. Hopefully enough that she is aware of the kinds of danger Amu might be walking into.
This might be sort of cheating in a way, but since Utau never made any promise to withhold information on the Scavengers from other people, I'm kind of angling for the fact refering Amu's parents to Utau opens up a way to inform them if needed, without Amu breaking her promise.
However, this is the sort of thing that only works if Amu herself doesn't actually think about it working like that when she tells them about Utau having an idea of what's going on, as then she would be aware that she'd still be breaking the spirit of her promise if not the words and wouldn't be able to do it.
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] Plan: My Friend Is Making Me Worried.
Crizzling Dreams: Saaya
Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
Crizzling Dreams - Saaya
In the space beyond the nothingness blooming in a first floor classroom, an opportunity presents itself.
It is rare to have the chance to enter the world-that-is.
A flock has followed shimmering shards of Self, fragments of mind that have slipped outside Great Wills authority, to a wormhole. Traced the hints of attention, belonging to two beings held by different seals to the pleading-invitation-wormhole. The greatest shadow, and the inverted Death.
Pieces of a sorcerer that matched the demons. A wish echoed through a mind that smoulders with a fire set in desperate defence.
A wish for death, memories and reasons stretching back a decade, and the damage each reflected "Saaya Yamabuki" wears.
Each shard-of-self- macca -is eaten by a mocking laughter that learns its summoner and why she blindly calls for death.
⁂
-she's only six years old when she realises the distance between her parents, and between her and each of them.
It's not some sudden dramatic realisation. She gets home one day, picked up by the same lady who dropped her off at school, and goes to show her mother the painting she'd made.
Saaya's parents are in the main living room, sitting opposite one another without talking.
Distant from one another, despite being in the same room (for once). They got like this sometimes, but it is the first time it feels like a wall. Or a gulf.
A gulf that she can't work out how to cross.
The painting ends up left on the table until Saaya takes it and hides it away in a drawer.
Torn to pieces, gobbled up by eager voices. Mocking laughter is all that they are. Mocking laughter and insane impulses, which now grow that much stronger.
⁂
-school was nice. People liked her, or at least listened to her, and it all made sense!
Saaya just had to be like her Father, and lead people! A… politician?
And… maybe if she's good enough at leading people, she could convince her parents to get along without fighting? Something that wasn't a vain attempt that just had one of them leave.
But first, making sure everyone in class knows who she is!
She'd failed. They knew, and hated her. Half of her said no, that wasn't how it was. The other half rejected the rejection.
⁂
-eacher had told them there would be a new girl joining today.
Who could it be, joining at the start of a year?
…
Pink hair, colour contacts in her eyes. Delinquent! Kinda cool though-
Why was she thinking that? The new girl clearly wasn't. Showing off like that didn't make her cool, why did the others…
Why did they all listen and smile at her, when all of Saaya's effort went into it to so much less effect?
They liked her, sure, but… it was an effort. Something she managed, other people's opinions of her. Making sure that they all look at her like people look at her parents.
Like how her parents always said, a princess. It was… hard to manage sometimes. When everyone was talking about what they'd done at home, rather than what they had.
And Amu just doesn't have to. She just talks, and people listen.
It's not fair.
It wasn't, and that was life. Scrabbling for the small shards of Macca, killing to hold it. There have always been greater demons.
⁂
-not fair.
'Himamori', Hinamori-chan, was a member of the Guardians.
'Joker'. After causing a scene in assembly.
Was that even a position before now, or did they make it up just to let her in?
After all the work she'd been doing, learning how to work with people in class, like father did.
Politics was meant to be her thing. Isn't having…
Art, sport, even cooking…
Isn't having everything in class and not caring that no one else could keep up enough for Amu?
How is Saaya meant to impress her father now, if she couldn't do the same as he always did?
(How was she meant to make him listen to her with more than half an ear?)
⁂
-Nikaidou-sensei is the one that incepts it, the corruption of her Dream. The darkening of the heart egg. The change of self.
On some level the 'system' behind the formation of Charas winces as her dream, political and socialite, Leadership in a word, surfaces.
There is a reason Yamabuki Saaya never developed a Chara, and it had nothing to do with lacking potential or dreams.
A piece of manipulation- so easily done -to twist Kukai against Tadase, because Amu has enough already, doesn't she? Enough people already love her?
Her memories blur, until a… pink blur mingles with the darker haze. Something twists inside her, lashing out, and it all vanishes, leaving her at the edge of the stage.
Applause. For her, surely?
…
Saaya tries to bring what exactly had happened up with her mother when she makes it back to the house, late after piecing together her missing memories from other students.
Not that her mother noticed on either account. The lateness, or Saaya's concerns about her teacher.
…
So she tries the teachers. Not Nikaidou, not after the previous day. Something is… off.
None of them have answers, seeming to brush off her concerns of Himamori's speeches' apparent effect on the school, and ignoring Nikaidou's blurry actions.
The last teacher Saaya tries to get through to kill any continued attempts in the water when the young woman points her towards the Guardians with a wink.
Ha. The Guardians that include Amu. The ones that can do no wrong, yet watch her with suspicious looks and guarded expressions.
Saaya makes sure to keep her friends closer from then on, whenever Nikaidou and 'Himamori' are around. Something about the pink and gold…
It makes her afraid.
Isolation. Fear. Running without knowing what from.
⁂
-week of grade school, Saaya comes in with a new haircut. Professionally done, a slightly brighter auburn colour, subtle gold highlights. Shorter "for the summer".
Clearly an expensive job. She smiles at her friends' compliments, fluffing it up with her fingers.
"I felt like a change!" (A lie. Not that anyone could tell. She was good at them. Good at living them.)
Before shooting a side eye at Amu, who rolls her eyes in response.
It's a shame that Saaya's previous experiences with psionics, throwing off the X Egg and Amu's lesser effects, have closed her off to passive mental perception.
Amu at least, and probably a few others amongst the class, could have picked up on the betrayal-regret-frustration lurking behind the smug persona she wore then.
The ripples of the previous evening, a screaming match with parents, for once paying attention, after she'd given herself a head of blonde hair, matching Hoshina's latest look. A change.
An impulsive decision for sure, that had her mother scoffing and her father demanding to know why she would ruin the upcoming shoot for his campaign. (If he had told her of course she wouldn't have. Though that would require anyone in the household to talk with another inside the walls.)
Marched to a hair salon, it had been 'fixed' before anyone else could see the 'embarrassment' Saaya had apparently made of herself.
Neither of her parents asked why she'd done it, and Saaya knew better by now than to try and explain.
She's known for far longer than she pretends she does.
⁂
-remembers more than she should, of the time under the Mystery Chara Change.
Of what that French girl did to her.
She remembers Amu's… fragments? Altars? Pieces? Her Dreams, and how their abilities felt.
Switching between those thought patterns, invoking powers from a system that is familiar yet not, which burned when she touched it.
Saaya wishes she didn't remember.
Because it makes her mind ache, reaching for things that aren't within reach. Faces that people smiled at, skills that aren't hers. Powers- Dreams of things like sports and cooking.
Not a dream for the right words to make her family just talk. To make people listen.
Saaya wishes she was the sort of person that had those dreams.
Another reason to fear. Another reason to feed the blue eternity.
⁂
-after talking with the teachers, being ignored by her parents in favour of their latest argument over her father's 'assistant', Saaya was alone. Again.
And had to face what she had seen. What had been forced on her.
"Bossy. Spoiled rich girl. Bully. No one really listens, they just agree to shush you. How do her friends put up with her..? Obnoxious laugh. I wish she'd leave me alone. Does Tadase even know who she is? Purify her and then hopefully she'll stop being such a nightmare."
How Amu saw her. Mind-to-mind, unadulterated, unfiltered. The Saaya that Amu sees, shown to her. Is that… who she is?
The first crack, on a mind strained by the X-Egg process and by her teachers dismissal, her parents' negligence. And then twisted by a question mark and magic into a target.
Crack.
Somewhere deep in her chest, in her heart, an egg shell cracks further, the smooth surface crizzling. It's not broken, not dead and dull like her homeroom teacher's once was.
But the blow has landed, a psionic hammer of opinion and image, and she lacks the tools or defences to do anything to defend her dreams.
And bit by bit her world dies.
⁂
-start of middle school doesn't go the best for Saaya.
The few weeks of holidays before it had been nice, at least when outside of the house with her friends.
Those friends were, unfortunately, part of the reason it hasn't started that well.
They were gone. A change of schools, one for her mothers job, the other because a place had opened in her 'famous' uncle's alma mater.
Leaving Saaya alone at school for the first time.
(Ironic, after she was meant to be the one to escape the weirdness of the place, before her mother and father had 'agreed to disagree' on the topic.)
It's an experience that puts weight on the cracked surface. A class of people, without the 'buffer' of her friends, that she struggled to reach. Some of them she could talk with about shallow things, but there was something just… missing.
A depth that she just couldn't reach into, a gap she couldn't reach across.
…
Not that Amu was having any of those issues. Spending half the day staring into the distance, seeming to fumble for anyone other than Saaya's name, and still the whole class looks to her before even the teacher half the time.
Saaya… is used to it by now. Other people might not see it, but she knows. She's seen the inside of Amu's head, heard her oh so damning opinion of her.
Spent nights wondering just how right it is.
She's watched how the atmosphere shifts with the pink haired girl, social dynamics- people -twisting around her little finger even as she pretends to pay no attention at all.
Like that… French girl and her jewellery, but infinitely more subtle.
Saaya wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
⁂
-tries only once to replicate what she could do, in those half remembered moments of Hinamori Dream. One try to summon up the abilities and potential that danced behind her eyelids.
Saaya reaches for that energy, without the lens of a ruby, and grasps the core of a nuclear reactor.
The surge of energy erases her table, bedroom door and a chunk of the opposite wall from existence.
Destruction answers her call, the System of Charas refusing to provide guidelines to any of her Dreams strong enough for it to hear. She pushes until there's nowhere further to push.
The shards of- aged oak, how did this happen? We will have to order a replacement to match. Saaya, was this you?!- door coat the hallway, even though there was no explosion to throw them.
Saaya's power is erasure, desolation, the deletion of things.
It is nothing like the Hinamori Dream.
⁂
-get away get-away getway getawayawayawaydestroyaway!
Saaya doesn't know what caused it, coming back after summer break.
Was it always there? The push, the whispers? Hinamori's voice is the loudest of the crowd, like the burning weight of 'purification', but telegraphed by nothing.
Just. Constantly there. Talking. Informing. Telling. Insisting. Ordering. Repeating on and on.
Their voices, their image and opinions, overlaid on reality and tried to nudge it. Nudge Saaya.
Speaking to… ears that aren't ears. To a face that wasn't flesh.
A dream long broken and dead, but not rotting, scarred with the symbols of suites and burns.
To something vulnerable in a way that was achingly familiar, but without the walls and defences she'd worked so hard to paint bright lies and happy colours over.
It was always there, she thinks. Just… louder now. The difference between a window with and without a light inside the building. The shutters opened?
The analogies made her head hurt, for all that they made sense.
It's not as if anyone listened to her explanations—pleas—anyway.
…
Saaya counters the only way she knows how, a subconscious reaction becoming conscious. Erasure is brought to bear whenever- wherever it touches her, destruction burning with incandescent fire on those ears, consuming that face.
Torching the building so that nothing can enter. Melting away the useless memories of all the times she wasn't good enough while she's at it.
Whether or not she knows it's a prolonged suicide, is one of the shards Saaya will never be able to recover from the rift.
She won't need to remember to know what she chose.
⁂
-knows it worked, when her sanity returns the next morning. Stability, if a terrible kind, is achieved.
The ringing has stopped.
Saaya is a little more irritable, but not enough people talk to her to notice. And the freedom, the silence at last is more than worth the stinging headache.
The 'Oujo' complains about Hinamori more, though no one ever listens.
Subconsciously, the flames burn, every vulnerable attack surface of her mind set alight with the destruction that comes so easily to the young girl.
If a Wild Card were to meet her, they would see the Blasted Tower burning, mid fall, inevitable and thundering.
It's relaxing in a way, to let all her efforts, the 'mask', persona, constructed social image…
To just let it finally go. To stop dreaming of one day making her parents care, of commanding the respect of the class.
That face burns in ruby light, falling to shards as Saaya stretches and shifts. More outspoken. Manipulation fading in favour of smirking attacks.
The last shards of egg shell, of her mask, are long ash by the time Saayas frayed bare patience sends her into a mad laugh at Makoto's blindness.
⁂
-another ringing of the bell, trying to press against cinder-walls, and she's had enough.
Saaya punches out against Amu, wanting nothing more than to turn her overbearing smirk into a hole-
-Erasure. Destruction. The stench of ozone- the burn of chemicals- the howl of Kagu- The scarf around a neck, white and pure and a body falling to pieces- Punch- World Breakers- Delete- A hole in the world- Pattern Spider Touch-
-and the world shatters. Amu's power-field command of the abilities they both hold parries the blow, and the world-beneath breaks a foot to the left instead of beneath the material of Amu's skull
a howling maw of not-reality opening
⁂
-once green eyes open beneath the Diet building.
This girl isn't met by family, however.
Saaya isn't surprised.
= = =
As promised, a look on why Saaya is the way she is. Mayhaps a kinder gaze, knowing how this came to be?
Thank you to @Baughn for beta reading, and for correcting my many assumptions to fit.
In the space beyond the nothingness blooming in a first floor classroom, an opportunity presents itself.
It is rare to have the chance to enter the world-that-is.
A flock has followed shimmering shards of Self, fragments of mind that have slipped outside Great Wills authority, to a wormhole. Traced the hints of attention, belonging to two beings held by different seals to the pleading-invitation-wormhole. The greatest shadow, and the inverted Death.
Pieces of a sorcerer that matched the demons. A wish echoed through a mind that smoulders with a fire set in desperate defence.
A wish for death, memories and reasons stretching back a decade, and the damage each reflected "Saaya Yamabuki" wears.
Each shard-of-self- macca -is eaten by a mocking laughter that learns its summoner and why she blindly calls for death.
⁂
-she's only six years old when she realises the distance between her parents, and between her and each of them.
It's not some sudden dramatic realisation. She gets home one day, picked up by the same lady who dropped her off at school, and goes to show her mother the painting she'd made.
Saaya's parents are in the main living room, sitting opposite one another without talking.
Distant from one another, despite being in the same room (for once). They got like this sometimes, but it is the first time it feels like a wall. Or a gulf.
A gulf that she can't work out how to cross.
The painting ends up left on the table until Saaya takes it and hides it away in a drawer.
Torn to pieces, gobbled up by eager voices. Mocking laughter is all that they are. Mocking laughter and insane impulses, which now grow that much stronger.
⁂
-school was nice. People liked her, or at least listened to her, and it all made sense!
Saaya just had to be like her Father, and lead people! A… politician?
And… maybe if she's good enough at leading people, she could convince her parents to get along without fighting? Something that wasn't a vain attempt that just had one of them leave.
But first, making sure everyone in class knows who she is!
She'd failed. They knew, and hated her. Half of her said no, that wasn't how it was. The other half rejected the rejection.
⁂
-eacher had told them there would be a new girl joining today.
Who could it be, joining at the start of a year?
…
Pink hair, colour contacts in her eyes. Delinquent! Kinda cool though-
Why was she thinking that? The new girl clearly wasn't. Showing off like that didn't make her cool, why did the others…
Why did they all listen and smile at her, when all of Saaya's effort went into it to so much less effect?
They liked her, sure, but… it was an effort. Something she managed, other people's opinions of her. Making sure that they all look at her like people look at her parents.
Like how her parents always said, a princess. It was… hard to manage sometimes. When everyone was talking about what they'd done at home, rather than what they had.
And Amu just doesn't have to. She just talks, and people listen.
It's not fair.
It wasn't, and that was life. Scrabbling for the small shards of Macca, killing to hold it. There have always been greater demons.
⁂
-not fair.
'Himamori', Hinamori-chan, was a member of the Guardians.
'Joker'. After causing a scene in assembly.
Was that even a position before now, or did they make it up just to let her in?
After all the work she'd been doing, learning how to work with people in class, like father did.
Politics was meant to be her thing. Isn't having…
Art, sport, even cooking…
Isn't having everything in class and not caring that no one else could keep up enough for Amu?
How is Saaya meant to impress her father now, if she couldn't do the same as he always did?
(How was she meant to make him listen to her with more than half an ear?)
⁂
-Nikaidou-sensei is the one that incepts it, the corruption of her Dream. The darkening of the heart egg. The change of self.
On some level the 'system' behind the formation of Charas winces as her dream, political and socialite, Leadership in a word, surfaces.
There is a reason Yamabuki Saaya never developed a Chara, and it had nothing to do with lacking potential or dreams.
A piece of manipulation- so easily done -to twist Kukai against Tadase, because Amu has enough already, doesn't she? Enough people already love her?
Her memories blur, until a… pink blur mingles with the darker haze. Something twists inside her, lashing out, and it all vanishes, leaving her at the edge of the stage.
Applause. For her, surely?
…
Saaya tries to bring what exactly had happened up with her mother when she makes it back to the house, late after piecing together her missing memories from other students.
Not that her mother noticed on either account. The lateness, or Saaya's concerns about her teacher.
…
So she tries the teachers. Not Nikaidou, not after the previous day. Something is… off.
None of them have answers, seeming to brush off her concerns of Himamori's speeches' apparent effect on the school, and ignoring Nikaidou's blurry actions.
The last teacher Saaya tries to get through to kill any continued attempts in the water when the young woman points her towards the Guardians with a wink.
Ha. The Guardians that include Amu. The ones that can do no wrong, yet watch her with suspicious looks and guarded expressions.
Saaya makes sure to keep her friends closer from then on, whenever Nikaidou and 'Himamori' are around. Something about the pink and gold…
It makes her afraid.
Isolation. Fear. Running without knowing what from.
⁂
-week of grade school, Saaya comes in with a new haircut. Professionally done, a slightly brighter auburn colour, subtle gold highlights. Shorter "for the summer".
Clearly an expensive job. She smiles at her friends' compliments, fluffing it up with her fingers.
"I felt like a change!" (A lie. Not that anyone could tell. She was good at them. Good at living them.)
Before shooting a side eye at Amu, who rolls her eyes in response.
It's a shame that Saaya's previous experiences with psionics, throwing off the X Egg and Amu's lesser effects, have closed her off to passive mental perception.
Amu at least, and probably a few others amongst the class, could have picked up on the betrayal-regret-frustration lurking behind the smug persona she wore then.
The ripples of the previous evening, a screaming match with parents, for once paying attention, after she'd given herself a head of blonde hair, matching Hoshina's latest look. A change.
An impulsive decision for sure, that had her mother scoffing and her father demanding to know why she would ruin the upcoming shoot for his campaign. (If he had told her of course she wouldn't have. Though that would require anyone in the household to talk with another inside the walls.)
Marched to a hair salon, it had been 'fixed' before anyone else could see the 'embarrassment' Saaya had apparently made of herself.
Neither of her parents asked why she'd done it, and Saaya knew better by now than to try and explain.
She's known for far longer than she pretends she does.
⁂
-remembers more than she should, of the time under the Mystery Chara Change.
Of what that French girl did to her.
She remembers Amu's… fragments? Altars? Pieces? Her Dreams, and how their abilities felt.
Switching between those thought patterns, invoking powers from a system that is familiar yet not, which burned when she touched it.
Saaya wishes she didn't remember.
Because it makes her mind ache, reaching for things that aren't within reach. Faces that people smiled at, skills that aren't hers. Powers- Dreams of things like sports and cooking.
Not a dream for the right words to make her family just talk. To make people listen.
Saaya wishes she was the sort of person that had those dreams.
Another reason to fear. Another reason to feed the blue eternity.
⁂
-after talking with the teachers, being ignored by her parents in favour of their latest argument over her father's 'assistant', Saaya was alone. Again.
And had to face what she had seen. What had been forced on her.
"Bossy. Spoiled rich girl. Bully. No one really listens, they just agree to shush you. How do her friends put up with her..? Obnoxious laugh. I wish she'd leave me alone. Does Tadase even know who she is? Purify her and then hopefully she'll stop being such a nightmare."
How Amu saw her. Mind-to-mind, unadulterated, unfiltered. The Saaya that Amu sees, shown to her. Is that… who she is?
The first crack, on a mind strained by the X-Egg process and by her teachers dismissal, her parents' negligence. And then twisted by a question mark and magic into a target.
Crack.
Somewhere deep in her chest, in her heart, an egg shell cracks further, the smooth surface crizzling. It's not broken, not dead and dull like her homeroom teacher's once was.
But the blow has landed, a psionic hammer of opinion and image, and she lacks the tools or defences to do anything to defend her dreams.
And bit by bit her world dies.
⁂
-start of middle school doesn't go the best for Saaya.
The few weeks of holidays before it had been nice, at least when outside of the house with her friends.
Those friends were, unfortunately, part of the reason it hasn't started that well.
They were gone. A change of schools, one for her mothers job, the other because a place had opened in her 'famous' uncle's alma mater.
Leaving Saaya alone at school for the first time.
(Ironic, after she was meant to be the one to escape the weirdness of the place, before her mother and father had 'agreed to disagree' on the topic.)
It's an experience that puts weight on the cracked surface. A class of people, without the 'buffer' of her friends, that she struggled to reach. Some of them she could talk with about shallow things, but there was something just… missing.
A depth that she just couldn't reach into, a gap she couldn't reach across.
…
Not that Amu was having any of those issues. Spending half the day staring into the distance, seeming to fumble for anyone other than Saaya's name, and still the whole class looks to her before even the teacher half the time.
Saaya… is used to it by now. Other people might not see it, but she knows. She's seen the inside of Amu's head, heard her oh so damning opinion of her.
Spent nights wondering just how right it is.
She's watched how the atmosphere shifts with the pink haired girl, social dynamics- people -twisting around her little finger even as she pretends to pay no attention at all.
Like that… French girl and her jewellery, but infinitely more subtle.
Saaya wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
⁂
-tries only once to replicate what she could do, in those half remembered moments of Hinamori Dream. One try to summon up the abilities and potential that danced behind her eyelids.
Saaya reaches for that energy, without the lens of a ruby, and grasps the core of a nuclear reactor.
The surge of energy erases her table, bedroom door and a chunk of the opposite wall from existence.
Destruction answers her call, the System of Charas refusing to provide guidelines to any of her Dreams strong enough for it to hear. She pushes until there's nowhere further to push.
The shards of- aged oak, how did this happen? We will have to order a replacement to match. Saaya, was this you?!- door coat the hallway, even though there was no explosion to throw them.
Saaya's power is erasure, desolation, the deletion of things.
It is nothing like the Hinamori Dream.
⁂
-get away get-away getway getawayawayawaydestroyaway!
Saaya doesn't know what caused it, coming back after summer break.
Was it always there? The push, the whispers? Hinamori's voice is the loudest of the crowd, like the burning weight of 'purification', but telegraphed by nothing.
Just. Constantly there. Talking. Informing. Telling. Insisting. Ordering. Repeating on and on.
Their voices, their image and opinions, overlaid on reality and tried to nudge it. Nudge Saaya.
Speaking to… ears that aren't ears. To a face that wasn't flesh.
A dream long broken and dead, but not rotting, scarred with the symbols of suites and burns.
To something vulnerable in a way that was achingly familiar, but without the walls and defences she'd worked so hard to paint bright lies and happy colours over.
It was always there, she thinks. Just… louder now. The difference between a window with and without a light inside the building. The shutters opened?
The analogies made her head hurt, for all that they made sense.
It's not as if anyone listened to her explanations—pleas—anyway.
…
Saaya counters the only way she knows how, a subconscious reaction becoming conscious. Erasure is brought to bear whenever- wherever it touches her, destruction burning with incandescent fire on those ears, consuming that face.
Torching the building so that nothing can enter. Melting away the useless memories of all the times she wasn't good enough while she's at it.
Whether or not she knows it's a prolonged suicide, is one of the shards Saaya will never be able to recover from the rift.
She won't need to remember to know what she chose.
⁂
-knows it worked, when her sanity returns the next morning. Stability, if a terrible kind, is achieved.
The ringing has stopped.
Saaya is a little more irritable, but not enough people talk to her to notice. And the freedom, the silence at last is more than worth the stinging headache.
The 'Oujo' complains about Hinamori more, though no one ever listens.
Subconsciously, the flames burn, every vulnerable attack surface of her mind set alight with the destruction that comes so easily to the young girl.
If a Wild Card were to meet her, they would see the Blasted Tower burning, mid fall, inevitable and thundering.
It's relaxing in a way, to let all her efforts, the 'mask', persona, constructed social image…
To just let it finally go. To stop dreaming of one day making her parents care, of commanding the respect of the class.
That face burns in ruby light, falling to shards as Saaya stretches and shifts. More outspoken. Manipulation fading in favour of smirking attacks.
The last shards of egg shell, of her mask, are long ash by the time Saayas frayed bare patience sends her into a mad laugh at Makoto's blindness.
⁂
-another ringing of the bell, trying to press against cinder-walls, and she's had enough.
Saaya punches out against Amu, wanting nothing more than to turn her overbearing smirk into a hole-
-Erasure. Destruction. The stench of ozone- the burn of chemicals- the howl of Kagu- The scarf around a neck, white and pure and a body falling to pieces- Punch- World Breakers- Delete- A hole in the world- Pattern Spider Touch-
-and the world shatters. Amu's power-field command of the abilities they both hold parries the blow, and the world-beneath breaks a foot to the left instead of beneath the material of Amu's skull
a howling maw of not-reality opening
⁂
-once green eyes open beneath the Diet building.
This girl isn't met by family, however.
Saaya isn't surprised.
= = =
As promised, a look on why Saaya is the way she is. Mayhaps a kinder gaze, knowing how this came to be?
Thank you to @Baughn for beta reading, and for correcting my many assumptions to fit.
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- Location
- Laniakea
Mm, yeah, she and Rima would definitely have a lot to talk about.
If Saaya unwittingly executed a Pattern Spider Touch on Amu and she blocked it, that implies Amu subconsciously executed a perfect defense against it somehow.
That says something.
Not quite sure what.
But it says something.