snip snip

[implausibility]

Who: Adachi Tohru (implausibility) and, in no particular order: Jan, Godot, Malik, Isamu, Nagi, Ikutsuki
When: Hours after sirens, forward-dated to Friday evening.
Where: Outskirts of downtown Siren's Port.
Summary: You don't snip the strings of a puppet without it crashing to the ground.
Warnings: I guess it's a little late to say spoilers for Persona 4...

Comments

[tots_prodigy]

Nagi didn't mind being out late as long as the smarter Darkness monsters -- the ones resistant to pure energy blows -- didn't bother him too much. Even they were bearable with a little effort, though, so he killed one by sending a broken piece of wood through its brain when it tried to come after him.

AGI, while good for his paycheck and good for the security it gave him, was a hideously boring, not so great company to work for sometimes. Despite Nagi's power and obvious skill with it, he was a Newcomer and thus missed, not for the first time, an opportunity at getting a promotion and guarding someone actually interesting. It was enough to make him consider doing something terrible to their computer systems.

For now, though, he turned sharply once he heard growling and unhinged laughter. Person or Darkness monster, he needed to be careful. Nagi snapped his shields up quickly, stepped closer, and whipped up a strong breeze as warning. "Who's there?"

[implausibility]

The laughter stopped short, almost as if the sound of Nagi's voice had been a punch in the gut. Adachi gasped, like he was swallowing the very sound, eyes darting around in the dark. Somewhere, an invisible string tying him to the puppeteer in another world, another time, was being pulled taut, in danger of snapping any moment now, and every interruption, every word and sound and presence, was like a wave being sent down that string - one false move, and it'd break.

"I am," he answered, quietly, without really answering at all. "And you're there. What are you doing there? You should leave me alone. We need some alone time. Gotta...I've gotta take it out, that's all."

[tots_prodigy]

He kept the shield in place without really thinking about it; years of controlling his power let him have that sort of luxury. Nagi stepped closer to the voice once the laughing stopped and he heard that odd gasp, pulled there for a reason he couldn't completely explain. Maybe he was just a puppet too, obeying someone else's plans.

"I'm here because I want to make sure nothing else is going to jump out and attack me on my way home from work," he explained. It was true enough, but not the complete truth. The complete truth almost never came from Nagi's mouth. "And who's we? There's only one of you and one of me, but I'm not who you mean." Reflexively, he prepared to attack in case he needed it.

[implausibility]

"I can't really...vouch for the creepy-crawlies 'round here, you know," said Adachi, looking about and scanning the area for a hint of a moving shadow that would indicate the presence of another darkness monster, but either they were smarter or had been thrown off by the scent of their kin's blood, because the environment was awfully still. Adachi tilted his head from left to right, as if trying to make out Nagi's form, but recognition never flashed across his face, and even as he blinked, his pupils kept on darting from brown to gold.

"The three of us, see, we're-" He stopped himself, mouth snapping shut with a small 'clack' as his teeth collided. Frowning at Nagi, he looked up, behind him. "Three...?"

[tots_prodigy]

As long as it was just the two of them and that uneasy breeze Nagi stirred up, he didn't need to split his attention. Any fight he got into would get his full power and focus; good for him, bad for everyone else. The changing eye color might have bothered a lot of people. It didn't bother Nagi, since his own turned red once in a while when suitably pissed off.

"Three?" he asked, trying to drag out more information. Nagi didn't see anything behind the man he believed to be completely insane. It was just two of them, not three.

[implausibility]

Adachi turned back slowly before something seemed to click, like gears suddenly snapping back into regular, precise and controlled motion. He waved his hand as if to dispel the point, and only when he raised it did it become obvious of the dark stain on his right forearm, a cut across the fabric of his jacket being an obvious indication of the cause. The area around it had been haphazardly tied together with what seemed to be a tatter of older, coarser material - probably something he had found in the vicinity (maybe something that had been thrown at him earlier, perhaps). "Right. Just the two of us, my bad. I miscounted."

He inhaled deeply after that, swallowing air on top of that thought to keep it down. Adachi himself was probably not even aware of what was changing inside of him, just like he had never been aware that something had chanced upon moving to Inaba. He was being dragged around like driftwood, in a tug-of-war game between a vindictive goddess and somewhere, small as it may be, the part of him that was painfully

[tots_prodigy]

"Hmm," was all Nagi had to say in reply. If there were three in this man's mind, he was insane and likely dangerous, no matter how sane he seemed to be acting at the moment. He shifted the wind at his control, eased it a little to take less of his power.

Whatever was going on, he had no idea. His own mind was calm and level despite the frustration poking at his scabbed-over temper. A few years ago, anything that annoyed him would have been grounds for injury at the minimum; new bosses had cooled that part of him just enough to earn the stranger a reprieve as long as he didn't threaten Nagi directly.

"If you say so...being a cop here must be pretty terrible." Nagi wasn't certain he noticed the image, but he raised his visible eyebrow anyway.

[implausibility]

This was familiar territory; this was easy. There were few things Adachi did better than complaining, and after all that strain, he seemed almost glad to fall into this familiar routine. "Man," he sighed, raising his uninjured arm and running a hand through his hair. "Tell me about it. Don't really train you for this sort of thing at the get-go, for sure." He glanced around, pointedly looking for a monster or two to make his point, but somewhere along the way, his gaze unfocused, and he stayed like that for a few seconds before abruptly snapping back to attention. That might have been fatigue, though, or he might've just seen something of incredible interest far away and decided not to share

[tots_prodigy]

While he hadn't meant to hit a talk button, he'd done so anyway and Nagi grumbled under his breath. Dealing with other people's complaints wasn't his job. His job was to serve both AGI and Madara at varying times, but ultimately to serve himself and try to ruin the company from his meager position within it. Nagi moved his hair out of his face so both blue eyes were visible now and they darted around for an instant, taking in the entire area and their odds of being attacked again tonight. Something still felt off about this; maybe it tied into the strange look on the man's face?

The moment he stepped forward, Nagi's eyes narrowed and his shields grew stronger, forming a barrier that could probably be sensed and would certainly be noticed if he tried to touch or shoot him at all. "I don't want anything from you. Like I said, I was dealing with monsters and thought you might be one of them. Maybe you are, maybe not. Either way, if you come closer, you'll have trouble."

[implausibility]

A strange look crossed his face, caught between being affronted and sheer curiosity. "Why? I haven't done anything. No, wait - let me guess, personal space issues? Too much touchy-feely in your past or something? Everybody's got a case of those, but look pal, this is a big place." He motioned around them. "You can't just go stakin' claim on every patch of land you stand on. This place is public property, you know. I could step-" And he did, but just one step, and not even a complete one. Adachi only put his foot out, as if testing the boundaries of this balance, or purposely trying to sabotage it, depending on how you looked at it. "And technically, that's still okay. It's legal."

He broke into a smile, too wide for his face. "But I won't, 'cause I respect that. We still got a problem, here, though, 'cause I wanna get over there, and you look like something's gonna reach out and wring your neck, so how about this. What if just he goes over there? That'd be okay?" With one finger raised, he pointed in Nagi's

[tots_prodigy]

"Because you have a gun and even if you're a cop, I don't like guns." Never mind that he can and has frozen bullets in midair; Nagi doesn't like guns because they're a pitiful imitation of the sort of destruction a person with a power like his can cause with little effort or thought. Nagi glared more seriously as he stepped closer and pushed the shield out enough that the invisible wall rested just in front of his leg. If he tried to move closer, it would be like hitting a wall. "What's legal isn't always right and what's illegal isn't always wrong

[implausibility]

Magatsu Izanagi swung.

Its phantom blade, transparent in the moonlight, seemed to hit something just as similarly intangible, like the metal had glanced off of something invisible yet incredibly resilient, and its sword arm bounced back just as its image disappeared. There was not enough will power in the world to make a persona appear constantly - Adachi had seen even the high schoolers, with their supposed infallible youth and their dogged strength, go weak in the knees after abusing the ability for too long.

His eyes widened, full of interest as opposed to surprise, and he perked, finishing the step with his other foot, but not drawing closer than that. "What...what was that? What is that? You can keep it out? How?"

[tots_prodigy]

Nagi chuckled, both amused and annoyed all at once. Did he really look harmless enough to go down in one quick attack, even from something he'd never seen before in his life? Sure, his shield was weaker now, but he'd saved himself from what was probably the worst blow.

"I've got a lot of practice controlling what I can do." As further proof, he shoved energy forward, hoping to do nothing more than knock the cop off balance so he could go home.

FIVE YEARS LATER

[implausibility]

No, it was curiosity. This kid could keep it out, and if he could figure out how, if he could maybe just do something even vaguely similar, then could he? Could Adachi keep her out? Get rid of these migraines? Could he cut off the phantom shackles that had come with the phantom power? (Because Izanami had overlooked one very important thing when she had chosen her puppets; she had forgotten that they were all still human, no matter what she planted into their minds to make them otherwise

[tots_prodigy]

Plenty of people had been curious about Nagi and his power before; while he'd ended up being trained by one such group, others were simply killing for bweing too damn nosy. As far as he'd experienced, there was no way to give someone this ability, or any ability really, without dealing with the strange effects this city seemed to have on plenty of the newcomers who hadn't had a power at home. He'd always be human, but would also always see himself as more than human for what he could do.

Above them, tree branches snapped and fell to the ground when a coil of loose power wrapped around them for lack of anything else to hold onto. His attack of energy hadn't gone well, but just like when fighting the Darkness monsters, Nagi still had opportunities to lash out with makeshift weapons.

"I can't explain it. It's just part of how I was born and what I've always done. I'm not like the new arrivals who get gifted powers by the Core." Or like anyone gifted their power by a goddess, though he didn't know such a thing was possible.

[implausibility]

It seemed as though the conversation distracted him, despite the fact that his persona would appear from time to time to ward off danger and keep him safe. Either Adachi was awfully good at multi-tasking, or the splinter in his mind from one thing to the other (I am your true self) was so severe that he hardly noticed. "Gifted powers by the Core, huh," he murmured to himself, raising a self-conscious hand to rub at the raised skin at the back of his neck (it was getting chilly out, he noticed belatedly), trailing off. He didn't know what that was like either - these were powers he had had prior to arriving at Siren's Port, powers he hadn't been aware of losing. It was hard to summon when he was conscious, let alone when left in a guarded hospital room to recover from a mysterious beating no one could explain