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

[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.

"B-but, at least I can't say there's ever a dull moment. We get more homicide cases in a day than I'd probably get all year back in Nowheresville. Can't really complain about having a job." Slipping one hand into his pocket, Adachi sauntered a few steps forward - easygoing and languid. "But say, pal, what are you doing here? Not out, I mean. Here. Right now." He motioned with the hand holding his pistol, pointing the barrel of the gun at the ground where the other man was standing, and hopped down from the small pile of debris he had climbed onto, a soft 'thump' sounding when his feet hit the dirt. "Right there. Instead of going on your way home? Did you want something?" He tilted his head one way, and then the other. "Can I help you?"

[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 direction, where, like a fog collecting, his persona blinked in to sight.

Don't let anything stand in your way, she told him.

[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."

Nagi stepped to the side, offering a little room to move if the gun went away for a moment. He knew it was to take care of monsters, but reflex and traning took over his mind enough to remind him that guns were hazards if he relaxed for even an instant. Before he could say that, though, he saw the strange figure appear. What was that? His eyes widened before hair fell to cover the right one again, making him look more like the teenager he was underneath all of his hate and distrust for the world as a whole.

[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.)

As quickly as it disappeared from above the boy, Magatsu Izanagi reappeared in front of Adachi, its blade extended in front of it like a barrier - one hand on the hilt and one pressed against the flat of the blade. It met the energy field with equal force, and while it hadn't been able to surpass the strength of the shield, the shield was not exactly strong enough to break the sword, either. The contact gave off an electric, static-y sound, as opposed to the clang of real metal against metal, and all throughout, Adachi watched with unwavering eyes, like he could soak up all that power in if he kept them fixed enough.

"How?" he asked again, after the attack, seemingly unaffected and single-minded. "What's the trick?"

[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.

Only afterward, when he glanced up, almost by chance, did he notice the trees and the collateral damage their clash had and was causing. "Whoa!" he said, eyes flashing gold for a second in alarm. "What do you think you're doing with that? That's kind of dangerous, she's gonna be pissed if you keep that up."

[tots_prodigy]

Conversation might have distracted Adachi, but it didn't bother Nagi one bit; he'd been trained to interact as well as guard either himself or his employer as needed, so the practice came in handy when he felt the need to stay alert and guarded at the same time. That was often, both in Siren's Port and home in Tokyo.

Nagi wanted to leave, but leaving meant risking that thing trying to attack him as soon as his back was turned and he couldn't take that chance just yet. He'd died once here and that was quite enough in Nagi's mind. "There's no 'she' around, unless that thing of yours is a girl. And even if someone does get upset, it can be blamed on the wind."

[implausibility]

Adachi gave him an unimpressed look, as if saying, Oh, come on, kid, you could've come up with a better one than that. "The wind," he said, glancing up occasionally at the thick, ominous branch in the air, "doesn't exactly play batter-up with folks, and last I checked, there wasn't a tornado warning for Siren's Port any time soon." To some degree, he must have understood that as long as Magatsu Izanagi was here, he had some level of protection, because he didn't run, as he would have normally done given any other situation.

The question, then, was how long he was going to be here, because Adachi could feel it - whatever it was he was trying to crowbar out of him, his person was as closely tied to it as he was. It meant he was running out of time. It meant he didn't have seconds to stall, and if it meant he wasn't going to run, then there was really only one option left. "'Sides," he said, "you know how the weather likes to change its mind - you should watch out too."

The mechanics of controlling a persona was still a bit of a grey area - he could summon it, but it felt like pulling teeth, and half the time, it seemed to follow its own agenda. The other half, though, it seemed to pick up on whatever he was thinking, at least, so when he thought, Go, go get 'im, before he gets me, it was more a matter of hoping that would work and that his Persona would listen rather than the implicit understanding that it'd obey. Adachi took a step forward, and he could sense his feet taking him one step away from whatever was binding him, like ripping through a sticky cobweb, and this time, it was strangely not painful. Rather, he heard something - someone give a sigh, an exasperated sound not unlike a mother reacting to a disobedient child, and Magatsu Izanagi appeared in mid-flight, sword drawn back and heading towards Nagi.

[tots_prodigy]

"Windstorms aren't uncommon in this part of the world." A fact that his research into this part of Canada had told him shortly after his first arrival here ten months ago. Ten months that seemed like an eternity compared to his years spent at home, despite little of interest actually happening in that time.

He could take care of himself no matter who or what came at him and this guy's words seemed like another stupid adult trying to tell him what was supposed to happen if he'd been a child in need of protection of warning. It was far too late for anything like that.

Nagi stepped backwards, preparations for leaving beginning, and he laughed when the thing appeared in the air again. Without hesitation or warning, he launched the branch fragments at her and pushed more power out to freeze the idiot in place so he couldn't move to try and attack him again. His patience couldn't handle much more of this nonsense.

[implausibility]

But he wouldn't be able to touch her.

She was in another world, in another realm that was far away from this one, and Magatsu Izanagi wasn't the one Adachi had been talking about. She was somewhere nothing could touch, Scorn and Hatred and Death itself, but she could and would grace every single one of them with her presence eventually. That was what he wanted out of him (as impossible of an endeavor as it was, considering how inherent she was to simply being human).

Adachi, however, Nagi could fend off, and easily too - he was not particularly stronger than others, and not particularly better in any other way to name, either. Adachi stumbled back, shielding his face when wood splintered upon impact, turning his face away from the battle like he had no part in it. "You guys," he was saying, hissing it in a way that might have been under his breath, but loud enough to hear, "You kids, always trying to get in other people's businesses - why can't you just leave anything alone?"

[tots_prodigy]

Nagi didn't know that the thing that appeared in front of this man wasn't the same as the She he kept talking about. How could he know? He wasn't a telepath or anyone good at sensing energy. All he did was use his own energy to move things, keeping him perpetually thinner than he should be no matter how much he ate sometimes.

"I'm not a kid. And I'll leave you alone if you don't attack me again." Maybe he'd never been a kid, not in the typical sense. Kid implied a certain innocence about the world that Nagi had lost when he was very tiny.

[implausibility]

"I was here first," Adachi said, and if he had stamped his foot, it couldn't have sounded more childish, as if things in the world could be determined just because someone said so. "I've got business to take care of, and- tch!" Pausing, Adachi dusted the pieces of dry wood and foilage off his suit, and groaned at the thought of what a mess he'd be dragging back into the apartment tonight - the very least he could do, then, is return with one less burden on his mind, he decided, with a futile sense of dogged determination. He looked back up, frowning even as he closed one eye to keep splinters and dirt from entering it as he brushed it out of his hair. "You were headed home, weren't you?"

It was a very poorly-veiled, Get lost, but Adachi never wasted effort on tact when he didn't want to. The brat had a power that he wouldn't share, and fine, that was fine - if it wasn't useful then it was useless, and really, who did he have to count on in the world? He could (he'd have to) do this all on his own.

[tots_prodigy]

"Does it matter that you were here first?" he snapped back, eyes narrowing once again as he coiled up all of the energy he felt like sparing, ready to launch it all out into one large attack if he felt the need to. "We all have business to do -- what I was going home for can wait a little longer." The rats weren't going to starve if dinner was a little late.

Nagi couldn't share his power. It wasn't a matter of wouldn't or ability to teach. Some things were inborne and couldn't be passed along.