EVENT - AWAKENING

[harmonizemods]

Who: PCs, ???
Where: Classrooms, ???
When: Monday, April 17, immediately after normal classes.
What: It's time.

The call came abruptly at the end of the day, as the students were preparing to end their normal session and proceed to their specialty classes. It was a small thing, easily forgotten: a staff member at the entrance to a few particular homerooms, asking one or two students to meet in the main hall. It was a little peculiar, to be sure, but they were only two weeks into the school year, after all--most students just shrugged it off as one of Chitoku's oddities.

Taue Shinichiro. Hazama Miyume. Tanemoto Ryuta. Kasubata Shizuru. Imaizumi Mirai. Uehara Himeko. Shikata Haruka.

Those called couldn't have been more different. What common thread could possibly have them brought together, few could fathom.

OOC note: Please keep everything in the same thread. Also, I'd like to keep up a fairly brisk pace, but I'll do my best to accommodate everyone. And please feel free to come into the chat at http://webchat.freenode.net, channel #harmonizerpg, for discussion!

Comments

[waterholdmedown]

Shizuru, as always, was willing to just go with it.

She hefted the hilt in her hand. It was easy enough to find the button that turned it on, and she gave it an experimental swing--not wide enough to hit anyone, but coming probably closer than she ought to have.

Then--well, nothing left but to try it, right?

She brought up the blade, turned it horizontally, feeling its heat nearly burning her skin, and brought it swiftly across her throat.

--and then promptly dropped it, sending the Evoker tumbling across the floor of the lab as she clutched at her neck and fell to her knees. Fuckithurtithurtithurtithurt--

But she forced open her eyes, and the vision in white and gold before them almost made it worthwhile. "Jerisavlja..." she whispered, her throat still burning, spots before her eyes.

Just seeing it, she understood.

[allisnothing]

Haruka couldn't see what was going on and it's not like any one was filling her in anyway. She had a pretty horrifying mental map going out but it sounded like Taue and Kasubata were still alive? No one was freaking out and the adults seemed to be continuing on plan.

...Whether they wanted to or not.

Haruka's face subtly darkened, even as she took the blade put into her free hand. There was a subtle tension across her whole body and an angry aura that was never there. She held her cane tightly.

And then she dropped it, letting it clatter to the floor.

Her eyes were open and though her eyes weren't focused, there was a very calm anger there meant specifically for the adults watching them. There wasn't any of her usual quips this time.

Instead, she quickly took the wakizashi, turned it with surprising ease, and drove it into her chest.

She couldn't remember anything that hurt so much. All she could think was 'fuckfuckfuckno... and the stray thought that wondered if they'd be happy with her corpse. She let out a strangled cry, eyes wide, and stumbled backwards, starting to fall, as the blade fell out of her hands and from her chest. Her hand blindly reached for something-

But before she hit the ground, it was like time stopped for a moment.

She felt oddly warm...not like what you heard in movies and books about death..

And she thought she could hear a barking somewhere, calling her...

A force pushed in her mind, over and over and over again...and it all kept saying one word...until it slipped out unconsciously...

"Per...sona...?"

She hit the ground and jerked and all the sudden, everything felt warm and okay. A large dog* with red eyes and symbols over its fur stood over top her for moment, sniffing Haruka for a moment before turning back to the adults with a snarl before disappearing into blue light.

Haruka, meanwhile, was left on the ground and still gasping for air, barely conscious and still struggling to fully grasp what happened.

((*http://www.zerochan.net/full/37159

[phantomcloud]

Miyume looked like she felt ill, though whether it was from the condition of her health or the horrific tableau before her, wasn't easily determined. She flinched at seeing Shizuru in obvious pain and flinched even more when Haruka collapsed. She gazed down solemnly at the device in her hand. After a second she switched it on and out came the burning blade. Unlike the others, she couldn't feel the heat as intensely as they did, though she could tell that to someone with normal perception in these matters that the wakizashi's blade must be pretty hot. She swallowed a bit nervously as she slowly raised the blade to her own throat.

The prospect of pain didn't scare her nearly as much as the prospect of causing herself mortal injury and not being able to feel it. Miyume touched the blade to her throat.

It stung but she was accustomed to coping with pain assaulting her from unknowable resources. She felt oddly detached from everyone and everything that was happening, almost as if she'd wandered into someone else's nightmare. Well, there was only way to make it real for her.

With an eerie calm, Miyume slashed her own throat. She instantly dropped the blade and it rolled away from her chair. She doubled over, leaning so far forward that her hair started to pool on the floor. She whispered one word, so softly, that it was unlikely anyone in the room would actually be able to hear it.

"Persona."

With that, it felt almost like Miyume's consciousness was undergoing some kind of division, like a part of her was pushing out of her mind and breaking through into reality. A dark cloud exploded into being in the air over her hunched form, hovering like a malevolent spirit eager to wreak havoc over all the equipment and the people in the room. It was vaguely girl-shaped and if one looked closely enough at it, there was a distinctly feminine face bearing a strong resemblance to Miyume's one flitting in and out of existence. It seemed to glare at Yachiyo with the same blank coldness Miyume had earlier.

[hoshikage_himeko]

Himeko knew that there was no use in discussing it anymore. Seeing the others lying on the ground, obviously in pain she knew that she had to do it as well. She took the hilt without any further complaining. Pretty much resigning to her own fate, so to say.

She sighed. There had been so many times she wanted to just kill herself and vanish from this world and now she was too afraid to try it out? She realized that she wouldn’t even die after doing it and there wasn’t any way to circumvent it. She shrugged. “Well then...time to prove I'm not a scaredy-cat!”
The blade itself had a nice blue color and there was this extreme heat coming from it and right at her. She was staring at it for a little longer before she finally drove it into her body.
It did hurt. Even more than she expected it to. She wondered if this pain might be a worse experience than dying was. Some tears she couldn’t suppress where running down her cheeks alongside her pained screams and noises she had to let out, before she simply fell down to the ground, throwing the blade away using the last of her remaining strength.

But as soon as she was lying on the cold ground, Himeko felt something familiar. A certain warmth only one place she had visited so far could made her feel. She opened her eyes to see something, which looked like one of the characters in a book her grandmother in Sapporo was reading to her when she was younger. The snow elf who was bringing the cold weather, she liked so much. “Jack Frost…”, she mumbled, showing the creature a content smile before it vanished again.

The pain she had felt seemed to ease already, but she wasn’t able to get up. Exhaustion made her unable to move resulting in her closing her eyes again.

[burningbow]

Each spirit put Mirai in a deep and nervous state where the only thought was how tight he was in his chains. He could go nowhere he wanted and take no entertainment from this situation. He raised his head and could see the bodies of his schoolmates collapsing on the floor. He was speechless. Now he was keeping a wary eye on the scientists. There were enough of them, and they were watching.

He went on struggling, winding, shifting, adapting. How long before it would be his turn? Now the only noise came from clicking heels on the laboratory floor. Since he was paying no attention to anyone but Miyume, he barely heard them coming to his position and stopping, where the medical staffer watched him and he barely paid her the smallest of looks.

One of the swords was handed to him, and he would rather turn it away. But he received it curiously. He returned his attention back to Miyume as he switched it on. He held it up like a torch, then switched it off...

"Well, I guess it was worth a look."

... and tossed it somewhere.

[harmonizenpc]

The staffer looked at Mirai with those flat eyes, a look that seemed almost annoyed, before going off to retrieve the Evoker he'd so carelessly tossed aside. Yachiyo, a cloud over her brow, seemed about to go rectify the situation, but a hand tapped her shoulder before she could go anywhere.

"Pardon me. May I handle this?"

Frowning sharply, Yachiyo nonetheless ceded the floor, and a small woman in a neatly tailored suit stepped out from her vantage point behind the center of the group to approach the recalcitrant young man.

"Imaizumi-kun?" She smiled and offered a polite bow. "Sekimiya Isora, the guidance counselor. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm well acquainted with your father... As I recall, in fact, he was quite adamant about your being in the first group selected."

[burningbow]

Mirai had been keeping a wary eye on the scientists. Now the space between his ears began to fill, not with defiance at the small woman's words but an obsession about unraveling the truth out of them. He said no word of any kind. He simply could not imagine this ever being the truth. He stood there feeling every bit the young man he was, and detoured into a daydream of confrontation.

It was a struggle, but his mind sparked, found a creative way around the problem.

"I know," he lied. "He told me."

[harmonizenpc]

"Oh, is that so?"

The lightness to her voice made it sound as though the comment were nothing. But the look in her eyes made it clear that she knew he was lying, and she wanted him to know that. "All the more a pity that you won't accept it, then. He was so proud that his son was among our brightest hopes for the future--I would hate to see your relationship damaged over such a small thing."

[burningbow]

Mirai had a growing feeling, a strong belief, that he would not escape using false pretenses. Now he had to think about what the truth could do. First, that it could be twisted to reveal anything he wanted it to say. Second, that it could be well hidden when he wanted it. Truly his father had hidden it well.

She smiled. He smiled. Then he dodged that attempt to yank his chain. Did he look particularly guilt-ridden? "My father... Prove myself to be a worthy son? I wonder what he would say were I to refuse." He sounded curious - and thought about either path. "I am quite sure I'm a disappointment to him already. Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll be going now."

[harmonizenpc]

Again Yachiyo moved to rectify the situation, and again Sekimiya held up a hand to forestall her.

"Then I recommend you take this last chance to redeem yourself. Certainly you two have had your differences in the past; I would hate to see what might happen were you to refuse this opportunity."

[burningbow]

Mirai's mind sparked again, in between the advice Sekimiya was giving him to atone and her warning that he would be outcast. So the two had been talking about him after all, and it was such a certainty that he almost had a smile playing on his lips. But it was wiped from his face when the staffer came over towards him and the wakizashi was offered a second time.

As she held it, a mischief came burning right behind his eyes. They wanted this one thing from him? He might take more from them still. "... Okay. I don't have to do anything else, right? Then you should've said so. It would have saved this misunderstanding," he rebuked, speaking with great boredom. He put his left hand over the hilt of the wakizashi. He did, really and truly, love fooling people.

And it was not long before he was doing what they wanted him to, when he took the blade at last. He switched it back on, a pale blue light unlike the unnatural shades that had come into existence all around them. It heated up the air. He was sweating with intense fear. It appeared on his face for a heartbeat.

The next second, the wakizashi was in his stomach. He buried the weapon to its hilt and cut to the side. He did not move or speak. He was simply crooked there, looking numb. A cold numbness - spreading across him. He imagined his blood running over his clothes. When he pulled the blade out and kept it half-steady in his hand, he had a feeling of something heating up at his core, bright and all-consuming.

Now he felt his mind fill, not with the anger or the pain, but with the primal sense of something trying to escape, and it was raising its head in defiance against his will. There was a strangled gasp from deep within his throat. It hurt so badly coming out! The floor was suddenly growing closer, and he felt it - hard - and rolled over onto his side, clinging to the blade half-embedded in his stomach as everything was going out of focus.

After this the heat reached his heart, and exploded inside him so much that some force seemed to be rolling him over onto his back and burning open his eyes. His vision was red. He was protected by scales, circled and circled around him in a wall, with three serpentine heads coming from the same body that seemed to look around hungrily at everything in the room.

"Varsavarti?"