Operation: Uncage the Sparrow!

[midnightmaiden]

Kasumi, now more than ever, is adamant about doing something right. She'll prove her worth. She'll go back to her roots as the Midnight Maiden, solving problems on behalf of the unfortunate!

Stocked up on Goho-M's, healing items, and other assorted odds and ends, she sends a message to Makoto to join her in Tartarus when the Dark Hour arrives. They're doing it tonight!

That'll prove she's not just some puppet.

And so she waits outside of Gekkoukan High School for the clock to strike midnight and for the Dark Hour to commence. She's got a rapier at the ready, though she doubts that she'll need it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Comments

[pheasantboy]

And she is so close. He gazes back at her, depthless, wondering. But it goes nowhere.

"I suppose that would be useful. I don't spend too much time thinking about things like that. I know you're going to say I should."

He reaches out for one of the little knickknacks on the table, some coloured glass marbles in a bowl. They skate between his fingers. The cognition who left must have liked them. Even if they aren't real, as the others say, somebody created these marbles for her, and not something else.

He considers Kasumi. She saved him, when she could have left him. "It's all right, Yoshizawa-san. I know you want to help. And, remember, you brought me out of that tower, when nobody else would."

[midnightmaiden]

"...I'm sure somebody would've eventually. Crow-senpai, maybe? He was concerned when he found out. I think he's just a little tired." Kasumi hasn't pried too much. Being around him can be... awkward, but she could tell that people like Magpie were keeping him busy. It came up when she visited Ren. "I just don't want you to feel like I'm trying to shove you under a microscope. Or make you feel like you're less than human."

[pheasantboy]

Again, he watches her, steady and solemn as she twists in the wind.

"Because you're too used to feeling that way yourself, right?"

[midnightmaiden]

"Only since I came here and met... that doppelganger and the other me." It was fine before then. No reason to question. It's only now that it's a problem.

[pheasantboy]

He hums understanding. Both of them, surrounded by other who just don't get it. Regardless of the details of her situation, he agrees the decisions should be hers.

"You asked if it bothered me, as a detective. To be faced with a mystery I can't solve. Of course it does. To be faced with things I don't remember, with events that don't make sense... it seems so important to do something about that. As if I was born to do it.

"But those things don't bother me for long. It's the attitudes of others that get to me. All the little looks, you know."

He suspects she knows very well.

[midnightmaiden]

"...I guess when you really think about it, those reactions are more personal. The mysteries are more abstract. And I bet there's a part of you who feels like needing to get those answers to be accepted is unfair, too."

Because why should he have to to be treated as a person? Why can't he just be?