🌒 [Open]

[wipingallout]

... ... ... ... ?

What is...?

I shouldn't... be awake...


[In the Velvet Room...]

[It's courteous of whatever's going on with Igor's plan here that Hamuko is dressed. She probably shouldn't even have a body... whatever she has going on now... did her body fall comatose without her? Did it die? If it was alive, she surely should be much older. ... ... ... Maybe that all doesn't really matter, right now. She's here, gifted a chance to be around others again. The pinboard catches her attention first, of course. Signs of other people... so many little notes, talking about multiple versions of the same person running around. That's... that's charming... that's fun. ...Even if the notes about Ken Amadas make her sad...]

Hmm... I don't see any other 'me' off the bat...

[She'll take a few minutes once given a pen and some pink paper to doodle a little version of herself, signed with her name and phone number, and add it to the corner of the pinboard.]


[Inaba, Central Shopping District]

[What a fun little town! A charming place... hey, isn't this the town she went to for the volleyball camp? She loved the accommodations, but it's so nice to actually wander the streets and see the little shops. This place is SO rural, Hamuko had never really visited a place this remote, even when jumping between foster homes.] Let's see... what's the good spot for the locals? [No point being a complete tourist shmuck!!]


[Shibuya, Underground Mall]

[Well, since nothing costs anything here... might as well get some cute new clothes, right? Who knows how long she'll be around here, and 'dreaming up' new outfits didn't seem to be a thing. No lucid dreaming here - somehow, Hamuko felt a lot happier with that in mind. Still... the fashion is so different!!]

I just want one cute orange top...!! Is orange out of style? Dang it...


[Iwatodai Dorms]

[Of all of the places she's been having fun goofing off and exploring in, the dorms... she couldn't quite get the courage to open the front. Not just yet.]

Not even Koromaru is out front right now. ...I've gotta apologize...

Comments

[wipingallout]

Killed... they were strong, but not impervious. But Hamuko hadn't made the choice to deal any final blow on them... not even after what they'd done.

But that doesn't mean she wouldn't understand to any degree.

"What about SEES?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"What about them? Oh, did I kill them too? No, so far I let them live. Well, excepted my mother's killer, of course."

[wipingallout]

That smile was... strange. It was hard to read into and gain any real... understanding. Outside of a simple fact, of course - he went through with killing Shinjiro.

"Hmm..."

Hamuko took a moment to take a bite, mulling it over. Deciding her next question, or maybe, leaving the air empty in case Ken felt a little more like talking.

[warped_ken_amada]

After a small moment of silence, Ken spoke again.

"You said you wanted to know how I got there, right? What is it specifically that you seek? What part of who I am now do you wish to understand?"

[wipingallout]

"Well... hmm. It's... a couple of things," Hamuko ventured, carefully. "I don't really know where to start? I guess... the Ken Amada I lived with was a dear friend of mine. But you remind me a lot more of..."

Who in particular? Well...

"...I don't know. Bits and pieces of cruel things, and the way you talk about inevitability reminded me of something."

[warped_ken_amada]

"'Something?' You don't have to dance around the topic like this. I can feel your connection to Nyx, and I'm sure you can feel mine. One of us is a seal, the other a weapon, but we do share this eternal bond."

[wipingallout]

This eternal bond.

And he describes himself as a weapon.

"...I wasn't... sure. I guess I didn't want it to be true. I didn't want that for you," Hamuko admitted quietly, stirring at her rice a bit. "How are you in tune with that... feeling? I don't think I would've placed it. I haven't felt it before now."

[warped_ken_amada]

"With time, simply. I was remade two years ago, that is plenty of time to learn all the subtleties of new feelings."

[wipingallout]

"Two years..."

There's a million follow-up questions, but the first thing that hits her is that that's... that's too much, for her friend. But she has to remind herself - this isn't the Ken she knows.

"What do you mean, 'remade'? By Nyx?"

[warped_ken_amada]

Hmmm, where to start...

"Are you aware of the experiments conducted by the Kirijo Group in 1999?"

[wipingallout]

"...Yes. We learned about it in our pursuit of ending the Dark Hour," Hamuko answered, a dread weight in her chest. "That was the year that Death was sealed inside of me. ...Did that event happen in your world, too?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"...It's not really relevant to our story, but yes, that was also the time Death had been sealed inside a young boy, who later became the field leader of SEES, someone able to wield multiple Personas: Makoto Yuki. Does that mean that in your world, you take his role?"

[wipingallout]

"I think so. In my world, my parents and my brother died in a car crash. Or... I think from Death overturning the car? I don't remember it clearly, and nightmares that I grew up with changed a lot of the details," Hamuko admitted. "Before the tenth anniversary of it, something stirred in me, and I woke up to Personas - and so did Death, for a while."

So it wasn't that Death was active in Ken, right? But bringing up the Kirijo Group...

"...We made the mistake of taking out the Shadows from that experiment. So the Fall was inevitable," she gestured to herself. That's why she became the Seal.

[warped_ken_amada]

"I see. If that makes you feel better, the Shadows would have merged together eventually. You only greatly hastened the process."

But that wasn't what they were here for. He refocused, and continued his story.

"In any case, in that experiment, right before Death got torn into pieces by a remorseful scientist, it glimpsed into possible timelines, and saw the Seal isolating Nyx from humanity's will, defying natural order."

Ken smiled a little.

"Now, Nyx as a whole doesn't really care about this "natural order", but one of the fourteen fragments of Death did. It tried to devise a solution to ensure the Fall would happen regardless of interferences."

[wipingallout]

It could do that...? That... that made Hamuko's blood run ice cold.

"So it set things in motion before it was torn apart?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"It set things in motion because it was torn apart. Death as a whole wouldn't have cared about this vision, but as I explained, that tiny fragment did. It hid and spent years searching for a solution. It tried to find a way to inject a will to cause the Fall directly into Nyx, without it having to be called by humanity. If it managed to do it, it would make any potential future Seal ineffective."

[wipingallout]

"So... where did you come into the picture? Was it dormant and waiting for you?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"I am getting there. Eventually, this fragment concluded it needed a human will, as if it tried to use its own will, it would disappear in the whole. But interfacing a human will directly into Nyx was nearly impossible. If only there could be a link, something compatible with both humans and Nyx..."

Ken's smile got a little wider.

"You know what I'm talking about. Shadows. Coming from Nyx herself, and present in all humans. But to relay the human's will to Nyx, the Shadow needed to be under its host's control. It needed to be a Persona."

Ken then sighed, and looked slightly pensive.

"And so the fragment looked for someone who both had the will to end the world and a Persona. A stable one, as the connection with Nyx would cause enormous strain, so Strega couldn't cut it. It searched, and it searched, for years."

[wipingallout]

It hadn't landed on Mitsuru, is her first thought... was there an incompatibility? Was it that Ken himself had a persona that better matched the fragment?

"...How much of you is that fragment?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"Very little. The fragment was small to begin with. Most of me is... raw Nyx essence. Power in its purest form. Strength to make me the perfect weapon."

[wipingallout]

Keeping herself composed was hard. Hamuko swiped at the corner of her eye, taking a breath.

"How much of you is Ken Amada...?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"The parts that matter. It's my will that drives the whole. It's just that that whole is no longer human. But ultimately, I'm still me."

[wipingallout]

Ah.

Hamuko's not sure which would've been worse - more of Ken Amada still present, that this was all him... or if Ken had been mostly subsumed into something else. But the sadness poured over anyway.

Ken, who loved his hamster... who liked sweets, and Featherman, and reminisced about what his mom used to cook for him and for herself. One of her friends, someone else that'd had to grow up far, far too fast. Hastily she turned her head, wiping at her face with the end of her sleeve.

It's not fair.

None of it was ever fair.

"Sorry... I'm sorry," she murmured, trying to recompose herself. Trying to apologize that, somehow, for whatever reason, she wasn't there for him even if that would have been utterly impossible. Feelings weren't always rational, like that. "...How's the omurice?"

[warped_ken_amada]

"What are you apologizing for? This is the best thing that could have happened to me."

[wipingallout]

She just shook her head. Even if she covered up her eyes, trying to keep tears from flowing, she gently gestured to the food in Ken's lap.

"Eat up, before it gets cold," she said.