personavelvetroomdr | (no subject)

a. Shibuya

Sumire's been meaning to expand her wardrobe for a while now, both here and at home. Kasumi chose everything for the both of them, so she only has the vaguest idea of what she's doing.

But! She has a - a date sometime soon! With a cute girl! So surely that means she needs to be able to dress to impress.

She's wandering around various clothing stores, occasionally consulting a packet of paper with labeled illustrations of various cuts of clothing. Sharp eyes might recognise the handwriting as Ann's, but the artwork decidedly is not. Even with that guidance, though, she... could use some help.

b. Tartarus

If Sumire's going to be any kind of use in Midnight-san's Palace, she needs some practice, and it's far better to get that practice with other people than to try to go into a cognitive space alone. Since there are regular Tartarus runs, she's opting to get in on one of those.

Even if the Dark Hour setting in and the high school exploding upward into a giant tower is... kind of alarming.

In proper Phantom Thief tradition, her outfit does change when she steps into the tower, but if anyone was expecting her to match the Violet they know, they're in for a shock. She's still wearing a leotard and long boots, but the leotard and its bolero jacket are a deep greenish-black, and the boots, more obviously green, have a faint snakeskin pattern. Sumire's gloves are blue-violet, and her hair pulls itself back into a bun, emerald-studded pins holding it in place.

She may be new to Persona combat, but she's ready to give it a go.

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Hah! She can already picture Shinji saying that in the more crude terms - and he wasn't wrong. The pulling off of the mask - that's much more elegant, that fits in the theme of what a Persona is so well - so it just has Hamuko laughing.

Even if the Light spell... does damage, rather than attempts an instakill.

"You keep surprising me, Vi!" Hamuko cheered, her Persona blocking a Giant's attempt to swing its blade down on her - the other was too stunned to move. Even if the stone creature resisted physical attacks, she honed in on the stunned one, delivering a critical with a few wide, long and devastating swings of her blade, bowling over the creature with the move and giving it a few extra stabs and slashes once it was down. "Cute persona!!"

Sumire's just relieved that pulling it off this time wasn't quite as harsh as the first time. It still stings a little, but it's not the same bone-deep 'rip your face off, get blood everywhere' feeling.

"Really?" It's both a reaction to Hamuko's surprise and to the compliment. Elphaba's just... just Elphaba.

"Other than that, I'm down to physical attacks, which won't help us much right now." And a heal, but they don't need that yet.

"The Light attacks work great!" Hamuko encouraged anyway. But she'll swap to Alilat, and blast that surviving Giant dead. It's a hefty chunk of SP, but she's got plenty to spare this early in the night.

"Hehe. How're you feeling? Confident? I think we'll be able to work up a sweat tonight pretty easily."

"All right!" She'll... keep that in mind for next time, since Hamuko's power seems to work like Akira-senpai's.

"Well, it's only one battle, but I think things are going well so far. And the company's great."

It's so calmly stated, Vi doesn't realize how cool she is! Hamuko giggles, waving her hand dismissively, pink flushing to her cheeks. "Aww, you flatter me! Don't worry, I'll look out for us tonight. Let's keep going!"

She'll lead the way again!

...wait what, why is Hamuko blushing--

..................oh gods she said that out loud.

Sumire goes bright red, and follows Hamuko's lead.

Hehehe.

Hamuko guided Violet through the floors - she focused on healing or knocking enemies down, letting them power through shadows at a reasonable clip.

For her, it was a drain on SP more than anything - the Skill "Salvation" handily kept them clean of any status and kept their HP near cap even if it was pretty darn pricey. In a floor with a teleporter, Hamuko paused to get a drink from her bag, wiping sweat from her brow and sipping at some canned tea.

"Phew... that's almost two dozen floors in one go. How're you feeling?"

"That really is quite a workout, isn't it?" Sumire says that, but she barely even sounds winded - but then, she's an athlete who just might have the chops to go professional.

(Kasumi certainly did, and Sumire still feels like all she's ever done is struggle to keep up... but her coach's advice has never once implied that she can't do it.)

"Tartarus is always such a drain... you're in such good shape, though, I bet you could conquer Mt. Fuji easily!" Hamuko laughed lightly, digging in her bag for another tea and offering it to Sumire.

"That's - that's a different kind of workout entirely." It's true that Sumire would have an edge on starting that kind of training, simply because she already does work out quite a bit, but climbing a mountain and doing gymnastics are very different things.

She does accept the tea, though. Anything to keep energy up in a time like this.

"There's no exact measurement but... Tartarus does stretch up so high into the sky that I think the highest floors are so exhausting half because of the atmosphere. And half because the Shadows are a huge pain in the ass," she laughed lightly, rubbing sweat off of her neck with her sleeve.

"Because the higher you go, the stronger they get?"

But by the same token, if climbing this thing was a regular experience, surely Hamuko and her friends adjusted to the grind.

"Exactly. They're very strong near the top, and they like to bunch up in teams that don't have convenient shared weaknesses," Hamuko laughed. "When we weren't training it was very 'Augh!!! Get out of my way!!'"

"Would you really have as much fun with it if they were conveniently grouped all the time?"

Sumire's betting not.

"Hahaha! I guess not. It'd get REALLY BORING just pouncing on shadows for ages just for the experience."

"And if it gets too boring, you have the same problem as if it's too frustrating to make progress - you lose all motivation to keep at it." Sumire's been to that party. It is not a fun party.

"That might actually be a problem here now, too... since it's here for us to train rather than its original purpose. No external threat and clock to race," Hamuko chuckled, though a bit less humorously than before. "And thank goodness I haven't heard of people going missing in this Tartarus, either."

"...What, like... just wandering in?"

"No, not exactly - the Shadows would call for people, lure them out of their coffins during the Dark Hour, and draw them into Tartarus. I don't think we ever found out why that was happening..."

"This stuff is scary enough when you know what you're getting into..."

Sumire can only imagine how bad it would've been to stumble in unaware.