AUGUST EVENT PT 2

[citta]

AUGUST EVENT PT 2

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→ 8/13-8/15 Obon Festival

Lanterns start to dot the streets, hung by the front door of each house who still have an able body to hang them. From there, the lights spread outward, neighbors visiting neighbors with lanterns in hand and prayers in their hearts that the light will be enough to guide the spirits of their ancestors home, enough to heal their loved ones and bring the health and energy back into town.

The first day of Obon passes in silence.

On the second day, the oppressive heat starts to lift, skies clear with a cool breeze that passes through the streets and rocks the lanterns at each door, which opens as people trickle out onto the street. By late afternoon, the entire town is alive with chatter and laughter, the townspeople bustling about to get their late start in setting up the festival stalls and the large stage set on the lakeside in front of the school. Some of the missing have started turning up again, with claims of having recovered from illness or returned from a trip, and more than that, visiting relatives are introduced to one another despite no car or plane ever seen entering or leaving the town. With most businesses closed for the Obon holiday, the second day is spent catching up with one another, making last-minute purchases and renting yukata, and finishing preparations so that both the spirits of their ancestors and those who have become well enough again may celebrate with all in full. By the end of the night, everybody has returned, the town restored.

Loud drumming can be heard the morning of the third day, taiko drum performances starting early and lasting late into the evening. The steady beat fills the air no matter where in town you are, but standing right in front of the stage, it can be felt in your chest, as if the entire town's hearts beat as one. Though less compared to during the tanabata festival, stalls are set up for Obon and largely consist of games and shops selling toys and trinkets, food stalls focusing on small treats rather than meals. With the taiko performance in the background to keep the rhythm, folk dances are held on the stage and in the parks and are open to anybody, participants being pulled in from the streets to join the circles to dance. Traditional clothing like yukata can be seen worn by almost everybody, from young children to great-grandparents, as they gather around the lake at sundown to say farewell to the spirits. Lanterns are lit and sent off into the lake, where they gather at the center and burn bright until there's nothing left to burn, and the town settles into warm, sleepy darkness.

When night falls and the townspeople begin to clean up, retrieve the lanterns, and go home, the breeze picks up a little, soft and cool, cutting paths throughout town much like the freezing gusts of winds that first Lockdown night. Rather than to the schoolhouse, however, the wind gently nudges you towards the forest, towards the edge of forest blocked by caution tape to keep people out of scorched earth and blackened trees. Only one lantern is left untouched, hanging on a tree branch just before this forest fire site, fallen trees cleared out to widen the path, that leads into the forest.

Soon, the full moon hangs high in the sky, shining its light straight down onto the castle ruins below.

→ 8/15 Castle Ruins and the Shrine

Carried along by the breeze that winds through the streets and blows down this path, finding your way through the forest becomes simple, and soon the trees part to reveal the castle ruins hidden away inside the forest -—at least, what used to be castle ruins. The changes come unexpected and instantly, in a blink of an eye during the day for those who still live in the castle, and a sight to behold for those who haven't returned in a long time until tonight.

Entering the castle reveals a repaired foundation and pillars which stand whole again, stairs to the second floor still broken but with all the rubble underneath cleared away, the air inside the castle no longer choking with dust. In the main hall, red candlesticks line the perimeter of the room, the glow of fire illuminating the murals that have shown up on previously blank walls, images faintly visible under a layer of yellow mildew. If you carefully scrub them clean, they depict a small village surrounded by farmland, a familiar lake at the center, flocks of crows adorning the skies with one large crow standing on the peak of the mountain overlooking the town.

At the center of the castle's main hall, a mother bear and two cubs can be seen snoozing in the middle of the room, sleeping next to a meter-by-meter square that has been cut into the stone ground. If you can get the bears to leave or are brave enough to approach without waking them up, you will see that hinges on one edge suggest it to be a door, but there is no handle and no way to lift the panel, nor can the door or the surrounding area be damaged no matter how hard you try. Upon closer inspection, there are four impressions on each corner of the door matching the size and shape of the ofuda received as a reward for defeating the dungeon boss, currently in RO's possession. Placing the ofuda on one of the slots causes the edges of the door to glow bright blue for a second before the light disappears, and the ofuda turns to stone, just like the door and the castle around them. Nothing more seems to happen after, the other three impressions remaining exactly the same.

All throughout the night, the candles burn along the perimeter of the hall, one hundred in total that cast the room in warm light. Whether you remember the fortune teller's words or are simply chatting with one another and catching up on all that's happened during your time here, each time a story is shared, a light blows out, leaving the castle dimmer and dimmer as the night goes on. The darker it gets, the more restless you begin to feel, Personas becoming more agitated and prone to lash out as the clock ticks closer to midnight. Those who choose to take a walk to the shrine to cool their heads find that the shrine looks different from before too, revealing unbroken steps, a thoroughly swept floor, stone lanterns whole instead of crumbled and broken, and the water basin filled to the brim with clear water that almost seems to sparkle in the moonlight— a far cry from how broken down the abandoned shrine appeared just a month before. There's still work to be done, however: in particular, the sign- restored and painted over in pure white so that it looks almost new- still displays no name. The paint is still a little wet, so perhaps somebody is just waiting for the paint to dry...

The night seems to drag on, but as long as people keep talking, no matter where they are in the castle or at the shrine, the candle lights continue going out until they count down to zero.

→ 8/15 Welcome to the Velvet Room

When the last of the candles go out and the castle plunges into complete darkness, a bright blue light begins to shine from beside the throne, taking on the form of a doorway set into the wall. Without fanfare, two figures step out, the taller with silver hair and a kind face, and the other with golden eyes that peek past long bangs to squint at everybody inside the castle. ...The latter immediately turns around back through the doorway to leave his partner to explain things to everybody here, who takes a seat on the throne as if he belongs there all along. If you have questions, come talk to this guy; but otherwise, there's nothing stopping you from going through the doorway to follow after the other one.

This isn't the only doorway that opens up: blue light shines between the pillars of the torii at the shrine, and similar doorways appear scattered throughout town to replace your bedroom door, the bathroom stall in a store you've run into for an emergency, set into the wall in an alleyway where there was no door before, even at the first floor of the school dungeon if for whatever reason you're there. Regardless of which door you enter, stepping through any doorway brings you into a small room, a bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of some sort of non-alcoholic mixed drink in a bucket of ice sitting on the table in the middle of the room, two chairs flanking the table and a plush velvet couch against one wall. The ground shakes and rocks as you look around, curtains pulled aside to reveal inky blue darkness, spots of light floating past the windows out in the distance like stars. Each person arrives in their own room, a placard with their name and arcana set on the door labelling it theirs.

Down the end of the hall, the door opens up into a brightly lit lounge, wide windows set along the walls although the landscape outside remains as dark as ever. The lounge is filled with chairs and couches covered in the same blue velvet as the rooms and music seems to fill your entire being rather than just your ears. Passing through the door at the end of the lounge brings you to the conductor's cab where a young man sits, changed out of his costume into a more formal uniform in dark blues with a train engineer cap pulled low over closed eyes, slouched far back on his seat with his feet up on the control panel. Despite all that, however, the train simply zips along, the rail just barely visible from the front window of the cab. The attendant tilts his head your way, looking rather irritable, silent until you speak first.

→ MOD NOTES

⬥ As a reminder, characters are more likely to lose control of their Personas around the time of the full moon (8/15) but this can also occur at any time, especially with internal conflict and during Lockdown. This is an optional mechanic. Personas will also temporarily disappear once the character enters the Velvet Room.
⬥ The two Velvet Room assistants will have their own top-levels below for those who wish to speak with them in this log, and they may be contacted at the NPC contact page at any time as well. The NPC contact page will serve as an "IC inbox" for the characters to freely interact with the attendants to ask questions, receive and fill requests, hang out, etc. Please read this page carefully for more information about accessing the Velvet Room.
⬥ While each attendant may have individual requests for those who ask for them, they will also give tasks for the characters as a whole. These general requests will be listed on the NPC contact page at the beginning of each month. Successful completion of a request will earn characters rewards, and there is no time limit for completion.

Comments

[overstrain]

[ Schrödinger's Rei made me cackle at 2 in the morning... i'm dead ]

Probably not... He summoned Vassago too, so it confirmed that he didn't necessarily have to hurt the owner to get their Personas.

[ But you can't really deny it either at the same time. It really is Schrödinger's Rei... ]

[reveilation]

[ Go to sleep, Haki... also Schrödinger's Rei means Ichi still has the power to make things not okay lmfao ]

Right. And I was fine too, back then. Souji said they're not bound by the same "rules" as we are, though. So they can summon whatever, without needing those charms. That's kind of unfair...

[overstrain]

They said they were some kind of guide, but they really want us to think for ourselves!

[ You know thinking isn't his strong suit....

ichi pls have mercy ]

[reveilation]

Do we have enough pieces to figure everything out for ourselves, though? If all we have to do is think, that's a great hint, isn't it?

[ Souji was just about to tell her something about how to get home too, I just remembered, so I'll wait for that before tagging back into this thread haha ]

[overstrain]

Do we...? I feel like what we have isn't enough. I was being lectured for several minutes and he said I gave off a weak answer, but... I'm not sure if it was the correct answer anyway.

[ He's pretty close to throwing his hands up in the air. He'd rather go punt more shadows than attend more lectures... ]

Also he was changing right in front of me as he was giving me the lecture!

[ haha............... ]

[reveilation]

[ WHY TELL HER THIS ]

Why were you just standing there while he changed?!!

[overstrain]

[ TO ADD MORE SHAMELESS POINTS TO SOUJI MAYBE??? ]

I wasn't! I was sitting!!

[ That. That doesn't help. ]

[reveilation]

That's even worse!!!

[ SOUJI ISN'T THE ONE GETTING SHAMELESS POINTS RIGHT NOW TERRY ]

[overstrain]

I WASN'T LOOKING!! There was a table!!

[ AAAAAAAAAAAA ]

[reveilation]

YOU STARED AT THE TABLE INSTEAD OF LEAVING?? TERRENCE?????

[ THE PROBLEM IS THE SITTING, NOT THE STARING ]

[overstrain]

He was in the middle of his lecture!! I can't just leave mid-lecture!! He might have said something important!!

[ Terry is a bad, bad student ]

[reveilation]

[ Terry is a bad student and Souji is a bad teacher and Kido is losing her mind at all of this ]

You can leave mid-lecture and he can say what's important after!!

[ oh my god. Kido wants to either laugh or cry and she can't decide which so she just buries her face in her hands and makes a despairing noise into her hands ]

He was just teasing you, Terrence...

[overstrain]

He looked so serious about it...

[ souji why ]

And he's the one that said I overreacted, so I thought he didn't care at all.

[reveilation]

You probably did overreact.

[ She doesn't have to be there to imagine him screaming like he was screaming two seconds ago. ]

You really didn't have anything like siblings at all, huh?

[overstrain]

[ He grumbles a bit because he can't argue with that... ]

I never had anything like a family or siblings, but I heard it's nice sometimes.

[reveilation]

...It's nice sometimes.

[ For somebody who doesn't have a family, who doesn't know how to approach a family meal and doesn't know how to handle the sort of teasing common between siblings, it must sound nice all the time. So it's probably insensitive of her to say it like this, Kido thinks, as somebody who's had bits and pieces of lots of family. ]

But, stuff like that... People tease and argue and stuff when they're comfortable with somebody, right? So... I don't think he hates you or anything like that.

[overstrain]

... I didn't really think he hated me?

[ Terry's confused, but. Well. Hm. He thinks about Kido's words for a bit. ]

But yeah, that's also a thing between friends, isn't it? I think I get that much at least.

[reveilation]

Hm, yeah. Well, that's good, in any case. It's why you two are sort of alike.

[ She closes her eyes, nodding a bit to herself. ...That's really all she has to say about it. ]

[overstrain]

Because...

[ ... ]

We're both friendly?

[reveilation]

Huh? No, he's not really all that friendly, is he?

[ Souji sucks /: ]

[overstrain]

I think he is? Though a bit frustrating...

[ Considering... ]

He doesn't make me want to throttle him on sight! I think that's something.

[reveilation]

[ Okay, Kido can't help but let out a short laugh at that ]

What a low bar! Is there anybody who didn't pass the throttling test?

[ His original? Minato?? What does it take for Terry to not find somebody to be friendly ]

[overstrain]

[ Terry laughs a little. ]

Well...

[ He punted Kokichi's fox Persona on sight, but he's pretty sure that doesn't count. ]

Yeah, quite a bit back where I came from some time ago. I was a lot more violent then.

[reveilation]

[ Kido had also punched Kokichi first thing before she'd even fully opened her eyes, so, fair. She's... not really one to talk about being violent, though. ]

Hmm, that's something we all grow out of, I think. I used to be pretty bad, you know?

[ Like, worse than she is right now. If he can imagine. ]

[overstrain]

[ Yeah, Terry's trying to imagine it and... wow. That sounds painful. Very painful. ]

How bad did you get?

[ He still wants to know anyway or otherwise he'll be filling in with his imagination as Kido, the yakuza subordinate or some shit ]