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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, I know. I mean not in the city. There ain't no rails for trains to go through. It don't make sense.

[ It doesn't make sense that it feels like it's moving right now. Or there actually are but he's just blind? He doesn't know whether to trust Arisato or not, but he sounds as confused as Mondo is... and that confuses him further. ]

...Aight. [ He sighs. Let's change the question. ] So where were you guys from?

[ There's really not much more Minato can say about the lack of rails in Hirajiro, so he just shrugs at that, and it's very tempting to just shrug at that next question too, even though he can tell that his lack of response to things will piss Mondo off quickly. ]

Dunno. We've both been on that train for a long time... I've lost track of how many years. A couple hundred? I dunno, it's hard to tell with no sense of time.

[ He really honestly can't answer Mondo's question, aside from these little hints. All he can remember is being with Souji, that so many days must have passed but neither of them changed at all. He certainly was not born in the Velvet Room, at least, but it's been so many years, he can't remember a time before Souji. ]

[ Couple hundred?! That can't be right, if this is the same Arisato he met. The vibes, the vague answers do remind him of the Arisato in Wonderland but... ]

So you haven't been anywhere else?

[ Or does he just not remember? Mondo tries to dig what he can. ]

What's this whole space anyway?

[ He gestures at the train cabin they're in. It gives him the kind of chill that he isn't sure he likes. ]

Um... It's the Velvet Room. ...Train.

[ He was not the one who named it, so don't ask. ]

Sorta just a place to hang out, or if you need me or Souji for anything.

[ 'Velvet Room'... sounds weird, but he won't say much about it. ]

Anything? So you guys 've got some kinda power to grant us stuff, or somethin'?

Yeah, if there's something you need.

[ ...There is no elaboration on what sort of stuff, though, nor what payment is expected or any of how it works. They're capable of lots of cool stuff, but he likes making sure it's things worth making, rather than just throwing out empty promises from the get go. ]

[ ...What he needs. He just wants the people here to be safe. More so the people whom he cares for. ]

Are there ways to make the monsters stop showin' up? ...You know 'bout 'em, right?

Oh, those... Hm... if you're able to beat them all in one night, they won't come back... for that night. Maybe that's a bit too much, for right now.

[ It's not the permanent solution Mondo is hoping to hear, anyways. Other ways to stop making them show up... ]

I guess if you're strong enough, they'll more or less leave you alone. It's kinda early for that too, though. How're you handling yourself in there, anyways?

[ Of course it won't be that easy, huh. ]

...Thought so.

[ He doesn't really care for them coming up to them, but he doesn't want the incident like Terry's to repeat. There hasn't been any signs of monsters that are as tough as the fucker from last time, though, so for now... it's fine. ]

Guess I'm doin' average. I figured each monster has different weaknesses, and they leave you weird items... but that's 'bout it.

Mm... Average is good. Forming teams to cover your weaknesses is also a smart idea.

[ That's pretty good already, Minato thinks, that they're figuring out those weaknesses— taking advantage of them, he hopes, instead of just punching everything on sight like Terry's doing over there. ]

You guys have just been ignoring or selling those items, though, huh...

[ Yeah. He figured that he worked better when navigating the dungeon with other people. He can hold himself up, sure, but it's definitely a lot more efficient when Kido and Kuze are with him. Their elements complement each other. ]

...What 'bout 'em? Are there ways to use 'em?

[ He's mostly troubled with the scrolls that the Onmoraki left them. It's... stinky as fuck and there ain;t much they can do about it, so he always just... leaves them there. Kido and him used it to wipe their hands, lol. ]

I mean, there's always ways to use stuff...

[ It just takes a bit of creativity, and it's not really worth the trouble sometimes when Personas are just as good. But in the case that people get tired and don't have the energy reserves to fight with their Personas... ]

A wadded up scroll stuck inside a lantern to fuel it makes a great grenade. The masks, wearing 'em lowers the Shadows' guard, so you can sneak by or get the first trike. Feathers can be stuffed inside a pillow to bulk it up a bit.

[ The last one has nothing to do with dungeon crawling, but it's stilll a practical application to be considered. ]

If you aren't sure how to use 'em, you can always let me or Souji take a look. Maybe we can make something cool with that junk— just one or two of each, not... ninety nine talons, or whatever.

[ He knows what you videogamers are like, hoarding 99 of the same item and then trying to sell them all at once, and he's not here for that. He's not really sure what the occult shop keeper's planning to do with all that junk either. ]

[ Mondo tries to make mental notes as Arisato gives him all these tips, but we all know he won't remember everything. Maybe just a couple. ]

...You sound like a pro in this. So... what, you know everything 'bout this world?

[ It's starting to become like an interrogation, but Mondo can't help it when he has so many questions about... well, everything. He should probably retort at Arisato's outfit, but he has no leeway for that right now. ]

[ At least Minato's not wearing his clown stuff anymore, just the uniform, or that might've been the first hint that this Minato isn't the one he knew. Hopefully, anyways. Maybe Wonderland Minato would also wear clown suits. ]

Nah, not everything. But I know way more than you guys do. Maybe that makes me sound like a pro?

[ But he does not openly offer any of that knowledge, because it'll all just go in one ear and out the other if he chatters on about anything and everything. Best for both their sake if Mondo has any specific questions. ]

[ Yeah no, the Arisato he knows is always wearing some plain looking clothes that he doesn't pay much attention to to remember what they look like. ]

I guess. It just sounds like you either see everything... or have been through all these before.

[ That's wise, because Mondo would absolutely do that ー forgetting, that is. ]

So you mentioned grenades... we can use weapons to fight those fuckers? Thought only Persona attacks work on 'em.

[ If Minato weren't bound to this uniform, he'd be lounging around in a white tshirt and brown pants the rest of his life, but the uniform is also pretty useful because he can just have a hundred of the exact same thing and never have to worry about matching clothes. It's convenient. ]

I mean... you can use 'em, but they're not going to work to well. Souji and I can imbue some magic to make things more effective against them, though. If you agree to a request of ours, we can provide stuff like that. Nothing too hard. Just things you can collect around town or in the dungeons or whatever, so we can get a look at them and figure out this whole dungeon business.

[ That's kind of like Mondo's clothes... then again he'll just wear white tanktops anyway because dude sweats a lot and it doesn't matter either way. ]

Huh. So kinda like an exchange, huh. Sure, I can do that.

[ It's a compelling idea, but he needs to figure out what to ask for. Hm. ]

's just real frustratin' to me not bein' able to actually join in the fight and just watch the Persona do their thing, ya know? Even if I know it's a part of me. Don'cha ever feel like that?

[ N...no, he doesn't. For him, somebody who doesn't like running around unless he has to, Personas are very convenient. But sometimes it is easier if he just slashes a Shadow apart with a sword because it's less tiring than Personas in the long run, and that's probably what Mondo is getting at. ]

It's more dangerous 'cause you can die, but nothing says you can't join in on the fight. Even if it's just your fists— sometimes, all it takes is a good punch to knock down a Shadow. You just gotta be unafraid to throw yourself in there. And have a good team as backup, so you can heal one another.

[ Unfortunately, Mondo doesn't think all that brightly, he just wants to Fight. He's not all about commanding people to do all the dirty work for him. Plus, Komainu's been working hard, he can't keep relying on him! ]

Huh. We can do that?

[ He's died before, what's one more time? ]

I should try it next time, then.

[ If he were to be given a choice, he'd love to fight with fists the most, but he'd also like to use some skills he picked up in Wonderland. ]

Say, you said you can provide shit, right? Can it be anythin'? Like a handgun?

[ y'all stop dying.......... ]

Mm, yeah, we can make guns. But, for a price: the material required, and... whatever I feel like asking for at the moment.

[ Which could be anything from telling him a bad joke to raising persona stats to buying him a burger, idk ]

Do you want one? ...Do you need one, if you're going to fight with your fists?

Fair. I'll do it. Whaddya want me to do?

[ He probably won't get too weirded out since he already knows Minato is weird... ]

ーYeah, well. I wanna fight close range and long range. I learned how to handle a gun in the place I was in, I don't wanna forget it.

Okay, first you need to get a firearm license.

[ He wants to trust Mondo, but also it's a gun haha. ]

Second, three pounds of steel, and I can take care of the rest of the material. Third...

[ hm, hmm, what does he feel like having ]

Can you build me a motorcycle?

Aah? I gotta get one? Can we even get one here?!

[ For someone who looks pretty haphazard, Arisato's surprisingly proper... Anyway. Steel, huh? ]

Can it be any kinda steel? No preferences?

[ He's pretty impressed though, don't that mean Arisato can make a gun by himself? ]

...Heh. Sure, I can do that. [ He's yet to actually suspect anything because Wonderland Arisato would have known about his self-built motorcycle in a passing. ] Oh but, I wanna see ya makin' the gun!

Yeah, then you won't get in trouble if somebody sees you with a gun at home.

[ I googled it and apparently it takes months to get a firearm license in Japan but we'll just say that the process is much simpler here because it's a small town and people go out to hunt bear or deer or whatever in the forest sometimes. ]

Any steel is fine, since it'll be melted down anyways. Can't watch me make it, though. I'm shy.

[ lmfao no he is not, he just doesn't like people watching ]

...Fair. I'll do somethin' 'bout that.

[ Laughs thanks Orinyan that sounds perfect. ]

Aah?! What kinda bullshit's that? There ain't no way yer shy!! [ He squints. Arisato's mysterious but shy isn't the word Mondo will use to describe him. ] What, you got somethin' bad you'll get in trouble with if someone's watchin'?

premise ⬥ taken ⬥ faq ⬥ navigation

→ 8/13-8/15 Obon Festival

→ 8/15 Castle Ruins and the Shrine

→ 8/15 Welcome to the Velvet Room

→ MOD NOTES

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