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- *event log,
- animal academy: sasuke sagami,
- danganronpa: kokichi ouma,
- danganronpa: mondo oowada,
- fate/: enkidu,
- girls' frontline: ro635,
- hunter x hunter: killua zoldyck,
- kagepro: tsubomi kido,
- megaten: akira kurusu,
- megaten: hibiki kuze,
- megaten: rei,
- night in the woods: mae borowski,
- npc: minato arisato,
- npc: souji seta,
- original: terrence nowell,
- pokemon: red,
- the world ends with you: neku sakuraba
AUGUST EVENT PT 2
premise ⬥ taken ⬥ faq ⬥ navigation
→ 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.
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Or in this case, she returns the favor by jabbing her elbow sharp into his side ]
A masochist and a sadist, a perfect pair, then.
[ Die, Hibiki. It's terrible, but being allowed to vent like this does make her feel better. ]
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[ She knows exactly where to jab to make it make it hurt the most, that's impressive. And yet, he's smiling while rubbing his side. ]
Earlier, I was just thinking that this place isn't that much different from home. There's no Internet, but there are school festivals and they celebrate Obon...it feels a bit weird.
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Well... Japan is Japan, I suppose. [ Even though Sasuke pointed out that this is no Japan. ] Even if the cities are different, we're all bound by similar cultures.
[ She gets up to stretch her legs, and make sure her lantern's still okay to be floated without sinking prematurely. ]
What're you getting all nostalgic for, anyways? Had somebody who'd beat you up for saying stupid things at home too?
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[ He's saying it even though he's never been to the countryside before. ]
Say...have you meet a girl called Airi?
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Airi? Red hair, very noisy? Yeah, I met up with her some time a couple of weeks ago, but we didn't keep in touch after. Do you know her?
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Yeah, she's...we're from the same world. She didn't hesitate to punch or kick someone if it was necessary.
[ Using past tense for this feels the worst. ]
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Did something— What happened to her? I should've kept a closer eye on her...
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[ Hibiki sighs softly and rubs his forehead with his palm. ]
I'm not sure, but she's acting like a zombie. Well, she is alive just...there's no point talking to her or anything.
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"No point talking to her"?! I've got people I knew who turned like that too, but just because they're unresponsive doesn't mean you give up on them and abandon them! There were people in town who were like that, and look around you! They got better! If she's your friend, don't you dare give up on her and decide there's no point trying to talk to them and get through to them!
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...It's those monsters. Lots of people got better after we beat up the guy on the very last floor. Even though everybody disappears at midnight, the monsters go around town and into people's houses and that can't be healthy. We have to work harder to get rid of them.
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[ Deep down, he's not all that surprised that her reaction was so passionate, but it doesn't make him feel any less bad. Hibiki isn't sure if that's what she wants either, but he does try to put his hand on top of her shoulder. ]
We'll get rid of them all. Together.
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[ Her shoulders stiffen at the weight, but then drop again, the fight leaving her at the apology. She doesn't really want to hear it- she'd rather hear a sorry if it's about being behind all those monsters, not a sorry for hurting her feelings that are going to get hurt either way because it's so easy to. But an apology is an apology and she'll take it. ]
You work well with your Persona and you're strong, so we'll be counting on you to fight. If you ever feel like giving up or don't know what to do, come find me: I'll knock some sense into you.
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[ Knocking some sense into him sounds like a time of his life, but after a moment Hibiki adds: ]
I'm not giving up on anyone either now or ever. We all have friends we want to protect.
[ Friends waiting for them back at home...but he leaves that unsaid. ]
I might come to you because I'm a sadist, though.
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You can't protect anybody if I break your feet or your ribs, so please make an effort to keep that at bay.
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Ah, yes. I'll try my best.
[ The real question should be is his best enough... ]
Would you really break my ribs...?
[ He's not asking about his feet for a reason. ]
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[ Like right now, he's sort of toeing the line, and Kido reaches forward to flick him on the forehead. ]
Just get stronger so my kicks won't break bone, and you'll be fine, right?
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[ Since he's not sure if dungeon experience will make his bones stronger. ]
I'll get back to you when I'm done...somehow...
[ Probably just a few days later!! ]
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Yeah, well, thanks. I'll be around. It's a small town, so we'll run into each other some way or another.
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You could always give me your number.
[ How subtle. ]
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Here, copy this over to your phone.
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|-----------|
| HI |
|-----------|
(\__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ づ
[ Kido made a mistake. ]
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She taps back a reply: ]
Goodbye.
[ And then she walks away, byeeeeeeee gotta go get rid of this lantern and then escape to go home ]