the_archivist | Prisma Inbox

I'll see you there then.

[ she's on the second floor in a red t-shirt and jeans--or whatever approximates that in 80s neon hell--with her evoker shoved into her pocket and a cup of coffee in front of her. the open plan of this level is less of a thing, with a layout more based around spread-out alcoves. ]

[Jon shows up after he orders a pot of tea, and settles down into the chair opposite her in the booth.]

How are you? I assume you got out of the Lightless alright.

I've been fine. And... yeah. The demichroma after it was over helped.

So what's your interest in this, anyway?

Can't argue with that. Better way to get money than the usual.

I research this sort of thing. Rituals, fears. Entities like the one you mentioned.

Last time I heard about people researching Shadows, they were trying to end the world. You don't seem like the kind of person who would do that, but...

[ she exhales, before taking a sip of her coffee. ]

So, you said something about recording?

I don't want to end the world. I'm not planning on it. I helped to stop something that was trying to,

[It's not wholly a lie. He doesn't plan to end the world. Hopefully something will destroy him first.]

Right, yes.

[He reaches for the tape recorder in his bag, but hears a click from the closest table where it's already started recording.]

Right... Statement of Minako Arisato regarding the sealing of the entity known as Nyx. Statement recorded direct from subject. Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, recording.

...whenever you're ready.

[ she takes one deep breath, in and out. ]

For about eleven years, there was an hour hidden between midnight and the next minute. It was called the Dark Hour. But to explain where it came from, I have to go back a little. Back in 1999, the Kirijo Group was experimenting on Shadows, trying to use them as a power source or... something. Honestly, I'm fuzzy on some of the details--this part is all things I found out later. I was like six when it happened. The point is... they found out about a prophecy about something called The Fall.

[ she feels the words coming with an ease and force that honestly unnerves her, but she forces a pause to at least invite interjection ]

Edited 2019-07-07 16:31 (UTC)

[There is always a kind of hum that begins when he hears someone give a statement. It settles into his skull, filling it up, until the rest of the world ceases to exist, nothing but white noise. None of it matters in the face of this, this knowledge.

When she pauses, he nods for her to continue, eager to hear it.]

[ and continue she does.

she talks about how long ago, supposedly, nyx bestowed death and night onto the world. she tells him about the foretold end, when one day the collective suffering and death drive of man would become too much to bear, and wake nyx to bring the fall.

she tells him about the kirijo group's scientists deciding that, yes, to die is a deliverance, and so they worked to reform nyx's herald, death, from the shadows they accumulated, and in turn cause the fall. of eiichiro takeba's refusal and sabotage of the experiment--how death inevitably escaped, split into thirteen pieces and scattered to the winds, and the explosion of all of that repressed human misery in the lab warped and concentrated the night, creating the dark hour.

she tells him of the late return trip to iwatodai her family had been making during that first dark hour. of finding herself alone in a stopped car, with two coffins in place of her parents. minako tells him, with an odd bit of fondness in her tone, of the seventh-generation anti-shadow weapon, aigis, dispatched to defeat death's incomplete form. of how their fight on the moonlight bridge set the car aflame. how minako, at six years old, had to watch her parents die horribly, and she barely escaped the car. she tells him of how aigis, in desperation and necessity, sealed the incomplete form of death inside of her, and how the twelve fragments of death's essence--each of a different arcana--reigned over the dark hour for years, staying dormant between each full moon.

she skims over bouncing between different group homes and foster families in the prefecture over the next ten years. it's not important. she comes back to talk about her return to iwatodai in 2009, about the invitation she received to transfer to gekkoukan high school--moonlight hall. her arrival to the dorm during the dark hour, which she'd gotten used to. bloody rain puddles, hazy green night, standing coffins and dead electronics, all normal to her by now.

minako tells him of the pale, dark-haired young boy in the striped shirt--almost like a prisoner--who appeared to her on arrival.

"you're late. i've been waiting a long time. if you want to proceed, then please sign here. it's a contract. there's no need to be scared. it only binds you to accepting full responsibility for your actions."

he had placed a contract in front of her, bearing only a simple bit of text and a blank for her signature: "i chooseth this fate of mine own free will."

and so she had signed. the boy accepted this. "...very well. time is something no one can escape. it delivers us all to the same end. wishing won't make it go away. and so it begins..." with that, he'd vanished, almost like he melted into the dark of the room.

she manages to hold back the tide again, pausing as she glances up to meet jon's eyes, still wondering if there will be something, anything, but that strange interest that manages to be detached and intense all at once. ]

Edited 2019-07-10 20:08 (UTC)

[Part of him, when this is done, will wish to say that he did it for the information, to stave off another ritual in potentia. The noblest of causes, of course.

But right now, there is nothing in him but unflinching and depthless hunger.

He drinks in the tale, feels that chilly night, the darkness pressing in and the blood on the ground. He feels the grief and the fear. So much fear, only partially numbed by the passage of time.

The strange contract signed and sealed and he can taste the hazy half-real dream thing that holds it.

But there is more, and the anticipation curls in his belly and warms him and sustains him and when she pauses he nods.]

Please. Go on.

[ she just nods, and she begins to tell him about a great number of things. her first encounter with other residents of the dorm, just before the lights came back on: yukari takeba and mitsuru kirijo. her first days at school. her first dream of the velvet room, that strange blue space between dream and reality, mind and matter, and her meeting with its master and the woman assisting him--who came into possession of the contract. of the arcana associations of personas, of bonds, of the fool's journey she found herself on.

the attack on the dorm the next night, on the full moon, when one of death's constituent shadows, arcana magician, followed akihiko back. when she took up yukari's evoker at the strange boy's urging and pulled the trigger without hesitation, bringing forth orpheus, mistress of strings, from the sea of souls.

when orpheus was almost immediately ripped apart from the inside by thanatos, a manifestation of the fragment of death inside of her. about how thanatos went berserk immediately, destroying arcana magician with its bare hands. learning after falling unconscious of the nature of her persona ability, fragments of her psyche that would grow along with her bonds. she tells him of waking up in the hospital after more than a week. being told the truth about sees, the specialized extracurricular execution squad. she was selected as field leader and they began exploring the impossible and monolithic tower, tartarus, that emerged every night during the dark hour. on the site where the kirijo group's lab had been. where gekkoukan high now stood. the heart of the dark hour, teeming with shadows.

she takes a sip of her coffee. ]

Sorry, I--need a second.

[He can't help but lean forward as she continues speaking, just a little, elbows resting on the table. His tongue flicks out over his lips briefly, like he's faced with the most delicious meal laid out in front of him.

He wraps his fingers around his own cup, not with the intention of drinking it, but in a way that suggests he's just remembering that he should pretend to be human, and humans do things like move and drink and hold cups.]

Of course. As long as you need.

[It won't be long. He's too hungry to wait for long.]

[ she's... clearly unnerved. but sure enough, once she drains her cup--it's right back to it. minako doesn't know why. so, her telling resumes. she fought. she grew. the team expanded. she viewed sees as her family and made so many connections outside of that. the boy in the striped pajamas gave his name as pharos, eventually, and appeared to her during the dark hour on occasion. she smiles a bit as she mentions aigis coming out of stasis to join them.

they had been told by the school's chairman, sees's advisor, that if they defeated the twelve full moon shadows, the dark hour would end. so they did, and arcana hanged man was defeated in early november, about six months after they started the work.

the dark hour continued. the chairman showed his true colors--he had been one of the kirijo group members seeking to bring the fall. by defeating the shadows, they merged once more with the main body, and death was ejected from her psyche. pharos stopped appearing to her. a boy her own age with a strong resemblance to pharos transferred to gekkoukan. he was kind, looking to enjoy life and took an instant shine to minako. minako cared about him too, but not in the same way. maybe part of her did, it was... complicated. she notes that aigis had an immediate dislike for ryoji, for... probably multiple reasons, but it was firm and emphatic. she thought ryoji was dangerous.

by the end of november, ryoji remembered who and what he was. aigis remembered what she had done in 1999. ryoji was death--surprise!--given human form and emotions by his time in minako's mind. he was the appriser, nyx's herald, doomed to become her avatar and bring the fall. it wasn't something he wanted. he pleaded with sees, with minako, to kill him before he met his destiny--it would erase all of their knowledge of the dark hour, of the time they'd spent together, and let them die painlessly when the fall came without living in fear in the meantime.

they were given a month to decide. a month of brutal fear for all of them. all but her.

eventually, their minds were made up, and minako spoke for all of them when she refused on new year's eve. there was no defeating nyx, ryoji said, but they weren't going to give up. she rubs a hand over her eyes and laughs softly as she tells jon how after understanding their decision, ryoji said goodbye, gave them some advice and made a point of wishing them all the best in the coming year before he left.

january was a month of training, of tying up loose ends, of pushing to the very peak of tartarus, she says--and talks about aigis. how the anti-shadow weapon, the android, had steadily become more and more human. how over the course of january, aigis's devotion to her had become less mechanical. how aigis had fallen in love with her, and she had fallen in return.

the end of january came. ryoji was now a mockery of his former self. nyx's avatar, a dark winged and six-legged thing, descended to meet them at the top of tartarus, sword in hand, face a blank smiling mask with empty eyes. behind it, the full moon seemed impossibly large, warped, managing to appear to be in front of the clouds.

she tells him how the battle with nyx's avatar went, with the avatar cycling through the various arcana of its constituent shadows as the fight progressed. of the wisdom nyx's avatar delivered as it did so in the form of a fool's journey, and she thought that maybe some of it had ryoji coming through--bits of his personality were there in the avatar, but eventually, nyx's true arcana was taken on.

"the moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope. yet, the arcana is the means by which all is revealed... beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end. it matters not who you are... death awaits you."

so they pushed on, she tells him, and seemingly defeated the avatar--only for it to shrug off the damage, say it's a pity that not more humans were like sees, and link up with the main body of nyx. in the moon itself. the fall was imminent. the velvet room again, a summons while she was awake. igor helped her to craft a power from the strength of her bonds, the universe arcana, that could perform the impossible. so she tells him how against the pleading of her teammates and dearest friends, she let herself be drawn up into the moon to confront nyx's main body. a lot of the details of what happened next are...fuzzy, she says. she knows how the universe arcana let her endure attacks that were the infliction of death.

minako tells him, looking off to the side, of how she burned her dread, crafted a great seal out of her soul and her love to contain nyx, to permanently prevent the fall, and to her knowledge annihilated nyx's physical form. ]

After that... honestly, I'm... not clear on how we got out of there. Everyone but me and Aigis forgot the Dark Hour. The others in SEES barely knew who I was. But we made a promise--meet on the school roof on March 5th. Graduation Day. I felt myself getting weaker through February, I was... exhausted, all the time. But I kept going, even though I could barely stay on my feet by the 5th. Aigis was there on the roof. She held me and let me rest, the others finally remembered--I could hear them coming, I caught a glimpse of them...

Then nothing. The last of what kept me going ran out. I fell asleep, I think, but I know I wasn't going to wake up again. Then... I was here.

[The months of combat and heartache culminating in monstrous Avatar of the End. The loss and grief and terror in facing the end of all things, in being forgotten, in losing so much. It's a feast. Everything that he could want laid out of him to dissect and tear apart and devour to sate that ever gnawing hunger inside him.

His breath comes deep and slow, the air thick like honey, and it's only when her story finally ends, that he finally blinks. His gaze is still distant and focused and intent, and the feeling of being watches is very intense, like there's people staring from all sides.]

Thank you.

[ oh minako doesn't care for this shit at all. she shifts a little unsteadily in her seat, and snaps her fingers a few times in front of jon's face after a few seconds of... all this, trying to ignore the feeling. it's not working well. part of her does feel... better, but--

something is very, very wrong about all of this, she knows that now. she realized all too early. ]

Jon.

[Jon takes a shuddering breath in, humanity slowly seeping back into him and he has enough awareness to realise he will hate himself for this later, but right now, he's caught in the sleepy lazy fullness of being sated. His tongues flicks out over his lips again and he finally focuses on her, the person, not the giver of a statement.]

Hm?

What was that, I don't... [ her hand goes to the pocket with her evoker, instinctively. just for the reassuring weight of it. ]

I appreciate you giving me that statement. I- it sounds... familiar in some ways.

I don't know if that's a good thing or not... [ other worlds dealing with things like that isn't a concept she's really fond of. ]

Almost definitely not. Useful to hear about things like this though.

Right. [ she nods, thinking. ] I have my Evoker here. Some of my Personas, too. If that's... I don't know. If seeing might help. [ though she has a sinking feeling, somehow, that seeing directly might be a little redundant. speaking of, in the back of her mind metatron sounds none too pleased about this whole situation. ]

Okay, uh. Not to sound suspicious, since I do actually feel a little better, I think, [ for as long as that'll last ] but--Seriously. What was that?

[ c'mon jon. she just told you Everything. ]

[The Evoker; he remembers the weight of it in her hand, cold metal and psychic force pressed against her temple to drive out the spirit of mind and memory that resides inside her. No, no he doesn't really need to see them directly. But still...]

If you want to show them to me, I wouldn't object.

[He sits back in his chair a little more easily, gaze becoming more human with every blink.]

You gave me a statement.

[ she's seen inhumanity in human form, whether positive or negative. avatars seem to be something they're both familiar with, and if there are other entities in jon's world like... nyx, or terminus, or the end, whatever his equivalent of her is--

there are more avatars. of nyx and others. she doesn't know if jon necessarily is an avatar of something, but there are a lot of strange possibilities and conjectures crossing her mind right now and she likes... none of them? so she's silent for a long moment, fixing him with a wary look. finally: ]

You know what I meant.

Edited 2019-07-13 20:13 (UTC)

[He blinks slowly at her, and maybe he should leave? Would that be the thing to do? Usually he can usher people out of his office. Usually he leaves when the statement is over.]

That's it. You gave me a statement. It was very... satisfying.

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im not gonna lie this is mostly to keep it from being a fuckin novel all at once

Re: im not gonna lie this is mostly to keep it from being a fuckin novel all at once

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