persona_uni | (no subject)

a. A day in the life

Welcome to yet another day at Vanderhall University. The sun is up, the trees are green, and it’s a little cold but not all that bad. Go to class, or don’t! It’s your day, to do as you want on this perfectly normal college campus that has nothing wrong with it. Clearly.

b. When the clock strikes twelve...

It’s college. Almost no one is in bed by 10, 11, or even midnight. Currently it’s 11:59, and many students (and non-students) are out and about. Some are at the library, working on late night projects or cramming for a test (or several). Some are probably a little, or more than a little, drunk, wandering around with friends or alone. A few might be in their dorms, watching Netflix or just trolling the internet.

But then the clock strikes midnight...

...and suddenly, everything changes.

That computer you were working on, or that phone midtext? Shuts off. It looks like it’s died, but looking around... no technology around is working. Worse, any people you were talking to, or who were even nearby, are now replaced by coffins according to their height. The moon hangs pale and large in the sky, and the entire world is cast in an eerie green light.

Anyone who’s left awake will have maybe a few minutes to take in their surroundings and panic as a result before something else appears. No matter where they are, they will attract creatures like nothing they will have seen before. Even though they’re completely foreign, anyone with a work sense of self-preservation will have their instincts screaming one thing at them.

Run.

[ooc: The game is open! Please feel free to make a top level for one or both prompts; tag around and have fun!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Naoto didn't name it, alright. (It is rather ridiculous, but then again, so the the Midnight Channel.) As long as he's following her, she doesn't care so much if he believes her. Convincing will wait until it's clear whether or not he has the potential.

"Looking for other people who might have been caught up in this. And to keep moving." Unfortunately, if her understanding of the hour is correct, there likely isn't a good place to hide out from Shadows- though they are less abundant than in Tartarus.

The people who had to deal with the names are usually never the people who make them up. He can sympathize, he guesses. It's not that big of a deal, and at least it's short. He'll follow, glancing around for people when she mentions looking for them. None in the immediate distance.

"You seem to know what's going on. It's not supposed to happen, is it, er...?"

"It shouldn't be happening, no," Naoto says, initially missing the request for her name. She's too caught up in thinking. Why would it be back now? The last time it occurred was because of Minazuki, and before because of that incident on Port Island.

Then she realizes she's gotten caught in her head a bit and looks back at him, a little bit sheepish. "My name is Naoto Shirogane."

"Ah." Ah, introductions? How proper. Well, it'll help that he doesn't have to address her by 'you' or anything, since he tried to avoid coming off as rude. Most of the time. ... Sometimes?

"Yoshino Takigawa," he offers in return, and raises his hand. Should he also offer to shake it? But probably not the time for that.

"If it only happens for an hour, is this risky?"

Naoto will take the two seconds it takes to shake his hand should he offer it, but otherwise she's going to keep walking. ...She's not always very good at the 'interpersonal' thing.

"Which part, exactly?" Everything concerning the Dark Hour is risky, but she's not sure if that's what he meant.

"Which part, you say... I guess everything? I mean, the moon's clearly too close by if it's that big, and it's green, and you're acting like we're suddenly in the setting of a horror movie."

He rolls his shoulders in a shrug.

"I'm asking if our lives are in danger or something like that."

"Unfortunately, yes," she says, and it really does no good to keep the information from him, "The Dark Hour is when Shadows are capable of emerging; they're monsters created from various negative human emotions." She doesn't want to be more specific than that, considering that the ones between the Midnight Channel and what she knew of the Dark Hour seemed to be a little bit different.

"Negative human emotions," he repeats, his voice neutral, if not simply void of any obvious emotion. He narrows his eyes to squint through the darkness, wondering if he might catch a glimpse. A monster, created from... humans? Shadows. Like the psychological term.

"What do they do?"

Naoto is not unaware of the very psychological terminology behind what happens- Shadows and Personas are not terribly subtle terms, after all. "They attack anyone who has the misfortune of being around," she says, "In this case, anyone who isn't concealed in a coffin."

"So if you're alive, you're screwed." He sighs. That sounds oddly gimmicky, but what can he do about it? These aren't the monsters he discovered or came up with. He looks down at his hands -- empty now without a coffee can, and totally unarmed.

"Any chances for survival?"

Naoto nods- but even then, she looks a little uncertain. "There are ways to fight them; unfortunately, those ways aren't available to us at the moment." Neither of them has an Evoker, after all. "The best we can do right now is evade."

"So, in other words, we have a relatively low chance for survival."

He's going to assume those methods for fighting aren't easily available, either, if at all.

"Got it. So we just stay moving."

"We probably stand a better chance that it seems; the shadows seem rather sparse." Which she imagines is a feature of the Dark Hour- most of the shadows there were in Tartarus, so less wandered the streets. "It's only for an hour, and with any luck I will be able to contact someone who can get supplies." Though, Mitsuru does go here- perhaps she's already noticed.

"Does that person know a lot about this situation?" She talks about it like she knows it, but she also talks about it like she knows it differently. If it was a widespread thing, then wouldn't more people talk about it?

"She does," Naoto confirms- though right now she's a little loathe to divulge a name, considering Mitsuru's rather celebrity status, "And she has the capacity to acquire what we would need."

"Isn't that pretty suspicious?" He shoves his hands into his pockets, tilts his head back, peers at the individual before him with a level, unbothered expression. Despite his words, he's not feeling any hostility toward her. She doesn't seem like she's lying, and he doubts she would do anything like attack him. But he says what he thinks. "A weird phenomenon, a person who will conveniently have the answer and the methods to help. You make it sound like whatever this is, there's going to be a need for cooperation."

Even if it's blunt, Naoto can't help but smile a little- that kind of suspicion reminds her a little bit of when this first started for her. Her expression clears quickly enough, shaking her head. "I'm not sure she'll have all the answers, exactly. This isn't the exact same appearance of the Dark Hour, and the one that existed previously should have been eliminated. But... yes. This will need cooperation, from as many people as we can get."

"If I follow you, am I going to be recruited?"

Mild curiosity. It's not wariness. If they need him to help, he'll do it as long as it doesn't endanger... but no, those two aren't here, and one of them can never be here, so he supposes it doesn't matter. Besides, Mahiro wouldn't care. He shrugs away the thought.

"What does it involve?"

"Not if you don't want to be." As far as she can tell, Mitsuru had always made it very clear to those that she worked with that just because they had the potential didn't mean they'd have to fight, and Naoto believes much of the same. It would be helpful if they did, but forcing people into something wasn't really something anyone involved would be alright with.

"Well, ideally besides the physical training and fighting part of it, we'd be trying to locate the source and putting an end to it." But she hasn't seen anything obvious so far.