estoria | [open] And as you know I have a gigantic heart

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[open] And as you know I have a gigantic heart

Who: Rise Kujikawa and OPEN!
When: 7/19-7/23 (IC) aka event-time!
Where: Various prompts
What: It started with a goat. Then it all just went downhill from there. AKA Rise Kujikawa and the mysterious memories event.
Rating/Warning: N/A for now, will update if needed

[It started with a goat. Honestly, at first she thought that she'd dreamed it, that maybe it was just an extension of the white feathers she saw in her dreams recently but no. She wakes up and there sure is a wispy little goat at the foot of her bed. She stares…and the goat bleats flatly at her. It's a sad-looking thing, but as she tries to get closer it seems to disappear immediately.

Wow. That's weird.]

A.) is for Academy

[It's a normal school day. With everyone back from the dead and her worries a little more at ease, she can concentrate a little easier. It's quiet in the Study Hall period of the day and she's working on some homework when she spots the goat out of the corner of her eye…approaching a wastebasket. She hasn't realized it can't change much of the world around them, but she'll get that memo as soon as she gets up and stealthily tries to approach the animal.

Of course, the goat suddenly moves and it startles her and her arms suddenly pinwheel as she yells, trying to balance on her high heels so she doesn't bite the dust. Are you going to catch her? Let her fall? Fall with her? Sorry about all of that.]

B.) is for Bad Places Rise Shouldn't Wander

[This goat is seriously way more trouble than it's worth. She's not sure where it came from or why it's in such poor condition, but she's taken to following it around the colony to make sure it doesn't get too far out of her sight. It's for that reason she doesn't even realize she winds up right in the middle of the Pleasure District. The goat's paused, and if it's possible it gives her a knowing look despite its lack of real expression.

(Is it possible that this goat knows about her dungeon?)

She ends up in a staring contest with the goat, narrowing her eyes when she realizes she's standing in front of a love hotel.]

Don't even think about it. [She sure was talking to the goat, but it's not that hard to overhear her.]

C.) is for Cafe

[Everything is exhausting. She's sprawled over a chair almost ungracefully and that goat hovers around near her feet, but at least its not moving. On occasion, she'll be writing neat lines in a notebook and sipping her tea, though she frowning in concentration. There's an extra chair at her table though. Feel free to ask if you can join her or even be nosy about what she's doing, she won't mind.

On the other hand, if you're a friend or even someone she recognizes, she'll look up and smile brightly before pushing the chair out with her foot.]

Hey, over here!

D.) is for Dancing Games

[Sometimes Rise likes to play games. Sometimes Rise likes to use the game station to practice and when she gets bored of dancing in her room this is the next best thing. However, she's found at the game center today in front of one of the dancing games, and as she watches the colorful arrows fall across the screen she's continually missing and whines in frustration.]

Ugh, come on! This should be really easy! [And it would be…if she actually remembered how to dance. It's like all memories and coordination have left her and she's left trying really hard to fix that. Help her? Challenge her? Question her?]

E.) is for Everything Else!

[If you want to run into her while she's out shopping, at work as a model/karaoke star/tofu connoisseur, or if housemates want to do apartment shenanigans here you go!]

[ooc: ALSO if you have a preference on your type of memory please let me know! Otherwise I will be randomizing. Thank you!]

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[He wheels in and sets the brake, resting one elbow on the table in front of him. She seems just as at ease as the first time he met, and it's kind of... nice.]

Yeah, that was some kinda shitstorm.

[He's definitely not going to admit he might have caused the walls to start falling, nope.]

Likewise.

[As for her question, he supposed he'd been holding on to the hope that he might find Gyro. Or Hot Pants. Or hell, he'd even settle for Diego right about now, but none of them were anywhere in this new place. It left everything feeling disjointed.]

No. He's not here.

[He wasn't feeling hopeful enough to say "not yet," or "I'm still looking," even if he was.]

What about you?

And that was one of the easier games. [But she's quick to move past that because it's a little sad, isn't it? He hadn't found anyone really familiar to him and that had to make things a little harder. This time it's harder not to look a little sad on his behalf if only because she knows how disappointing it can be to try and find someone and realize they aren't there.]

People seem to show up once a month. Maybe he'll be here next time, sooner than you know it. [That might be too optimistic but it's better than the alternative that maybe things really are that bad.] We ended up finding Yosuke-senpai at least. But another one of my friends from home left right before everyone new showed up. Maybe they trade people out. [It's possible. When she first arrived, Yosuke had only been around for a few days before he disappeared too.] There were other friends in the test game before the one you arrived in. I'm hoping to see them again sometime soon.

[Johnny makes a sour face at that. That was easy? Being left nearly-naked on a beach where the buildings collapsed around you, only to get out to the ocean where giant stupid-looking sea creatures tried to eat you? No thank you. Maybe if he had Slow Dancer with him, but even then, it was not something he'd be volunteering for anytime soon.]

They got some screwed up ideas of what makes a fun game in the future, I gotta say.

[He does seem to brighten a little at the idea that he's only gotten here ahead of his friend. That was a lot more acceptable than being the only survivor.]

Wait- What do you mean? Where did they go?

[On the bright side, Johnny missed the faux-Hunger Games.] Not all games are like that! There's a lot at the game center that aren't ViViD that look pretty fun if you're ever interested in that kind of thing. Some of my friends spend time there.

[But she puffs out her cheeks in mild frustration.] But that part I don't know. I can't really tell where they are but they didn't show up in the game I met you in, and they're not here. But we definitely saw them. [Naoto, specifically. Where was the tiny detective now?] And another friend was here but wasn't here for long. Only a couple of weeks. None of us really know why they choose when to take people back to the Nexus Code.

I'll pass.

[His first experience with the game was more than enough. He couldn't imagine a person who'd do it for fun. How the hell was that fun?

He gets the sense she knows something, but since so many of the words and notions are new to him, it's hard to tell. Nexus Code? A place? Strange name for a place. They'd kind of talked about it in that presentation, hadn't they? Before he'd arrived in the town proper, but it hadn't made sense then, and it still seemed a vague idea at best.]

So... the only way to meet your friends is in the games? Is that what you're saying? Can't we find where this Nexus Code place is and... I dunno, bust 'em out?

[She shakes her head and it's a little sad then.] I asked Yu-senpai when I first got here and he said there wasn't a way for us to access the Nexus when people get pulled out of the colony. People are still looking into it but so far nothing. The only way people can get back into the colony is through ViViD...it's why we check it for new people every month.

[It was how she found Johnny, after all. And Teddie and Yosuke.

By now, that goat is curiously sniffing Johnny's chair, trying to get a better sense of what it is. Rise's eyes drift toward it and she shifts her foot, trying to nudge the goat away. If anything, it looks like she's kicking thin air.] That happens about every month, but people can get pulled out at any time.

[Johnny considered that for a moment. It was frustrating as hell, but it sounded like all they could do was wait. It suddenly made a lot more sense why people would actually voluntarily go back to these virtual games. He had been dead-set against it, but if it meant finding Gyro or the others...]

Is there any way to know who has already been here before?

[She seemed kind of fidgety, was he asking too many questions? They did hardly know each-other and he'd kind of intruded on her good graces. He hoped she wasn't uncomfortable.]

Pulled out? What do you mean?

[And she hopes she doesn't look too foolish, especially since the goat's definitely not paying attention to her.]

Umm...hm. I don't know, actually. I guess you could look through the network but that would take forever. There's this guy here who created the app for when people arrive and disappear from the city but I don't know if that takes into account everybody who's been here before. Your best bet is just to ask around and hope. It's a pretty hard thing to figure out.

And I mean pulled out like...you go to bed one night, and the next morning a friend of yours could completely disappear without warning. That happened to Yosuke-senpai right after I got here. We were all getting ready for bed and Yu-senpai noticed his room was empty. You never know when people will disappear.

[It's kinda scary, really. By this time the goat's very close, and it's with one headbutt to Johnny's knee that he'll find himself being tugged into one of Rise's memories.

On the bright side, the memory is a little happier than the subject they'd been speaking of. Rise seems to be leading a group of four teenagers to a shrine, stopping in front of them before she begins to explain what happened to her the night she was kidnapped. There's a lot to say here, a lot to think over, but it's clear that there's a friendship that's grown here.

"I'm glad you're the first people I got to know here," she says to the group, smiling cheerfully at a girl with short brown hair.

"Oh yeah, we almost forgot your present. The Teddie Glasses. Um, you don't have to take them, but… Well…" Chie pauses, waiting for Yu to act. He leans over, presenting a pair of pink glasses to Rise.

"Senpai… Would you be struggling without my help? I can help you in that world, right? With my power…So wouldn't it be better if I joined the team?"

"These are kinda proof that you're one of us…" The boy with headphones around his neck, Yosuke, trails off, doing his best not to give her another goofy grin.

"I see… I do remember you all wearing glasses over there. Thanks, Senpai. Now I'm part of the team, too!" The glasses go into her pocket and her hands fold behind her back. " I'll be going to Yasogami High, starting tomorrow. But I don't have any friends yet, so don't ignore me, alright? I do owe you my life, so… you know…"

It's Yu's turn to interject, a cool look on his face as he assures her, "Leave it to me."

" W-Wow… I didn't realize you were so cool, Senpai." It's enough for her to blush faintly, stars in her eyes as she watches Yu closely. But Yosuke's quick to draw attention to himself again.

"This sure is a rough time to transfer here, though. The kidnappings, King Moron's death… All that, and exams are soon, too." He sighed. "Exams… Now I'm depressing myself. I wonder if there's any chance they'll be cancelled…"

Chie shakes her head woefully. "I doubt it. They always hold exams, rain or shine…" And while the older teens gripe and complain about the pending exams, Rise can only laugh in response.

"I almost got killed by those monsters. Compared to that, exams are nothing!"

Yosuke barely gets the chance to say, "Alrighty then, let's discuss the case some more tomorrow at our special headquarters." before a tall, blond boy appears, interrupting their meeting to inform them that someone named Teddie is on his fifth topsicle.

The memory fades from there, bringing Johnny back to the cafe and Rise wincing at the sudden pain in her head.]

[Though the answers weren't exactly great, at least Rise was honest. It wasn't too much worse than he'd expected. Though the technology here made it easy to get the word out quickly, sometimes you had to do things the "old-fashioned" way(It still grated a little to have everything he'd grown up knowing be called "old-fashioned" but that was a whole other thing).

More chilling though, was the idea that they might be taken away in the night without a trace like that. One moment there, another gone? It made him uneasy and-

Without warning, he was somewhere else. A town maybe, nowhere he recognized. The buildings were modern, but not so sharp and sleek as the ones in Cerealia. Rise's voice was the only one he recognized, but the situation- had she been kidnapped? What was the meaning behind the glasses? Who the hell was King Moron?

Johnny tried to shake himself free of the invasive memory, but it continued until someone came running in talking about Teddie and topsicles and Johnny was just as shocked to find himself back in the café. Only now Rise was wincing and had a pained look on her face. What the hell had just happened?]

H-hey, what the hell was that?

[A beat.]

Are you okay?

[She's going to kill her goat. She's going to find the thing and sacrifice it to make sure it can't touch anyone else ever again. ...okay she wouldn't, she likes animals too much, but she looks absolutely annoyed at something Johnny can't see as the goat passes through the other side of his chair and loops around the table back to Rise's side.

Her eyes are half-closed to ward off the dizziness, but she's powering through it even as she swallows a few times to alleviate the sick feeling in her stomach.]

I'll be fine. [Sooner or later. She's figured that out by now.] But I have a really, really important question for you. Have you noticed anything following you lately?

[Rise seems pretty pissed, but he's not sure if it's directed at him or just at the fact that whatever just happened had... well, happened. At least she's glaring at a space he's not occupying, but that doesn't mean he's off the hook. There's something off about her now. Like she wasn't well or something. She'd been fine when he'd come over, but...]

Yeah?

[He didn't believe her, but didn't feel like he knew better than she did. They'd only met once before anyway. Her question though, that caught him a little off-guard.]

Huh?

[Johnny didn't want to admit it, but shit. Yes. And again, hell yes. It was starting to drive him a little up the wall to be completely honest.]

Y-yeah. I guess. I mean-

[No one else could see it. That was the problem. Not the bird, not Gyro, not his brother's ghostly shade that seemed to call out to him from the corner of his vision if he let himself get distracted.]

Yeah. I have.

[She's directly looking at the goat now so Johnny's definitely off the hook, and when she looks up she's pulled together again. It's not his fault that things are weird and he's still new. He's probably still getting used to Cerealia messing with people and it wasn't fair to throw everything at him all at once. She softens her approach then, tilting her head just so.

She hasn't even really realized there are other things happening in the colony either.]

Can I ask what it is?

[At first the question is distracting. Why the hell would she want to know-

And then he catches the direction of her glare. Oh. Oh.

It was sort of a relief to know he wasn't alone in his insanity, but the entire situation was uncomfortable and, in all honesty- painful. He'd only recently re-lived a lot of these memories when he fought Civil War. And now they were creeping back in, picking at the barely healed-over scabs.]

People I knew, from back home.

[He frowned. The same guy he'd asked her about when he'd shown up in that sand castle not so long ago. Still no sign other than that ghostly trace. When it appeared so closely in tandem with the shade of his deceased brother, it made him wary. But Gyro had been okay the last time he'd seen him. He'd still be okay, when this was all done and he found everyone, he'd be okay, right?]

But mostly a little white bird. The wing's broken.

[He'd tried several times to pick it up, all to no avail. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if the thing tottered in any moment. He'd probably outrun it for a little while, but it always caught up.]

[She pauses for a moment to think on that.]

A friend of mine's seeing the same things. People he knew back home and a little dove. I don't really know what all of it means, but be careful with the bird. You know what those things do now. [Another pointed look at the goat.] Did they both start showing up at the same time?

[On one hand, it was odd to think that so many people here were suffering the same delusions he'd just experienced. On the other, it was stranger still that this sort of thing passed for normal. Everyone was... taking it pretty well honestly. The whole thing set his teeth on edge and he'd spent the better part of yesterday chasing shadows and half-formed illusions of his friend and family.]

Yeah? That's... shit. Sorry.

[He has some idea of where her creature is, by the direction of her glare, but at least it isn't anywhere near him again.]

Yeah. Sometimes the people would vanish and I'd see the bird trying to follow me or- hell, the whole thing is so messed up. I tried to pick it up, y'know, to help it, but...

[She waves a hand again like she's saying "it's okay", finally looking up from her goat and more relaxed than nauseated to say the least. It is pretty weird that people are passing all of this as normal, but then again it's not like Rise's life has been normal since moving to Inaba. What's the difference between chest monsters and floating goats? She frowns in sympathy then.]

They won't let you touch them. I tried getting the goat to hold still, too, but my hands kept passing right through it. I know they aren't real but then how can they be affecting other people? That's the part I don't understand. And none of us are seeing each other's animals or people. And I don't have a person following me either. [Not that she knows of, anyway.] Hopefully all of this stops in a few days. That seems to be how long most things last here.

[Rise remained as composed as ever and listened, even if he did sound crazy. He fully expected her to laugh or give him shit about it, but she actually seemed to know a comforting amount about what's happening, even if it doesn't help him actually stop it from happening. At least it's confirmed that he's not losing his mind. That, or everyone else is at the same time. Probably not something he wants to think about too hard.]

I think the people are just part of it. I don't usually see them at the same time as the bird. Plus, I mean- I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy. But I'm sure any crazy person would say that, huh.

[Let's be real, it's probably the latter. But all things considered she's seen enough crazy things both here and at home that this is just a drop in the bucket. If she can do her best to help him feel more at ease, that's what she'll do. She does smile ruefully at the denial of his insanity though.]

Probably, but I think this is the one place you can get away with it and people will believe you. It is a little weird that some people are seeing people and animals. [She leans back in her chair, regarding him thoughtfully.] The last time we saw people's memories, it was in a house of mirrors just outside of the main colony. It's like they're bringing things closer and closer to see what limits they can push.

[While he didn't exactly feel better, he didn't feel any worse for having told her. Besides, she was dealing with some potentially crazy guy peeking into her memories pretty well too, even if he hadn't done it on purpose.]

Yeah?

Who is they anyway? How come they can throw this sorta shit at us and we don't even see it coming? Are they really that powerful?

A lot of people assume it's CERES, the company that's running the city. They're generally behind all of the weird stuff that happens here but then they like to deny it. Even if it's not them, it's someone with strong ties to them. There are a lot of secrets in this place that we're still starting to learn. None of us knew about the labyrinth until a couple of months ago, but that's been there for a while.

There's Mosley-san, but...he's not that great at giving answers either. Something new seems to happen every couple of weeks. You start trying to prepare for it even if you don't want to.

Labyrinth? They got one of those here?

[A week or two ago, half of what she said would have been gibberish, but now he was starting to piece things together. It wasn't as if he'd gone actively hunting for a lot of the information- not yet at least, but it was good to know there were people and places worth looking into. Meant he hadn't hit a dead-end just yet.]

Mosley-san... huh. What can you really do to prepare anyway? Become a shut-in for a few days every couple a' weeks? I think I'd feel even crazier if I thought I was the only one dealin' with this.

That's what they call it anyway. I don't know if it's like a labyrinth anybody else is used to, but it's right outside the city walls. It's like it was a part of the colony they were gonna use but decided not to. The place is crawling with all of these weird machine monsters and everything.

[But she smiles lightly.] I don't think being a shut-in would help anybody, but people start coming up with plans and systems to stay together or know how to put up a fight when things get bad. The thing all of us know for sure is that CERES usually doesn't help us when things go wrong. We can only really rely on each other here, you know? It's pretty hard for people not to get involved in all of this.

Sounds fun.

[The sarcasm is strong, but he nods at the description. Why have something like that? Were they guarding something else? It seemed a suspicious enough place to start at least.]

Huh. And this kinda shit happens pretty regular, yeah? What else has happened? Does it trade out every few weeks or do they just find new ways to torture everyone?

[He's not sure how to feel about relying too heavily on others. It's sort of a new concept for him and it's hard for his words not to come out a bit cold.]

What can other people even do? Is there someone out there that can actually stop this sorta thing?

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[open] And as you know I have a gigantic heart

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