towerofanimus | Infighting Week One

Infighting Week One

Characters: any character participating in the Infighting event
Setting: pods, week one of the event
Format: any
Summary: All week one Infighting event threads should go in here, to keep things organized.
Warnings: horror, trauma, experiment results, impossible geometry, cabin fever

[Group Information]
Dax's Pod
Riki's Pod
Jason's Pod
End of Week One

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_{[For some people, it's not just a simile that something sucking away at their magic is sucking on their soul. At first it's not anything she can really detect - a subtle gnawing ache from somewhere indiscernible within her, a pulse that easily hid under.. y'know, her normal pulse.

But it's like a little hole getting bored out in her, and as it grows, Sayaka actually gets the hint that woah, something is up here. If she was just hungry, she'd barely even feel it - that's what her Soul Gem did, it buffered her. She hadn't really felt all that hungry in the months it'd been since her contract, and tended to skip meals even when they weren't just food bars - but this genuinely HURTS. She gets restless, treading around her cell anxiously in an attempt to figure out what the hell is causing that.

It takes her uncountable laps before she realizes the feeling weakens when she's standing over here, but makes a resurgence when she's over, say, there. Steeling herself for that unsettling twinge, she marches over to the space she'd defined as there and knocks sharply on the wall.]}

Hey, 'sup over there? Kinda getting some, um, weird vibes..

[ He... can't turn it off.

The more people become restless around him, the more it becomes apparent that whatever had been done to him had caused a ceaseless drain of the literal soul of those around him.

It was slow, yes, but it was like slowly taking parts of people.

... He felt so sick from it that he couldn't think straight, and the fact he's got his head to his knees in the corner nearest to where Sayaka was likely feeling the worst just made it all the more obvious. Especially when she knocks on the wall.

... He's just too sick, he wants his eyes shut, he wants to stop feeling. But he can't. In fact, he is over-feeling, and his head is pounding, from the whispers of the two creatures inside it. Normally they're indiscernible, but they only got louder since the surgery and then slowly became nearly deafening.

Whispering but it was like screaming it was so loud and painful--

... Oh.

Someone is addressing him, aren't they?

They did so nearly a minute or two ago. ]

... What?

[ Sorry, he's... he's too out of it to properly get what she's saying. ]

...Heyyy. Earth to spaceman, earth to spa-- oh, hey, there you are.

_{[She's not impatient in the least, what are you implying.

Sayaka backpeddles now that she seems to have reliably gotten the source's attention, relieved to put in a little safe distance. It's not just that draining pain that's bothering her, she picks up on now. There's some kind of.. oppressive atmosphere, one that's prickling at the supernatural senses more than the physical ones.]}

..this is.. is this thing something they did to you?

[ He sighs.

Tick, tick, tick...

He is slow in replying. His head is killing him and why won't they just shut up?!

If he wasn't so calm he'd be bashing his head against the wall right now. ]

... What, Thanatos?

[ God of Death, yada yada... he's not well enough to be polite right now, so he answers quietly and kind of rudely. ]

Nah. That's just my psychotic Persona. ... I really wish he'd shut up.

Oh.

_{[That provides a surprising amount of insight. Psychotic murder-sonas have been explained to her before, and h-hey, maybe if she just sits wayyyy over here she won't feel that intangible worm eating away at her.]}

Jeez! Rain or shine, those Personas don't let you guys have a break.

_{[All Personas do is try to murder you horribly when you're unlucky enough to do something innocuous, like talk to the wrong dude-who's-actually-a-star, right? She's pretty convinced that's all they do.]}

[ He lets out something like a bitter laugh. Oh, no, don't, Sayaka, you've made him... ranty. Being ranty distracts him from the pain, too... ]

Ours? Yeah... ours--my team's, that is... they aren't natural. Little kids aren't meant to have negative manifestations of humanity in the form of demonic-like creatures shoved into their head and then attached to their psyche, expected to tame it without acceptance like a normal Persona-user. A Persona's supposed to be your 'other self', a mask used for protection.

Here's... a hint. Ninety percent of the kids who were part of Project Strega either died, went mad, or were turned into Shadows completely, consumed by the things. We just happened to live.

[ You better BELIEVE he's bitter as all fuck. ]

Our Personas just became semi-tolerant and trying to murder us most of the time. So we take drugs to control them.

_{[Sayaka wasn't sure what she was expected, when Minato first plunged into his rant - but it definitely wasn't what she heard. She's quiet all through it, but for what it was worth her stare could've burned a hole in the wall.

Kids forced to deal intimately with monsters, some of them turning into them - that struck uncomfortably close to home. Suppressants are to grief seeds are to - she doesn't want to think about this. ..but people with those out of control personas.. they're forced to always think about it, from how Minato's talking.]}

..I'd thought they might all just be - like that, but if that's why..

_{[Considering she'd only seen Jin's, and - a vague, confusing glimpse of Eikichi's, though she hadn't been focusing on that so much as wanting to punch a star's face in.]}

...why would someone do that? _{[And underlying that question, unstated but felt is 'why would someone do THIS?']}

[ He doesn't really know. He just holds his head. Well... ]

... Power. Ending humanity by calling a Celestial Goddess who is tired of hearing it's pleas of pain. Or... in this case, 'progress' for progress' sake.

[ He hates scientists so very much and he... sits and leans his head against the wall, trying to concentrate on reigning in the God of Death and an Angel of Death in the form of a serpent from doing as they please.

The success is... debatable.

While the soul-draining slows, he cannot stop it, and his head is hurting far more for it. ]

_{[...the drain begins to fade, to something rather tolerable. Sayaka can pretend that, hey - maybe that's only about as bad as using magic regularly would be for it, right? And she's no slouch about throwing it around normally, so really... she can cope with this.]}

Well that just sounds stupid of them! Progress isn't worth a thing if all the people are dead, right?!

They don't generally care if people die when they get what they want.

[ He... knows this too well, unfortunately. ]

Especially not the corp--man we dealt with.

[ He has to correct himself, because he realizes... hating Kirijo when they're not at fault is useless. ]

_{[..what shouldn't have felt that long ago, Sayaka had always had trouble imagining people who were real villains - mankind was the good guys and that was that. But as she'd dove further into life as a Puella Magi - and then, life in the tower -

She now understands that there are people who might as well be Witches, who don't have the excuse of losing themselves to a dimming gem.]}

..people like that. People like - this.

_{[She has to be vague.]}

..It's not wrong to want to hurt them, is it? It seems like the only right thing.

[ He is silent for a long moment, before he speaks again. ]

... I've spent most of my life since we escaped that--that... place acting on that exact same thought. That... people like Jason, the man who ruined our lives, don't deserve to be alive.

[ His head thunks against the wall, but not with much force, and he rubs his neck, sighing. ]

I can't tell you what's right. I mean, after all, I'm a murderer. A 'vigilante'. Someone who kills other for profit. I've spent my entire life... angry. Resentful, that when I was a child, me, Jin, Chidori, and my ex-friend... were taken like that.

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Infighting Week One

(this is definitely before her own surgery since i'd had it nearly all writ before seeing it, woop)

(I AM OK WITH THAT)

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