#empressbufudyne

[angryspacegirl]

Dark Hour: Recovery?

@empress-bufudyne

“You stupid bitch,” Serori muttered, unable to even lift her head to properly level her insults. “This is low, even for me. Risk-taking is one thing, but to do something like this... This can’t be what I wanted, was it?” There was only silence in response. “Yeah, well fuck you too, you busted-up idiot.” With what little energy Serori had left, she spat, a thick glob of spit arcing off the foot of the bed onto the floor.

That took more out of her than she’d anticipated, and Serori crashed her head back against the pillow of the hospital bed. What a boring ceiling in a boring room in a boring building. How worthless that she’d been brought to a place like this. It was a waste of time, since the doctors wouldn’t ever even begin to guess what had happened to her. So far, they were completely clueless, and that wasn’t going to change.

From their perspective, she’d had some kind of heart attack, for reasons that they couldn’t quite figure out. Before anyone had even had a chance to cut her open, or whatever it was they did to someone having an attack like that, the problem had somehow fixed itself. Some kind of miracle. Yeah right.

Mitsuru had stepped out for a moment, and that was for the best. It was bad enough that Serori had flatlined in the middle of their emotional conversation. For the other girl to see her talking to herself like this would be just the cherry on the shit cake.

Her chest felt cold again, and her vision grew hazy. With defiant rage in her eyes, even as her teeth began to chatter, Serori glared at the apparition standing over her. “S-so that’s it huh? You’re gonna s-suck out all m-my heat, and then t-tear that heart outta me?” She felt fingers clasp around her heart and pain shot through her entire body. “J-just try me, bitch...”

[labyrinthled-blog]

@empress-bufudyne  II Starter Call

“You’re wondering why I’m back? Go ahead and ask Aki.”

Shinjiro had been prepared to be bombarded with questions. Not just from Mitsuru, but from the other members of SEES who’d met him before. Like those underclassmen. Even then, it wasn’t exactly pleasant to be faced with the fact that he’d turned and ran from the cause. He wasn’t planning on seeing it through to the end, anyway. Not enough time. 

“If there’s nothing else, I’m ready to go. I already brought the stuff I’d need to fight Shadows with.”

[sumofzero]

@empress-bufudyne  ♥’d

“It’s been a little while since I’ve last seen you, Kirijo-Senpai.” He offers her a smile as she sits. He has to admit, he’s a little worried about the meeting, even if he was the one that asked for it. He had a lot of questions, and now that he was out of High School it felt like the better time to ask.

“I hope you haven’t been caused too much trouble.”

[maid-to-suffer-blog]

I’mma write something down here and you can totes read it but it’s technically not for this blog.

Mitsuru’s Shadow World/Palace would be a mental hospital. I considered a Jail, but I think the Mental Hospital is a better idea. The Kirijo’s Safehouse, located in the Dormitories.

In this place, Mitsuru is a Doctor, and she sees all the members of SEES as patients, trapping them inside their own rooms. At first, it seems like she wants them there for her own safety, but the deeper you go, you realize that all she wants is for them to be safe, to enclose them somewhere where she can provide them with food, care, entertainment... Safety.

But her issues start when she starts believing she “knows better what’s best for them”. In a palace, she’d fill Yukari’s room with pictures of her dad, Fuuka’s with telephones and computers that are connected to everyone else, Akihiko’s with punching bags and protein, Junpei’s with videogames, Ken’s with children’s toys... It shows that Mitsuru sees their needs as nothing more than entertaining themselves, pretending that nothing’s happening to her, nothing’s happening in the outside world that should harm them.

Mitsuru’s room is always locked, but if you manage to open it, you’d see that everything in the room looks like a reflection, rather than the usual pillowed walls in mental hospitals. She tortures herself every moment she looks in the mirror and sees herself.

She’s not a Palace ruler that’s hostile towards the group at the beginning, but the moment you attempt to free her friends, she would go berserk trying to get them in the rooms again.

“Going outside, looking at the truth... They mustn’t!”

In a Shadow World concept, the real Mitsuru would be trapped inside the room, and until you defeat Shadow Mitsuru, she wouldn’t be freed. Mitsuru is strong on her own, and she faces herself everytime, and refuses to accept she’s overprotecting her friends. It’s never enough. Although Penthesilea might be seen struggling to get out of a straightjacket, she can still cast spells and Swift Strike the heck out of you.

The point is, Mitsuru is not evil, regardless if it’s a palace or Shadow World, she’s just... worried she might’ve dragged all these people into this.

[angryspacegirl]

Dark Hour: Ennui

@empress-bufudyne

It was Sunday. It had been a week or so since she’d started living part-time at the dorm with the rest of the Execution Squad, though the truth was, she hadn’t been spending very much time there at all. Other than the day she moved in, and the evening it took her to recover from her first time in Tartarus, she hadn’t been back. Even after talking with Mitsuru at the shrine, she’d ended up relaxing by herself until the sun came up, and then returning with her bike to her apartment.

On the surface, it was like nothing really had changed. Serori killed time at her apartment, rode her bike around the city, got herself into trouble and just as swiftly got herself out of it. The Execution Squad hadn’t called her, so maybe they’d forgotten about her entirely, or maybe they mistakenly blamed her for what had happened to Mitsuru. Either option made some kind of sense.

Were it not for some of her things still being at their building, she could probably forget about them, too. Most of them, at least. She couldn’t quite say what possessed her to pick up her phone in the early afternoon. Maybe she was just bored, looking for something to do. Maybe she just wanted to make sure that a personality as big as her own hadn’t been forgotten.

Either way, she called Mitsuru.

[angryspacegirl]

Dark Hour: Regret

@empress-bufudyne

Thin beams of light pierced through the shades, and Serori rolled over onto her side to bury her face beneath the covers of the the think blankets. “Eurgh...” she groaned, her head pounding.

“It’s past noon,” came a voice, masculine, stern. “You should get up.”

“Fuck off,” Serori grumbled, even as she pushed herself up, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. “Where’s Kaho?”

“Out. She has a job. She can’t sleep through the whole morning.” Serori felt something small and hard land atop the blankets. “Your phone rang last night.”

“I know.” Sighing, she swung her legs off the side of the bed. “Don’t bother me.” She had a hangover, and it hurt to be awake. She didn’t even bother to look at the phone as she scooped it up.

“Serori.” The stern voice grew ever-so-slightly softer.

“Fuck off,” she repeated. “I don’t want to talk to you, or look at you. You make me sick.”

“I know.” Finally, he came fully into the room, hands pushing at the wheels of his chair, until he was away from the doorway. “So I will keep this brief. Your mother will find out you’re here sooner rather than later. You should go talk to her, or go back to Iwatodai.”

Throwing on some clothes, Serori dragged a comb messily through her hair. “I don’t want advice from you, Nagi.”

“I know.” He sighed quietly. “Do what you want.”

“I always do.” She listened for the sound of wheels growing fainter in the distance before closing the door and picking up her phone. It had been two weeks since she’d come to Osaka, and she’d spent every night drinking, getting into fights, and then coming back to the old haunt to sleep with Kaho. She’d been drinking too much, and it was catching up to her. There was only so many more fights she could win, before she’d slip up and have her skull driven into concrete. Was this fun, or was it just a long, determined march towards her own death?

Maybe it was both. Most things were, by now. Her phone was in her hands, navigating through menus to get at the message.

"Serori... it's been a while since I last saw or talked to you. I came to your house to visit you, but you're not answering... Is something wrong?"

She dialed Mitsuru’s number.

[angryspacegirl]

Dark Hour: Cinématique

@empress-bufudyne

It wasn’t so much that she was excited to see Mitsuru, in particular. Rather, it was just the act of cleaning herself up, getting out of the house, having some kind of destination or goal in mind that made her feel better than usual. Without a job, and without any school to occupy her time, her days were... boring. More boring than her time in Osaka had been, even with the looming threat of the Dark Hour and fighting Shadows and all that hanging over her. Most days, she just sat around eating instant ramen, polishing her knives, sometimes wandering out to the bad parts of the city just to race around on her bike or get into a fight.

Compared to that, a day out at the movie theater, even if it was a documentary on a killer, was positively normal. For such a normal day, it was natural that she’d try to look a little more normal, too. Her jacket and gloves weren’t going anywhere, but she could replace her riding leathers and grungy shirts with something a little cuter, some decent jeans and a somewhat stylish top. She even made sure to do her make-up again, although she wasn’t altogether sure why. Maybe, like going out at all, it was just a sign that she was putting in any kind of effort.

Sitting outside the dorm, leaning back against her bike, she affected a yawn and looked at her cell phone. It wasn’t like they were in a time crunch, but it was better to get to the theater with a few minutes to spare. There probably wouldn’t be too many previews before a documentary. She’d already texted Mitsuru that she was there... Now all there was to do was wait.

[angryspacegirl]

Dark Hour: Prelude

@empress-bufudyne

It was like someone had slammed an iron spike straight through her wheel. One moment, she was blitzing down the side-streets of the city, weaving through the trash and debris common to this part of town, teeth gritted and eyes narrowed, as if she could just ride fast and dangerous enough, nothing could catch her. The next moment, her bike froze. It wasn’t as though the battery died, or she ran out of gas, some kind of weak deceleration that would lead to her just gliding to a clean stop. No, this was like someone had cut all power to her bike, and every single mechanism governing her turns and manueverability similarly failed.

Screeching out of control, she vaulted over the top of the bike as it tumbled over into a heap, with the girl slamming her right shoulder against the brick wall of a building. “Fuck!” she screamed, crashing her fist to the ground and forcing herself up through power of will. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Right arm feeling completely useless, she reached to her hip with her left hand, pulling out a sheathed combat knife, and pulling the sheath off with her teeth. Positioning the hilt into her mouth, she bit down, hard, and held steady her right arm. With a grunt of exertion, followed by another painful groan, she rammed herself back against the wall, shoving her shoulder back into its socket.

Pain subsided temporarily, she grabbed her motorcycle, paint scratched from where it had skidded along stone. She twisted the key, then twisted the handlebars. “The hell? Tank’s half-full...” Her tools were back at the dorm, and there wasn’t much she could do without them. Instead, she merely launched an impotent kick at the bike, further scuffing the white katakana lettering of her name along the side. “Bullshit.”

Something red dripped from her face onto the ground. Was she... bleeding? It didn’t feel like she was, and she reached up to touch at it. No... definitely not blood. Too thin to be blood. Looking to the ground, she could see a puddle where she must have landed, red. There were dozens of them, all small, all undeniably red. 

She wiped more of the liquid off her face, and held her hand up against the sky to try and get a better look, only to catch the sight of a strange, green light in the air, unlike anything she’d seen before. “What the fuck is going on,” she growled, snatching her combat knife in her left hand and looking around for anyone who could verify that she hadn’t finally lost her mind altogether.