concoursec | that's not the sound of desperation or anything (closed)

Entry tags:

that's not the sound of desperation or anything (closed)

Characters: Maria Cyphert, Yosuke Hanamura
Location: Training Centre
Rating: Let's say PG-13; probable eventual warnings for language, weapons and Yosuke
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed!
Summary: If she asked to see him again, that means she likes him, right?

The idea of being the one to decide when and how to train, of needing to do it at all, is a weird one to Yosuke. Even if he was back home, he's not sure it would sit any better with him. He's settled in pretty well, or at least he thinks so, but there's too much of the past year tangled up with it in his mind for stuff like this to be completely comfortable - or something like that, except harder to put a finger on.

He has to get used to it sometime, though, and he's already put it off for a little while. That's why he's here, trying not to let the humidity make him lose his grip on his weapons before he finds anything to whale on, kicking up the leaves underfoot as he walks because it's an improvement on the silence.

Now that he thinks about it, he could have come down here earlier, huh? That girl he ran into that one time... Sure, it hadn't been his idea of a date, but maybe he should have taken her up on the offer, pushed himself a little. He hadn't been certain that she was completely off her rocker and just going to use him as target practice, after all.

Well, what's done is done. He wonders for a moment if she's around here anyway, and then laughs a self-mocking laugh aloud to himself. "Yeah, what are the chances? There's nobody in here..."

...But never mind that. Time to focus.

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"Worried about me, huh?" He winked. True, maybe he didn't remember all the details, or for that matter whether he'd brought the machine with him... but if a girl wanted to show something off to him, who was he to complain? "That's the stuff that isn't summoning them, right? Yeah, they did show us a little. I'm pretty sure I get it."

"They really frown on cadets getting killed by T-Rexuars. But if you can Junction, then all they can do is put you into a comatose near-death state, so that's totally acceptable. You really want to see something impressive, then?" She reached over her shoulders to tap each gunblade with an index finger, grinning.

Yosuke's own grin was starting to look just a little frozen. Man, he couldn't tell if she was joking or not... What was with him and meeting people like this?

He rallied, though; it was probably a bit late to back out now. "Uh, y-yeah!" he said as fearlessly as he could manage, however unimpressive that might have been at the moment. "Bring it!"

Yeah, how weird that he might meet a combat-hungry, weapon-obsessed girl in a school for mercenaries? Go figure.

"Then we need to find a T-Rexaur." She strode confidently on ahead, whacking at some of the foliage as she passed it just to make extra noise. "Back when I first started, I used to run from these all the time... if you're going to be in here, get in the habit of doing that! But I'm with you so it should all be okay."

Yosuke's partner hadn't ever really been a weapons fanatic, that much was true...

He loped along close behind her, glad to steer the conversation away from the topic of his getting put in a coma. "A dinosaur? That shouldn't be tough to spot in here. Seems a little uncreative, though. Heh, you should see some of the things we used to run away from."

But as bright as he sounded at the prospect of witnessing something cooler, it did come as a surprise to him when he swung one of his own weapons at a few nearby branches and had it rebound off something... hard. Hard and, now that he squinted through the leaves, kind of reddish-brown. Possibly even scaly.

"Whoa..." Oh, wait, he doubted there was much point dropping his voice now. And what was that low noise in the background? "Hey, Maria-san...?"

"What?" Maria said, actually questioning the appendage of 'san' to her name more than anything.

Of course, once the T-Rexaur lifted itself out of the busy in a shower of shrubbery and with a mighty roar that rumbled out through the Training Center, she forgot all such questions. "Oh good, you found one!" she said, whipping her blades out happily. "Okay, first thing's first is I need to get bitten!"

"Sure, go for it," said Yosuke, hastily backing up and scrambling for a defensive stance despite his trusty blades seeming suddenly just a little inadequate in the face of the monster lumbering towards them.

But even with the approaching T-Rexaur's cry ringing in his ears and drowning out almost everything else, it didn't take him too long to catch up with her actual words. He whipped around. "Wait, bitten?" he spluttered. "Are you insane!?"

"Sure. Limit Breaks only come out when you're pushed past normal limits. Pain, adrenaline, rage, despair... That's what you need to really let out your power!"

She stepped forward, trying to draw the monster's attention as she held her weapons ready. "Of course, you could always get knocked out instead, but then you wouldn't be able to watch..."

Despair...? "That's not what -"

Even if he'd known exactly how he was going to finish that protest, it wouldn't have helped. As the monster turned to set its sights on Maria, its lashing tail caught Yosuke square in the unguarded stomach, knocking him effortlessly across the grass.

"Hey!" Of course her reaction to a comrade being struck was to charge up and smack the T-Rexaur with a double blow of her gunblades. The recoil backflipped her away from it to land several yards back, quite gracefully all things considered. "You okay?!"

Judging from the groan that came in reply, Yosuke was more stunned than hurt for now - the worst he could privately lament right now was the way he always seemed to land on top of his wallet pocket. He'd even managed to hold onto his weapons for once. Still more than a little winded, he started to struggle back to his feet, fighting to catch his breath.

The T-Rexaur beat him to it, though. Shaking off the gunblade impact, it reared and, with another enraged bellow, lunged for the closest target it could see.

Yosuke, therefore, got a perfect view of the monster seizing Maria in its teeth, shaking her body violently, then hurling her at the ground like one giant wad of spit. She hit hard, rolled to her back, then snapped herself upright with a kick. It was a hell of a blow for anyone to take, and blood shone bright on numerous lacerations on her arms and chest, but she didn't seem to feel the wounds in the slightest. "Come on! Get up! You stay on the ground, you're just easy prey!"

"Dammit, I know," mumbled Yosuke. Disoriented as he still sounded, he was at least back on his feet, although he'd almost lost his balance wincing in sympathetic pain as she hit the ground in his stead. That bite didn't look like the kind of injury she should've just been shrugging off, either... "Listen, I really, really think -"

Either this particular T-Rexaur was blessed with an impeccable sense of timing, or the sound of Yosuke's voice happened to rub it the wrong way, because it chose this moment to let out yet another deafening roar. It advanced on Maria, the ground trembling under each ponderous footfall -

- Yosuke's body seemed to move on its own -

- and the monster's jaws clamped down a second time, meeting about as much much meaningful resistance from the skinny teenager as it would from a rag doll.

He dropped heavily back onto the grass, trailing blood.

Maria... well, she'd been in his position enough times to show what probably amounted to a lot less concern or alarm or even emotion than he might have wanted her to.

"Okay, the plan was NOT for you to get beat up," she said, flipping a gunblade back into its holster. In the same motion, she made a circle with her now-free hand, then thrust it out at him, palm open, to cast Cure on him. "Let's avoid that one."

"Y-Yeah..."

Yosuke was too busy clutching his head to see much of whatever Maria was doing. He might as well have swapped his heart out for a drum next to his ears, the way it was pounding. Ugh, that had been moronic even for him... and after that minor freak-out over how cavalier she'd seemed about getting chomped on by a monster, no less...

Hazily, he glanced down. His other arm had taken the brunt of the attack as he'd leapt in, but the stupid thing must have had more than enough teeth to handily perforate his side, too - although the spell had turned most of the adrenaline-numbed pain down there just plain numb in a hurry, the dark stain beginning to pool and spread across the rest of his shirt was pretty good evidence. Heh, not exactly photogenic. The blood on his exposed arm, in contrast, was bright and fresh even as the wounds it spilled from began to stitch themselves back together, practically gleaming red... and... blue...?

Wait, this wasn't a sci-fi movie! The blue couldn't be blood - and now that he did a double take, it was enveloping more of him than where he was bitten. He stared blankly. Did something in the air change just now?

Instantly, as if in response, the soft blue glow coalesced into a single small, flat shape, hovering serenely before his eyes.

The stink of the T-Rexaur's breath still entirely too close by snapped Yosuke back to his senses; apparently, for some reason, he looked like the easier prey to finish off first. He threw himself out of the way and rolled before he could be more literally snapped up, gritting his teeth against the lingering pain.

"Don't - you -"

It began as a growl, but as Yosuke dragged himself to his feet, his voice rapidly picked up into an almost convincing battle cry. So what if he didn't completely understand what had just happened? That didn't matter. What mattered was that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was payback time for this ugly son of a lizard after making him look so freakin' lame.

"Don't you look down on me!" He swung his remaining kunai in a vicious slash. "Come, Persona! Jiraiya!"

The T-Rexaur wasn't close enough to hit, but the glittering card was. As it shattered into the countless motes of light it had appeared from, a tall, shining humanoid figure swooped down, red scarf billowing in the suddenly howling wind - something else struck the confused dinosaur from above, shuriken ramming into its skull with enough force to drive it into the ground.

What.

Maria hadn't been off-guard in the middle of battle for a long time, but that display had her gunblades wavering and her eyes wide with surprise. "I didn't know you knew how to use a Limit Break!"

Luckily, the monster seemed just as surprised as she did. As it slowly picked itself up, Maria shook her head. "I gotta admit, that was actually pretty impressive."

The T-Rexaur might have had some difficulty standing even after recovering from the blow at first, but it didn't last long; the gale buffeting the monster dissipated almost abruptly as Yosuke's attack had whipped it up, leaving only the slender silhouette of Jiraiya looming over the T-Rexaur's snout almost as if to taunt it.

On the ground, Yosuke was sprinting the hell out of the way, closing the distance between him and Maria. He turned his head at the sound of her voice (as did Jiraiya, regarding her impassively with its blank, star-framed eyes), but quickly waved away the compliment, such as it was. "Well, that's just a warm-up -" he started to say.

Or not. Still livid, if by now clearly sluggish, the T-Rexaur finally lurched upright and snapped at the glowing figure hovering in front of it - but its jaws closed on nothing but a translucent, rapidly fading outline in the air. Noticing a distinct lack of further dinosaur-flattening, Yosuke looked up just in time to see the last glint of light off his Persona's chest disappear without a trace.

"Huh!? I didn't... Persona...!"

He stopped and lowered his blade. The air had changed, he decided. For just a few moments there, in some indescribable way, it had been the oppressive air inside the TV... and now, that feeling was gone again. If only it could have taken this damn monster with it.

"Um, on second thoughts - little help, Maria-san...?"

He'd already pretty much forgotten who the monster had bitten first.

"Maybe you're a natural," Maria said as she stepped up, a wicked almost-feral grin on her face as she hefted her gunblades, "but you still need a bit more training!"

On the last word, she spun both her gunblades vertically, shedding light as she did, then charged the monster with a howl of bloodlust. As its head lunged down for her, she practically skipped sideways, lashing out with a blade as she did. When it impacted, she pulled the trigger; the shockwave racing down the blade reversed its momentum, and she used its force to twist and bring her other gunblade down hard on its neck. The momentum of its trigger-pull and her own leg strength flipped her up onto the T-Rexaur's head. She thrust both blades into its skull, on either side of the wound left by Yosuke's own Limit Break, then pulled each trigger half a dozen times each till the T-Rexaur was jerking and thrashing mindlessly on the ground from the shockwaves racing through its brain.

She yanked both blades free, then brought then down crosswise, hammering them home with enough force that the trigger sent her into a forward flip off the monster's skull. She landed a good ten feet away from it, then spun to face it, lifting both blades again. This time, she didn't shed light so much as absorb it, her body glowing a brilliant blue-white until she was nothing more than an outlined figure. That figure shifted abruptly, swelling and growing until a massive lion of light towered above both monster and ally. With a roar, the lion hammered one mighty paw into the T-Rexaur, a devastating blow that made the ground tremble.

It vanished like a snuffed candle, leaving Maria to stumble slightly for her balance. No real fear that the T-Rexaur would take advantage, though; it seemed uninclined to move ever again.

Yosuke was quick to rush towards her, and just as quick to encounter a rather stark reminder of how he'd been dragged into this in the first place. Yikes, her clothes were in even worse a state than his shirt by now. ...And the clothes weren't really the important part, huh.

"Uh, you okay? Sorry, I shouldn't have asked you to cover me like that... But whoa, Maria-san, that was brutal!" He wasn't even exaggerating, although he did have to wonder exactly how impressed he was allowed to sound without it reflecting badly on him. That last shockwave had nearly floored him as he stood by, never mind Maria.

But it was pretty emphatically over, too. Once that had sunk in, another realisation that had been vying for Yosuke's attention in the fray finally grabbed hold of it: he was only holding one kunai, and this time a cursory glance around the grass nearby didn't turn up anything that looked like the other one.

"Oh, right..."

He began to pick his way over to the fallen dinosaur - hopefully it had just knocked the weapon away in its dying throes, and not, say, landed right on top of it - but after one too many wobbly steps, stopped and crouched, his breathing heavy. "Geez..." he managed to say after a few seconds, opening one eye. "I forgot how much that always takes out of you."

"What does what now?" Maria, of course, was perfectly fine, barely even breathing hard. She brushed at her clothing absently, then even more absently dug another Cure spell out of stock and cast it on herself, mending her wounds. "And what are you doing?"

She hadn't registered the loss of his kunai during all that; she'd had other things to pay attention to. Hopefully he wasn't counting on her to have seen where it went...

"Uh... N-Nothing." Man, this was getting seriously embarrassing.

Once he'd mustered the energy to stand back up, still somewhat pale compared to how he'd looked just after Maria's first Cure spell, he made his way over to the T-Rexaur, looked down, and groaned. He couldn't be completely sure the suspiciously handle-like shape he could barely make out between the monster's scaly side and its blood on the ground was what he thought, but he was pretty damn positive he wasn't going to be able to pull it out from here.

"Oh, don't tell me..."

Just on principle, he reached out with both hands to give the dinosaur a shaky push. It met with about as much success as if he'd blown on it.

"Hey, look out."

Maria stepped forward deliberately, then lashed out with her other leg, hard. All that jumping and darting around she favored, plus the simple mechanics of proper swordplay, meant that she had much more strength in her legs than anyone might suspect... plus a Strength Junction didn't hurt. Hammering all of that into one blow was enough to knock the corpse back just a little.

"Oh, thanks." Yosuke didn't seem fazed. In fact, apart from a small grimace at the stickiness of the monster's already cooling blood, he had an almost absent look on his face as he finally tugged his unfortunate weapon free. Maybe coming down from his earlier adrenaline rush was part of it, but that wasn't quite the only thing on his mind.

"Hey, what did you call that just now? A limit break? And... everyone can do that here, huh?"

She nodded. "Learning how to perform one is a compulsory class, so you can channel them reliably and effectively. But anyone can do them, if their emotions hit just the right peak, you just showed that yourself." She flipped her gunblade back into the holster, so she could give him a comradely slap on the back. "You might turn out pretty good once we polish you up a bit, y'know."

She might have been a little too gungho about that slap, which immediately prompted Yosuke to gurgle and pretty much topple over again.

"That... That's not a euphemism for anything, is it...?" he said weakly, standing back up for what seemed like the millionth time today. "Nah, I was just - I mean, that thing you summoned, that was part of it, right? Does that mean everyone here's got one of those, too?"

That didn't have much to do with what he'd really just begun to wonder, though - why was he starting to feel, of all things, a faint twinge of disappointment?

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