He purses his lips, hating the words even as he speaks them. "I'm betting we'd be a liability. I'm not talking about ordinarily strong Shadows. I'm used to those. These were like...."
And he shakes his head. Like standing on the beach, not with a ten-metre tsunami coming that you could pray to outrun to high ground, but fifty metres, a hundred metres, a thousand. Like looking up at the cloud across the sun, only to have a meteor be the last thing you ever see.
Yet Futaba did get him through it. "Alilat is a red obelisk, inscribed with the figure of a woman. A pre-Islamic goddess. She used ice attacks. Uriel is an archangel. He used mostly physical attacks, but also a Megidolaon at one point. I'd have been dead if not for Futaba."
He reaches for his tea. "In short, I need to get a lot stronger, and I need to do it fast. Crap, I sound like a shonen protagonist."
He snorted. "I don't know how to tell you this, but as a Wild Card you're literally powered by friendship. You are a shounen protagonist. But... you're probably right. Dammit. I'm so fucking sick of being two steps behind the curve. Every time I feel like I've made progress, here comes a new fucking problem, winding up to kick me right in the fucking dick-"
Inhale. Exhale. "It's frustrating, is all I'm saying."
"I know the feeling." Reaching for another cup and teabag, he sets it under Phoenix's hot water tap and presses the button with a wrinkle of his nose. Shonen protagonist this... ugh, it's not like he hasn't thought it before.
"If we're going to talk about shonen protagonists, what about the power creep? I don't know if this is something you originally experienced, but every Palace I've seen—Kamoshida's, Kaneshiro's, Madarame's, Futaba's—has initially been almost more than we could handle. Almost. As if they tailor themselves to us to keep us out. As if we never truly made progress.
"Perhaps Ren's Palace tailored itself to Futaba's ability, and not to mine." Or perhaps it was down to something else entirely.
"Yet more support for my increasingly-plausible Theory of Narrative Contrivance." He sighed. "Which seems to work for everygoddamnbody except me. Can't help but wonder what I'm doing wrong, that I always feel like I'm outclassed and unprepared..."
"After the second time I 'died'... I woke up in a place very much like this one. A place where stories were not just things we tell each other, but real, physical places you could go to. There was a lot there that was weird as shit, but the more time I spent there... the more I came to think."
He tapped his finger against the table idly, brow furrowed in thought. "Was it really that different? What are Personas, but manifestations of a story? A brave noble turned outlaw, fighting to overthrow a false king. A trickster god, both foil and friend to the pantheon. A prince in exile turned pirate, consumed by revenge and forsaking his own name. They're all... little fragments of a story we invented. And it's not just Personas. You're not the first Wild Card, nor am I, in either of our worlds of origin. There've been others, people selected when a crisis loomed to threaten the world. Each one assigned the role of 'The Fool'. The protagonist of the story, who travels the world and achieves enlightenment. History runs in cycles, and those are stories, too. Feels like everywhere I look, when I peer at the deeper reasons behind shit that happens, it's like the world was just set dressing until the moment- when the protagonist awakens, and the tale begins."
He took a long drink of tea. "The musical bullshit doesn't help, either."
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And he shakes his head. Like standing on the beach, not with a ten-metre tsunami coming that you could pray to outrun to high ground, but fifty metres, a hundred metres, a thousand. Like looking up at the cloud across the sun, only to have a meteor be the last thing you ever see.
Yet Futaba did get him through it. "Alilat is a red obelisk, inscribed with the figure of a woman. A pre-Islamic goddess. She used ice attacks. Uriel is an archangel. He used mostly physical attacks, but also a Megidolaon at one point. I'd have been dead if not for Futaba."
He reaches for his tea. "In short, I need to get a lot stronger, and I need to do it fast. Crap, I sound like a shonen protagonist."
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Inhale. Exhale. "It's frustrating, is all I'm saying."
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"If we're going to talk about shonen protagonists, what about the power creep? I don't know if this is something you originally experienced, but every Palace I've seen—Kamoshida's, Kaneshiro's, Madarame's, Futaba's—has initially been almost more than we could handle. Almost. As if they tailor themselves to us to keep us out. As if we never truly made progress.
"Perhaps Ren's Palace tailored itself to Futaba's ability, and not to mine." Or perhaps it was down to something else entirely.
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"After the second time I 'died'... I woke up in a place very much like this one. A place where stories were not just things we tell each other, but real, physical places you could go to. There was a lot there that was weird as shit, but the more time I spent there... the more I came to think."
He tapped his finger against the table idly, brow furrowed in thought. "Was it really that different? What are Personas, but manifestations of a story? A brave noble turned outlaw, fighting to overthrow a false king. A trickster god, both foil and friend to the pantheon. A prince in exile turned pirate, consumed by revenge and forsaking his own name. They're all... little fragments of a story we invented. And it's not just Personas. You're not the first Wild Card, nor am I, in either of our worlds of origin. There've been others, people selected when a crisis loomed to threaten the world. Each one assigned the role of 'The Fool'. The protagonist of the story, who travels the world and achieves enlightenment. History runs in cycles, and those are stories, too. Feels like everywhere I look, when I peer at the deeper reasons behind shit that happens, it's like the world was just set dressing until the moment- when the protagonist awakens, and the tale begins."
He took a long drink of tea. "The musical bullshit doesn't help, either."