View source for 2024-12-11: Their Woman In Kamogawa

{{LogP2
|cast=Fin E Ld Si Laffinty, Muginami
|location=Kamogawa
|summary=Lan finally confronts the spy in their midst. Madoka is safe.

...but it doesn't feel good, does it, Princess?
}}
{{PhaseAndTurn
|phase=2
|turn=1
}}

 <Pose Tracker> Laffinty Fin E Ld Si has posed.
<poem>
In Kamogawa, the sun is shining and the air is clear. But a gloom still pervades for Princess Lan. An...INTRUDER has been at Kamo Girls' School for months now. She's convinced there's something unusual, but other than how quickly the girl snuck into her and Madoka's lives, she can't find a thing. She has enlisted some help....but even Moid could turn up barely a thing. Maybe a few sightings. Maybe not? The galaxy is huge and the Zuvorg Federation doesn't have comprehensive facial data on every imaginable citizen. They're not THAT advanced. Which means...

It has to be up to Lan, then.

Madoka's out for the day. This is her chance. Lan told Muginami she needed her help with a Jersey Club task for the Student Council. A lie, but Lan felt nothing about lying to an enemy. She guided her away from the classrooms, to the shadow of the gym...

Slowed...fingers curled into her fist. However sweet Muginami had been...the timing, the vague stories...Lan didn't believe it.

"Muginami..." she said, fist finally balled up. Her gaze turned over her shoulder, just catching Muginami out the corner of her eye. "Why are you here?"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Muginami has posed.
<poem>
       If Muginami had known how things would turn out, maybe she would've come up with a tighter alibi.

       In her line of work, simplest was always best. Tell a story that anyone could, and gauge the details later. Handwaving that she's here escaping Some War, Somewhere On Earth, she'd thought, was good enough.

       Stopped seeming the case the minute she started noting mysterious flashes tailing her. -Especially- stopped being the case once she began to spot a mysterious splash of sky blue peeking from the bushes from the corner of her eye with increasing regularity. And here Muginami thought she'd been acting so wonderfully normal. Taking the bus to get out of town instead of her Esoteric Space Hoverbike, like a good girl!

       The longer she's tried to act like she doesn't notice, the more tiring it's become. Following behind Lan, then, her attire only changed for the winter in that she's wearing a scarf, Muginami stops right in tune with Lan, and prepares her most naive innocent baleful little head-tilt.

       You could almost hear the 'hmmmmm? whatever could you mean?' loaded and ready at her throat. But it takes only a moment's flash of her eyes down to Lan's fist, a careful understanding of her simple choice of words...

       And the tension drains from her picture perfect innocence. Muginami's carefree smile collapses into an almost imposing one, and a looooong sigh spills from her lips, shrugging her shoulders. "...Well well, you took your time going and confronting me about it, huuuuuh?~ Poor thing. You've really got to fight that avoidance of yours. It's not like you're any good at tailing someone secretly~"

       Tossing a mysterious pair of goggles over to Lan (and wondering if she'll drop them all adorably trying to catch them), Muginami simply asks, "Well, it'll all make sense in a sec. The one you got was right over here, wasn't it?~" ...And she points to her inner underarm, exactly where Lan's Memoria is.
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Laffinty Fin E Ld Si has posed.
<poem>
Somehow...it hurts a little that Muginami just takes it gamely. That she doesn't give her that carefree smile and pass it all off and tease her like she always does. A spike lances down Lan's spine, a thousand emotions too densely packed to process what was why. Her head dips, as if for all the theater of the moment, the only one who got hit was herself. "No," she mumbles. "I suppose I'm not."

But she still manages to square herself up afterward. Her catch isn't very clean, framed against her body, but she doesn't fumble them, either. They're not quite the same type as Le Garite's, but when Muginami indicates where Lan's Memoria is, Lan can't hide a gasp and quickly slip the goggles on, then raise her gaze again.

Right there...near the bottom of Muginami's abdomen...a glowing sign...the readouts around it indicate an advanced, strongly bonded Memoria, if she remembers Moid's lesson right.

She all but tears the goggles back off, eyes flicking up from Muginami's belly to her eyes. "A Memoria...it was you. Ignis found a Memoriate months ago but we never found them. How?!"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Muginami has posed.
<poem>
       ...From Muginami's perspective, that awkwardness and bottling up of emotion almost looks like Lan isn't upset much at all. Hand on her hip, she watches Lan's body language with great care, but just how frozen up it can be has always made that girl hard to read.

       Two different ways of masking. Channeling it all into a performance, against dutifully stowing it away and out of sight.

       That cocky little smile widens, eyes half-lidded, as Muginami pushes her lower body forward, as if to flaunt the Memoria in question. A badge of pride for her willfulness. "Hmm? How? The real thing I'd like to ask is just how it's so easy to just waltz right into Pharos. Truth be told, I was expecting to get shot at or needing to slip around guards, but the place was tooootally deserted! I was starting to just wander around aimlessly, until it was right there in front of me!"

       Fluffy sleeves behind her back, Muginami asks, "Ignis, you call it, hmmm? That's honestly not a very cute name for it. And it -is- really cute~ It started sulking and withdrawing from me, but once I undressed, it's like it woke up aaaaaall sorts of pent-up feelings. It went all like, byuuuu~, and I felt a bit of burning around my belly, and then just like that, we were partners!"

       ...There's a faint rosiness in Muginami's cheeks, as she switches her weight to the other leg, looking off in the distance towards where Madoka's house would be. "I'm kinda curious what it was like for you two~ Are you good friends with yours? I figure Madoka would be best friends with that green one too, but maybe not! She's always fighting against something, y'know, so maybe she's pretending it doesn't hate her, for all I know~"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Laffinty Fin E Ld Si has posed.
<poem>
Different lives. Different ways. Different loyalties.

They could only be enemies, right?

Lan tsks as Muginami mocks Pharos' security. Though you could call them a paramilitary, Novumundus is run MUCH more like a civilian organization...something that Moid seems entirely pleased to do zero things about, and even Tadokoro more theatrically bemoans than actually dislikes. But security is certainly one of the ways that manifests. "Just walked in..." Lan mutters, frustrated. But more than that: She colors a little. "U-undressed!?" she stammers. Huh? Was that the secret the whole time!? No! That's...dumb!!

Ignore the way she tracks Muginami's rolling hips. She is thinking about vox. Her eyes cut up to Muginami's again. Her expression curdles to a scowl. "They're...weapons. Dangerous," she says. She knows it to be true fundamentally, but...Madoka's big smile and happy friendship with Aura...with 'Midori'...is that all, really? Why does this INTERLOPER know so much more than Lan!? The blue girl tries to keep her footing straight to hide how adrift Muginami has her. "They're not to be played with! You have to know the kind of damage they can do!"

Visions of the nightmare at Militia Zodia Academy flood her mind. The hemisphere-scale crater on Gallia IV...that makes her back straighten properly, and she snaps again, "What are you going to do with something like that!?"

</poem>
 <Pose Tracker> Muginami has posed.
<poem>
       The little giggle Muginami elicits behind curled fingers seems a little more genuine - the teasing sparkle in her eyes returning as she pesters Lan, simply asking - "Hmmm~? You're probably having aaaaaall kinds of fun imaginings as to what that was like with the Vox, huh?"

       Those fingers become a single digit up against her lips, as Lan alludes to the danger posed by the three. "Right right, of course. They're the demons from that old fairy tale, aren't they? Hoooow'd it go....the green demon will cry in the skies, the blue demon will eat among the stars, the orange demon will spit out something dark?~" Her hand wheels in circles with each entry in the fairy tale gotten vaguely incorrect.

       "They sound real scary, if the legends are totally true. Though to be honest, the Vox I befriended sounds the scariest, but she was a total sweetie-pie, just one who's been hurt before, I think~ It sounds like you're the expert on the demons from the legend, though, Lan, so I have to wonder..."

       Muginami's eyes stop averting around like there's something fun straight around the corner, and instead gaze straight into Lan's soul.

       "If they're so bad, why oh why are you and your friends gathering them up in one place, hhhhmmmm?"

       "...And if they're that important to you..."

       "Then, are you going to wind up fighting me over Ignis~?"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Laffinty Fin E Ld Si has posed.
<poem>
"Obviously not!!" Lan yells back, actually raising her voice but also turning red like a tomato from embarrassment.

The embarrassment fails her though when Muginami gets the fairy tale spectacularly wrong, making Lan shift her feet again unhappily. She's pinned so much of herself on that, but--!

Muginami spears her through, and she has to physically clench to not stagger back from that stare. "They were found here! We had to step in so they wouldn't use them recklessly! Destroy this world like Gallia IV was!" she shoots back, and then catches herself, and sucks in a breath. She manages to find a center point and turn a cold eye on Muginami. Is Lan going to fight her? Muginami? Her classmate? Madoka's friend?

She hesitates longer than she wishes before saying, "If I have to." Not that she can see any other course...

"You didn't answer my question," she prods back, holding that gaze even as it feels like she's the one in danger from doing so. "What will you do with it?" If all Muginami wants to do is get her kicks with the Vox, that's...tolerable. But if she would turn it on Pharos or Kamogawa or Madoka then Lan can't allow that!
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Muginami has posed.
<poem>
       "Wow! Sounds pretty reckless if even just one can mess up a whole planet, to bring all three together!" Muginami exclaims - her eyebrows knitting together even as her eyes half-lid playfully. "Who's 'they' in this equation who'd do bad stuff with the Voxes anyway? Any idea who caused that? I think I heard about that accident from a few friends..." -she's lying, given she's had a phone call or two with Kirius about that.

       "I'd say you shouldn't really worry your butt off with what we need to do with Ignis, but honestly, I'm not the most sure myself what it's gonna be useful for..." Curling her fingers below her chin, Muginami looks every inch the pondering detective. "Big Bro's got the picture on that, and he should be here in town soon. Pretty sure by that point everything's gonna go topsy turvy around here, but you're not gonna have much luck stopping a firebrand like that Ignis friend of mine~"

       Hands behind her back, Muginami's eyes go wide, head tipping over a good ten degrees. "...Until then, can we just enjoy what we've got here? Just the way we've had it? ...It's been a lot of fun, after all, getting to spend time with you and Madoka without a care in the world..."

       Something just faintly sad enters Muginami's voice at the very end. "So we may as well get the most out of it that we can, until it all has to end!~"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Laffinty Fin E Ld Si has posed.
<poem>
Who's 'they' in the equation... ...Lan doesn't answer. Does she really think De Metrio...does she really think Vilagiulio, the kind man she knew, would use the Vox for evil? The doubt is just thick enough that she hesitates rather than howl it.

Muginami takes such a cheerful, almost malignantly uninterested approach to it all. "You don't know--!" Lan yelps, flustered. She holds herself back, her hand clenching around the goggles. "Big Bro," she mutters, remembering the name. Some kind of alias? She leans forward, serious. "I won't just let you have your way!"

and then Muginami completely bulldozes her effortlessly, again.

"I--" Lan says, voice caught in her throat. This woman just promised to bring war to Kamogawa and then said they should just hang out and pretend everything's fine?? Lan stands there, poleaxed, all momentum of anger or righteousness suspended. "How can you say that?" Lan finally stammers. "Tell me you're going to make this place a warzone and then say we should hang out like always!"
</poem>

 <Pose Tracker> Muginami has posed.
<poem>
       "I can say that very easily," Muginami answers, hands drooping down to her sides, as she twirls on one foot to watch the slowly setting sun. "You never know who you're gonna have to hurt to survive, y'know? Today's friends can be tomorrow's enemies, for reasons you'll only understand years from now. And if you get hung up on every potential broken bond, you'll never make any in the first place."

       Over her shoulder, Muginami's sun-bright smile feels more forced than ever. "So that's why I'd like us to be friends up until the moment we don't have a choice! No reason to waste this precious time we have together bickering about the inevitable. It's not like -I'm- the one making this peaceful little town a warzone. Those Pharos people are the ones who parked the Voxes right out in the harbor, didn't they? Like someone lit a huge bonfire and I'm the threat with my lil bucket of water cause I might make stuff wet trying to keep things safe~"

       A long, low sigh follows. "...Well, if that's a problem for you, I can avoid staying at Madoka's place for a little while until things cool off. I guess it's unlikely for someone like you, Miss Laffinty, to know just how precious a connection with someone is. You've had so many from the moment you were born~"

       Head craning upwards, Muginami's pupils contract, and as she walks off, she can only laugh, "I'm kinda envious, in the end!~"
</poem>

[[Category:Logs]]
[[Category:Phase 2]]
[[Category:Phase 2, Turn 1]]