Is anyone out there?(Holly)

[Jonathon Montoya]

Jonathon walked around the park.  He remembered this place being full of people before the quarantine.  People doing the sorts of things that people do in parks.  Walking, talking, feeding birds, all of it.  Now Jonathon was the only person there as far as he could tell.  He picked up a bit of litter and tossed it in one of the underused garbage cans.  Taking in the scene around him, he just sighed.  It was kind of disappointing really, everything close was cold and lifeless, and beyond that was the fog.  He sat down on a bench and sighed again.  Sometimes he just wanted somebody to talk to.  He hadn't gone to his family in a while and he didn't want to, there would be too much he'd have to explain.  Plus, new people that he did meet tended to just fall into the rut of the quarantine, going through every day the same without even realizing it.  He looked up at the sky and silently wished to find someone else who saw the fog and would stick around long enough to talk about it.

[Holly Mason]

Holly didn't care much for the park.  It wasn't a bad place, she just wasn't the type of person to walk around aimlessly or to just sit and enjoy the sunshine.  No, she always needed to have some kind of mission or she'd get bored.  She didn't understand how people could just sit around and enjoy the sunlight.  This place seemed like a den for the lazy and unmotivated; the kinds of people that could actually enjoy those "simpler" parts of life.  She'd be more disgusted if those kinds of people weren't so useful.  Today though, she had her own reason for wanting to go to the park.

Butterflies.



On her way home from school yesterday she was sure she saw a strange butterfly out of the corner of her eye, thinking on it, it was actually pretty indescribable. Her mission today was to find it again, or others since it's unlikely she could even tell them apart.  The mission was simple, but Holly was curious.  With all the strange things happening she didn't want to ignore anything out of the ordinary even if it might just be her imagination.

The park was oddly quiet this evening.  Holly wasn't sure if she should be happy or disappointed.  On the one hand, there was less noise to distract her from the butterflies, on the other she kind of enjoyed the chatter and everything being so empty felt almost lonely.  Oh well, getting mopey wouldn't help anything!  Holly wandered around the park for awhile, but she didn't catch sight of any butterflies.  This was rather frustrating, but she wouldn't let it get to her.  This was important!  Was there some trick to get them to come out?  She was pretty sure she hadn't done anything unusual when she saw the one.  Was she hallucinating?  That was definitely possible, it was just a flash of color after all.  Perhaps she needed to recreate what she was doing on her way home that day?  Do they only come out when you're not thinking about it?  That would make it rather difficult to find them...

She started wandering though the path she'd take to get home from school, somewhat lost in her thoughts while looking closely for these strange butterflies.  Then, the rhythm shifted somehow.  Not any particular music, but the sound of the area, the way the area felt.  She heard something, breathing, footsteps, there was someone else here.  It snapped her out of her current daze and she removed her hand from her chin and looked up.  The person had taken a seat just before she got out into the open past the trees and bushes that were between them.  Holly raised one of her eyebrows.

"Well don't you look depressed?  Moping around won't solve anything you know."

[Jonathon Montoya]

Jonathon looked up, surprised to see someone else in the park. "Huh...what...Oh, hi there." Jonathon said, looking up at her over the upper rim of his glasses. "Not depressed just lonely...though one could say they are roughly the same thing. One just involves being sad with no one to lean on with your sadness." Jonathon then clapped his hands and stood up with a sigh, turning to face her. "And I know that moping won't get anywhere, but I just feel so overwhelmed by this situation. The world was ending and I'm standing up to all of it alone it seems some times." He then offered a hand to her. "I'm Jonathon by the way. Nice to meet you."

[Holly Mason]

Holly folded her arms and quirked her brow.  

"Hi," she replied in a biting tone.

She rolled her eyes.  End of the world?  SOMEONE was being a little melodramatic.  She just allowed him to speak and silently stared.  It was a judging stare, the same kind she gave her parents.  When he approached her posture and expression didn't change, nor did she unfold her arms to shake his hand.

"Sounds more like to me you're just feeling sorry for yourself.  Don't like something?  Go fix it.  It feels too big?  Break it down.  Everything can be broken into smaller pieces if you quit being lazy and get out of your pity party and think about it for a second.  Even accomplishing a small piece, even if it feels insignificant, is more productive than sitting alone in the park brooding."

She had little tolerance for what she viewed as laziness.  This was practically the ultimate form of it because it was so difficult to get out of once you let yourself wallow in it.  Holly sighed.  She understood what she had to do; she had to do her duty as an 'active' and a 'leader' and show him the correct path.  She divided into a few groups: they were either active or passive, in other words they either commanded the world and shaped it to their liking or simply let things happen to them; and they were either a leader or a minion, in other words they were either the type that mobilized people, or they were the type to take orders.  He was probably the latter on both counts.

"Holly Mason," she still didn't uncross her arms or look him in the eye.  "What is it you're so hung up on anyway?"

[Jonathon Montoya]

Jonathon sighed and looked up at her. "You really don't see it, do you?" His voice was full of disappointment. He'd hoped that she would know what was going on. "Haven't you wondered why there is this quarantine? It's not whatever they're saying it is. There's no nuclear radiation or any of that other crap they say it is. It's demons." He looked at her and realized he was sounding like a moron. "Please, you have to believe me. Everything outside the quarantine zone is covered with this fog that is full of monsters." Jonathon then realized he had one more trick. "I...I fight them. With this." He then summoned the card with his persona. "It's called a persona."

[Holly Mason]

She swore her face was going to get stuck like this if she kept talking to this guy.  Did he always just go up to random people and tell them about the actual state of the world?  Was he nuts?  Holly just stared at him with that same judging stare with one eyebrow up.  This one might even be a little bit difficult for her to handle if he was this clueless.

"Are you stupid?  I know exactly what you're talking about.  Do you normally go up to random people and tell them this?  Are you trying to get someone killed?  You're lucky you ran into me instead of some random normal."  She unfolded her arms and pointed at his face.  "If you do have a brain in there think for a second.  Persona users aren't common as far as I can tell.  You see a random person walking in the park, chances are they aren't a persona user.  You following so far?"  She continued without waiting for a response.  "Okay, so there's a good chance you just told a random civilian who can do absolutely nothing about all this that there are fucking man eating creatures lurking just outside the city.  Now, picture how you're feeling now except you actually can't do anything about it.  How's that going to make you feel?"  Once again she continued without waiting for a response for him.  These were rhetorical questions after all.  "They're either going to spend all their time afraid, or they're going to try to do something about it anyway and likely get killed for it.  Normals can't stand up to shadows.  So you're worried about the state of the world.  Cool, do fucking do something about it instead of making things worse!"

Holly flipped her hair and sighed.  Hopefully that would be enough to make him understand why this was a bad idea.  She had a mean exterior, but she really did care about what happened to these people and to this city.  Understanding wouldn't be enough though.  If he was willing to wallow in this kind of despair then he needed direction.  She had been working solo so far, but a little help couldn't hurt.

"This has to be a secret okay?  Not only is it bad for anyone you tell, but we don't know how the shadows will react if enough people find out.  Some of them clearly have some intelligence, so they may react unpredictably if their secret gets out.  Try to stick with what will actually be effective in stopping them.  Right now we need resources and information more than anything.  If we have a better idea of the area, how these powers work, how the shadows work, what they're planning and possibly how to break the barrier, we'll be more effective at ending all this.   More tools to fight them is also pretty useful don't you think?  I'll come back here this time next week and we can share what we found.  Does that sound good?"

[Jonathon Montoya]

Jonathon couldn't help but smirk, even though she was intimidated by her. When she stopped drilling into him for showing her he put his hands into his pockets and chuckled. "I knew you knew though. At least, I was pretty sure you knew...You weren't like the normal people out here. You still had something resembling life and wonder to you. You weren't just here in the park because it was part of the route you took to get home. You were following that butterfly." Jonathon was thinking through what would have happened had she been normal. He pushed the thoughts away, trying not to think about failing again. "And sure, I met someone who was talking about an information network she was running. Her name is Ayakura Alisa. Uh, here." He said, pulling out his phone and finding his contact information. "May as well exchange numbers if we want to keep information flowing."

[Holly Mason]

Her face immediately returned to the upraised eyebrow, judging stare and folded arms it was before she so generously tried to help him.  Yes, her face was definitely going to get stuck like this talking to this guy.  Was he seriously pulling that to cover his up desperation before?  What a loser.  Well, she could let him have his 'pride,' but she was still silently judging him and her judgement wasn't exactly positive here.

"I said I would come back here.  I know it's inconvenient, but this isn't the kind of thing I want to talk about over the phone.  Or the internet for that matter.  If you REALLY want my help I'm sure you can handle a little detour right?" she smiled.  The smile itself looked perfectly innocent, but her eyes were almost a little scary.  "Now, then.  What can you do and what can this other person do?"

[Jonathon Montoya]

"Sure, it's not trouble. I can get here fairly easily, when I'm not in school of course..." He said, running his hand through his hair nervously. "At least here is a nice place to sort of stop and meet someone as opposed to say, the sewers." He chuckled at himself awkwardly, she was beginning to make him uncomfortable. "Well, I can use a persona and fight shadows...that's about it. Alisa though, I don't know much of what she can do. I know she's heading up this information network her parents used to run. I don't know what happened to them though...She also draws, a lot. I met her while she was making a rather nice painting of the city, as nice as foggy and miserable can be."

[Holly Mason]

Did he just imply what she thought he implied?  There was no way right?  Holly stared at him for a moment and blinked before speaking.  Her voice was more cautious than it had been, and significantly slower as well.

"I was asking what your personas did, buuuut I notice that you included 'using a persona' on your skills list but not hers.  This Alisa person isn't a normal is she?"  She paused again, looking more stunned than angry.  "Regardless, I'll be more specific.  What can your persona do?"

Holly really hope she was looking too far into things, but given this guy's track record she got the feeling she wasn't.

[Jonathon Montoya]

"I...I don't know if she has one. She never said. She is...different though. Her parents died and she looked like she's been through a lot. I didn't pry too far." Jonathon said, then he summoned his card again. "My Persona, well, it can shoot wind and lightning at things..." It was strange, the names of the spells weren't coming to him at the moment. "It can probably do more then that, I think...haven't needed it to do much more." Jonathon chuckled and the card vanished. "It's a giant multi-headed snake...thing. His name's Orochi. So...what about you? Do you have a persona that does cool stuff?"

[Holly Mason]

Holly wasn't sure if not knowing if she had a persona was better or worse than working with a normal.  She unfolded her arms and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"That's pretty important to know if you're actually going to be working with them," she sounded more exasperated than angry at this point.  "If she's not a persona user she needs to stay out of there.  They can't take it like we can.  I'm sure there's other ways she can aid us since she already knows.  Find out if she's a persona user and what she can do if she is.  If she's not, keep her out of trouble.  If she's had as much luck finding other users are you imply then she can still be very useful.  She just needs to keep doing that.

"As for me, my persona can heal physical wounds and inflict wind damage like yours.  I also learned a new trick recently I haven't been able to try out.  I can expose enemy weak points and lower their abilities to resist any strikes against them.  I'm not sure how effective it'll be, but if there's a large group of us against some shadows we should be able to hit them pretty hard."

[Jonathon Montoya]

Jonathon nodded. "Well...I guess I could ask her about it...Or, maybe, you could come ask her yourself. We're bound to meet up some point soon. She mentioned that she might be recruiting members and I doubt I'm the only one she's met." He was attempt to try and gain some ground in the conversation, seeing as she'd been talking him into a corner the whole time. "Please, the more persona users we get together for this team the better. Especially people like you who have a persona that can fill a support role." He stopped and sighed, then looked into her eyes. "Please, we could always use more help."

[Holly Mason]

If she was less used to people begging for her attention or approval she might be weirded out by the way he invited her to come to this meeting.  Fortunately for him, Holly actually considered this the natural order of the universe.  People were SUPPOSED TO want to work with her, people were SUPPOSED to beg her for her assistance.  She simply tapped her chin for a moment.

"I'll see if I can make it, but I'm not going to make any promises.  When and where are you meeting?"

It would be good to meet more persona users, but she wasn't going to work FOR someone else.  She might be willing to work with them, but it would be on her own terms.  Being anything but the leader offended her sensibilities.

[Jonathon Montoya]

"Uh...One sec." He said to her, digging for his phone. He honestly expected her to say now, scoff, and kick him for good measure. The fact that she seemed semi-interested surprised Jonathon. "Alright, got it." He said, holding his phone up to her. "That's the location, date, and time." He said, pointing at the screen and leaning his head to the side of the phone. "I hope to see you there. I don't know how many persona users will be there, but the more the merrier...or something like that..." He said, awkwardly chuckling as he tucked is phone back into his pocket. "So...uh...bye..." He then turned and headed back to the school.