This Place [Mod/Awakening]

[Holly Mason]

For the past few days, there was something irritating Holly, but she couldn't place what it was.  It wasn't the usual kind of irritation she felt either.  That irritation would normally pass quickly, and if anything would just give her direction.  If she was annoyed by something it meant there was something to fix, something to do.  That kind of irritation was in her chest.  This irritation was just painful.  It was like there was something slowly burning in her stomach making her hate everyone and everything around her.  She had been finding herself lashing out at people for small slights that she would normally just shrug off, or even more strangely no reason at all.  Her current plots have been bringing her no joy, her relationships have felt boring if not outright annoying, even exploring the outside was just pissing her off more than anything else.  The worst part was that she couldn't place what was happening and it made her just want to tear her hair out.

But despite all that she still couldn't bring herself to sit around and do nothing.  That just made her even more angry.  Her past explorations in this state has left her feeling little more than hollowness and increased frustration, but it was still better than being useless.  As for where to go, well there was clearly only one choice.  She had been avoiding this place up until now even though she could handle the shadows in it because if she ever walked into another mine again it would be too soon.  Holly decided to make an exception this time.  After all, she already hated everything, so what was a little more anger?  Just seeing the entrance to this place was enough to make her frown, walking inside and seeing the oh so familiar sights, sounds and smells was enough to make that curl into a snarl.  She hated this place so much, she hated this feeling so much.

As expected, the lower parts of the mine were pretty much identical to the upper parts, there just seemed to be less paths.  Not unexpected given they probably hadn't spent as much time digging here when the mine was still operational.  It didn't do anything to improve her mood though, not that she thought anything would at this point.

[Erithania]

Behold, terror.

Gravy Giant

Skills
Brave Blade
Gigantic Fist
Agidyne

Null: Slash, Strike
Weakness: Wind, Light

[Holly Mason]

A shadow, what a surprise.  Holly's expression didn't change from the irritated snarl that her mouth seemed to be stuck in, but the rest of her just looked bored.  What was the point in fighting these things anyway?  It was like there was an endless abyss of black, gooey creatures and for every one she killed two more showed up.  And killing them wasn't exactly easy for her either because her persona was so god damn useless sometimes.  Scoffing, she called her card in front of her and threw one of her knives through it.  Her persona appeared with almost a serene smile, something that was rather unusual for Anaisa Pye.  A series of colored rings appeared around the shadow; even now this seemed like the most reasonable thing to start with in most cases.  The shadow responded by throwing at her face.

"What the fuck is with you things and constantly throwing fire at me?!"

Holly shouted, but she knew the shadow wouldn't understand her.  Her eyes suddenly moved from bored looking to outright angry.  Four of her last five encounters have involved the shadows flinging fireballs at her face.  To make matters worse, they weren't exactly small fireballs either.  She had long passed the point where even after weakening the enemy significantly, she wasn't able to outheal their damage anymore.  Her body still ached from previous encounters, and the only reason she didn't have a ridiculous amount of scars was because of her own healing ability.  Why did she even keep coming down here?  All the shadows were just going to come back, they always did.  It was impossible to get through these areas without encountering at least one no matter how many she slaughtered.  Some notion of increasing strength?  It didn't really seem to be helping her anywhere except for her ability to kill more shadows.  It's not like she could summon her persona outside the outer circle.  Maybe it'll weaken the barrier?  There had been no signs of that happening.  She had no idea how the fuck magic worked anyway.

It was a topic she thought a lot about after the fight with the reaper in the graveyard.  Not because she was disheartened or doubted her own reasons for fighting at the time, but because there was a normal that wanted to try to get a persona.  She could tell the story of how it happened and try to pick out consistences between everyone else's stories, but part of her was sure that the near death experience wasn't actually what caused her to awaken to her persona.  It likely helped because such experiences can force people into a mental state they wouldn't otherwise be in, but the persona came from somewhere else.  By the time she figured it out the normal had already awoken to his persona, but it was still nice to figure out.  Holly was pretty sure hers came from her desire to fight for something greater than herself.  To people that didn't know her well, it would sound strange because she came across as selfish and demanding, but even a quick glance at the things she did and the things she enjoyed would make the truth obvious: Holly was almost incapable of enjoying anything that didn't serve a greater purpose or that didn't involve the company of people she liked to be around.  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that her lone desire was to change the world, it just manifested itself in a few different ways.  Her desire for this wasn't for some holier-than-thou reason either.  No, it was mostly selfish.  She wanted to create a world she enjoyed for the most part, though on some level she still wanted her friends to be happy with it all too.

But it was becoming obvious to her that these fights served no purpose.  She was sure that was also not the reason for her irritation.

Shaking off her pointless thoughts, she called her persona again to attack...for some definition of the word.  The blast of wind shot right through the shadow's head and it momentarily fell on its ass.  Well, it was weak to wind, but this just made her even more irritated.  Even at its strongest without spending an eternity enhancing her strength it still did barely anything at all.  Would she even be able to take more difficult shadows at this rate?  The shadow got right back up and launched another fireball at her face.  Even with the debuff, the fireball still managed to hit.  This was so irritating.  All of her powers were so damn useless!  Even if she knew that wasn't true, it felt like it.  If it weren't for times like the fight at the school--

Holly paused for a moment.  Now that she thought about it that's when this started wasn't it?  She knew her powers made a significant impact on the course of the fight.  Not only was everyone much more difficult to hit, but when they did get hit it hurt significantly less and was probably part of why the healers were able to keep up so easily.  Plus, it greatly enhanced their own damage.  Yet, she was sure they would still win if she wasn't there at all.  There were so many of them...it was bound to fall eventually, all she did was speed it up.  When she stayed back to heal a couple of stragglers and check the damage on the school, she realized that she didn't actually know the place the party they were throwing after was taking place.  By the time she found it, the party was already done, so she was pretty disappointed there, but...That wasn't it either.  The part that really upset her wasn't missing the party, it was that no one even seemed to notice she didn't make it.  All she really did was make the fight go by faster and a little smoother, so they probably didn't even need her at all.  That was likely the core of the issue and it irritated her even more.

Holly fired another blast of wind at the shadow.  When she finally did kill it, and in her mind it really was just a matter of when, no one would ever know.  In the end, it might not accomplish much at all.  So why was she there at all?  Well, it was strictly because she was feeling restless, but why choose this place?  Well, because it was the biggest problem she knew of right now and she wanted to try to fix it even if it meant flailing around a bit.  It was inefficient and stupid.  The shadow continued attacking with fire.  It was strange, she figured that a shadow like that would be more proficient with physical attacks, yet it kept using magic.  Was it mocking her?  She balled her hands into fists.  When she summoned her card this time she just decided to punch it in anger.  Anaisa Pye dropped another small blast of wind on the shadow, but it still wasn't going down.

This was so pointless.  So pointless, but it felt so good.

The shadow retaliated with another fireball, which just made Holly scream.  "Dammit, stop throwing fire at me!"

She felt something strange in her chest and in her head.  Anaisa Pye forced herself out, but she looked a little different.  She still looked like a woman with long brown hair in a yellow dress, but the dress was nicer.  The fabric was better, the stitching was better, the color was better, it was more stylish...everything was better.  She was also wearing a bit more jewelry than before and it was nicer too.  The serene smile didn't vanish from her persona's face as the fireball hit them both.  It barely hurt at all.  Did something happen?  She felt more power with in her as well.  She was sure she could use the two defensive buffs that she was missing before now.  What just happened?

It was in that moment that she understood.  Did it actually matter if all the persona users could finish the job without her?  She did help them, quite a bit she thought.  Her place was always more of a guiding force and one that would prevent too much harm from befalling her allies and friends.  That was enough.  This need to be productive at all times, this need to be grand and perfect, this need to only do very visible things...it was all silly.  It should have been obvious from the start especially given her usual nature: wanting to do something was all the reason anyone should ever need to do something.  Anaisa Pye turned back to the shadow without comment and without losing her smile to deliver one last blast of wind to finish off the shadow.

It was a completely pointless fight.  No one would hear, more would come, it probably didn't do anything at all to help the situation, but damn did that feel good.

[Erithania]

Guess you could say. . .



. . . it's all gravy.

[Holly Mason]

Suddenly, Holly felt a lot better.  She was a little embarrassed about what was pissing her off so much, but it made sense to some extent.  She had been worrying so much about this incident and wasn't really interested in taking breaks so it was only natural that emotional stress would pile up until something small made her snap.

She wasn't convinced that she'd ever be the type that could just stop and smell the flowers because she still found most mundane things pretty boring but...well, maybe it'd be worth checking out what normal people did sometimes.  

Occasionally.

If she felt like it.