Treo sat on a bench, remembering what he had learned about those who stayed neutral. Kumori wanted to research. Well. Research meant information, Treo liked information, helped him to figure out what was wrong from right, black and white text proved things easier than any words. He had tried to help the boy, when it turned out Kumori was a better help when he gave him healing.

Oh well. Manabu didn't seem to want to work together, nor did he seem the type that would want to. He gave a sigh and awaited his new 'friend'. He had his hair covered by a black fedora and was dressed with a black waistcoat. There was no need to look too normal. His handgun was in his side holster, just gleaming to let people know he wasn't an easy target.

Maybe this would go better than planned.

It seemed like a very nice day. The weather was breezy, the air was fresh, the sky was a lovely shade of azure and the clouds that filled it seemed fluffier than usual today. Even the chirping of the birds seemed a bit cheerier than usual. Or maybe that was exaggerated. Spending time in a park was ever so wonderful after days on end of traversing large murky lengths of abandoned ruins. He tugged at his light jacket, a hoodie that he wore sometimes in his travels as he looked around for the Wild Card. There was no need to look too outstanding. After all, Treo said that he only wanted to talk and pool information in the park.

After meandering around a shaded area of the park, Kumori eventually came around to a picnicking area and found a boy in a fedora and waistcoat with a gun holstered at his side. …Well I guess he wouldn’t need a reason to blend in, but…

“Good morning, Ashdown-san,” he said, giving a neutral bow as he approached. “I hope that you’ve been enjoying the weather.”

Treo smiled in reply. "The weather has been good, nothing like where I used to come from. It was always cold. Cold and rain. The rain would break occassionally to show the sun, but it was just a momentary break. The more sun there was the worse the rain would get." It seemed as if the weather directly tied into his memories.

"But enough about the weather in my country. It isn't something I like to talk about. I assume you know what I've come here to ask for?" The boy was very cold and calculating about his decisions. It was information he strove for, Kumori seemed nice enough to comply. That was good. He didn't want to have to attack him.

He trusted him.

"...Of course," Kumori nodded in reply, playing with the wire that led down from his earbuds down into the front pocket of his hoodie where his CD player sat. He looked up to the sky and considered everything that he had learned in his time exploring as the clouds drifted on their vague course, trying to think of a proper starting point. "Well, can we start with what you want to know and what you already do know?"

Ah. Nice and formal, just like it was good to be. "What I know is what I've encountered. The two shadows, Miss Yellow and Miss Gold. The Gunman. Other than that, I don't know anything of interest." That was true, he had thought Sora held all the cards, but it turned out he was just another ace up someone's sleeve.

"So simply put Kumori, I don't know anything and you, you know everything." He smiled, lifting his hat so his face wasn't hidden.

"I'd like to know everything."

"Miss Gold... Is she the one that you are... 'employed to' now, so to speak?" Kumori settled down at the bench and pulled his earphones out, allowing them to dangle loosely over his hand. If anyone tried to strain their ears to listen, they would be able to hear nothing, since the device wasn't even on. He looked at Treo and continued speaking once he saw his cue. "...In any case, please remember that I know very little about the ruins, so some things that I'll say based on motives and goals will be postulation. Take what I say with a pinch of salt. Let's start with the humans with shadow abilities, then. From what I've found in the ruins, when the laboratory was still up and running, the goal was to develop these powers, or at least they were a part of their motives...

"Based on what's been going on with Kageyama-sensei and his obviously golden eyes, it looks like the method of conversion is still workable even given the current state of the ruins. But even after being 'converted,' it seems like it might be tough to find the people out, especially given that when they aren't in their shadow forme, they are for all intents and purposes fully human.

"When we were fighting the gunman, our Hachirou Eiji-san, I commented that Miss Yellow was the cause of the state in the ruins... But he refuted me on that point, saying that I 'didn't know anything.' I suppose that means that Miss Yellow didn't cause the downfall of the research facility," Kumori sighed, offering the earbuds to Treo. "In any case, please put these on. No doubt you'll find this intriguing."

--

Yuzuki hummed a tune as she crossed an alley in the back streets, taking a well-worn shortcut to Ruwashi Park, where Treo said that he wanted to meet. Oyashiro seemed to be a bit antsy about the detour. She was usually never this nervous. ...This is a terrible idea. Please turn back.

"Geez, why are you being so uptight, Oyashiro-sama? Treo-kun is fine, and Sleepyhead wouldn't do anything funny."

...I was talking about this walk through the back streets, Yuzuki. The last time that you've walked down here, horrible things happened! Yuzuki blinked in confusion. She had never gone down this path, so why was her persona getting so worked up-

She gave a muffled shriek when a rough, strong hand clamped her across her face. Yuzuki's eyes shifted to her side, where she saw the pudgy face of a biker. The man chucked when he saw the fear in her eyes and adjusted a cigarette hanging from his overly full lips. "My, my. Talking to yourself in these parts of the ruins? You wouldn't happen to be lonely, now, would you? Because my buddies and I are all for keeping you company. Name's Uezono. Go ahead and cry if you want. Doesn't really make a difference to us."

Yuzuki saw other punks starting to surround her and her eyes widened a bit when Uezono tried to search out a certain feature of her chest. She bit down hard on the man's hand, causing him to knock her away on the head with his other hand. She stumbled forward and raised a hand to her bruised face. Uezono merely squinted his small eyes and chuckled again, cracking his knuckles without missing a beat. "Flat as a board, but you’re feisty. I like feisty."

He was a bit surprised when he saw the girl giggling too. "My, my, my~ So we have some rapists coming at me from behind and with that cocky attitude, no less! Did you maybe grow up watching action movies and thought that you could do it too when you were older? Uezono-kun, but that's just nothing short of adorable. Your sense of humour is simply impeccable. Bravo."

Some of the less seasoned gang members started to shiver at the sudden turn in atmosphere, but Uezono merely narrowed his eyes. "You won't think it's so funny when-"

Yuzuki broke out into full-out laughter at that point. "My, my, my, even your comebacks are lacking imagination. I’m impressed that you all can go around strutting your stuff and calling yourselves street-smart toughs when this is all you’ve got. You’re nothing more than some boys playing make-believe."

“You bitch!” the gang leader roared as he ran forward and drew back an arm for a punch, but Yuzuki had sidestepped and kicked him in the side, causing him to stumble back. She then kicked a pile of boxes lying off to the side, causing a rain of rusted kitchenware and cardboard boxes to tumble down onto the man, obstructing his movement quite efficiently. The girl walked up to him and drop-kicked him in the head, ending any blockbuster-movie one-liner retorts that the man might have had. She turned back to his henchmen and saw that some of them were advancing slowly with knives. As she turned, she also noticed a red toolbox lying very near her. It was perfect. "Hm...? Well aren’t we feeling bold. But hold back for now, okay? I’ve got something to look at."

The girl stepped over to the toolbox, popped it open and gave a delighted squeal when she saw some nails and a hammer. Yuzuki could see the gangsters looking at each other in confusion, which gave her a perfect opportunity to speak with an Evil Smile laced into her words. "This pig called me flat before, didn’t he? Not that I mind. When you’re as athletic as I am, you don’t need any excess fat. They called me a genius at PE in primary school, did you know that? The lectures that they had were pretty neat too. For example... Oh, and stay where you are, okay? It’d be a shame if Uezono-san couldn’t wake up again."

She stood up, some nails jingling in one hand and the hammer swinging in the other and kneeled near the unconscious man. "As I was saying, for example... Can anyone tell me how many joints are in the human hand? Twenty-nine, as far as I’m concerned. Well, now you know. I’m sorry that you can’t see from your angle now, but I’m sure that you can still hear, right? So count with me now~"

"One..." Thwack. "Two..." Thwack. "Three..." Thwack.

Treo gave a small nod. "I suppose you could say 'employed'. I like to think of her as a friend. She asked me to gather others." He chuckled slightly, looking at a tree in the distance. "Seems like they didn't want to believe me. She'll find them soon enough, they all go into the ruins enough..." Then he said he didn't know much.

Compared to what the others know, what Kumori knew was a goddamned Encyclopedia. The first few pieces piqued his curiousity. There was a way to become a shadow?, Did it mean you got stronger?... Hrmm.. Takumi was a lot stronger than his original self once he had the treatment, but... was he in control?, Did Miss Yellow direct her clown on the stage, or was Takumi working to his own ways? Intriguing.

Then this Miss Yellow wasn't responsible for the ruins at all... Intriguing. This was information he had been looking for. He took the headphones with a nod and slipped them on his ears.. interesting... After listening for a while he nodded and handed the headphones back.

"I see, so our original hypothesis was useless. Perhaps we need to think bigger." He remembered how Gunm- Hachirou Eiji had managed to shock him so hard he thought he would die. He gave a heavy sigh. "Perhaps Miss Yellow was a... scientist?, He sighed to himself, trying hard not to part with the only information he had to barter.

"Miss Gold said to me that, Miss Yellow's goal is something deep in the ruins. She wants the power to escape the ruins, yet she doesn't have it. Miss Gold said that we could help her, in fact she wondered if that's why we were given this power." Treo continued to think, perhaps him being a Wild Card had something to do with this?

Maybe.

"Hm... Scientist or test subject. We can't really gather any information from what Hachirou-san said other than Ms. Yellow was not single-handedly responsible for the collapse. I would think that she might be the former, based on her knowledge of the ruins... As for the reason that we were given the powers to summon our personae... Well, we can only ask that of the butterfly, mm? With all this talk of personae and shadows, it could very well be that the butterfly itself is another Jungian character, that of Philemon, the spirit guide," Kumori said, wrapping the wire of the headphones around the CD player and returning it to his jacket pocket.

"Ms. Gold... She seems like she knows Ms. Yellow quite well, mm? Perhaps they were collaborators on the project? Did she make any mention of any other people with golden eyes? I've read some lab material that suggests that there were three surviving test subjects in one particular successful experiment... However, when I asked Hachirou-san if there were more, he said for me to 'dream up as many as I wished.' If he isn't playing me for a fool, then that means that there could be dozens more of these survivors..." Kumori chewed on a fingernail as he contemplated what it could possibly mean. "Keep in mind that Hachirou-san used to be a policeman before we encountered him, and it's uncertain if he was one of the initial test subjects or happened to have been converted like Kageyama-sensei.

"...It's rather frustrating. Everything that I've seen is so horribly vague, and a single encounter with our dear gunman blew my flimsy hypothesis to pieces," Kumori shook his head, a flash of frustration registering on his facial features. He sighed from all of the pent-up confusion and lack of progress that he had seen. "...I honestly need to know more if I want to make a waterproof thesis on the issue. If you have anything at all that could bring me out of grasping at straws... please share it."

The boy composed himself and raised an eyebrow when he felt the presence of another persona user. "...Glad to see you, Shimizu-san."

Yuzuki giggled at the scanner as she bounced over and took a seat at the table. "You haven't even taken a glance over your shoulder. What a scary psychic you are, Kumo-chan! Sorry for being late. Some boys were giving me a hard time in the alleys, so I had to make sure they repented from their actions. What have we been talking about?"

Treo nodded, this was quite the interesting encounter, he wondered briefly how Kumori had so easily trusted him, but that's beside the point. "The butterfly?, I remember seeing one of those guide me to the ruins. I followed it until I... blanked out.. and woke up in the ruins. Philemon?, The guide?, This would be a good hypothesis. He does 'guide' us to the ruins, where we awakened."

"I think Gunman-san was pulling your leg Kumori. Though, after what happened to Takumi... I wouldn't doubt that, maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth. Though, the question is raised. Was turning Takumi into a shadow part of their plans? Maybe it is a sense that... they needed test subjects." He placed his hand on his chin. "You don't think... they want to reverse the process?, That's what they're searching for?"

He heard Ms Gold mentioned again and sighed, if they were going to figure this out, they would work together. "Other than Miss Yellow, Miss Gold didn't seem very interested in talking about these things to me. I did manage to get a bit of information out of her, regarding how long she had been there. She mentioned how she hadn't seen the sunlight in a long time." He chuckled slightly. "I suppose it could be nothing but mere conjecture. I am purely speculating. But, perhaps Gunman-san was one of the first. That would put him on the same level as Ms Gold."

He sighed. "I don't think he was one of the first, then again. I don't know anything about him, other than he was a policeman, then he was here?, I'm not sure." It was then Kumori displayed anger at being held back, losing a chance at information. "Kumori. I don't think we have enough to make a solid hypothesis, yet at the same time, who's to say Gunman-san wasn't just lying?, He could be trying to take us off the path."

Then... she appeared and spoke of repenting. "Yuzuki, I'd ask what you did but..." He stopped himself and collected his thoughts. "Nevermind. We were just sharing what we knew." He turned to Kumori again. "All I know about Miss Yellow is.. not only is she strong spellwise, but she's also quite strong physically." He held his hand to his face, trying to focus. "I suppose that's all I have to say, at least all of my information."

"Hm~? You're already done sharing? That's a shame," Yuzuki said. She giggled when Treo indirectly asked how she disciplined the silly boys. "It wasn't anything bad, Treo-kuuun~! All it took were a few mean words later and they were falling apart! Poor sensitive things."

Kumori didn't think too much of Yuzuki's words and opted to continue thinking about what Treo said. "I'm pretty sure that he was speaking the truth, based on what he initially told Kaerunuma-san... That he was '66% right.' It was a big clue, and out of all of us, Kaerunuma-san is possibly their biggest threat in terms of discovering any conspiracies that might threaten them. Which meant that he was quite ready and able to kill us if we hadn't lucked out... He had no concrete reason to lie, and there's always the reason that he's misinformed, since he is an underling to Miss Yellow. There's one thing that I've been wondering about, though...

"...Why can't they leave the ruins? Kageyama-sensei was able to assume his shadow forme in the school... From what I've heard, that's the entire reason that the incident occurred in the first place. I wonder if there is a difference between the current Kageyama-sensei and the... patrons to the factions. And I can't exactly pinpoint why they would want to leave the ruins..." Kumori looked up at the sky and considered the problem. "...Maybe, aside from just wanting to get out of that place... There might be some significant other that's in the outside world that they're looking for. A romantic idea, I know, but... There was evidence that at least one of the surviving patients had 'someone on the outside' they were trying to cure.

"...But again, that's outdated material. This patient could very well be dead right now or unrelated to our Miss Yellow and Miss Gold, for what little we know..." He leaned and looked back at the sky. It seemed that based on the sun's position, it was nearly noon. How tragic it was, that they had so few ideas over such a long period of time. "...So much of this is ambivalent. Do you think that Miss Gold would be eager to clear things up?"

He sighed, knowing the answer to that question was more likely than not going to be negative.