Getting Answers [NPC/Grantus-san]

    Letting out a long, tired sigh, the teen raised a hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes. Geez, these last couple of weeks had been exhausting. With that broadcast that blurted out the names of tons of people (apparently persona users themselves), he'd been having a devil of a time at shool. Some of his classmates had recognized his name, unfortunately, so he'd been furiously attempting to calm the flying rumors and potential issues that would arise out of that.

    While trying to keep things in order on this side, he'd barely had any time to go out and do any actual investigating into the whole issue that was steadily getting worse, much less poke around at any of the alternate worlds. On top of that, Hyde was busy, and all Rita would do was tell him to look for a colorfully dressed girl in front of the radio tower if he wanted more information. Which, truly, infuriated him the most. She wasn't at school lately so he couldn't exactly ask her for more information, showing up at her house just made alarm bells go off in his head (he doubted she'd take too kindly to that, and he'd prefer to keep all relations between them peaceful), and she didn't respond to the few text messages he'd sent after her cryptic response. Honestly. He didn't care if she viewed him as a team member or ally or whatever, but they were on the same fucking side as far as he knew. The least she could do was tell him what the hell was going on. ...Oh well. If that's how she wanted to play it, he supposed he had no other choice than to play along.

    It wasn't long before he found himself standing in front of the broadcasting tower in San Malarus. Hoisting his backpack higher on one shoulder, he started to look around for a "brightly dressed girl" as Rita had described. Brightly dressed...some specifics would have been nice. Technically, you could say all the girls in the area were brightly dressed. // Did she have to be so vague...? // Honestly, how could--hmm...wait a minute...didn't Hyde call that one girl he'd seen "brightly dressed"? The one with a multitude of patterns and colors and a brown hat? The same one who had appeared on the broadcast? Could Rita be referring to her?

    Just standing around would look suspicious and odd.  The teen opted to instead walk over to a nearby bench and sit down, plopping his bag next to him and pulling out a notebook and a pen. As he began to scribble on the lined pages, he'd occasionally glance up and look for the reporter girl he'd seen on the air. If he found her...well, he wasn't quite sure about that yet. He'd prefer to just talk with her and get a few answers, but he wasn't quite sure what to expect if he actually approached her. Might as well be geared for anything at this point. After all, she must have a few tricks of her own up her sleeve if she was able to hijack the station in such a manner and know all that she revealed already. Just who was she, exactly...?

   He heard them approach before he saw them. By the time he looked up, the person was already taking a seat next to him, apparently nonplussed by his appearance. Julian, on the other hand, felt a moment of panic as she said his name. His grip on the pen tightened for a fraction of a second before he forced himself to relax. So far, she was just talking. He'd prefer to keep it that way, too. For now, it would just be best to keep calm and go with it.

    Slipping the writing utensil into the metal spiral so that it wouldn't get lost, the teen leaned back on the bench and met her gaze. "No. You're right." Now, the question was, where to go from here? He had no idea how willing to talk she was about this. But being overly cautious hadn't gotten him very well so far. Might as well jump in at this point. "You riled up a lot of people." he started, slinging one arm across the back of the bench. "Most don't really know what to make of your broadcast. The hype is only just starting to die down a little bit. But everyone is still scared." He watched her face, carefully taking note of how this news affected her. Was she happy about causing panic? Was that her aim all along? "What was the point?" If she thought she was doing the general public some kind of service by making Azores' well-kept little secret common knowledge, he had to disagree with her there. Right now, all everyone was doing was panicking. Besides, what good could they do to help? They didn't have personas. They couldn't go into the alternate worlds. Besides passing on observations to people who could do both, what were others going to do to solve the problem? From his perspective, having them meddle would just complicate everything. So what was her aim?

    So in other words, everyone who had been dragged into this mess was going too slow for her...no, not just her. She was saying "we". "We" who? A group of some sort? Couldn't be persona-users...no, actually, that would make perfect sense. If they saw this whole situation as a competition or something of the like, he could see them trying to sabotage other groups for whatever reason they saw fit. But this wasn't a game, and this girl seemed smart enough to realize that. Could this group be someone from another world then, someone tied to this issue even more than he and the others were? ...But the way she said it...was she and this "group" responsible for everything that had happened so far? "...'We', huh?" He dropped his gaze and mulled over her words for another second before looking at her again. "Who is 'we'? And if you want to give us a chance to fix things, why would you start an 'event' like this in the first place...?"

    Shit. This was...a lot to take in. To his credit, Julian merely sat there and absorbed everything until she was completely finished. Now he understood why Rita didn't try and repeat verbatim and instead sent him to the source (although it would have been nice for some kind of warning). Leaning back on the bench, he combed his fingers through his bangs and thought for a moment. Never mind all the existential questions popping up in his mind right now; the big problem was finding these angels and attempting to sway them to his side of thinking. Here's hoping another user didn't try and fail at that already.

    Fixing her with his gaze, he wondered out loud, "So where do you fit in? What do you hope the outcome of all of this is?" He figured she'd be on the side of the persona users', but he'd rather have a guarantee than go off of assumptions.

    So she was claiming to be playing this neutral, yet had an "idea". That didn't sit quite well with him. "Sorry, but I think it's kind of relevant." He smiled lightly, although the action seemed mildly apologetic, if not a little weary. "In the end, you're an angel too, right? That means you play a part in all of this too." Find the angels, convince them to help Azores. That was their job in a nutshell, right? In that case, it didn't matter if she was an "observer" or not; she still had a role in this somehow, being an angel. And the last thing he wanted to chance was, oh, a split between the users and she to be the deciding vote or some other such nonsense. He'd rather have all his bases covered instead of dismissing any possible help or possibly screwing himself over later.

    "Do all the angels know about us?" he'd ask afterwards. If she said "yes", he'd continue with, "In that case, can you tell me who these angels are, exactly? That way at least we're all on even ground here." If she said no, he'd nod with a slight sense of relief. Phew. He might not know exactly who or what he was looking for, but at least the angels wouldn't know who he was, either. Anonymity on both sides; that worked for him.

    It was obvious by the way she acted that her true goals were not to be shared with him or anyone else for that matter. as much as he wanted to push the issue and find out what it was exactly that she wanted, Julian knew doing that was a stupid move. The last thing he needed was to get the neutral party mad at him. For now, he would let the issue drop. Wouldn't hurt to ask the others if they had any clue as to her true intentions, though...

    // Forgotten forest and a wooden castle... // A forest...Lunapa was the rainforest-like island, right? But Malstu was pretty built up with trees and such too...hm...guess looking into both of those worlds was in order. Her words also gave him a little hope; if that was the only angel that hadn't been looked into, then maybe...yeah, he'd go there soon. Maybe she knew something...

    "Thank you." Putting his notebook back into his backpack, the teen stood up before slinging his bag over one shoulder. "You've been a big help." This was all extremely unsettling, and he really didn't like the situation one bit. The odds felt a little stacked against him. But then again, it was a little exciting, too; at least now he had a specific task instead of running around in the dark, struggling to find a lead. Maybe now there could be some headway made. Giving the girl a light smile, he nodded once to her in thanks. "I'll see you around, I guess." Was there another way to say goodbye to an angel? He wasn't sure. But he got what he came for, and that was all that mattered. Finished with his farewell, he turned and walked off down a nearby street, mulling the information he'd just learned over as he started home.