The Scene of the Crime [Open]

[Hisui Inagawa]

Hisui found the reaction to her little game interesting. By the foreign boy's sudden silence, it seemed that she had managed to find the limits of his grasp of Japanese. But Lucretia's focused expression indicated that she was managing to keep up fairly well. For all that colloquialisms and archaic synonyms seemed to stump her, more academic terminology was perfectly fine. Hisui was pleased to have already unearthed an indication of where the foreign girl's expertise lay.

However, in light of Lucretia's next question, Hisui's triumph was shortlived.  The questioning tone made it clear that she was probing Hisui's knowledge of English, but the rest went by too quickly to be completely sure.  Hisui did have some experience with the language, but the vast majority of it was in written form. For all the Yakuza had a hand in milking English-speaking tourists of their money, Hisui wasn't involved personally in those operations, and her distaste for popular media meant she paid little attention to Hollywood and other sources of the spoken English word.

Working with her knowledge of written English compared with the romaji alphabet, Hisui made her best attempt at formulating a reply.

"Ai kunau hau tsu rii-adu Ingurisshu."

Hisui's mouth turned down into a mildly annoyed expression. She could already tell that this was a sub-par display, and resorting to Japanese to say how well she could handle English seemed absurd. There had to be a better way.

Focusing intently on the two foreigners, Hisui tried transmitting something else. Instead of spoken words, a series of images. The books in Hisui's library. In particular, images of the writings of Aleister Crowley, Jeremy Bentham, Carl Sagan, all in their original English. She tried to express a nonverbal understanding that she found them easy to read.

And then she waited to see the reaction. Hisui supposed that she would have ended up exploring the limitations of this power sooner or later, and this was as good an excuse as any.

[Lucretia Odovacar]

All Lucretia could do was blink and stare.  It actually took her a moment to realize that she was staring at Hisui while she attempted to parse that sentence.  Once she did realize, she quickly stopped and starting staring at her feet instead, but it would still be difficult for her to figure out exactly what this user was saying.  The first word was obviously I, the last English, but everything in between was completely indecipherable, even to Lucretia who had a reasonable amount of experience dealing with people speaking broken versions of the languages she knew.  Hisui seemed to realize this based on her expression, and attempted to transmit some images to help her figure it out.  Why she didn't just use Japanese was beyond Lucretia.

Of course, she only learned other languages in order to read books that interested her.  She had probably never actually spoken English to anyone before.  It took a moment for it all to click, but at this point, Lucretia was certain that Hisui just pronounced the K in know.  This clearly wasn't going to work at all.  Lucretia was actually a little embarrassed for her faulty assumption, as she didn't mean to make the new user feel that uncomfortable.  This was probably not the best way to make new allies.

"Ah, I see," she switched back to Japanese.  "I will translate them into Japanese for now.  It will also be useful to do that so the other users can read them too."

[Tristan Carter]

When the other girl spoke, Tristan couldn't help but grin. He hid it behind his hand, though, in a way to make it seem casual. He didn't want the girl to see him all but laughing at her. He took note of Lucretia's reaction as well. It didn't look like she understood Hisui's words any better than he had. At least I'm not alone in that, he thought to himself with a mental chuckle. It wasn't that he found the girl's pronunciation humorous. He had just been shocked by it after her flawless display of Japanese that Tristan was still trying to decipher completely.

When pictures of books entered his mind, the boy was stumped yet again. He hadn't received actual pictures in his head before. And of books, no less. Some of the author's names seemed familiar, though. And interestingly non-oriental, at that. Slowly, Tristan pieced together what had been said with the pictures. So, Hisui could understand the words as long as they were written down, but speaking it was currently beyond her capabilities. So, she tried to convey that she had read certain English books. As interesting as Tristan found that, he decided against any further exploration of the mental link's limits.

"So," he said in Japanese mentally, still feeling odd with how he did that, "I suppose it would be best to talk in Japanese. Although, Lucretia, that may not be needed. It would be easier for you to translate into English, right? And Hisui, you can read English. This may work out better than you realize, Lucy." He thought a moment. There was no reason for Hisui to not help, so far as he could see. He couldn't think of anything more important than getting a good grasp of the situation. If anything, Lucretia seemed like she might possibly be an issue. Even with how little he knew of the Italian, he could tell she was a stubborn one. After all, she had proceeded to risk someone's life to get the information she desired. She may be less than willing to let someone help her. At the same time, she seemed rational enough to see past petty pride.

"Lucy, you could translate the notes to English. Hisui could translate them from English to Japanese and, you know, make it to where the average citizen could understand them. Preferably. Lucy doesn't have to figure out how to translate straight to Japanese, Hisui doesn't have to wait so long to be given the needed information. Everyone wins, yes?" Tristan felt like that would be the best way to resolve the issue.

Besides, the sooner they moved on from that, the sooner Tristan could finally ask what Lucretia was thinking when she messed with the coffins.

[Hisui Inagawa]

Hisui's eye twitched. To be rebuffed by the foreign girl after making it perfectly clear that she understood how to read English was beyond annoying. The mental message had arrived, obviously. And the foreign girl wasn't stupid, obviously. The only possible explanation was that this was some sort of test.

Hisui plastered a smile on her face, doing her absolute best to keep the murder out of her mental tone. "English would be perfectly fine," she said in Japanese. "Your consideration is appreciated, but unnecessary."

At Tristan's words, she nodded in emphatic agreement. Normally, the prospect of doing menial translation work for other people would be considered a complete waste of time, but it was by far preferable to being treated as an incompetent. "I would be glad to help out."

[Lucretia Odovacar]

Lucretia blinked a few times.  She could hardly believe what they were suggesting, or that Hisui would so willingly go along with it.  If she was as familiar with language as she claimed then surely she would know what a terrible idea this was?  There must be a reason she decided to learn these languages instead of just reading Japanese translations.  She didn't seem to be lying, but Lucretia supposed she couldn't completely discount the idea after suggesting something like that.

"First, my name is Lucretia, not Lucy," she pushed her glasses up.  "I do not think that would be a good idea.  When people translate anything some of the original meaning is always lost because not all languages have the same ideas in the language.  Suggesting that anything be translated not just once, but twice, and by two different people will just make it a bad translation.  It should not take me that much longer to translate myself.  As long as I type it, no one should have any trouble reading it."  She turned her attention back to Hisui, though continued to speak to both of them.  "Would you prefer an electronic copy or a printed copy?  And where do you want me to send them?  Tell me if you want a copy too Tristan."

[Tristan Carter]

Tristan smileded when Hisui went along with his idea. Seemed like his idea was a good one, at least for a moment. Then Lucretia spoke up.

The Italians word's about her sudden nickname made Tristan's grin grow wider. He hadn't even thought about it when he said it, but Lucretia caring enough about it to say something to stop it confirmed it as a guaranteed fixture. Or maybe he would come up with new nicknames for each encounter? Either way, Tristan knew it wouldn't be very long before Lucretia grew tired of objecting and simply submitted to the name(s).

Of course, her views on his other idea almost made his eyes glaze over. He understood what she meant. She wanted the notes to be as close as possible. Of course, in his own limited experience, Tristan found that the majority of what was lost in translation was emotion. Since the notes were likely to be technical, Lucretia didn't seem the type to include an emotional bias. There was also the problem that she didn't know perfect Japanese. She could unknowingly translate it incorrectly herself. Of course, her notes, her rules.

"Fine, fine," he said with a sigh. "It was a simple suggestion, Lucilia, no need to get worked up. I figured it would solve some problems, that's all." He paused a moment to consider the offer. What would he really benefit from with the notes? A few terms he didn't quite understand and a lot of observations that wouldn't affect him. Really, the only things that he needed to know would be battle oriented. Besides, he really didn't want information that may or may not be incomplete or faulty. It would only influence incorrect assumptions about what was going on. "I'll take the notes on anything involving our enemies and other Users, if possible. I'd rather not have to deal with anything else yet. As for my copy, I'd prefer a printed version, please."

[Hisui Inagawa]

Hisui swallowed the irritated retort that bubbled up at Lucretia's talk of bad translation. If Lucretia was so eager to translate directly to Japanese, then Hisui would just take her own copy of the notes and translate them to English for the benefit of any other foreign Persona-users. Yes. That would be an absolutely sane and reasonable course of action.

Her cheek was beginning to hurt from the forced smile. It was fortunate that this meeting seemed to be winding down. "An electronic copy would be most convenient," Hisui replied. "Let me give you my contact information so that we can coordinate any important operations even while outside the range of telepathy."

More detailed plans would have to wait until Hisui could see the notes herself, but there was one thing she wanted to set up immediately.

"I would also be very grateful to be shown firsthand how your excursions into the other realms go. The written word alone can only convey so much."

[Lucretia Odovacar]

"Alright," she nodded and made a mental note of what they both wanted.  "I should be able to have that finished tonight.  There is not very much to translate."

Lucretia pulled out her phone when Hisui transmitted her contact information.  The email address would be put into her glasses computer, but it made more sense for the phone number to go into the phone.  She transmitted her own as well, as was customary upon meeting a new user.  Her contact list was 10 times the size as it was before any of this happened; possibly more than that given how little she used it before now.

"Yes, I can do that," she said with a nod.  "We have similar abilities, so I can tell you what I have found out about it so far.  It would be easier to do in the other worlds themselves than it would be to try to explain it on paper.  Let me know when you want to do it."