Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 1: - Quiet Outside, Dead Inside

The scratching of pencils echoed through the room as my wide, rounded, cool coloured green eyes focused on the crisp paper of the school notebook in front of me, the pages cramped with kanji all relating to my lessons. My teacher’s voice droned on through the air, as I smoothly copied what was being said into the notebook for this particular subject.

Shrilling ringing shattered the soft atmosphere of the lesson, indicating that the school day was at an end. Pulling my pen back, I delicately slid the lid back on and immediately began to slip the supplies back into the simple black backpack I carried. My long black hair covered my face from the surrounding individuals who were also moving about, thanks to my full fringe and sidelocks; soon finished I wrapped one of my long fingered and pale hands around the white straps.

Pivoting in my seat, I rose onto my feet and slightly adjusted my uniform; it consisted of a white button blouse with a small black tie secure around my neck under the collar, a black blazer with the silver grey shield and three black chevrons of my school emblazoned on it. A tartan patterned black, red and grey skirt fell to my knees with white knee high shocks and simple black shoes covering my feet.

“Oh! Sorry Chiba-san!” A female voice exclaimed. During my adjustments, I’d unexpectedly turned and nearly slammed into the girl who had just got out of her own seat; she was tall, much taller than my medium height was, with wavy platinum blonde hair that was styled in bushy ponytails with a parted side fringe swept towards the right side of her face. She accessorised with a single yellow hair clip above her left ear as well as small circular earrings on both ears and she had bright blue eyes.

The girl wore her winter school uniform in a fashion modified to fit her taste: the standard black blazer was over a white hooded sweatshirt, worn long to cover most of her short plaid skirt. Her sweatshirt had a red stripe between two blue stripes at the bottom, an S symbol near the front bottom on one side and a green four-leaf-clover symbol on the back of the hood, she wore red tights and brown boots with yellow laces.

“It’s alright Takamaki-san, I shouldn’t be so distracted. My apologises,” I apologised. My voice was low and soft, contrasting with Takamaki-san’s voice which was slightly higher and more expressive; I bobbed my head to the girl and proceeded to walk away from her since the bell had singled the end of school meaning it was time to head back home.

Shūjin High School was filled with people wandering the hallways, either on their way to club activities or perhaps to spend time with their friends, or they could be like me and trying to get home, but it almost seemed like they didn’t want to cross my path and stepped back as I walked forward. I could never know how the people of this school saw me, no one was ever cruel to me and it was better for them to be away from me… but I was lonely.

A sudden ringing came from my phone and I stifled a sigh from escaping my lips since it could only be one person, moving over to an empty area, I pulled my purple cased phone out and saw that it was the person who I dreaded it to be. Swiping the answer icon over, I lifted the object to my ear whilst silently praying to the gods that this wouldn’t be something I didn’t want to endure.

“Hello Uncle,” I greeted. I needed to keep myself calm during this conversation, this man had the galling ability to rattle me in every manner possible; even after several years, I still struggled to believe that this man was related to my mum who had been a wonderfully kind person… at least from what I could recall of her that is.

“Natsumi, Ouvrard will be at home tonight. Ensure you practice hard for your sake,” Uncle’s cold and cruel voice stated. The disconnect tone blared out from my phone seconds later, I felt a building irritation at the man that had my arm twitching slightly as I struggled to keep my emotions under control in such a public setting.

‘My sake? As if this practice is for my sake at all. It’s more for your sake than anyone else.’ I snidely thought. As much as I wished for a place that wouldn’t force me to do something I now hated with all my heart, I had nowhere else to go. Taking in a deep breath to help centre myself, I turned out of the little enclosure and returned to the throng of students moving about. Exiting the school, I continued my walk towards the station with careful and precise steps that that had me gliding through the route; I easily avoided people who nearly intersected my path and kept my green eyes focused straight ahead, anything to keep my mind off of uncle’s irritating message.

Reaching the station, I swiped my pass over the scanner to open up the barrier and passed through it. My train arrived shortly after I got to the platform and I moved to the side to allow the passengers on board to flow out before stepping onto the metallic box that could sandwich people in so tightly it was enough to make me feel sympathy for the sardines wedged into cans.

I gripped the railing and kept my eyes firmly locked on the outside of the train, but that did not mean I was absentmindedly lost within my thoughts, I had excellent spatial perception of my surroundings which meant I sensed someone approaching me. I didn’t react as he or she could just be moving towards the doors in order to get off; however, when I sensed the presence of something moving towards my backside, I reacted.

Releasing my grip on the railing, I twisted around to bring my hand swinging back and it crashed into the thing approaching me, instantly tightening my grip into one as solid as iron. I roughly jerked the object upwards, which was a rugged hand lined with age with my hand firmly wrapped around the wrist, I followed back to the source and saw the old man who was staring at me in shock as were a few other people. My feet were solidly planted shoulder width apart, with the slightest bend in my knees to maximise my stability in the rumbling, vibrating vehicle.

“Please sir, kindly do not touch me?” I coolly requested. Had anyone from school been nearby, I suspect they might have been surprised; my smooth voice was still as it had been when speaking to Takamaki-san earlier, but if one listened there was the slightest flecking of steel to it and a metallic gleam to my eyes, the man stepped with a wary look on his face and I released my hand from his wrist and turned my back to him once more.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The train ride continued without any more incidents and I was able to safely disembark, resuming my walk towards the house. The building I was heading to might as well be a cage that I was only freed from in order to attend school before being forced back inside of it. A place I would much prefer to leave behind or burn to the ground if possible, especially since it was far bigger than necessary for two or rarely three people that lived here… but then uncle did enjoy hosting meetings with his cronies here if not at some fancy restaurant. Stepping inside the building, I slipped my shoes off and stepped into my slippers.

“Natsumi-sama, welcome back,” A female voice called. I looked up and saw Watanabe Naomi walking up to me, her shoulder length brown hair flapped behind her as she moved with her brown eyes remaining steady and calm, she wore a button down white shirt with a black pencil skirt and black tights; Naomi was an employee of my uncle who worked rather closely with him, which confused me as to why she was involved with a man like him given that she seemed like a decent individual when compared with my uncle. “Ouvrard-san is waiting for you,” Naomi admitted. Her voice had taken on a slightly meek note to it.

“I know, uncle already told me,” I stated. Clinking of heels came and I looked up to see the person I never wanted to see walk around the corner and into the hallway; she stood with a straight back and an almost imperious air about her, her greying hair was pulled back into a tight bun leaving her icicle cold grey eyes to glare out from her narrow eyes and sharp face. A fancy, calf length, pale gold dress covered her thin form and her hands were folded in front of her.

“Natsumi, come,” Anais Ouvrard ordered. Despite having lived here for two and a half years, she still hadn’t adapted to using the honorifics, Ouvrard pivoted and marched away from the hallway and further into the building; stifling a sigh, I set my bag down and proceeded to move after the woman, no footsteps came from behind us which was no surprise given that Ouvrard would forbid anyone except my uncle entry into the room where she conducted my training.

I didn’t like Ouvrard, she had been brought into my life in order to train me in singing. Singing had been something I enjoyed, but ever since my uncle took me in and he’d learned I had a decent voice, he had brought this woman here. The moment she began to teach me had been the start of my own personal hell, day after day I was forced to singing until sometime my voice went raw and rough by the end of it, yet Ouvrard often times didn’t seem to care about that fact since I barely had time to recover before she started me singing once more.

Stepping into a small circular room built perfectly for sound resonance, plush red carpeting ran underneath our feet and a small rise of wooden steps elevated a circular dais upon which sat a fancy grand piano which had been brought in for her usage in training me. The woman proceeded to sit down on the bench and she looked at me with those unfeeling eyes, eyes that reduced me to nothingness.

“Va! Laisse couler mes larmes, understand,” Ouvrard stated. Ouvrard had been a Prima Donna over in France, but once she lost her ability to hit the higher notes, she moved into teaching others how to sing; I wish she had never lost the ability to sing or at least had never had the opportunity to meet my uncle, at least then I wouldn’t have to deal with this.

“Yes ma’am,” I responded. I took a deep breath to fill my lungs as I waited for Ouvrard to get on with it, there was a section before I was meant to start singing so I simply remained quiet as I waited for the notes on the piano to finally hit the starting one for me to sing; soon enough the note was depressed and I proceeded to open my mouth.

Va! Laisse couler mes larmes
(Affectueusement)
Elles font du bien, ma chérie!

Les larmes qu'on ne pleure pas,
Dans notre âme retombent toutes,
Et de leurs patientes gouttes

Martèlent le cœur triste et las!
Sa résistance enfin s'épuise; le cœur se creuse...
Et s'affaiblit: il est trop grand, rien ne l'emplit;
Et trop fragile, tout le brise! Tout le brise!

“Very good, my dear. Each day you’re improving,” Ouvrard congratulated. But her words were cold and unfeeling; I hated the way she said those words, I didn’t understand why she felt the need to keep calling me such a thing but every time she did it sent all the cold of winter driving deep into my bones even during the heat of summer.

“Thank you,” I stated. My tone was even and steady, not showcasing just how much I actually disliked the woman sitting at the piano; with that out of the way, Ouvrard proceeded to drill me through several more songs from operas like Faust, Romeo and Juliet, Carmen, Les Troyens, Samson et Dalila, and L’étoile. Soon enough the afternoon light faded into deep twilight and I started to cough slightly from the hoarseness of my throat.

With the training over, Ouvrard stood to her feet and proceeded to pat me on the cheek in a manner that was mocking and I felt my muscles tense up in response to the light scratchy sensation her perfectly manicured nails caused on my cheek as they pressed against my flesh. Once done with that mocking move, Ouvrard stepped around me and proceeded to walk away from the room with the piano, Naomi poked her head into the room and handed me a glass which held a concoction which helped to soothe my throat after practice. My uncle wanted me to perform for him and his wretched colleagues whenever they were together, that was why he had me practicing with that maniacal woman who seemed obsessed with my voice from how she treated me.

I turned to watch the woman walk away and as she did, I saw something settle over her almost like some strange sort of hazy image that wrapped around Ouvrard like a gossamer screen. I couldn’t clearly make out many details beyond something faintly black and maybe gold twisted around her; I blinked my eyes and lightly rubbed them in order to clear the strange image from my eyes before swallowing the rest of my drink.

The moment that Ouvrard proceeded to leave the building, I quickly ascended the steps and I ducked into the place that was my room, I changed into a pair of black hakama pants with a white haori top. Reaching under the bed I proceeded to pull out a very large chest of shiny wood secured with a heavy padlock, reaching under the haori I pulled out a key and slid it into the keyhole for the object.

A small click sounded and the lock fell slightly into my hand, removing it I set the object to the side and proceeded to push the lid open, revealing the contents held within. Piled on top of each other were a large variety of weapons, some of Japanese origin whilst others were of more western origins… all of them were reproductions, fakes useful only for practice but my dad had been a prudent man.

My dad had ties to an old samurai clan and he’d been raised in a manner that was befitting of their old ways, ways he had carried even to his adulthood and through into his family; that manifested in naginata training for me. Reaching into the chest, I rifled through the objects before picking out the naginata from inside of the chest and setting myself into a stance.

Exhaling a rush of air, I began to move through the kata that my dad had drilled into me. Sweeping my naginata to the right or left as if displacing a weapon. Thrusting upwards diagonally as if to block a weapon. Stabbing forward towards an imaginary opponent. Pivots and twists of my body accompanied my feet’s movements. Rotations of my hands were made to maintain optimal grip on the weapon’s shaft.

With a final decisive thrust, I came to a sharp stop, my chest rising and falling with gasping breaths. Sliding the weapon back so that it hit the ground, I focused on reclaiming my steady breathing as I slid my eyelids close to block out sight whilst I glided my fingers up and down a section of the shaft’s rough grain to aid in centring myself once.

Once calm I opened my eyes and walked over to the chest, settling the naginata onto the ground beside the chest which I then pushed my hands into once more and pulled out a bow. Pulling out a quiver that was also under the bed, I set about losing arrow after arrow at a patch of the wall cut repeatedly by the piercing of the heads; once done with the entire quiver, I pulled them out and put them into the quiver.

Walking back over to the chest, I proceeded to move through the caring and refinement of the blade and string. Once that was done, I put the weapons back in their places and closing the chest; once it was closed, I sealed the padlock and proceeded to shove it back under my bed where no one looked. Moving around I leaned back against the bed and tilted my head back as I stared at the ceiling trying to bring my family to mind like I always after practicing.

Yet just like every time I tried to remember them, the sounds decided to assault me instead. Screeching metal as it twisted in the wrong way, horrifying screams that rattled my brain as the phantom scent of blood stung my nose… I could never recall the faces of my family now, only their names and vague memories of them; my mum’s eyes were remembered but only because I had a constant reminder nearby that was highly unpleasant to be around.

My mum, Cho, my dad, Daichi, my elder brother Hikaru and my little sister, Mirai. All three of them had died nearly three years ago, an accident had claimed all four of them whilst I’d been at an after school club… actually it had happened almost right as I was coming out of practice since they’d been coming to pick me up. That was how I ended up within my uncle’s ‘care’ to begin with.

“They’re gone now! It’s best you forget they ever existed! Don’t you dare cry Natsumi! Don’t ever cry!” My uncle’s words rattled through my skull. Don’t cry, an order forced upon me hours after their death when I’d still been numb from it, he was also responsible for the destruction of their images, every photograph of them had been torn out of my home and burned to ash; there by making him the reason I could never recall their faces despite my wish to.

Since then, it felt like nothing in this world apart from my uncle could provoke an emotional response out of me; even singing which I use to love within all my heart now meant less than nothing to me. The truth was, that sometimes, I felt like I was dead inside… nothing more than a spectre that slinked through life, unseen by the people around me, unnoticed by those around me.

It was as if my uncle’s words from that accursed day had forced me to kill off my own heart. Turning me into a ghost.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and her Persona. Thank you to Turandot (LostOzian) for the lovely review.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 2: - I am thou, thou art I

Raking my hands through my hair in an attempt to ease my headache, I kept walking down the pathway. Another school day had ended and it was time for me to returned to my birdcage no matter how unwilling I was to be heading there; the only positive I could take was that Ouvrard wasn’t waiting to torture my voice some more when I got back to the building.

‘That accursed woman. Why does Anais Ouvrard think she can turn that house into her own personal opera house just because my damned uncle hired her?’ I thought. I closed my eyes just briefly as that thought fluttered through my mind; but when I opened them up, I practically jumped a foot into the air and definitely took a couple of large steps back from the deeply troubling sight that lay in front of me.

I had only been a short distance from the house when I’d closed my eyes but now that I had opened my eyes, the house was nowhere to be found and instead a towering building stood in its’ place. It was a bright golden bricked building that towered above me with black bricks lining what appeared to be the windows and doors, it was circular in appearance with a pale gold domed roof, there seemed to be golden statues ringing the edge of the domed building.

“What on earth?” I questioned. An eerie atmosphere hung over my form as I looked around the area, finding a fog surrounding the area near me and the area surrounding the building was deserted of any other houses or people; swallowing thickly I took a hesitant step backwards when something fluttered in front of me in a delicate manner… it was a blue butterfly that almost appeared to be translucent.

Do not run. Words echoed around me yet at the same time those words seemed to be coming from within my own mind. Do not run. Take a step forward, towards your freedom. The words continued, yet the voice couldn’t be identified, the butterfly fluttered further towards the ostentatious building that tried hard to be elegant and, in my opinion, it failed miserably which caused it to look gaudy.

Frowning slightly at the unnerving prospect of stepping into such a strange building, there was something within me that spurred me to follow after the butterfly into the shadow of this strange building. As I walked, ripples moved out from my feet, these ripples were purple in colour and when I lifted up a foot, water followed in its’ wake which caused me to move quickly towards the building as I tried to ignore the horror story like feeling that was pressing down onto my shoulders with every step.

Reaching the door of the building, I found the blue butterfly had vanished leaving only a black wooden door with golden pattern curling across its’ surface barring me from going inside. Swallowing thickly, I reached out a hand to the shiny gold handle and proceeded to push it open to reveal the interior of the building which was as ostentatiously ugly as the outside of the building happened to be.

Deep red carpets covered the, likely, wooden flooring with a large staircase rising up in front of me before branching off to the left and right. The staircase appeared to be made of marble with gold filigree coursing across the banisters, two corridors at ground level shot deeper into the building, but I heard sounds coming from that direction. Not exactly wanting to encounter anyone, I decided to head up the staircase and took the left hand turn.

Moving down the darkened corridor, red carpeted and wooden walled with what looked to be gas lamps offering feeble illumination. Doors were pressed periodically into the wall but whenever I stopped by them, I heard sounds echoing out from the other side. Coming to a stop beside the fifth door that no sound came out from, I proceeded to open the door and stepped inside to whatever lay beyond.

It was a small rectangle of a room, longer than it was wide, I walked over to the edge with careful steps, more red carpet that I finally realised was rather plush as each footstep seemed to sink into the carpet. A duo of chairs sat at the end with both being unoccupied, they were an ugly gold colour and when I trailed my fingers over the fabric, I realised it felt like velvet which caused me to frown slightly. A marble balcony with the same golden filigree curled across the front of the box with red curtains almost acting as a cordon between this area and others; pressing my hands on the balcony, I proceeded to lean my body out slightly in order to gather my bearings of this strange building.

Down below was a massive gathering of seats, velvety golden chairs were moving in a circle around the lower area, split into different groupings with pathways of gaudy red piercing the different groups to allow passage between the different areas. A large stage dominated the back wall, deep brown wood made up its’ surface as vivid red curtains framed the depressed area where the performers would tell their story, in front of it was a collection of black chairs that were split into groups but only three instead of the dozens that the gold chair made up. Up above was another gold filigreed marble balcony that I could not see to since it jutted out far beyond the box I stood in, but it likely contained more seats and alongside me were more boxes like the one I stood within.

‘Oh stars! This is an opera house!’ I realised. It looked like a strange mashing together of different opera houses that I had seen Ouvrard and my uncle discussing I could perform at – without any consideration as to how I felt about the subject, as per usual – which might be the reason behind why it looked so ugly in its’ gaudiness , it simply didn’t look right to mash them together; however my confusion was forcibly abandoned when I realised that people had appeared.

They had seemingly appeared out of thin air, all of them dressed in clothing as gaudy as the surroundings they were in as they flocked towards the chairs but from up above there seemed to be something odd about them… something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But whatever it was put a churning feeling right into my stomach, my instincts were practically screaming at me to flee this strange place and I quickly turned around to head for the door out of the box.

Yet, before I could take more than a single step forward, the door suddenly flung open and in its’ way was an entity of such strangeness. It was tall and shaped like a human with broad shoulders and a barrelled chest of muscle, the body was clad within an ugly suit of red and gold that was as gaudy as the rest of the stuff I’d seen here but what unsettled me most was the golden mask like for a masquerade that rested upon its’ face that seemed utterly devoid of all features beyond two burning pools of red that stared out from behind the mask’s eyeholes.

“The intruder is in the Maestro’s box!” The strange being declared. I felt a strange sensation, like heavy pressure pushing down on my shoulders with an impending sense of danger, deciding that staying behind was a superbly bad idea and the ordinary way out was barred, I did the crazy thing and quickly turned around to jump to the balcony. “Halt, intruder!” The strange being cried.

“No way!” I responded. With that out, I promptly turned around to hang from the balcony before releasing my grip and plunging through the air towards the ground; my heart hammered in my chest so hard the sound blocked out all else as I wildly swung my hands about in a desperate attempt to seize a hold of something anything to stop me from falling and breaking something important.

As my plummet continued, I spotted red fabric, not thinking much I swiped out and seized a hold of it, my body jerked to a stop but only briefly and the fabric started to tear along itself and I continued to drop to the ground but much more controlled than before. Gritting my teeth slightly, I tried to think of things to do as I angled my body in a way that might at least minimise the tearing or at least allow me to safely land on the ground.

Surprisingly enough, the ripping stopped just enough for me to gently set my feet against the ground as I released the fabric from my white knuckled death grip. Blinking in surprise that something like that had actually managed to work, I was stationary for all of two seconds before a piercing high pitched, and almost musical, scream tore through the air. I looked up and saw a woman, or a girl, clad in white pointing at me and that was when the chaos proceeded to erupt like a damned volcano.

The people sat in the seats proceeded to scream as if I was some kind of demonic beast. Realising this was a bad situation, I immediately bolted down the red carpeted aisle towards the door that would hopefully lead me out of this place, unfortunately more of those masked beings showed up and these ones carried weapons in the form of thick truncheons.

One of them charged right at me and raised the weapon up to start swinging at me, I threw myself forward into a roll, gliding underneath the weapon as it whistled the air over my head. I got my feet underneath me and sprung upright before needing to jump to the side to avoid another swing from another masked being. Gritting my teeth, I quickly gathered what I needed in my mind and lashed out with my foot.

The appendage caught the butt of the creature’s weapon, forcing it to release the truncheon and I quickly moved to where it would land. My fingers easily curled into perfect position around the weapon’s handle. I quickly threw the object at another of the creatures and without waiting to see if it hit, I proceeded to leap onto the chairs behind me and I immediately started to use them to cross to the back of the room, each step was perfect and precise as I bounded across the backs like I was a rabbit. Once I reached the end, I jumped off and landed on the ground ready to run once more.

‘Okay… that’s weird.’ I thought. I quickly sprinted out the nearby door and into a darkened hallway which I darted down; my body was moving in an odd manner, it was like it was responding to my thoughts, not so much the electrical command currents sent pulsing across my nerve endings but the mere imagining of what I wanted my body to do was enough, also that truncheon seemed to fall into my hand too perfectly to be natural.

I bolted down the hallway, seeing odd shapes in the faint shadows but I refused to stop moving to investigate, I needed to get out of wherever the heck I was and back to a world that made sense. My breathing was coming in heavy gasps as my heart continued to thunder away in my chest, I snapped my eyes about to be aware of danger whilst focusing my ears as much as possible to pick up the slightest sound of anyone chasing after me.

Darting passed a hallway shooting off the one I was currently in, I felt panic start to grow as I didn’t know where I was. But before I could get too far passed the hallway, a powerful arm seized a hold of me by my throat, dragging me back into a muscled body; I lashed back with my legs, but it felt like I was kicking solid metal walls and trying to pry the arm off was a perfect example of an exercise in futility.

My throat felt like it was being squeezed by a vice and then motion hit my body, it was moving too fast for me to make anything out only that I was being dragged backwards at a horrifically astounding speed. I tried to position myself so that I could be able to breath without my throat getting destroyed by the mass of muscle pressing into my airway. However, the hulking brute behind me made that impossible when the arm pressed down even further onto my throat which caused dark spots to start dancing in my vision.

Thankfully that immense pressure faded and I was unceremoniously dropped into a heap on the ground, I choked and gasped as I tried to get myself back together whilst talking echoed over my head. Apparently, whoever had jumped me ended up dragging me back to where this Maestro person was located from the bits of conversation I managed to pick out through the haze as my head continued to throb with pain. Sharp pinpricks stung at my skin around my chin and my head was forcibly lifted up to look at someone.

“O-Ouvrard!” I choked out. Because it was her, despite the black and gold outfit that covered her form consisting of a golden shirt covered by a black jacket with golden cuffs and black pants; on her face was a white half mask that covered the right side of her face and eerie gold eyes bore into me; despite the absurd outfit, strange mask and disturbing eyes, it was definitely my wretched music teacher. “What is going on here?!” I demanded. Feeling utterly confused by the whole situation.

“Ah, so it is you Natsumi,” Ouvrard stated. I didn’t get another chance to say anything when something hard and sharp sliced across my face, my upright position quickly crumbled and I collapsed to the ground, feeling an incredibly painful sting burning over my cheek, shock pulsed through me as I reached my fingers up to brush against my aching cheek and the sharp stinging increased as something warm oozed over my face and fingertips, pulling them back I saw the blood staining the tips. “How dare you ask questions. You know that isn’t how this works,” Ouvrard sneered. I saw her hands clad in golden gloves with bejewelled rings on each finger, likely the source of the cut on my cheek.

“What is wrong with you?!” I snapped. Despite the pain radiating across my cheek and the shock driving itself into my skin, I clambered onto my feet and tried to maintain a steady stance as I looked at the woman who blinked at me in surprise. “I just happened to come into this damned weird place and the first you do is attack me! Also, I almost got choked to death by that brute over there! Now, what in damnation is going on here?!” I demanded. I was far too angry to think about how this woman might react to being defied but it was all too crazy of a day at the moment.

Ouvrard’s sneer was the only warning I received before her hand lashed forward and I was hoisted off of the ground. My hands flew up to try and sink my short nails into her vulnerable skin but once more it felt like trying to harm steel, my back was forcibly slammed against the wall and my air firmly driven from my lungs. Leaving me gasping in both pain and oxygen deprivation as I bleary looked down at the woman holding me aloft.

“You were to be my masterpiece, my pièce de resistance, my angel of music. Such a shame that instead of being grateful for my teachings and your uncle’s generosity in allowing such a waif as you to be taught by me, you are nothing but a rude, ungrateful, thieving little girl! Stealing away my efforts for your own selfishness,” Ouvrard snarled. Her lips were twisted into a dark and terrible sneer as her grip on my throat increased in pressure. “Your voice is mine! Mine to mould and craft as I see fit! I don’t intend to let you wriggle away!” Ouvrard declared. Unable to bear anymore, I swung my leg out and caught the woman in the chest, forcing her to release me as she stumbled back and I crashed against the floor.

“You… keep… saying…things… about… how you… own me. But that… is nonsense…,” I wheezed out. Pushing myself onto my knees, I struggled to rise up fully and had to resort to bracing myself against the nearby wall to keep myself from swaying and toppling over once more. “You were praised, openly and for years. Respected and loved by everyone. You had everything you could ever want and yet! Yet you come into my life! You steal something that I love from me! Claim that you own me! And I am sick of living beneath your thumb! My voice torn asunder by your cruel desires!” I snarled. My breath coming back with each word.

“True, too true,” A feminine voice sang. It was strangely harmonic and caught me off guard, I snapped my head around to try and find the source, yet nothing could be seen speaking to me. “She accuses you of stealing from her, but she is the true thief! She would take you from this life if she could! A selfish and obsessed woman! Will you allow her to take all that you are!? All that is rightfully yours!” The voice echoed. But strangely it shifted, part way through the voice had changed to a dark and eerie snarl, much more masculine than the soft feather like voice from before.

“No, I’ve had enough,” I admitted. I had said it quietly as I drew myself up to my full height and glared at Ouvrard who was glaring at me. “You don’t know the pain you put me through! The things you have done to me! I have been reduced to feeling as if I’m more dead than alive, as if I am empty of meaning and purpose, seen but never listened to! But now, you will listen to me! I am done! Done with you daring to take my voice from me!” I yelled. It felt so freeing to say those words after all this time, to final speak for myself instead of staying quiet.

“Magnificent,” The voices echoed in eerie harmony. In that instant, a powerful headache slammed into my mind’s focus feeling as if something was trying to claw its’ way out from inside; my mouth opened but I don’t even know if I was screaming or not, my hands rose up to grip the skin under my raven hair as my body stumbled about. “To live under the thumb of another, chained to their wants and desires is not your way. The other you sings for freedom to be taken even if darkness is your only reward! We may now make a contract. I am thou, thou art I!  Let the song of your soul ring out to those who would subdue you!” The voice called; the masculine echo stronger this time. It almost seemed to echo from deep within my soul.

“Yeah, I’m know. Time to fight back,” I agreed. Some instinct kicked in, I moved my hands down to wrap the fingers around a weight that had appear on my face, my fingers dug into the seam between the weight and my skin then I pulled. Hot, burning pain lanced across my skin as I tried to pull the object away from my face, but I continued to pull with all my might and eventually it came free of the skin, blood trickled down my face as if the object had been fused to the organ instead of just resting on it. “Come Phantom!” I cried.

The pain flared brighter in respond to that cry, the sensation of blood rolling down tickled my skin, but it was soon burned away, quite literally. Blue flames suddenly engulfed my vision completely, but I felt it moving across my skin and clothes, swallowing up my form before suddenly flowing backwards behind me. Gaping mouths were on the group who stood in front of me, but their eyes were focused behind me, so I cautiously turned around to see what they stared at.

Floating behind me was a man… at least that’s what I think it was, but the outfit obscured much. A thick black cloak swallowed up all manner of limbs except for the thin and bony hands which seemed to almost float around the cloak, a thick red length of fabric was held between the two hands with one end looping back on itself giving the fabric the appearance of a noose. A heavy black mask was pressed onto the entity’s face which obscured much of the face except for the mouth and chin areas and the forehead, skin looked to be pulled tight and had a faded yellow-white tone to it, a dark grin was stretched across his dry and chapped lips as deep set gold eyes peered out at me, dark brown hair was plastered to the head and around the neck was a red cord holding a glittering gold ring that shone brightly; I knew in my heart that this was the Phantom I had called for.

“Alright,” I spoke. I turned around to glare at Ouvrard who was stumbling backwards with wide eyes full of fright and I finally took notice of something, a long smooth cylinder was in my right hand; looking down, I saw with a heavy dosage of surprise that a naginata lay in my hand, its’ handle was a deep black with the steel of the curved blade gleaming in the light; a wild smile to match Phantom’s dark grin spread across my face and I pointed the weapon at Ouvrard. “I’m not letting you do as you wish any longer! This is my life! My voice belongs to me! And me alone!” I declared.

“Destroy her!” Ouvrard ordered. The weird creatures moved in front of her and then seemed to bulge and ripple, eventually a black and red liquid flew up into the air before splattering down and yet the creatures’ appearances had changed; now the two of them were completely different entities, my eyes darted between the two of them as I worried about what to with these things.

One of them was a tiny little orange creature with sharp claws on the end of its’ fingers with what looked to be a mop of brown hair hanging over its’ eyes, a pair of ears were poking out from the hair with a braided tail flopping behind it and what looked to be circles dotting its’ body. The other was even smaller with earthen brown skin that appeared to be cracked in places, with intense green eyes peering out from behind its’ knees which were pulled up to its’ chest.

Yet as I looked at them it felt like some kind of information was wavering into my mind, somehow, I just knew that the crouched monster was known as Gnome whilst the dancing orange creature was called Obariyon. The orange creature spun around and suddenly a boxing glove appeared above it and flew towards me.

On instinct, I threw myself to the side into a roll. I quickly got my feet underneath me and swung my naginata out towards it. But the moment my weapon grazed it, I felt as if my blade was repelled slight, making the wound a paper cut as opposed to a slice. Jumping back, I looked at the orange creature which continued to dance happily as if my blade had never touched it. Things got worse when I sensed something flying towards me.

Twisting towards it, I barely raised my arms to block the stone chunks that had suddenly come flying at me. Yet as each attack smashed into me, I barely felt it instead a tingling sensation coated my arms, implying the attack had barely tickled me which caused my eyes to furrow together in confusion. Suddenly a dark and ominous chuckle reverberated within my mind, on some level I knew that it had to be Phantom.

“The Earth and Gravity are yours to command. They shall never harm you greatly. Now use them! Call upon your power!” Phantom declared. It was like information flowed into my mind at that moment and I understood what power Phantom was talking about, so I stretched my hand pout and felt something drain away, not by much but it was enough to be noticeable, and flow into Phantom.

“GRY!” I cried. A pulsing, vibrating wave of green energy flowed from Phantom as the noose was flourished, it flew out and struck the Gnome creature. Shockingly enough the creature was hit so hard by the attack that it was thrown onto its’ back. Obariyon was so shocked that it froze its’ movements, so I quickly made my move. “Tera!” I declared. The same stone attack that had barely harmed me flew out and slammed heavily into the orange creature which sent it stumbling back.

A furious scream echoed and I looked up to see Ouvrard with her mouth open and I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing up right. Suddenly more of the same masked beings appeared at Ouvrard’s side and then did the same ones that the last two did, bursting into puddles of red and black goo before turning into more creatures. There were more of those Gnome and Obariyon creatures but also several other types spotted among them.

“Destroy that intruder already!” Ouvrard roared. I saw the creatures starting to approach at that cry, tightening my grip around my naginata, I turned and quickly charged away from the scene; I was outnumbered and with the current unknown powers of this strange entity that had spontaneously appeared from within me, staying behind to keep fighting was a foolish idea.

But what the heck was going on?

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 3: - Personas, Palaces and the Velvet Room

I ran. I ran as fast as I could whilst looking around the opera house that I’d ended up trapped in somehow, I tried to avoid as many of the strange creatures as possible. Phantom drifted in front of me before bursting into flames and shrinking down, down and changing shape until it became something else entirely which fit easily within the palm of my hand and I stumbled to a halt in surprise.

The object that Phantom had become was a mask, like one worn at a masquerade, it was a solid minty green shade with darker green edging around the ends of the mask and the eyeholes; at the sides were white flower petals but I couldn’t identify the type, then again I wasn’t a botanist. Clattering echoed behind me; I turned around to see the menagerie of creepy creatures charging towards me. Quickly slapping the mask onto my face, I pivoted and proceeded to start running once more, ignoring how it perfectly fitted to the contours of my face.

I darted through the rooms and down hallways, desperate to avoid being caught by those things as my mind spun with where I needed to go, but at the moment I had no clue. Being forcibly dragged at high speed had disorientated me quite a bit and I had no mental map of this place to consult and aid in my escape. As I sprinted around a corner, I saw a door stamped into the wall at the other end, but it was so out of place that it was surprising to suddenly see it there.

Hearing more footsteps approaching me, I decided to take a chance and legged it towards the out of place door. Something flew too close to my head and I pivoted around to face it, but at the moment I saw the creatures approaching me, I slammed back into the door which unexpectedly swung itself open and I lurched backwards over my own feet.

“Owww!” I complained. A blunt pain stung across my entire back as I lay on it for several moments, staring up at the ceiling which I noted seemed rather different to the creepy theatre and my home, namely that it was a warmer wooden colour instead and they appeared to be draped with blue fabric in voluminous layers.

“Well, that was quite the entrance,” A voice commented. It was male and given everything I’d been through recently I instantly leapt to my feet and twisted around to point my naginata at the person; what I found was, as expected, a man. But this man was old with a long nose, pointed ears and bulging, bloodshot eyes with a ring of white hair around the back of his head and only the back of his head, he wore a black suit, white gloves, white socks and black shoes.

“Who are you? Where am I? What the heck is going on?!” I demanded. I kept myself centred as I’d been trained, my right hand was tightly gripping the naginata’s shaft whilst my left was loosely wrapped around it so that I could easily reach for my mask and summon Phantom if things got really messy within this new strangeness that I’d fallen into.

“I am Igor. Welcome to the Velvet Room my dear,” The man spoke. I looked around the room, seeing it was a wide open space covered in that same blue fabric but there were no windows, the man was sat at a table on top of tatami mats, creepily enough chains dangled from other places. Yet as I looked, the door I’d fallen through didn’t appear to be present at all which caused my eyebrows to furrow together as I turned my attention back to the man. Strangely enough, there was a song echoing, it sounds… primordial. So old the words were long lost, but the sensation, or comfort and safety remained strong and deeply rooted to the echoing vibration, yet there was a hint of something else beneath the pulsating tones.

“Velvet Room, seems appropriate,” I admitted. The man grinned at my words, suddenly a young girl appeared; she had long platinum hair and golden eyes with lips that were a noticeably pink colour, she was dressed as if she was a maid, the dress was blue with a rather stylish matching headband that had white butterfly ornaments and yellow roses, a book that seemed strangely large and entitled Le Grimoire was held under her left arm. In the right hand was a small tray holding two cups of steaming liquid which she set on the table.

“Thank you Lavenza,” Igor spoke. The girl nodded and moved to hold the tray against her legs as she stepped back but hovered near the table. “Come, join me and I shall answer whatever questions you have to ask,” Igor insisted. His hand waved me closer, but I just looked at him in confusion as I refused to drop my stance. “You have managed to enter this place, a place between thought and dream. That is not something ordinary people can achieve and I sense in you something I have seen before, a power I have experience with,” Igor admitted.

“Alright,” I decided. If this man did prove to be a danger, I’d attack him instantly, but at the moment I needed answers more than anything else; I walked over and proceeded to sit down at the table in the empty chair that had not been there moments before… or at least I don’t think it was, but I kept my naginata upright with its’ butt firmly against the floor; this was useful for one reason. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked. The moment I’d sat down, Igor had reached over and gripped my chin and leaned in close to my eyes, I responded by pointing my weapon’s blade directly at his throat.

“Calm yourself, I’m merely looking,” Igor insisted. I didn’t sense any malice from him, or Lavenza for that matter, and he did just seem to be looking into my eyes, so I proceeded to pull my naginata away, but I kept it upright just to be safe. “I thought so, it would seem you’re Betwixt,” Igor commented. With thar he released my chin and proceeded to move back to properly sit across from me.

“Be-what?” I asked. I didn’t fully understand the word he had spoken, it sounded like something old and almost archaic, it fit his appearance but it was rather strange sounding; Igor proceeded to drink from his cup, finding myself suddenly thirsty, I lifted up my own cup and took a sip, finding that the liquid inside was tea and it was rather delicious which caused a relaxed feeling to suffuse my tense muscles.

“Betwixt,” Igor repeated. He lowered his mug and focused on me, so I proceeded to do the same thing. “Tell me have you ever taken the time to examine your eyes closely,” Igor wondered. I shook my head in response to this, mentally wondering what my eyes had to do with this. “I thought not, most people overlook doing such a thing and this isn’t something you’ll spot by a cursory glance, one must look deep and long at your eyes. You see my dear, your eyes aren’t completely green, instead right near the edge of the pupil, it become a different colour and it isn’t gradual either, but quite instant. The rings are also two different colours, your right is sky blue whilst your left is sun yellow. Those rings are signs of a person being Betwixt,” Igor explained.

“But what does that mean?” I asked. How could having rings of different colour mark me as something else and did that mean I somehow wasn’t human; I don’t think either of my parents nor Hikaru or Mirai had such a thing but then I’d never taken the time to look directly at their eyes for any length of time beyond simple glances and it wasn’t like I could do that now.

“Betwixt are unique my dear, their physical forms are born of humans, but their souls are created from another being. A being I am subservient to, the one I call my master, Philemon. Because of this fact, they are collectively called the Children of Philemon. On occasion, it is necessary for a child to incarnate into a human in order to help protect humanity. Lavenza and I, our Master Philemon and his Children make up the Triad of Rulers of Power. He bestows, we cultivate and the Children as Betwixt protect. Your eyes symbolise your connection to this world and those eyes will allow you to perceive the other worlds that live alongside your own physical reality, places influenced by humanity’s thoughts,” Igor explained. That sounded confusing, especially the bit about my soul being some sort of esoteric entity from another being.

“So… you mean… I can see… things… created by a person’s mind,” I clarified. It sounded absolutely ludicrous no matter how I tried to turn it over in my mind but could that be behind my unusually accurate intuition or keen spatial awareness; a sudden thought came to my mind, because it would certainly explain something. “Is that how I ended up in that place?” I wondered. That world was so bizarre, creepy and out of place that it being a creation of the mind seemed the simplest explanation.

“Do you think she has one?” A soft female voice asked. It could only be Lavenza since there was no one else within the room, but that confused me and I looked at her, wondering what she could possibly mean by that vague question. “Do you think she has a Persona?” Lavenza asked. Her golden eyes were focused upon Igor who I turned to face, quietly expecting an answer as well.

“I don’t think Lavenza, I know she does,” Igor answered. His lips were pulled back into a grin which exposed a mouth full of rather pearly white teeth and they were focusing upon me; but everything about their little conversation confused me even more than the Betwixt one earlier, and I darted my green eyes between the two of them.

“A Persona? And please assume I’m going to need clarification for everything you speak so the conversation can go faster,” I spoke. Igor simply continued to smile at me as Lavenza remained rather silent with her face being incredibly passive… it eerily reminded me of me when I was at school and I wondered if the uncomfortable feeling I had when I looked at her was what I caused to the others at school.

“A Persona is… I suppose one could call it a mask to help support you, armour to bolster you to fight against this world. There are things called Shadows, one version is them simply being embodiments of stories but the other, more dangerous version, is when the darkest aspects of a person are given life and form within the realm of the mind, something corruptive and polluting, a Persona can be considered a tamed version of these Shadows. You have awakened something in your heart, something that wished to rebel against the chains binding you down and that is why your appearance has changed,” Igor explained. But that last comment had my eyes blinking in confusion.

“What?” I asked. Igor didn’t answer me and instead pointed towards a mirror that was weirdly out of place in this room, I set my naginata down – determining that neither of these people were a threat to me – and quickly rose to my feet and moved over to look into the reflective surface. “Th-this is insane… this isn’t me!” I exclaimed. The sight that lay in front of me was too shocking for me to believe.

Reflected in the silver surface was a beauty; her raven hair flowed down behind her and the fringe was pinned to the side by a white hair clip which allowed her to see unhindered, a bodice made of an emerald green material that felt like leather covered her form with a sheer wrapping of glossy pale brown material wrapped around her shoulders and collarbone area, but a sliver of skin could still be seen clearly. Full finger, mossy green coloured gloves rose to the middle of the forearms with gleaming steel plates running across the back of them, soft brown leggings covered what I could see of the legs although most of them were blocked by the emerald boots that were slid over them, thankfully having low heels, with the front of the boots also covered by steel plates; oddly enough there was an ankle length skirt… or rather half skirt since it only covered the sides and back leaving her front exposed, were it not for the leggings and boots, the skirt was made of a soft brown upper layer and minty green under layer with there being white thread woven on the brown  portion that formed into the shape of nadeshiko blossoms. Honesty, if it wasn’t for the waving arms and bobbing of my head, I wouldn’t have believed it was me, no matter how much I thought about it.

“Are you certain? Who do you think you are?” Igor asked. I turned to look at the man who was staring at me with quite an intense look, even Lavenza seemed to be curious about my words; but it should have been obvious, I didn’t dress like this, it was covering but accentuated my figure and more so than what I normally wore but it was the armour that threw me more than anything other aspect of the outfit, the very beautiful outfit.

“Someone weak… incapable, alone, dead inside, someone that isn’t even a person, merely a ghost,” I admitted. It was exactly how I thought of myself, I was too weak to stand up to my controlling uncle, only fighting back after being goaded into doing so by a voice in my head and that was only at a mockery of a real person; unable to express the sorrow I still felt over losing my family, no friends and walls between me and the rest of the world… I was basically a walking marionette.

“And what do you see in the mirror?” Igor prompted. I furrowed my hidden eyebrows at him and proceeded to turn back to look right at the reflection, I reached up to my mask and slightly lowered it from my face just to confirm it was me in the reflection; I focused on the figure that the mirror showed me as I replaced the mask onto the face.

“A warrior. Someone strong, bold, vibrant… someone alive… someone free,” I admitted. That was exactly what this figure seemed to be, the opposite of everything I thought that I was, which was exactly why I couldn’t believe that this person was me even though it was obviously apparent with everything I’d done to test that it was me coming up positive.

“Perhaps this outfit represents the you that you wish to be,” Igor insisted. His words might very well have been accurate, I did want to be free, to be strong enough to stand up to my uncle, to be able to connect with others and discover what this world was truly made of over the swill my uncle tried to force feed me; swallowing thickly, I turned from the mirror to focus back on Igor and upon what he said.

“You said Shadows exist. I just ran from a place that stood where my home is, but it wasn’t in any way like it. It was completely different and there were deformed monsters in there. But worst of all was something that looked like Ouvrard but wasn’t anything like her… well it was if you take all her bad traits and crank them up to eleven then remove anything good, if there is any such thing, about her,” I admitted. Moving over, I proceeded to sit back down at the table and took a long sip of the lovely tea which allowed me to relax. “Could that be a Shadow? A Shadow of Ouvrard?” I asked.

“Yes, it certainly was. That place you were, was likely in the realm of the mind, a place that exits parallel to your world that your Betwixt eyes allowed you to enter, we call it the Metaverse and it isn’t not the first of its’ kind. What you entered into was likely a newly developed phenomena called a Palace,” Igor admitted.

“A Palace is formed when the twisted desires, other strong negative or corrupt thoughts that warp the perceptions of people into a hazard for themselves and others gather. This person likely has one such desire within her heart that has grown into that Palace,” Lavenza stated. That was a little unnerving as it meant there could be dozens of Palaces out there with all kinds of twisted creatures residing within their walls.

“If a Palace has formed from twisted desires, does that mean I have one?” I asked. Twisted desires or negative emotions were a part of life, it was impossible to have positive things without some negativity; if what they said were true then everyone was likely to have a Palace and personally, I didn’t want to see what a Shadow of myself looked like… it was a little too scary to contemplate, scarier than the Shadow Ouvrard I’d just met.

“No, you see most negative thoughts are small enough that they simply gather into Mementos, a sort of collective unconsciousness for humanity’s ills and woes. Only extremely strong negativity can break off to form individual Palaces. As you have a clear grasp on your desires, evidenced by taming your Persona, it is unlikely you’ll ever manifest an individual Shadow and therefore an individual Palace,” Igor admitted. That was a relieving thing to hear, I was glad to know that I’d never run into a Shadow of myself.

“Is… is there anything I can do about that thing that looks like Ouvrard,” I asked. Igor’s eyes widened in surprise and I spotted Lavenza looking at me in surprise; Ouvrard might have been the kind of deranged person who formed a Palace from some – currently unknown – corrupted feeling, but she was still a person, a person that was likely suffering from the corrupting feeling twisting her up inside. “If I… remove it, would that help?” I asked.

“No. The Shadow is a part of the mind, to remove it would mean to destroy it which means that Ouvrard’s mind would… stop working essentially,” Igor admitted. My breath caught in my throat and I started to choke slightly, harshly coughing out to help clear my throat, I took a quick drink from the tea as horror was most likely plastered upon my face at the information had been given to me.

“Then… is there nothing that I can do for her,” I spoke. I was despairing at the moment, the fact that I knew something was causing Ouvrard pain which was directly impacting her relationships with those around her, yet the first thing I thought of meant that it would be impossible for me to actually help him without some fairly major consequences.

“Perhaps there is. As Palaces are new, we have limited information, but I can tell you what me and Lavenza have learned,” Igor stated. Even just a small amount of information could be useful in solving this insane conundrum of a mess I’d stumbled into. “First of all, a Palace will contain three entities; the Shadow, a dark reflection of the desires of the person whose Palace has been formed, cognitive imitations of people in their lives and the other type of Shadows, being created from human minds that take the form of entities from humanity’s myths and legends. They drift into the Palace as its’ distortion pulls them there and they are forced to take on a form that matches the way that the Palace’s Ruler views the real world equivalent of their Palace. The real person is seemingly unaware of what happens in the Palace but something like Déjà vu might affect them and a change in the real person’s mental perception will change the Palace as well,” Igor explained.

“Wait a minute, you mean those things I fought were created from stories?” I questioned. Igor nodded his head to confirm this as my eyes widened at the possibility of what I might run into within that Palace. “That means Gods, demons, and all sort of creatures could be run into within that place,” I clarified. Once more Igor nodded his head as a smile spread across his lips at my words, or my flabbergasted expression.

“Within the Palace should lie something… let’s call it a Treasure for now, that is the root of the twisted desires,” Lavenza explained. She seemed to say only small bits of information; but at the same time, they carried enough weight to be influential to this conversation, honestly her words had interested me and an idea bloomed to live within my mind.

“Removing this Treasure, could that remove the twisted desires inside of Ouvrard?” I wondered. Igor and Lavenza proceeded to look at each other, a complicated mess of emotions boiled within their eyes as if they were silently conversing something that had apparently unsettled them; Igor drew his gaze from Lavenza and proceeded to fold his hand together, a clear presence of worry upon his face which had been rather blank throughout the conversation so far, except for those grins.

“We don’t know, but if the Treasure is a mental representation of desire itself, there could be a danger to removing it,” Igor spoke up. I couldn’t understand what could be so dangerous about pulling out the cause of something evil. “To remove the Treasure runs the risk of not only removing the twisted desires but desire in of itself. The desire to breath, to eat, to walk… to live,” Igor explained. Oh… that, that definitely wasn’t good.

“Okay, so I can’t remove the Treasure without risking Ouvrard dying,” I admitted. I did not want to save Ouvrard if it only led to her death, which would also essentially make me as much a murderer as destroying the Shadow; I was desperately wracking my brain to come up with some idea to help Ouvrard, causing my head to be bent down as I tightly gripped my scalp. “Unless… what if I replaced the Treasure with a different Treasure,” I wondered. I lifted my head up to look at Igor and Lavenza, the blonde girl looked confused whilst Igor raised a single eyebrow at my words. “I don’t mean that literally, but instead what if I gave Ouvrard a new and positive desire to pursue to replace the Treasure I remove,” I clarified.

“Ah, now that is an inspired idea. But it still carries the risk of that not filling this individual with enough desire to live. In short, she could still die,” Igor admitted. There was a risk, but the same could be said of anything in this world, there was a risk with everything that anyone would do and if I didn’t take that risk then I wouldn’t be able to do anything; Ouvrard needed to change which meant that taking the Treasure was my best chance of causing that to happen.

“Still, not doing anything and allowing Ouvrard to drown in darkness as her desires eat away at her. That’s not something I can do,” I responded. Igor held my gaze as I stared into his bloodshot eyes, we waited in silence for a few moments before Igor’s lips proceeded to pull back into a wide and toothy smile as he continued to stare at me.

“Very well, Lavenza and I shall assist you in stealing Ouvrard’s Treasure. Recall what happened when you first entered this person’s Palace and I shall have Lavenza there to help you,” Igor stated. I smiled brightly at the offer of help which I was sorely in need of if I wanted to succeed in rescuing my mother. “The door to your world is right there,” Igor stated. He flicked a hand over his shoulder and when I looked in that direction, I saw that a door was indeed there.

“Thank you, Igor. And you too Lavenza. For the information, the help… and the tea,” I admitted. The cup of tea had been fully drunk without me being mostly aware of it, Lavenza softly smiled at me and Igor inclined his head; I proceeded to rise to my feet and moved around the table towards the door, I gripped the handle and pushed down on it in order to open it up and I saw the street outside the room, looking oddly dark as well.

“I do hope you don’t disappoint me, Maiden,” Igor spoke. However, as I turned around to ask what Igor could mean by that, I found I was outside of my home once more with no sign of the Velvet Room insight; sighing I shook my head but then a strange sensation hit me, an odd draining feeling that had me stumbling to the side and leaning against the wall that encircled my home feeling exhausted.

‘What… what happened to me? I feel like I’ve been drained of energy, as if I’d just done a marathon of different weapon movements back-to-back with no time to rest in between them.’ I thought. My body ached all over, and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open; with all the willpower I could manage I pulled myself off the wall and into the building not wanting to risk dropping asleep outside.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 4: - Infiltration of the Opera House

A small scream was forced from my lungs as I was sent flying backwards, my body roughly slamming into the ground and rolling a few times, feeling my half skirt flap, tangle and untangle around my legs as I felt the blaze of the fire spell run across my body before dissipating. But the pain remained, a small groan escaped my lips as I shakily began to push myself up, utilising my naginata as a crutch.

“Be careful Natsumi, you cannot afford to allow any of your weaknesses to be struck, otherwise the Shadows will utilise that opportunity to overwhelm you,” Lavenza chastised. I looked up at my mentor, for a tiny girl Lavenza hit like a freight train moving at a hundred miles per hour, plus she always aimed for my weak points which made dodging her moves vital otherwise I was going to be feeling the pain like right now.

Lavenza cracked open the book she carried which she called the Persona Compendium, although apparently this wasn’t her own instead being her sister’s – at least that’s what she said – from a previous group of Persona wielders’ time. A woman appeared briefly and I felt the healing wave of energy run over me, removing the damage from the fiery attack, Lavenza didn’t possess a Persona of her own but she was able to access the recorded Personas to fight.

“I know Lavenza,” I responded. Standing up straighter, I took in a deep breath; in order to help prepare me, Lavenza and Igor had divided my training with Lavenza taking over my combat training whilst Igor taught me about how to use my eyes to perceive the history, strength and weaknesses of Personas. This allowed me to learn that each Persona could be one of six different affinities to the ten types of elemental magic or two types of physical skills; these were known as Strong, Weak, Neutral, Drain, Repel or Null.

By attacking a weak point, I could knock down an opponent – what I did to the Gnome in my first fight – and quickly strike again. Unfortunately for me, as a side effect of Phantom making me resistant to Earth and Gravity magic, I was weak to three different types of magic, those being Fire, Ice and Nuke. And getting hit by those hurt, more than could be put into words. But thanks to Lavenza, I was improving with every battle and had become stronger with Phantom gaining new spells.

I’d also learned that the draining feeling I had sensed in my first battle had been because spells were powered by Soul Power, a kind of mental/spiritual energy that when taxed resulted in exhaustion, skills on the other hand drained Life Energy with the same result. Both could be restored by basic rest, good food and drink or other items from the real world that claimed to do that in which the Metaverse’s ‘if you believe it can happen’ policy made real those effects and also sometimes made them stronger.

Lavenza proceeded to close the Compendium and her golden eyes darted around, I looked at our surroundings and fought down the heavy shiver. To train, Lavenza had brought me into Mementos which was in the Metaverse location of Shibuya Station with the place dyed black and red with veins coiling across the floor, walls and ceiling. The atmosphere here was heavy and spine tinglingly cold, Lavenza refused to go any deeper than the entrance but did encourage me to in order to get practice against Shadows, not that I could go very far, the second floor down ended in a dead end.

“Come Natsumi, we should return to my master,” Lavenza insisted. She quickly marched over to the nearby door that linked to the Velvet Room and I followed after her, stepping into the place I’d tumbled into and had become quite the cosy place, its’ atmosphere brighter and happier than Mementos filled with the charge of infinite potential and a song that hummed in harmony within my own soul.

“Welcome back,” Igor greeted. Lavenza curtsey to the hooked nosed entity whilst I gave him a sharp bow, I’d come to respect him as he taught me how to perceive this other world and its’ creations. “Now then Lavenza, how ready is our dear Maiden?” Igor questioned. He was always calling me that, I think it was a term of endearment as much as the equally often ‘my dear’ that he used.

“I believe so master, these two weeks of training have given her the reflexes and understanding of movement within the Metaverse that will aid her in combat. Her Persona is becoming stronger and her eyesight is keener. She is as ready as possible for her first Palace,” Lavenza insisted. Igor nodded his head and proceeded to look over at me as if waiting for my assessment of my readiness.

“Like Lavenza said, I’m as ready as can be. If I don’t do this soon Ouvrard might do something, she hasn’t acted towards me any differently, but I don’t want to risk it by waiting any longer. If my mentor says I’m ready, then I’m ready,” I answered. Igor’s almost permanent grin seemed to widen at my words and I lightly twisted the naginata within my hand as I looked at the man. “Might I ask a question?” I asked. Igor inclined his head as I sensed Lavenza looking at me. “I understand Philemon’s purpose as the granter of Personas, but what exactly do you cultivate and what exactly am I meant to protect?” I wondered.

“Ah, yes, we forgot to tell you that,” Igor realised. He steepled his fingers and looked at me. “Personas are born of the heart, typically that means one Persona per person. But occasionally there are people born, people who for some reason are not bound by this rule, something about them makes their heart open to all Personas, allowing these people to contain those Personas even if they aren’t their own. Here in the Velvet Room, we allow these individuals to fuse different Personas they hold to made stronger Personas. To strengthen Personas they hold by increasing their capabilities or allowing them to be taught skills and spells they wouldn’t normally learn. As the Protector, you must guard this individual, for when danger comes, they are the one who will confront it. The Wildcard who holds an infinite number of Personas, is humanity’s greatest protector against those who would and could harm your kind. Thus, he or she need a guardian who stands between man and divinity,” Igor explained.

“A protector of a protector… I understand. But at the moment this person isn’t in my life, so what should I do,” I wondered. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to keep fighting after this Palace, but I couldn’t just say that to Igor, besides my opinion could change after getting through this obstacle so it was better to remain open instead of making a choice only to take it back at some point or another.

“Defeat Ouvrard. You cannot protect the Wildcard with the threat of a Palace Ruler hovering over you, it would be too dangerous for you and the Wildcard,” Igor insisted. His eyes firm and intense, a completely foreign expression to the entity’s face, but his words were completely true; defeating Ouvrard had to be my focus for now, everything else could wait until after I was done with her.

*Persona 5 Royal*

‘Anais Ouvrard, my uncle’s house, Opera House.’ I thought. Those words echoed like a mantra within my head as I took a deep breath, I focused myself on the method Igor had helped me develop to perceive the other world and then cross over to it. An ominous pressure rested on my shoulders and when my eyes opened, I found myself standing before the path that led to the Palace.

A quick glance down showed that I was clad within the outfit that would protect me in this world, Igor had called it the Rebel’s Armour and was created from my idea of what a rebel looked like… how a beautiful outfit with armour was a rebel I don’t know, but I decided against questioning it. Twirling my naginata briefly and adjusting the position of the nisun-nobi I had brought with me to give me some range attacks.

The harmonic call of the Velvet Room echoed nearby, but neither Lavenza nor Igor could help me in stopping Ouvrard. Something about rules against interference, only a Betwixt or other Persona wielders could take a part in these kinds of battles. Swallowing a lump in my throat, I tightened my grip on my Rebel’s Weapon before allowing it to vanish in blue flames as I willed it away – I could call it back at any moment – and strode into the area surrounding the opera house.

But this time, instead of foolishly entering the front door, which set off an alert that someone had intruded into the Palace, I proceeded to loop around the edge of the building until I spotted a smaller door that was partially hidden away. The door was a simple black colour and fairly small in size compared to the larger door at the front which meant this was most likely meant for the stagehands, calling my naginata back I quickly slipped it into the thin seam between door and frame.

Holding the belief that I could pry it open within my mind, I quickly started to pull back on my weapon, soon enough a loud creaking and crunching sound echoed and the door flew open. Grabbing a hold to it to prevent the wood from banging into the brick, I dismissed my weapon and quickly stepped inside and pulled it close behind me in order to avoid suspicion. Crouching into the shadows, I pulled out a notebook I’d brought recently and opened it up, revealing a rough sketch of a map that contained the places I had been and what I could recall from my first visit. Quickly looking around, I confirmed that I was in an area behind the stage so I would need to look around some more in order to locate the Treasure.

‘The Treasure will be in a secure place, likely isolated from the rest of the people. Up is out, that’s the boxes for V.I.Ps and it’s unlikely to be there, especially since the only place that seemed important was that box I was caught in and it was as empty as could be. I’ll start by looking around down here.’ I decided. Slipping the notebook away into one of my skirt’s pockets – don’t question it – I stood up and began to move down the hallway with careful steps.

As one would expect, the backside of the opera house was choked with ropes, props, clothes, and other miscellaneous items that practically choked of all of the red wood flooring. I had to stare hard through the deep darkness that surrounded this hallway in order to avoid tripping over any of the obstacles, it was lucky that I did that as I spotted a Shadow heading right for me.

I stepped back against the wall and ducked down, keeping myself out of sight as much as possible as the entity stomped passed, it’s masquerade mask practically glowed in the darkness. I need to tear that mask off before anything else, pulling myself out I took a few steps forward before jumping onto the Shadow’s shoulders, causing it to swing about in an attempt to dislodge me but with my hand arched into a claw I threw it down to grip the mask’s edges.

“Let’s see what you really look like!” I declared. Pulling the mask free, I jumped off the Shadow’s shoulders just in time to avoid a tumble as it turned into goo; quickly summoning my naginata I watched as it reform into two Personas and their information flowed into my mind courtesy of my eyes, one was Saki Mitama of Shintō thought with a resistance to ice and weakness to wind and gravity shaped like a yellow teardrop on its’ side with a bright smile on its’ face and closed eyes, the other one was Kodama a little tree spirit that looked to be made of wavering green paper shaped like a person with red designs and an oval head with a resistance to ice and earth and weakness to fire.

“Sing Phantom!” I called. Tearing the mask from my face, I allowed it to burst into flames and reform into my Persona. “Gry!” I commanded. The green pulsing energy flew out and rattled Saki Mitama, dumping the spiritual entity to the ground and I took advantage of Kodama’s panic to dart over and swing my naginata down through Kodama which caused it to burst into black smoke, in a purely physical fight I was a lot stronger thanks to my dad’s training so I could actually beat Lavenza in that manner, unless she used a particularly powerful Persona or pulled out her damn chainsaw.

Leaping backwards, I saw Saki Mitama pull itself up and immediately launch shards of ice at me, I threw myself to the side, successfully dodging the attack and allowing me to stab my weapon into the Shadow, dissipating it and causing money to drop to the floor. With both of them gone, I sighed in relief and felt Phantom return to mask my face, I needed to be conservative about how much energy I used since there was a limit on my Soul Power and running out would put me in danger of being taken down. As for the money, I was rather surprised by its’ appearance, but I scooped it up none the less, after all it could be useful if I needed anything for myself.

I returned to pushing deeper through the darkness, occasionally stopping to add more to my sketch of the Opera House in the hopes that it would aid me in ensuring I didn’t get lost, not that there were many landmarks within this place for me to orientate myself by. I kept moving until I located a door, I pushed it open and saw a spiralling metal staircase rising upwards, I began to ascend the steps, taking care to make as little noise as possible on the climb upwards; once I reached the top, I pushed the door I found there open.

The door led me onto a catwalk that I realised connected to a catwalk that stretched across the airspace beneath the fresco ceiling – which was just as gaudy as the rest of this place – and it let to quite the intimidating chandelier, a massive cluster of crystalline items that were allowing light to spill down onto the seats at the bottom. There was a distinct lack of people up here but that didn’t stop me from moving across the catwalk towards the chandelier since its’ bird’s eye view might help me in determining where to go next.

I managed to find a space in the chandelier to nestle myself safely since no one could look up and find me, I pulled out my notebook and quickly scratched in the new areas I’d seen before starting to observe the area below me. It was wide and open but there were no doors whose presence I couldn’t explain with basic logic which despite everything this building did still seem to have an abundance off regarding its’ construction even if its’ decoration was tacky.

Suddenly the velvet curtains rose up and I saw a woman swanning on stage, dressed in a near luminous blue outfit that was much better looking than anything else I’d seen here, she opened her mouth and started to sing, the mezzo-soprano tone of her voice reaching high up as she sang. I didn’t care to hang about and listen to the music to identify the opera, tucking my notebook away I stood to my feet and decided to try looking somewhere else when something tickled my ear.

Turning my head, I noticed that there seemed to be a pair of doors secluded away from the rest of the building at the other end of the chandelier’s catwalk. Curiosity buzzed within me and so I quickly scampered over and found the doors were covered in musicals notes, treble clefts and staffs with red rope slashing across the ebony surface.

“My music is worshiped the world over,” Ouvrard suddenly announced. I jumped and spun around with my naginata pointed out as I snapped my head and it around, but no sign of the Shadow or the real woman could be seen. “Such a beautiful voice and it’s all mine,” Ouvrard continued speaking. It sounded like she was right next to me, yet I couldn’t see her and her voice sounded a little off. “I am the Prima Donna and the Maestro. Nothing can stop me,” Ouvrard’s voice added on.

“Okay, this woman is officially obsessed,” I commented. Dismissing my naginata, I pulled out an arrow and sawed through the rope binding the door, pushing it open I saw a dank and dark room with what looked to be a deformed flower at the back of the small alcove; walking over I saw that nestled into was what looked to be a wooden skull with glowing red eyes. “What is this?” I wondered. Reaching out, I picked it up and turned it over, but I could see nothing special about it until a strengthening sensation washed over me. “Woah! Did… did my Soul Power just get restored?” I questioned.

It didn’t look like I could use the object in such a manner but the more I looked at the object the more I felt something, something trying to press itself into my mind. Recognising the sensation form when Igor had been teaching me to read Personas, I relaxed my mental state and this allowed the information to flow into my mind and I learned that the thing in my hand was called the Will Seed of Attachment.

“Attachment, could this represent Ouvrard’s distortion? But it isn’t a Treasure. Both Igor and Lavenza seemed certain I’d know it when I saw it,” I muttered. With nothing else to do, I slotted the object away and proceeded to return to the chandelier catwalk. The opera singer continued to sing which covered my steps and I reached the metal stairwell, descending down it towards the bottom in order to continue searching the other areas.

“Halt intruder!” A voice bellowing. Twisting around, I saw one of the Shadows charging towards me with a truncheon raised to strike, however, the moment he was in range, I kicked my left leg up crunching it into the mask and the force tore it off; the shadow stumbled back in shock at the pain before dropping into goo as I called my naginata back to me and dropped into position as the shadows emerged.

“EEWWW!!!!” I shrieked. One of the Shadows had taken the form of a lump of what looked to be meat, rotten and thick in appearance with red eyes. “GRY!” I cried. On impulse, I threw out an attack that would work against it which caused the Shadow, known as a Slime, to flop downwards. I quickly twisted my attention to the other one and saw that it was a turtle with a black shell and a snake or dragon curling around it, the appearance made me think of the Four Symbols entity Genbu… which it was and unfortunately resistant to both of my Spells.

Realising that this enemy would be more dangerous than the Slime creature, since it was likely capable of using ice from the aura it gave off, instead of attacking while it recovered, I instead chose to increase my magical defence. The training with Lavenza had been brutal, but thanks to that I had managed to gain a new spell which caused that effect, a dark greenish glow surrounded me and I felt my body become hardier as it took effect.

The Genbu opened its’ mouth and unleashed a plaintive cry which caused shards of ice to shoot forward, even with my body made sturdier to magical attacks, I wasn’t about to risk taking an attack like that. Dodging out of the way, I felt the cold of the ice streak passed me as the Slime proceeded to pull itself upright, with a dangerous aura radiating from it, I barely flipped away from the ability in time to dodge it, but I felt the strange sensation that being caught by that energy would have been dangerous for me.

I quickly sent another Gravity Spell at the Slime which dissipated it into nothingness, darting over I stabbed down sharply into the Genbu which caused it to rear up but clearly it was more resilient than the Kodama which forced me to dodge around it as it unleashed more Ice Spells at me. That song and dance continued for another couple of physical strikes but eventually it was turned to smoke, more money clattered onto the ground but a clasp that looked to be made from some kind of metal and a small bead in a pink-purple colour that gave off an odd sensation dropped alongside. Picking both up I slipped them into another of my skirt’s pockets – there were quite a few of those – and continued making my way down the hallway but I sensed a tension tingling through the air.

Creeping through the dark corridors, I soon found the tense sensation lighten somewhat, instead a sensation of safety and comfort blanketed the air. I perked up and looked around curiously until I spotted that pressed against the wall was a door that wavered in and out of focus, it was nothing like the door to the Velvet Room and the hymn of the soul wasn’t present. Furrowing my eyes, I walked over to the door and found it quite firmly despite being hazy, pushing it open I ducked inside and found a barren wooden room with an empty bookcase and coils of ropes, weirdly enough there were several chairs and a table nestled safely in the centre. However, the appearance of the room suddenly wavered and instead changed to look like the kitchen at the house before reverting back.

“Oh…kay,” I let out. Deciding not to question the Metaverse’s weirdness – I had to preserve what was left of my sanity someway – I took a seat and proceeded to add to my sketching of the Palace, but the more I worked on it, the more I felt like I was getting nowhere closer to the Treasure even if I had found a Will Seed, whatever that was worth. “I need to keep going, otherwise I’ll never get free,” I commented. Pushing up from the table, I tucked my stuff away and pushed open the door.

Seeing no Shadows or cognitions hanging around, I stepped out fully and set the door closed behind me. I’d wandered around the entire back end of this place, but I hadn’t seen anything and it was doubtful to be up near the booths which left the front of the building. As I contemplated how to reach the front, sounds started to come near me, I dived into the shadows and curled in on myself to ensure I wasn’t seen as I focused on my hearing to determine what was going on just now.

Cognitions breezed passed, a flurry of activity and loud – well loud after the near silence that had engulfed me for the first part of the infiltration – words. Words that seemed to be discussing the show that had just been on, how well the main singer had performed, the ‘Maestro’s’ latest demands and how worried they were about completing them, and something about a squeaky piece of wood on the stage that had been a pain for them to fix.

‘Squeaky piece of wood?’ I thought. This entire building had been gaudy, bar these back areas, seemingly meant to representative of how Ouvrard viewed these kinds of buildings and that meant everything should have been overbearingly, insanely perfect; a piece of wood that was likely odd didn’t fit into it. ‘Interesting.’ I decided. My goal was no longer the front of the building, instead I was going to check out the stage.

Once the people passed and the corridor was empty once more, I pulled myself out of the darkness and immediately started to creep my way towards the stage. Reaching the wing that led to the stage, I found it empty and barren of people and props; stepping out onto the dark stage, which I could still see perfectly fine, I carefully made each step as heavy as possible testing for which wood was making a sound.

I made my heavy steps across until I was roughly near the centre when the sound echoed up to me. Freezing, I waited for the squeak to fade then rocked back on my heels to put my foot down again and causing the sound to bubble up again. Pulling my foot back I stooped down and pressed my hands against the wood, trailing my fingers all over the grain until the tips caught on something. Focusing upon that area I found a thin gap in the wood which ran a distance up and down.

Gripping the edge as firmly as I could with just my fingertips, I started to lift it up until my fingers could wiggled further underneath and allow me to firmly lift the wooden plank which pulled up a larger section of the stage. Once fully lifted, the trapdoor revealed a vast underground space that was shrouded in darkness and had a chilling cold air blowing through it to blast up into my face; the Treasure would likely be located down there since it was so out of the way and most people wouldn’t be able to locate it.

A roar echoed towards me, I released the trapdoor allowing it to slam back down and I immediately threw myself out of the way of whatever was coming. It slammed heavily into the wood near the trapdoor as I pulled myself to my feet and brought my Rebel’s weapon towards me, I looked over and saw a rather large Shadow looming near, much larger than any of the Shadows I had come across both here and in Mementos.

“Defiler! You dare to return! And even after sullying the great Maestro’s private box, you dare go further! You would dare to enter the Maestro’s sanctum! The place she crafts masterpieces!” The Shadow bellowed. Woah, Ouvrard really thought she was that great of an individual, she needed a pretty serious reality check. “I will not allow you to go any further!” The Shadow declared. It did the turning into goo thing and emerged as a tall humanoid clad in green and blues with a helmet and wings extending behind it as it clutched a spear.

“Sorry, but I’m not going to let you or Ouvrard continue to ruin my life, so get out of my way. Before I make you,” I insisted. The Shadow brandished its’ weapon as the information of its’ existence proceeded to flow into my mind revealing its’ name was Principality and it was resistant to both Bless and Fire but thankfully weak to Gravity, along with Curse. “Makakaja!” I declared. I immediately felt the strength in my body increase as pale green light surrounded me, a sign my magical attack had been temporarily increased.

The Principality summoned a large bolt of light before sending it flying towards me. I dodged out of the way but still felt the burning heat of the light shoot passed me, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my skin had taken on a slightly tanned shade. Twisting around, I slammed Principality with a Gravity Spell, or at least I tried to do that.

Sadly, the damned angel fluttered its’ pretty wings and glided out of the way. It then proceeded to use those same wings to charge towards me with the spear thrust out before it. Clear in its’ intent to pierce me. Bringing my naginata around I caught the tip of the spear on my shaft and threw it up. This caused the weapon to fly above my head as the Shadow lunged forward with its’ momentum.

I lifted my leg up to slam a hard kick into the Shadow’s torso. It flinched backwards exactly as a human would, but it recovered much quicker and gathered more Light. I took the blast point blank, sending me grinding back across the wooden surface, but my stance held true. I recovered and summoned Phantom to release another Gry Spell at the Principality, willing it to strike true this time.

This time the attack succeeded. Gravity’s green energy rattling the Principality like a ragdoll until it slumped to the ground in a useless heap of fabric and feathers. Seizing the opportunity, I charged over and sharply stabbed down with my weapon, piercing through the Shadow. It threw itself up with a scream that seemed both high and low at the same time, echoing around us. Pulling my weapon free, I jumped backwards.

Principality twisted around with an eerie fire burning in its’ eyes and it charged towards me. A burst of light sliced through the air. Sliding my legs out, I ducked underneath the attack and dismissed my naginata. Jumping back up quickly, I readied my bow, I quickly fired off an arrow which forced the Shadow to swerve in its’ approach. Quickly knocking another arrow, I fired this one. But this time, a flash of steel sliced through it and it clattered to the floor; useless. Taking no chances, the Principality didn’t stop once it dealt with the arrow. It instead chose to release more light towards me. Acting quickly, I fired of an Earth Spell.

The two elements collided and threw up a smokescreen. Acting quickly, I moved as quietly as possible around the outskirts, keeping my ears and eyes open. My naginata returned to my right hand as I lifted my left up to cover my mask ready to strike. A soft fluttering of wings made me pause my movements as I waited for something to happen. A shadow suddenly surged through the smokescreen with wild stabbing movements. I continued my quick circle, until I was behind the Shadow. With a quick pull, Phantom emerged behind me.

“Let the darkness consume you!” I declared. A pulse of Phantom’s viciousness roared through me. The Gravity magic flew from Phantom’s noose towards the Principality sealed within the smoke and rattling it as bad as before. The attack also cleared the smoke and allowed me to see the angel slumped on the ground once more. Tightening my grip on my weapon, I darted forward.

Plunging my weapon down, the blade sank into the body of the Shadow and a thunk sound reached my ears. I tugged lightly but found the weapon lodged in the wood. It would require more force to free it, but I didn’t want to take the risk that would present to me. Instead, I released it and backed off, preparing my bow once more and loosing an arrow at the pinned Shadow.

This time, there was no chance of the Principality blocking or dodging the arrow flying at it. The arrowhead pierced into the angel’s chest from the side, but it got off one last shot. A bright flash of light that slammed into my left leg before I could dodge, a hiss of a breath seethed out between my lips as I dropped. My right hand instinctively moved to clutch it, as if that would brush the pain away.

Also, the pain was hot, it wasn’t anywhere as bad as Fire or Ice, and infinitely better than Nuke, which mean it would fade soon enough. But the same could not be said for the Principality, my arrow had managed to strike true and clean, turning the Shadow into a bunch of smoke. Its’ disappearance caused my naginata to clatter loudly to the floor as I pushed myself firmly up onto my feet, although my left leg still tingled.

I slightly hobbled over to my weapon and scooped it up before looking into the space beneath the trapdoor. Even though it would likely lead me towards the Treasure, I was tired. Several battles with Shadows with that last one especially draining my Soul Power significantly, and that last attack had done some hefty damage to my Life Energy, causing a weight of tiredness to press down on my entire body; but the more concerning part was the loud clamour of footsteps coming towards me.

I didn’t want to take my chance, not with that many Shadows charging towards me and with myself in such an unsuitable situation to hold off many more battles. I quickly pushed the trapdoor down, allowing it to slam firmly into the edging cut for it, the loud banging rang out, but I didn’t hesitate as I stuffed my hand into a pocket and pulled out a small orb.

Lavenza had called it a Goho-M, I threw it at the ground and felt something flow over and around me until the world seemed to lurch beneath my feet and I stumbled when the strange screen vanished and I found that I was now outside the Opera House. Deciding not to question whatever the heck it was that Lavenza had given me, I proceed to do the only smart thing in my situation.

I ran right for the exit back to the physical world.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 5: - The Maestro’s Cavern

It was two days later that I’d returned to the Opera House, I’d taken a day to ensure I’d properly recovered after draining myself so badly the first time, especially against that Principality. Fortunately, that day of rest had allowed me to check in with Igor and Lavenza and I learned that the room with chairs and a table with its’ air of safety was called a Safe Room, the Will Seed was apparently a congealed form of the distortion, they kind of acted like a camera’s tripod with the Treasure being the camera, apparently there were two more. Also, the little bead I’d picked up was a Soul Drop and could restore my Soul Power.

Heaving up the trap door, I looked down into the darkness before quickly glancing around. Seeing no Shadows or Cognitions, I gripped the ring that lay on the underneath of the hatch and slipped into the opening pulling the opening close behind me and I let go, dropping into the darkness. Thankfully the lack of physics and my thoughts, allowed me to land securely on my feet without making a sound but I ensured that I stayed still for a few moments in order to check for any approaching enemies.

A few breaths later, a soft glow began to rise up, it was gentle and easy on the eyes with a soft blue-green colour but luminous and frequent enough for it to give me a clear view of the surroundings to not leave me unaware. Stalactites hung from the cavern ceiling as humps and ridges occasionally broke up the rocky ground, from these seems to be the glow and when I touched it, I felt a grassy like substance, perhaps moss then.

The cavern was huge, stretching out all around me and even with the luminous moss, I couldn’t see to the far edges. A quick sketch of this place was made in my map before I started moving about the cavern, I would need to be careful down here as any Shadows could be behind the raised ground and some of the ridges were so large that it’d be too late by the time I eventually saw the Shadows; for that very reason, I kept my naginata clasped tightly in my right hand.

I ducked low beside a rock and carefully peaked around the edge, finding a Shadow walking towards me with quick steps, almost as if it was running away from something that I couldn’t see. Keeping myself low I waited for Shadow to get passed me before lunging forward and tearing its’ mask off as per usual and then waiting for it to reform, out popped a creature shaped like Saki Mitama but turned one hundred and eighty degrees, grey in colour with a kind of squished winking face; it was Kushi Mitama of the same origin as Saki Mitama with a strength against Wind and weakness to Fire.

The other Shadow that had popped out turned out to be a young man clad within a toga, but it was streaked with what looked to be dried clay. His skin was tanned from a long life being near the sea and its’ sunlight, wild black hair that gave of a kind of crazed air hung around his face which held a distressed expression, harried green-brown eyes darted about as if in search of something. In one hand was a chisel and the other clasped a hammer, both looked to have seen some usage; the information flowed into me and I learned this man was called Pygmalion from Greek Mythology, being strong against Wind and weak towards Electricity and Ranged Kinetic Energy.

But as I gazed at Pygmalion, I felt something strange which I hadn’t felt before, I felt a strange sort of connection that seemed to pulse between me and this Shadow. It was nothing like what bound me to Phantom, but something lighter, like a sensation of familiarity and similarity. Unfortunately, my interest about the Grecian-born Shadow resulted in me being blasted by wind which had flown from its’ hammer.

I was sent flying backwards through the air. All the training with Lavenza came in handy as I quickly righted myself in mid-air and easily landed on my feet. Calling upon Phantom, the entity manifest and sent a Tera Spell flying at the teardrop shaped spirit because I felt an unsettling aura coming from it, but not something I could understand at the moment, nor did I want to understand it since it seemed rather dangerous.

But it was as if Kushi Mitama could sense my lack of desire to know what it could do. It managed to bob and weave around the attack before focusing back on me. A dangerous shroud of energy started to form around me. Not sticking around, I jumped into the air to dodge and dismissed my naginata before prepping my bow. Landing back down I swiftly released my left hand gripping the string.

The arrow sliced through the air and pierced into Pygmalion. Dropping to his knees, I followed up on the stunned Shadows with a Gravity Spell that rattled Kushi Mitama quite thoroughly. Enough to drop the entity to the floor alongside Pygmalion, I was more than a little surprised by the potent effectiveness of the Spell despite there being no weakness to Gravity present. Deciding to capitalise on the current state of the Shadows, I unleashed another arrow into Pygmalion before following up with a strike from my naginata. Both Shadows dissolved into nothingness, so I quickly scooped up what they had left behind.

‘I need to be more cautious about my infiltration this time. I’ve got to find that Treasure before I run out of Soul Power.’ I thought. Focusing myself with a deep breath, I started to move forward deeper into the cavernous surroundings. Why on earth did Ouvrard conceive of an Opera House with a massive subterranean other side? Was this meant to represent something about Ouvrard’s mental state? Or was it something else that created this spacious underground?

Through my mental musings, I elected to instead slip between each darkened patch that I came across, envisioning myself capable of moving between those patches without being spotted. This allowed me to avoid the Shadows, especially the ones who I realised were glowing with an ominous red aura that I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight as it moved passed me. Swiftly filing that type of Shadow under a ‘do not attack unless prepared’ label, I proceeded to continue slinking along.

A series of whispers began to assault my ears and I froze in my motions, thankfully crouched behind a rock. I looked around for the source of those whispers as I focused my ears on what the words were saying since they sounded rather familiar. In the inky darkness, I managed to make out a kind of depression that was slightly blurry; standing up straighter, I quickly looked around for danger before making my way forward.

The depression turned out to a door which was identical to the other that had contained the first Will Seed, quickly slashing through the red ropes that bounds the door I pushed them open. A second Will Seed stood nestled in creepy vines within the middle but this one glowed with a green light instead of the red light that had coloured the first one, quickly picking it up I tucked it into my pocket as the replenishing energy flowed through my body.

‘Two down, one to go. I wonder what will happen when I get all of them.’ I thought. Stepping back out into the darkness, I blinked slightly to adjust to the sudden darkness compared to the slight light that had been within the Will Seed’s Chamber. Once clear, I proceeded to slink back into the shadows in order to continue my exploration of this place, hopefully I’d find the Treasure’s location soon.

More slinking passed in the darkness combined with the occasional fights against the Shadows I had already fought in the Palace. I also managed to locate a couple more Safe Rooms which allowed for a few moments of relaxation in between each stint of battle so that was a least a plus but still no sign of the Treasure and I was running out of places to investigate if the map I’d been drawing was any indication to go by.

Tapping the pencil against the growing map, I orientated myself in the direction of the area I hadn’t explored yet and proceeded to make my way over there. I could only hope that I found this location soon otherwise I might have to fall back for today in order to rest up, exploring the Metaverse had a draining consequence attached to it. As I moved towards the unexplored area, the whispers started to echo once more implying the final Will Seed was nearby. Easily spotting the door this time, I moved over to it and lifted up my naginata.

“Halt outsider!” A voice bellowed. Throwing myself backwards, I landed on my hands and sprung back onto my feet, a large Shadow had appeared between me and the door; even worse was that the aura it was giving off was much stronger than anything I had run across including the Principality that I fought at the entrance to this place. “You will not take another of the Maestro’s Treasure!” The Shadow declared. It then proceeded to turn into goop.

What emerged was a humanoid male with long flowing white hair clad within an elaborate teal-blue armour with a diadem like object curled around his head, black boots and gloves matched the black underlayer that he wore with embellishments on the former two that matched the rest of his armour, a silver spear with matching embellishments and a white cape completed the look. Thanks to my eyes, I learned this creature was called Tam Lin, from English folklore and meant to be a human kidnapped by fairies, although…

‘Are you kidding!? It resists Bless, Fire, Earth, Physical and Wind. I’ll just count my blessings that it’s weak to Gravity along with Curse.’ I realised. The Shadow didn’t let me have more than a few seconds to process this information as he lashed out with his spear towards me, I dodged out of the way and quickly whipped my mask off to slam Tam Lin with a Gry spell; it dropped to the ground, so I sent out an echo of that spell. ‘I’m going to need to be on my toes for this fight.’ I decided.

I wasn’t the sort of person to recklessly use attacks on enemies when I knew they wouldn’t work, so I was pretty much stuck with Gry and the two Support Spells I knew. Currently Tam Lin was in a dizzied stated, swaying from side to side as if unable to properly recover from the state. Frowning slightly at the oddity of the event, I instead chose to cast Makakaja on myself to increase the damage I would be able to deal via my spells.

That little break however gave Tam Lin enough time to recover fully from my attack and he climbed to his feet. He charged forward and began to swing his spear in wide arcs that were fast and dangerous. I ducked, twisted and blocked as best I could but I still felt the tiny tell tale sting of something slicing across my skin. Eventually, I ducked low beneath a high spear swing and I tore the mask off.

“GRY!” I commanded. The point-blank attack of a type of magic it was weak to caused Tam Lin to be sent flying backwards. The Shadow crashed heavily into the stone wall and dropped to the ground; my breath was heavy as I desperately sucked in air to refill my lungs. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out some medicine and quickly tended to my wounds, feeling my skin slowly knitting itself back together.

Tam Lin scrambled up onto his feet and held his spear out horizontally before him as a wave of energy surrounded him. Sensing that whatever it was had caused something to change about him, I dismissed my naginata I pulled my nisun-nobi free and dropped myself into a fighting stance. I fired off an arrow which managed to catch Tam Lin in the shoulder, but he quickly charged at me and thrust his weapon out towards me.

I blocked the attack with my bow and quickly brought Phantom out once more to deliver another Gravity spell into the Shadow. Tam Lin was flung away from me and into the nearby wall which allowed me to send out another spell into the Shadow’s body which caused it to fall into that dizzy state again. Deciding not to question the weirdness, I focused on a more immediate problem.

The continued usage of magic had drained my Soul Power quite considerably, lucky for me I had that Soul Drop. Quickly downing it, I felt my Soul Power be restored to my body, but Tam Lin climbed to his feet and rushed at me. He swung his weapon out in that wide arc of attacks once again, tossing my nisun-nobi to my left hand, I summoned back my naginata. I brought my weapon up to block the attack and this caused us to start pushing against each other.

“You are seriously starting to irritate me,” I hissed. Tam Lin said nothing as his face remained rather passive, but then Shadows didn’t display many emotions to begin with. I pushed him away and promptly jumped backwards. Dismissing my naginata, I prepared my bow and loosed another arrow at it which caught Tam Lin in the knee. It was best to target the exposed joint areas in order to weaken the Shadow.

Tam Lin charged at me with a single thrust which stabbed me hard in the shoulder. But I seized the shaft of his weapon to prevent him escaping. The Shadow froze up and that allowed me to slam it with my Gravity Spell once more. Tam Lin was forced back by the attack but his spear behind pierced into me.

‘It doesn’t hurt! It doesn’t hurt!’ I chanted. I reached up with my right hand and pulled the weapon out while maintaining the mental chant in order to curtail the pain that would be pulsing through me otherwise from removing the weapon. I steadied my breathing and focused on bringing out Phantom once more.

“Let the darkness consume you! Gry!” I declared. Phantom summoned out the attack but this time it seemed even stronger than normal. The pulsing energy surrounded Tam Lin and pulled in on itself in such a violent move that the energy seemed to tear apart Tam Lin. Breathing heavily, my eyelids fluttered rapidly, not really seeing the left behind objects that cluttered the floor, likely in shock from what had happened as I felt my knees give out.

They thumped hard against the cold floor beneath me and my breathing started to tremble heavily as the events sunk in. That had been difficult, both my Life Energy and Soul Power had taken a heavy hit from the changing of blows, I’d depleted my arrows – although at least I could recover some – and the wound in my shoulder wasn’t helping matters either. I reached my right hand up to grip my shoulder as I rooted around for some more medicine.

“That Will Seed had better be worth it,” I grumbled. Pulling out the medicine, I quickly tended to my wound and set about gathering everything up, dropping my arrows away – thank goodness their heads would be repaired by the Metaverse’s laws – I quickly gathered up the money when my hand ran across something underneath. Clearing the money away from the object I saw what seemed to be an underlayer of black armour, it felt rather strong and firm yet flexible as well.

The object began to glow as did my own outfit and suddenly the object disappeared from my hands and slammed into my body, yet no pain came. Instead, my outfit seemed to have changed even though there were no difference in appearance, instead it simply felt stronger… more protective. That was an interesting development, one I might need to inform Igor of, but at least now I knew about it.

Pocketing the money, I sliced open the ropes tying it shut and pushed open the door. Inside was a Will Seed coloured in blue this time, I lifted it up and felt my Soul Power be minutely restored, but then the Will Seed began to glow and that glow emanated from two pockets on my skirt, a quick check proved that it was the other two Will Seeds as I pulled them out. All three floated into the air and then they started to spin around in a circle in front of me, getting faster and faster until they blurred together and suddenly the three faces were slammed together in a blueish-grey three skull shaped objects with darker blue lines showing the edges of the initial skulls.

Crystal of Attachment. That was the object’s name and I furrowed my eyebrows as I turned the object over in my hands, despite its’ changed appearance I couldn’t sense any great deal of power coming from it, in fact the power radiating from it had barely changed. Huffing in irritation, I slipped the object into a pocket and turned to leave the room.

I located the nearest Safe Room and allowed myself the opportunity to rest, I had brought some energy bars, thinking they might be able to restore Soul Power. I consumed them alongside a thermos of tea that I had also brought… my pockets were surprisingly roomy. Even as I rested, I could feel the food and drink restoring my energy alongside the small break that I gave myself; I did feel tired, but I refused to retreat until I was certain of the Treasure’s location.

Setting out once more, I continued to explore the underground area’s final area and found something that was practically a beacon for the Treasure’s location, double doors that were golden in colour with a black flower pattern curling across the surface with black handles extending from the surface. Letting a breath escape from me, I reached my hands out towards the door.

A sensation tickled my mind and I jumped backwards just as a surge of goo shot up from the ground. Sneering at the appearance of another Shadow, one that felt just as strong as Tam Lin was, the Shadow appeared in the appearance of the security that Ouvrard believed would be protecting the Opera Theatre she was corrupted by.

“You apparently have no sense of your station! I shall endeavour to teach you that!” The Shadow declared. It turned to goop and then emerged as another man in armour, this looked to be white with a grey plate on the chest, blue plaid under-armour was exposed on the under legs and lower upper arms, short black hair that only fell to the eyebrows and tops of the ears was matched by black eyes that peered at me. A thick blue scarf with a gold and green cross pattern and golden tassels covered the rest of his face. There seemed to be a brown cape streaming behind him and a spear resting on his shoulder.

“I’m really not in the mood for this, time to put you in the ground,” I snarled. The entity was called Setanta, of Celtic Mythology, and with a resistance to Range and Nuke attacks yet a weakness to Psy and Earth. “Well, easier than the other… one,” I commented. But as I did, I felt something off, about myself instead of the Shadow… it felt like Makakaja had already been cast. I was rather confused by this until I recalled the Crystal of Attachment, this must be what it can to.

‘Okay, that’s actually useful.’ I decided. To immediately have Makakaja active on me, that would save some Soul Power and allow me to deal more damage from the start; I immediately sent out a Tera Spell which sent Setanta stumbling to the ground thanks to striking its’ weakness, I quickly followed it up with another strike which sent it into that a state that seemed similar to the dizzy state that had afflicted Tam Lin but slightly different. ‘Whatever that is, it’s useful.’ I thought.

I darted over and swung my naginata down to slice a wound open. Setanta pulled himself up, so I jumped backwards as Setanta rushed at me. With a powerful thrust of his spear, he lunged at me, but I diverted the blow with my naginata and thrust out leg. My leg cracked into the torso, forcing Setanta away from me. At least I now had some breathing space as I prepared for the next move.

Setanta allowed an energy to surround him, it was different to what Tam Lin had used but seemed just as dangerous. I decided to go with the safe route and simply blasted the Celtic warrior with another Tera Spell. With him knocked down, I darted over and swung my naginata down to deal another blow to the Shadow.

However, right as my weapon reached the body, a see through reflective surface bounced by weapon back and it caught on my shoulder. A searing pain burned through my body at the wound that burst across my body. Stumbling back, I reached my left hand up to grab some medicine which I quickly used before clamping the hand over my wound while it healed.

Setanta stumbled to his feet as he looked at me with eerie dark eyes, he darted forward and began to swing out his weapon. Tam Lin had used a similar move but the swings were a different pattern and seemed weaker as well. I was able to dodge them with a greater deal of ease than those from Tam Lin. Getting out of the arc of swings, I pulled my mask off.

“Be buried in darkness!” I declared. The Tera Spell thudded against Setanta’s body, thankfully that strange reflective barrier didn’t pop up again and the pressure of the attack sent him down again; I wonder if that barrier was one that only repelled physical attacks. Deciding not to risk trying my arrows even if they could hurt him mildly, I decided to unleash another Earth Spell at him which sent him into another dizzied state. Which was a relief as I finally pulled my left hand away from my shoulder with the wound now healed.

For the rest of the battle, I continued with the unleashing of consecutive Earth-based Spells. I also avoided the strikes that Setanta sent out at me as much as possible, but I was still hit by them on occasion, opening wounds more painful than those from Tam Lin. Thankfully, the physical reflecting barrier had faded away which allowed me to return to utilising my naginata on occasion to conserve Soul Power. Soon enough Setanta took one last Earth Spell and turned into smoke.

I took in a steady breath to settle myself, then I reached for the doorway and pushed it open. Inside was a large circular room with a high ceiling, a part of the room was portioned off by a gauzy curtain through which I could only see a shadowy shape. Worried that it was Shadow Ouvrard, I moved forward only on the balls of my feet, taking a careful step forward to continue looking around for the Treasure.

Elegant dresses, that weren’t anywhere near as ostentatious as the rest of the stuff, were draped around the room in varying shades of blue, green and purple. As I turned around the corner, my breath caught in my throat when I saw a massive redwood grand piano sat proudly in a small alcove, hovering above that was a shimmering orb that seemed to be rippling across its’ surface.

“Now that’s the Treasure,” I decided. Hidden within the depths of the Palace as it was, guarded by stronger Shadows than anything up above and have no definitive shape; well, it made sense since emotions weren’t concrete things even if you could attribute them to places, people or things. Reaching my hands out, I found that they phased right through the object, pulling off my mask, I tried again with Phantom’s limbs but the same thing happened, so I called my Persona back. “Snag. Well, I guess I should head back to Igor,” I decided. At least I could make my way back here easily.

I turned around, prepared to leave only to jump back when I saw someone was behind me. The face was hidden by the shadows but whoever it was had clearly emerged from behind the curtain, yet the luminous dress meant it couldn’t be Shadow Ouvrard… actually, I think it was the mezzo-soprano from two days ago. The person approached me and I saw the face come into the light.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed. My voice piercing through the underground before my hand clamped over my lips as a nauseous feeling churned up my stomach, my heart thundered in my chest and my skin began to go all clammy; the cognition in front of me had long black hair which framed the face thanks to the full fringe and sidelocks allowing wide, rounded, cool coloured green eyes to stare at me with confusion, long fingered and pale hands were crossed in front of the torso. This cognition, the mezzo-soprano who had performed in the star role was ME!

I continued to tremble as I stared at the cognition of myself in a state of horrified shock. The cognition opened her lips which moved but not a single sound came out of them, not the rush of air or even the crack of a dry throat… there was nothing. My shock turned into a blinding rage as my horror built more and more; this was how Ouvrard saw me, someone not even worth being heard except for when she was singing!

Spurred by the rage, I swung out my naginata, cutting through the terrifying cognition like wet paper. It burst into the same dark smoke that other Shadows did, mechanically pulling my hand away from my mouth, I desperately sought to control my breathing and keep the rising bile down until I was safe. Knowing that someone might have heard me scream, I decided to do the one thing that I could.

I bolted out the door and towards the nearest Safe Room, determined to escape this place.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 6: - The Maestro of Attachment, Dantalion

“The Treasure is intangible, to me and Phantom, so the question is how to get the Treasure to become tangible,” I explained. The Velvet Room’s immortal song resonated around us as Igor and Lavenza appeared deep in thought about this issue, as they were the experts on this special kind of lunacy it seemed best to consult them first before things could potentially go wrong.

“A most unexpected development,” Igor admitted. His gloved fingers drummed against one another in a rhythm that seemed perfectly aligned to the resonance of this domain since it punctuated each pause in the song. “To alter the Treasure’s current form would require us to alter the Palace’s nature,” Igor admitted. I’m betting that was easier said than done.

“But the Palace is deeply rooted to the mental state of the person who created it. Altering the Palace would require altering Ouvrard’s mental state,” Lavenza pointed out. I glanced at the girl and saw that, despite her ramrod straight back and proudly stiff shoulders, her hand were twisting together in complex patterns.

Changing a person’s mental state wasn’t simple, some kind of manipulation would be necessary, but I didn’t comprehend other people’s emotions. Manipulation required exploiting people’s feelings so it would be improbable for me to do that. But as I drummed a rhythm of my own against the table, a buzzing deep within my soul drew my attention.

Phantom: I’d learned all Personas – mine included – had roots in stories, whether mythology, history, religion, or more recent things like books, so I’d done some research. And frankly… my Persona was kind of scary, or at least the origin was. He’d practically ruled over an opera house and a young woman’s life… by manipulation!

“I have an idea,” I spoke up. Lavenza and Igor looked at me; I just hoped this crazy plan of mine worked.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sunday mornings were always reserved for singing, unless something had happened to Ouvrard, which naturally meant I was to be in the piano room. Unfortunately, the location also happened to be cognitively linked to the cavern which kept wavering into view, thanks to my Second Sight. In fact, I think I could feel the oppressive atmosphere of the Opera House bearing down on me like some ghastly beast.

“Natsumi, we will begin with Vous êtes mon Prince Charmant,” Ouvrard commanded. She breezed through the room and towards he piano I was leaning against, I watched the woman with ice in my eyes, she sat herself down and made to open the lid. At that, I finally moved. Pushing off the piano and twisted around. My left hand darted out to forcibly slam the lid down with a thunderous echo. “Natsumi! What are you doing !?” Ouvrard shrieked.

“Putting my foot down,” I stated. I fought to keep my voice steady and calm as the resentment this woman had more than earned began to bubble up within me. Here, I had no power and was nothing more than a simple human girl, but it had been the same when I confronted her Shadow. I did it then, I could do it now. “I am sick and tired of you believing I’m nothing more than a prop, someone who sings on command,” I hissed. At that, I leaned down so our eyes were level with each other. “You have mistreated me for the last time. Your fetid attachment to my voice ends today. I will tear that distorted desire from you and reclaim my freedom,” I threatened.

With that, I pushed myself up and away from the piano then turned to face the door, all the while beating back the smirk that threatened to pull at my lips. Ouvrard’s face when I’d spoken to her with such ice and steel lacing every word; well, it had been immensely satisfying to watch her jaw slacken, skin pale and eyes going wide.

“How dare you! You ungrateful bitch!” Ouvrard shrieked. Such a high note should have at least cracked the glass if not outright shattering it, but nothing happened and the sensation that tickled my mind was familiar; turning around, I looked right into the wrathful golden gaze of Shadow Ouvrard. “I am the master here! You obey me!!” Shadow Ouvrard wailed. A reaction like this must have been a good sign.

“Not anymore,” I admitted. With that, I left the room to prepare for the retrieval of the Treasure.

*Persona 5 Royal*

By the afternoon, I was prepared as I could be, and my nerves were now little more than sporadic butterflies. I dived into the Metaverse and quickly created a shortcut to the Safe Room nearest the Sanctum, I crept my way there, staying as quiet as I possibly could. Upon reaching the doorway, I quickly looked around before stepping out of the shadows to dart inside.

Nothing much had changed about the room since I had last been inside, except that the glowing orb had been transformed! My crazy idea to scare Ouvrard had successfully caused her Treasure to materialise as an object that could be physically handled. A grin split my face as I quickly moved over and took a hold of the object.

‘A musical score.’ I realised. The staves were littered with musical notes although I noted that while the tempos were clearly listed in both French and Italian, the lyrics and the title was blurred and when I tried to focus pass the blurriness, it was almost like the pen marks were swapping places constantly. If this is what people with Dyslexia endure every day, I have an immense respect for them tackling school. There was only one portion I could clearly make out, the final word of the title: Triomphante, French for Triumphant.

There was little point in trying to figure out the sheet music. Instead, I turned towards the door ready to dart out of the Metaverse entirely, but something stopped me. A force on the paper shaped Treasure jerked me to a stop. Turning back, I saw the ferocious countenance of Shadow Ouvrard. Her teeth were bared in a vicious snarl. Pupils narrowed to pinpricks, one hand gripped the Treasure until her hand was white knuckled while the other flexed between a fist and a claw as her nostrils flared like she was an enraged beast.

“You would dare to put your hands on my masterpiece! Dare to take what I spent my life building towards! I will not allow this insult to go unpunished!” Shadow Ouvrard shrieked. But I would not falter when freedom was within reach. Flipping my naginata around, I jabbed out with the butt of the pole. Sadly, Ouvrard’s Shadow dodged the attempted attack without releasing the Treasure.

“And I will not allow you to continue to dominate my life!” I respond. Without the capability to do harm to the Shadow without inflicting terrible and lasting damage upon the real person, I was restricted in what action I could take. Which basically amounted to these little blunt jabs that she could easily see coming thanks to our proximity. Still, I kept trying, up until she used her free hand to grab the shaft.

“You have no idea the gravity of your crimes,” Shadow Ouvrard hissed. I suddenly felt a bone deep chill press itself across my body, some kind of power was growing from the Shadow and it had an ominous feeling to it. “It’s time you understood the punishment for daring to think you can escape from me!” Shadow Ouvrard declared.

At those words, the strange power grew stronger. Making a snap decision, I released the sheet of paper and used that same hand to punch the one she was using to hold my weapon’s handle. The attack forced Shadow Ouvrard to release it. I quickly flipped backwards twice and swiftly set my stance. Yet, worry gnawed at my mind, since neither Igor nor Lavenza had mentioned this happening.

“This is my stage! I am the master of this place! You may be the Prima Donna! But I control everything!” Shadow Ouvrard howled. The power rose up in a surge of red and black waves, it rose until it completely covered the Shadow from sight. Soon enough, it fell away but the entity inside had been transformed and I could only gape in shock at the twisted monstrosity before me.

Shadow Ouvrard had now doubled in height, with gangly limbs that almost appeared to be double jointed. A skull had replaced her face and I couldn’t tell if it was a mask or not. Voluminous red cloth was draped across her form and pooled around her feet like puddles of blood. Her skin had been turned into an obsidian black, looking very glass-like as it moved with light refracted over it. But the most shocking thing, information was pressing itself into my mind when it hadn’t done that with this Shadow before.

‘Dantalion?’ I questioned. That was the name that my eyes were drawing out, yet I couldn’t identify where it was meant to be from. It was as if the Shadow was now no longer a part of Ouvrard, could that mean it was safe to attack now? ‘No resistances, yet no weaknesses either. And if I want that Treasure, then I’m definitely in for a fight.’ I thought. The main threat to me would be if this Dantalion could use any of my three weaknesses, that would make the fight even more difficult.

A bubbling energy began to rise up from Dantalion who lifted a hand that contained a quill. Wafting it through the air, I saw some kind of pink-purple energy start to trail off the ivory feather. Lavenza’s training allowed me to identify it as Psy energy. Lucky me. Not that I was going to take the strike anyway. The waves of energy pulsated towards me and I dived in a roll to the side, gliding under the energy and quickly moving to my feet.

Snapping my left hand up, I tore of my mask and used Phantom’s Earth magic to launch a counterattack. The chunks of rocks hit home but it seemed more like a light graze than any actual damage, but even so I could just keep piling it on. Dantalion snarled at me before thrusting the gleaming gold tip of the quill down towards me. I dodged back, receiving a nick to the back of my palm, then I threw myself forward in a run. My naginata carved a gash through the glass like skin, it tore as easily as the other Shadows despite the odd appearance.

Another burst of Psy energy began to gather so I immediately darted away from the demonic creature to avoid taking the blast. My eyes darted about, searching for a place to duck down – a precaution – but that cost me. The mind-numbing energy slammed into me, sending me into a roll and scrambling my brain slightly. Damn! So that wasn’t just an ability that Lavenza had, it was innate to Psy energy in general.

I immediately began to relax my mind, to remove the slight scramble – thank goodness there was no Confusion or Forgetfulness Ailment attached to it – as experience taught me to. As soon as my mind relaxed, I snapped my eyes open, only to roll out of the way of a golden tip spearing towards me. My mask came off and Phantom unleashed a wave of Gravity from his noose, sending Dantalion stumbling backwards. I used the opportunity to springboard back onto my feet.

Quickly striding forward, I drove my weapon into the nearest piece of glass. A screech that practically shook the cavern earthquake style rang out. I tore my weapon free and jumped back several times. Psy energy chased after me, relentless in its’ eerie pulsating manner. I set my stance and brought my naginata up to intercept each of the balls of energy. I could only afford to take a certain amount of damage, any more I’d be unable to heal all my wounds.

Dantalion turned to me and whipped the quill around, the feather seemed to grow longer in tandem with her movements. In fact, it got so long that it began to brush against sections of the cavern. Yet when those two collided, the cavern had gashes clawed into the rocks from the feather’s shockingly razor edge. The demon swung the sharp feather towards me with a great deal of speed attached.

Knowing that blocking or hiding wouldn’t protect me, I quickly jumped and dived away from the rapidly whipping feather. It tore up chunks of ground whenever it struck as Dantalion kept up the stream of attacks towards me. Finishing another jump, I summoned Phantom and rained rocks down upon Dantalion. It was more to stop her relentless assault than actually bring her harm.

Either way, it worked as Dantalion reeled back, taking the quill with her and giving me an opening. I dived in and dealt another blow to the glassy skin. Hopefully, I was getting closer to defeating her; certainly, every blow I made would bring me closer to victory, but how much closer was I now? I had to end this before I ran out of Soul Power and was forced to rely upon only my physical capabilities. My attention was violently dragged back to the fight by Dantalion hauling her body back up as she glowered at me with the burning flames that had replaced eyes.

I twisted around a Psy blast and had Phantom unleash a burst of Gravity. When an interruption arrived. The doors creaked suddenly; it was unnaturally loud to be heard over the sounds of my clash with Dantalion. Pulling back, I quickly dived behind some rubble for cover as I looked at the interloper… only to blink rapidly several times in extreme confusion, while fighting back my revulsion.

Stood in the doorway when she couldn’t have been there was the cognition of me. The disturbing puppet gaped at the destruction that had been levelled at our surroundings. Yet she didn’t even bat an eyelash as Dantalion released a pain filled groan while pulling herself up. Instead, the cognition ran over to the twisted Shadow and fisted portions of the silky outfit tightly, I dispersed my naginata and readied my bow.

“Ah, Natsumi. Such a good little songbird. Nothing like that deceptive hooligan attacking me,” Dantalion cooed. But her voice, oh gods her voice was horrible! Like some sort of eldritch abomination! It sounded like a wine glass filled with water having a finger trailing along the rim and nails on a chalkboard. I wouldn’t be surprised if my ears were bleeding. “Sing for me my bird,” Dantalion insisted.

A bolt of fear slice through me. But it was enough of an adrenaline kick to overcome the pain in my ears. Hauling myself up, I drew back the arrow and fired. Whatever this cognition could do, I had to intention of finding out. But it seemed bad luck was the aim of this infiltration, as Dantalion intercepted the shot with one hand and lifted the cognition up with her other.

The puppet turned to face Dantalion as I seized another arrow. A sweet melody, not unlike a lullaby tumbled from her lips. I lined up the shot and loosed the arrow. Once more, it was blocked but this time by some kind of psychic barrier. The cognition’s song continued to flow uninterrupted and I faintly saw its’ energy twisting around Dantalion.

“Ah, much better,” Dantalion sighed. I, on the other hand, felt like screaming as that little performance had gone and healed all the damage I’d managed to inflict. This battle had just become that much harder for the inclusion of that annoying song. “Now, be a good girl and turn that voice upon the intruder!” Dantalion ordered. The puppet turned to face me and I saw her mouth opening.

I made the very wise choice to dive behind a nearby pillar. This was very wise; in that, seconds after I moved, a piercing note struck the rock that I had just left and shattered it. This also resulted in a small crater being left behind. Note to self: avoid being hit by deadly song, it might just kill me. A horrid cackle rattled the air and I knew things had only become that much more difficult for me.

Diving out from behind the pillar, I pulled of my mask and had a Gry Spell be sent flying out towards the cognition. I needed to get rid of her! That would balance the scales again. Unfortunately, the psychic barrier appeared again which blocked the attack. Dantalion swung down her quill tip towards me. I blocked the attack but immediately felt myself pale. The puppet was opening her mouth as she filled her lungs with air.

My father’s training kicked in. I tilted my weapon down and away from me as I pulled myself back into a pivot and continued to move away in a spinning fashion. The spinning might rattle my sense of balance, but it allowed perpetual movement. That continual motion safely got me out of danger of the rapid fire operatic notes that flew from the cognition without any pause for breath. I dived behind another pillar and sucked in a quick, sharp breath.

With my lungs refilled and balance restored, I dashed out from the pillar which had brought me to be behind the duo. Phantom unleashed Tera at the duo. If they couldn’t see my attack, then perhaps I’d- Nope! The psychic barrier appeared and repelled the attack this time as well. A small hiss of air escaped from my lips. The demonic creature turned to look at me and whipped the quill feather at me.

I flicked my naginata around to divert the attack. But the puppet was opening her mouth once again. Diving behind the gauzy curtain allowed me to dodge the siren attack. However, I didn’t get up from the ground and instead lay there wheezing. This fight was going poorly, I was so under prepared that in any other situation would have been laughable. The Treasure was hidden now and I doubt I’d be able to find it and escape with it while the Shadow and her puppet kept attacking me as they were.

“My, you do seem to be struggling with this Shadow,” A voice commented. Given the current tension of my situation, I think that I could be forgiven for stabbing out in its’ general direction without looking. When I finally did look, I saw the owner of the voice starring after my weapon which had gone wide instead burrowed into the rock. “Well, that was unexpected,” The woman commented. She then turned to look at me.

Her hair was a very light shade of blonde, platinum most likely, and it was short enough to tickle her cheek bones, her eyes were a very familiar shade of gold and not of the Shadow variety. She wore an almost knee length dress with five black circles running down the centre, each circle had a gold dot at the centre and a black ring enclosing each circle. The boots were almost knee high – thus exposing the black leggings underneath – and were thick heeled, she also wore a simple hat and gloves that rose halfway up her forearms. She held a thick brown book that reminded me of Lavenza’s Grimoire; plus, her dress, hat, boots, and gloves were an exact match to Lavenza’s dress in terms of colour.

“Are you one of Lavenza’s sisters?” I asked. It was the only logical conclusion due to how much this woman looked like her, plus the sensation she was giving off was similar as well. “Sorry about attempting to stab you, by the way. You kind of started me,” I apologised. I also pulled my weapon back so that I could be prepared if that twisted Shadow ended up finding me, somehow it hadn’t.

“It’s fine, especially since Masakado was active. I wouldn’t have felt a thing,” Lavenza’s sister (?) responded. I wasn’t completely focused on her though as I continued to listen to Dantalion’s attacks and wailing taunts, occasionally punctuated by brief operatic songs. “I am indeed one of Lavenza’s sisters. My name is Elizabeth. Do you need some help?” The woman added on. The last bit, however, definitely drew my attention.

“I thought those of the Velvet Room couldn’t get involved in these kinds of events,” I challenged. Because so help me, if it turned out that they could then I was going to be extremely angry with Lavenza and Igor. Thing would have gone much more smoothly if I had help, especially right now. It had been a struggle to deal any damage to this blasted Shadow given her puppet would simply heal every little scrape and papercut she got.

“They cannot. But I left my attendant position for a personal reason. As such, I am no longer bound by the laws of the Velvet Room. Do you require aid?” Elizabeth asked. I had never expected that would be possible; but all thoughts of that type were rattled from my head by Dantalion’s next attack, she was moving ever closer to my location. My answer was pretty clear.

“Yes! Dear gods, yes! I absolutely need help!” I exclaimed. Elizabeth merely smiled and rose to her feet; she offered me a hand and I took it. Another burst of song rattled the cavern and my lips pressed into a thin line. “We need to do something about that singing,” I snarled out. If Dantalion kept healing, then this fight would drag on until I no longer could fight.

“I may have a suggestion,” Elizabeth spoke up. I glanced over at the former attendant, curious about what she might suggest. “That is a version of you, born of her mind, but the skill is too real to be dreamed. You have that same skill. Use that to stop the singing as the barrier is only gone when she sings,” Elizabeth explained. It made sense and it would make for the perfect swansong. With a nod, I darted out and Elizabeth followed.

“Do you really think someone will be able to help you?!” Dantalion mocked. She struck with her quill, the sharp edge gleaming brightly. Elizabeth moved in front of me and easily caught the tip on her book before throwing it aside. When she did, Dantalion was thrown off balance. The cognition stumbled slightly as she tried to regain her balance. But Elizabeth didn’t let up.

Instead, blue flames scorched across her and a figure appeared behind her, pale white skin that looked more like paper than anything else, wild blue hair, a white-yellow robe and a katana in hand made up this Persona. The katana was drawn and the air seemed to be torn asunder. The power of that single physical strike sent Dantalion stumbling backwards even more. The red clothing was split apart and the black glass was heavily damaged. Only the psychic barrier had been undamaged.

Reacting with how she had been designed, the puppet immediately focused on Dantalion’s malady. She quickly sang the lullaby song towards Dantalion, repairing the damage once more and removing all evidence of the wounds Elizabeth had inflicted apart from the damaged cloth. She turned her gaze to us and opened her mouth, prepared to strike at us with whatever song she chose. But this time, I knew what to do and dismissed my naginata as I moved in front of Elizabeth.

“As Schonberg once said of Carmen, she would die rather than be false to herself. If that is my fate, then so be it! But I will not lie anymore!” I declared. With that declaration of freedom, I took in a breath and opened my mouth to sing my favourite of Carmen’s songs, L'amour est un oiseau rebelle. The passionate song of freedom and love flew from my mouth to combat the operatic tones coming from the puppet. I managed to detect that it was a song from Cendrillion.

The two resonating waves collided, vibrating the very air with their clash. Dantalion did not like this development as she tried to attack with her quill and Psy energy. But Elizabeth intercepted her every time. The blue haired Persona and another with massive butterfly wings, a red shirt, black pants, a sword and crown kept Elizabeth safe as she used her own body as a bulwark against the attacks. I didn’t focus on her for long and instead kept my attention on the singing I had to do.

Eventually, I saw the cognition weakening, her song was becoming softer while my remained strong and consistent. Her body began to tremble as her lungs gasped for air. She suddenly collapsed to her knees and I quickly stopped singing. Pulling out my bow, I knocked an arrow and fire at the puppet. There was no psychic barrier there to save her this time. The arrow pierced through her chest, turning her into smoke once more.

“No!” Dantalion wailed. Not missing a beat. I pulled off my mask and had Phantom attack with Tera. The rocks seemed to deal more damage this time around, causing a vicious smirk to curl on my lips, no way to heal and no backup. But this time I had a powerful ally; the scales were now firmly tipped in my favour this time.

“Shall we end this?” Elizabeth asked. A cheerful note laced her words, completely at odds with what we were doing; but I agreed with a sharp nod of my head. Using my naginata, arrows and both types of magic – along with my support spells – I attacked while Elizabeth bounced between Personas at a rapid pace so fast it would have been dizzying to focus on them.

The onslaught of perpetual attacks of all kinds slammed repeatedly into Dantalion. She desperately tried to strike us with Psy energy or quill strikes, most of them were blocked or dodged – or in Elizabeth’s case completely ineffective – most of her attacks were focused on me after realising this but any that found there mark were erased by a swift healing from Elizabeth. With a powerful roar of energy from Phantom, the Gry spell struck home on Dantalion, square in the chest.

Dantalion collapsed onto the ground in a cloak of black flakes which was slowly breaking apart. The Treasure fluttered through the air and I swiped my hand out to grab the musical score. My eyes focused on the notes as my arm pulled back and the true magnitude of the music that Ouvrard had dreamed of sank into me this time, unlike before.

“No!” Ouvrard’s voice cried. The sound a pathetic wail, but it drew my attention towards the Shadow and it was truly a miserable sight. She was knelt on the floor and curled over; her face hidden behind her arms. “My masterpiece. You can’t take my masterpiece from me!” Shadow Ouvrard continued to cry. But her words caused an angry fire to start burning in my heart.

“I can’t take it? You don’t have the faintest clue what I’m capable of!” I hissed. Flexing my left hand brought my naginata to my hand as my right tightly gripped the Treasure, causing it to bunch up and crumple in my fingers. “You have no idea of what you took from me! And you dare to beg for the same not to be done to you!” I snarled.

As I spoke, my legs carried me forward while my left arm rose as the head of my weapon pointed directly at the quivering Shadow. She had now risen her head and those eerie golden irises gazed at me with very real fear. Good. After all the pain she’d inflicted on me, how the coughs I endured would bring up bloody flecks after I was forced to practice. The muscles, diaphragm and lungs would ache for days, leaving me perpetually breathless and yet still I’d be forced to sing even when reduced to wheezing hacks. The fact that any love I’d once had for singing ended up being completely stripped away… well it was about time.

“You dared to take my voice and eroded my passion! You deserve to suffer for the things you did to me!” I yelled. I came to a stop in front of the Shadow, who shivered and cowered away from me with her eyes scrunched close. “You deserve to feel my pain!” I yelled. With that, I thrust my weapon downwards. A sharp sound echoed out, filling the cavern with its’ single note.

“What… what happened?” Shadow Ouvrard asked. She opened her eyes and blinked them in a rather numb manner as she looked around, before landing on my naginata, the tip pierced into the ground beside her, not a nick or graze marred the Shadow’s form. “Wh… why did you miss?” Shadow Ouvrard murmured.

“Because even if you do deserve it, it would make me worse than you,” I admitted. Stepping back, I pulled my weapon free and then dispersed it, ensuring I couldn’t harm her or even make the attempt. “The masterpiece you created, it’s beautiful. Like all the pain of an angel’s fall from grace and all the beauty of a human’s rise to heaven woven together. Atone for your sins. Then make your song real,” I encouraged.

“Thank you Natsumi. Truly, thank you,” Shadow Ouvrard spoke. At those words, she started to glow with a white light and Shadow Ouvrard’s body began to go transparent; my heart leapt into my throat in a panic. “I shall return to myself now. Goodbye,” Shadow Ouvrard admitted. Shortly after speaking those words, she completely vanished.

“At last, it’s over,” I breathed. A tsunami of relief washed over me and I turned towards Elizabeth, prepared to thank her for her much appreciated aid, but the former attendant had vanished. Before I could think about it for long, a loud rumbling followed swiftly by some ominous cracks in the floor drew my attention. “Oh, what now!?” I exclaimed.

“Natsumi! Over here!” Lavenza’s voice cried. I quickly spotted my petite mentor holding open a very out of place door. Shoving all questions in a mental box, I sprinted for the door as if my life depended on it; the falling rocks made it abundantly clear that it did.

I weaved, dodged and eventually hurled myself through the opening.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 7: - Change of Hearts

I was breathing heavily as I stood in the Velvet Room, feeling my legs shaking madly at the mad dash I’d just made in order to escape from the place within Ouvrard’s mind. The musical score seemed to be almost crushed within my right hand given how tightly I was holding it as my naginata twitched and jumped from the trembling of my left hand.

“Well my dear, it appears you have succeed,” Igor commented. I continued to shake as I looked over at the old man who was calmly sat at the desk like always. “This Ouvrard’s Palace has dissolved. Her Shadow has returned to his true self and you possess his Treasure,” Igor summarised. The grin that spread across his face seemed wider this time around.

“But will it be enough?” I wondered. That was the one thing that wouldn’t stop nagging away at my mind, no matter what distractions I tried: my shaking subsided as I moved towards the table, roughly dropping down into the chair with my legs stretched out underneath the table instead of curled up near the wood. “Will all of that be enough to stop what she’s doing and keep her alive?” I clarified.

“I do not know,” Igor stated. I looked at the man with a frown on my face at his answer as Igor folded his hands together. “I have already told you; Palaces are new developments so our knowledge of them is limited. Besides that, it will be up to Ouvrard to decide what to do; to keep living or give up. This is not a decision you, or I, can control. No matter how much that control is desired,” Igor explained.

“I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it,” I decided. All I could do now was wait for Ouvrard to be affected by my actions; Lavenza came over and set two cups of tea down, one in front of each of us. “Thank you, both of you, for all of your help,” I admitted. I never would have made it as far as I did without these two people aiding me with their knowledge and experience.

“Of course, my dear. And I am sure that your prior experience will aid you greatly,” Igor stated. He proceeded to drink from his cup whilst I gazed at him with a perplex look on my face as a soft ‘what?’ slipped from my lips as Igor lowered his cup. “Your experience in Ouvrard’s Palace will aid you when entering new Palaces,” Igor clarified. I felt a chill run down my spine at those words.

“Um… no,” I stated. My voice was slightly shaky as I spoke those two words, Igor parroted the second one back at me with a question mark added to it. “No. That place was utterly horrifying! I risked my life fighting that thing Ouvrard had turned into with only Phantom to help me! Until Elizabeth showed up that is. I’m not doing that again!” I announced. Quickly draining my tea, I rose to my feet and grabbed my weapons and the Treasure, with them in hand I swiftly moved for the exit, not bothering to process the shocked looks on Igor and Lavenza’s expressions.

“You may not have a choice in the matter Maiden,” Igor called. I jerked to a stop at his words and turned around to face the old man with Igor having twisted around in his seat to face me; Lavenza was warily looking between us with a pallor of worry upon her face, but she made no move to intervene between the two of us.

“Is that a threat?” I asked. Igor had been nothing but kind to me, supportive and understanding, so my tone was not the cold steel one might normally expect to be attached to those words, instead it was a cracked one, like holding back tears; I didn’t want to lose Igor and Lavenza, odd as our relationship was, but I refused to be controlled by anyone ever again, no matter the cost.

“No, merely a statement of fact,” Igor answered. A smile came onto his lips, but it was more sorrowful than the others I had seen before. “I have told you before, that I had prior experience with Betwixt and Personas, through that I realised something. There is likely a phenomenon exerted by people, not too different to gravity, that draws certain people to each other,” Igor explained. His words caused my eyebrows to scrunch up as I looked at him.

“That sounds an awful lot like fate,” I noted. In truth, I didn’t like that word, perhaps it was because of losing my family and how my uncle had treated me afterwards, but the idea of being locked within an inescapable situation, predetermined by some other person, left a bad taste in my mouth. Igor’s smile became a bit brighter at my words which made me glad, he didn’t look right not being happy.

“Gravity, fate, destiny. As a wise man once wrote, what’s in a name,” Igor commented. Suddenly a stack of cards appeared within his hand and he proceeded to set them upon the table. “What I am saying Maiden, is merely that you will be drawn to those with the potential to wield Personas and Palace rulers, especially as you are the protector of the Wildcard. The Seven Sins as an enemy and the Major Arcana as comrades and allies,” Igor added on. But I didn’t understand that last bit, not completely anyway.

“Be that as it may, my fate is still mine to decide. No matter what,” I affirmed. With that, I pulled open the door and stepped through it back to reality; a heavy sigh escaped me and I felt the tension from being in the Palace drain out of me… right up until a hand landed on my shoulder. “AH!!!” I screamed. I also hopped forward, twisted around and dropped into a stance, before it sank into my mind as to who had spooked me.

“Hello Natsumi-sama,” Naomi greeted. Seeing the one individual I knew that hadn’t been cruel to me despite being connected to my uncle caused all the tension to leave my body once again and this time, I went as far as to collapse onto the ground with great big gasps escaping me. “Natsumi-sama! Are you okay?!” Naomi exclaimed. She knelt down beside me with a worried look on her face as her hands hovered near me, but she clearly didn’t want to breach any lines I didn’t want her crossing.

“I’m fine… I just heard something, grabbed my bow and came to check it out,” I lied. Even though it left a horrifically sour taste in my mouth, I knew that I had to, otherwise Naomi would start asking questions and telling her about Palaces, Shadows and everything else would make me sound unhinged enough that she’d probably consider taking me to the nearest psychologist and who knows where it would go from that.

“Well, everything looks fine now,” Naomi reassured. She seemed to hesitate on giving me a hand, so I made the choice for her and gripped the hand causing the woman to blink her eyes in surprise, but she still helped to support me as I regained my footing. “Natsumi-sama, what are you holding on to?” Naomi asked. Since she was holding my right hand, Naomi clearly meant my left hand which held the Treasure; I looked down whilst trying to figure out how to explain it, but upon seeing it my eyes widened in surprise.

Instead of the musical score that it should have been, my hand now contained what appeared to be some kind of recorder. It was a dark grey colour with the typical buttons that were used to operate the object, it seemed that there was something already recorded in the object. Curious, I proceeded to press the play button; immediately a familiar voice began to ring out, a bit chaotic and bouncy but it was definitely my voice with it being younger and obviously untrained yet so full of enthusiasm and love as it sang an old anime opening that I must have enjoyed back then… something I had lost since this recording was taken.

“Is that… a recording of your voice? Why do you have such a thing Natsumi-sama?” Naomi asked. So, I wasn’t hearing things, this really was a recording of my own voice, which meant that this recording had been the source of Ouvrard’s distortion; that caused a queasy feeling to nestle within the pit of my stomach at the implications, it was probably a good thing that I had stolen her Treasure.

“I just happened to find it, no idea why I’m holding onto it though. Maybe the thing I’d heard had spooked me so much that I ended up forgetting about it when I came to check on it,” I explained. Another lie to add to the unease in my stomach since that hadn’t happened at all, but Naomi seemed to buy the lie as she shrugged her shoulders with a gentle smile on her lips, she then turned to the house and moved towards it with me taking off after her.

A fair amount of time has passed, proving how long I’d been inside of the Palace, yet Naomi didn’t seem to realise that I had been missing which meant that she had likely been working late over with my uncle. Naomi did stuff for my uncle probably acting as a secretary sort of individual, but the exact details were things that I didn’t want to know and Naomi didn’t feel like sharing either not that I blamed her.

I returned my nisun-nobi to the chest and then entered the kitchen, Naomi was looking around with a perplexed look on her face and I quickly figured out why, Ouvrard, or rather her lack of presence. After all, Sundays rarely ended this early, it normally kept going until after the sun had started to dip below the horizon; unless she was distracted with setting up concerts for my uncle to show me off at, still her lack of presence was abnormal to say the least.

“Seems Ouvrard isn’t here now,” I commented. Naomi nodded, but I saw that she looked relieved, likely to not have to deal with the tension that stretched between the two of us. “Sit down and relax Naomi-san, I’ll cook for tonight,” I offered. I felt lighter after dealing with Ouvrard and at the moment, I wanted to repay Naomi for her having to suffer at the hands of a fair amount of tension between me and Ouvrard over the last few years.

“Ah! Natsumi-sama, you don’t h-,” Naomi began to protest. She moved towards me with a hand stretched out towards me as if she was attempting to stop me, but I easily moved out of her reach and clasped my hands around one of her own as I gave her a gentle smile, which caused the woman to jerk to a stop as she stared at me with wide brown eyes

“Please, Naomi-san, let me,” I requested. Naomi’s lips pressed together as I pulled my hands away and turned to the kitchen to head inside; it had been too long since I helped to cook but I’m sure I would pull out some old memories and follow a simple recipe… but as I gathered up the ingredients, worry gnawed away at my heart like a ravenous beast.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Several days had passed, days without any solid information about what was happening with Ouvrard’s condition. She hadn’t shown up at all over the course of those days and neither me or Naomi had any manner of contacting her, only my uncle could do that and I was a little wary of approaching him in order to ask about Ouvrard. So, for the time being, I was on pins and needles waiting for the results, but Naomi was enjoying the freedom of not having to deal with the tension.

It was currently a Sunday which meant that I had no school, thankfully as the atmosphere in Shūjin was getting worse, a brown bag swung slightly beside me which was filled with a few new releases to light novels that I enjoyed reading. Reaching home, I opened the door – I’d disposed of the Treasure recording device the day after I went into the Metaverse – and stepped inside only to see Naomi stood there with a panicked expression on her face which caused my muscles to bunch up.

“Y-you n-need to c-come to th-the fr-front r-room,” Naomi stuttered out. She was abnormally concerned and that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on, swapping my shoes and dropping off my books as quickly as possible, I walked to the front room door and entered, only to freeze up when I saw the person who had likely unsettled Naomi so much.

Sat on the couch with his fingers laced together like Igor did – but with an aura completely opposed to the master of the Velvet Room – was a tall, bald man with a small black goatee resting on his chin; he wore a business suit made of a white buttoned shirt with black pants and a jacket, over his eyes were a pair of orange-tinted square glasses but I knew the colour of those eyes were the same brown as my mum’s eyes.

“Uncle… to what do I owe the afternoon visit?” I asked. My back was ramrod straight as I sensed Naomi nervously hovering over my shoulder, my uncle looked at me before slightly gesturing to the chair that was across from him. “I’ll stand, thank you Masayoshi-ojisan,” I responded. My tone was tense as my mind spun with why? Why had my uncle suddenly returned to the house? He normally never came before it was practically pitch black outside, therefore what was the purpose of his visit?

“I’m here about Ouvrard-san,” Uncle Masayoshi spoke. Naomi gasped slightly as my eyes widened in surprise. “She suddenly came to me, after several days of complete silence and, in a blubbering mess, begged to be released from her job here. She kept saying something about how she had destroyed your singing, Natsumi. Tore away your ability to sing with true passion. She was utterly regretful about her actions and wished to be dismissed from her post immediately,” Uncle Masayoshi explained.

“Good,” I stated. Venomous steel coated that single word, but it was present enough for me to feel Naomi’s shocked eyes boring into me as Uncle Masayoshi stared at me with wide eyes, allowing me to faintly see the brown of his irises. “Singing was something that I deeply loved, but she then took it away from me. I want her gone, so she can never come back to this building and leaves my voice alone,” I insisted. My expression was made of stone as I stared at him, not wanting him to see how relieved I was that Ouvrard was still alive after I took her distorted Desire.

“Very well then,” Uncle Masayoshi spoke. He proceeded to stand up and I heard Naomi scuttle out of the way and I stepped back from the doorway as my uncle moved towards it. “I’ll make sure to send someone down in order to replace Ouvrard as soon as possible,” Uncle Masayoshi stated. My eyes fluttered rapidly before I curled one hand into a fist at his words, I wasn’t about to let him slip some other music teacher into my life just to force me to entertain him and his cronies, no matter what.

“I don’t need anyone else uncle. I hate singing now, I refuse to sing ever again. Ouvrard took that from me, so I won’t be using my voice in such a manner ever again,” I responded. Of course, what I wasn’t saying was how much I hated him as well for allowing Ouvrard to be brought into my life in the first place; Uncle Masayoshi stopped moving and turned back to face me, my eyes were hard as I stood as if prepared for a fight against the man who was focused solely on me.

“Natsumi,” Uncle Masayoshi breathed. He couldn’t hide his expression of shock after my words, I’d been quiet and reserved because of him, because of what he did to me three years ago; but now, with Phantom’s words ringing within my mind, I was standing firm against him refusing to give in to his demands, refusing to be let my voice be taken by anyone anymore.

“I am being very serious Shido Masayoshi,” I vowed. Using his full name and dropping the uncle to show just how serious I was about this vow I had made to protect my voice. “No more singing instructors in my life. I’m leaving singing behind now so I will never perform again, not for you or anyone else in the world. My voice is mine and mine alone with no interference from anyone,” I reasoned. Uncle Masayoshi remained silently as he and I stared at each other in a silent contest of wills.

“Fine, very well,” Uncle Masayoshi grumbled. He then turned and proceeded to walk out of the building, causing me to breath a heavy sigh of relief as I felt my legs slightly give out underneath me, causing me to lean into the wall as Naomi rushed up to my side, with a proud smile on her face and I allowed a grateful one to lightly touch my lips.

*Persona 5 Royal*

At a brisk pace, I moved down the hallway of Shūjin practical building, it was after school, but I had offered to take stuff to the nurse’s office since I had felt a bit more freedom after awakening Phantom and stopping Ouvrard. Sadly, the nurse hadn’t been there, so I was looking for a teacher to speak to in order to get the stuff inside since it didn’t seem wise to leave it lying outside the office where anyone could grab it, it was currently hidden but could probably be found if someone looked hard enough.

I moved up the staircase when an odd sound reached my ears, this caused me to pause and frown in response to its’ occurrence. Pushing my legs into a jog, I rushed up the steps and turned the corner; I saw that only the P.E. teacher – and someone who gave me the creeps – Kamoshida Suguru and someone I’d known since middle school, Mishima Yūki, were up here but Mishima was sprawled on the floor.

Mishima was of average height or shorter, with brown eyes and spiky, blue-tinted black hair, black eyes and a relatively average face according to other people but that face was rather injured, he wore the standard winter uniform though without the blazer and with the shirt untucked, the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and the suspenders were off his shoulders, he wore white tennis shoes with green accents; his left arm was bandaged quite heavily. Kamoshida on the other hand was unnatural tall with a lean yet muscular build, brown-black eyes, neck length unkempt black hair and thick eyebrows with a broad and square jawline. He wore a white shirt and black track pants with double white stripes, around his neck was a red timer and a whistle. There was a strange intensity to Kamoshida’s eyes as his left hand rose up whilst being curled into a fist.

My eyes flew wide as I realised the purpose behind that move. Grinding my teeth together, I flew over like an arrow loosed from a taunt bowstring as the fist started to descend towards Mishima who flinched but didn’t move beyond that. I reached the two of them and wrapped my hand firmly around Kamoshida’s wrist, halting the movement and causing both of them to call out my family name.

“Is everything alright?” I asked. It might have been an odd question to ask after what I’d just seen, but jumping to conclusions was foolish and I also wanted to hear how they responded to that question; one thing was clearly obvious enough for me to know it as truth, and that was that something suspicious was going on.

“Everything’s fine Chiba. Mishima fell so I was just about to help him up,” Kamoshida answered. He leered at me in such a manner that I wanted to scrub myself clean with volcano heated water; Kamoshida then tried to pull his hand free, but my grip was strong and he failed, which surprised him if the widened eyes were anything to go by.

“Surely an open palm would work better than a closed fist,” I chastised. That intensity from before came back to Kamoshida’s eyes and now that I was close enough, I realised that it was anger; in response I shuffled my feet out slightly to widen my stance as a steely glint had no doubt entered my eyes given that Kamoshida flinched away from me slightly.

“It’s okay Chiba-san!!” Mishima exclaimed. I tore my eyes from Kamoshida to look at the boy, seeing a desperate plea on his face; internally I frowned at his words, I released my grip on Kamoshida’s wrist and extended that hand to Mishima. He took it and I pulled him up onto his feet whilst positioning myself in front of Mishima so that Kamoshida couldn’t do anything to him without going through me first.

“Damn brat! Who does she think she is? Getting in the way of my fun!” Kamoshida spat. My eyes widened, although this was not at the words that had been spoken but instead it was focused on Mishima’s lack of a reaction to those words; I cast a glance over my shoulder and through my hair, seeing Kamoshida holding the wrist I’d grabbed as an eerily familiar haze seemed to settle over him.

It was the same haze that I’d seen settle over Ouvrard and it explained a lot, like my discomfort around him and the strange atmosphere that permeated the school. Plus, there was the fact that the volleyball team, which Kamoshida coached and Mishima was a part of, always seemed to be bruise and weary in a way that had struck me as abnormal.

‘I guess Igor was right.’ I thought. One of my own teachers was likely in possession of a Palace and if he was abusing the students then I couldn’t ignore it. ‘I guess I’ll have to steal his Treasure.’ I decided. With that thought in mind, I turned away, grabbed Mishima’s hand and walked off; after finding a teacher I knew what my destination outside of the school was and it wasn’t home; it was Mementos.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 8: - Advent of The Fool

A heavy sigh escaped my lips as I dropped my head onto the desk in my room, feeling exhausted and annoyed as I glared at the source of my distress. It was a fairly thick notebook that was also pocket sized, its’ white pages were filled with kanji and that is what I was glaring at specifically; things certainly hadn’t been easy for me as of late.

It had been a couple of months since my world was flipped on its’ head and I became involved in the Metaverse. Even thought I had been determined to change Kamoshida’s heart, I’d ended up running into several roadblocks in my search for his Palace and I’d only managed to establish its’ appearance within the Metaverse at the end of February, in other words it took me nearly an entire month.

The physical world location was Shūjin High School – which had been easy enough to figure out – but realising that its’ appearance was that of a castle had taken much longer than I wanted it to. People had continued to suffer whilst I established this connection, the volleyball team’s wounds were getting worse and I think Kamoshida was blackmailing Takamaki with something, plus the disbandment of the track team was his fault as well. Those last two nuggets of information I’d managed to pry out of Shadows of Shūjin students down in Mementos and I had used that information to anonymously spread a few rumours via gossip loving classmates of mine.

A total of four issues had also further delayed me, although only half of them were connected to Kamoshida’s Palace. Locating an infiltration point had taken several days since I had wanted to avoid it being easily discovered by Shadows, but the hard part was how to confront Kamoshida to make the Treasure – when I found the blasted thing as this castle was much bigger than Ouvrard’s Palace – manifest; the face to face move that I’d used on Ouvrard might not work, or worse if it did and I messed up, Kamoshida could die and there was a risk of the blame falling on me if anyone else saw it.

The other two problems were more troubling, I’d only started to pay attention to it recently, but in the last two years, incidents of people suddenly having mental breakdowns had been increasing. As a result, these breakdowns ended up leading to accidents that claimed many lives and ruining many more, most recently a train had crashed last month with a fifteen year old girl as one of the victims.

And the last problem… Igor and Lavenza had vanished. That had happened last month as well, they’d both just suddenly disappeared and I could no longer see an entrance to the Velvet Room. All I had as proof that they’d even existed were my memories and a hairclip shaped like a blue butterfly which had shown up in my room on the day that I had lost contact with them; I now permanently wore it, hoping it would guide me to them when they returned.

‘I think a break is necessary. A nice coffee and curry break.’ I decided. Pushing myself up and closing the notebook, I decided to leave it behind whilst I went on my break in order to leave it behind for the time being, I hid the notebook away in a secret compartment so that if anyone got in then they’d never find it. Grabbing the handbag, I used to carry my purse and phone, I left my room only to pause at the silence that pressed down upon my shoulders.

Since the confrontation between me and my uncle in the house he lived within, I had successfully attained a house of my own for me to live within outside of my uncle’s malicious influence. No one had come to replace Ouvrard, leaving me free of anyone trying to exploit my voice anymore, the fake weapon collection of my father was in the dojo attached to the building and best of all I was at peace within the building.

Although, something strange had happened at some point since I’d moved out, at least once a week Naomi would come by to check on me but after she went on a trip to… somewhere, I don’t recall where it was, but she had gone with my uncle back in February. Yet after he had returned from the trip, Naomi had been conspicuously missing and my uncle was completely unwilling to mention what had become of her beyond the fact that she was no longer employed by him; I didn’t bring it up afterwards because I saw my uncle’s explosive temper rising when I initially pressed him.

Heading down the steps, I left the empty building behind and quickly made my way towards a little café I had discovered in the back alleys of my new residence of Yongen-Jaya known as LeBlanc. Opening the door on arrival, jingling the bell and making Sakura Sōjirō, the owner, look up at me with a smile but it seemed unusually strained for him. Sōjirō was a middle-aged man with slicked-back dark hair that had a receding hairline, grey eyes, a chinstrap beard with a goatee that flared out and he wore glasses; his outfit consisted of a pale pink dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just slightly below his elbows, pale khakis held up with a white leather belt and white loafers. While working at Leblanc, he wore a black apron with a white pinstripe design on it and had his pants legs folded up to the middle of his calves.

I gave my order to the man which consisted of one house blend with sugar and milk and a plate of curry and he set to work on making it for me. I could only take coffee with stuff to reduce the bitterness, it might not be the best way to have it, but after I’d spat my very first cup into Sōjirō’s face after the first sip, he agreed it was for the best, I settled into a booth and brought out a light novel volume I’d been reading and then stopped in order to work on Kamoshida’s Palace.

‘Stop it Natsumi! You’re meant to be relaxing!’ I mentally chastised. I pinched the bridge of my nose and rubbed it briefly; one would think I’d be more concerned with practicing for entrance exams but letting Kamoshida run riot over Shūjin wasn’t something I could allow to happen. I focused my attention back on the book and tried to disconnect from the world and my irritating situation.

Clinking came, meaning the food and drink had arrived but when creaking echoed, I lifted my nose out of my book and saw that Sōjirō was sat across from me, he looked worried which caused the book to fall into my lap, forgotten for the moment. I’d never seen Sōjirō look so worried before, even if it had only been a few weeks that we’d known each other, he’d always had this seemingly unflappable demeanour that never got rattled by anything, so if he was worried then why? Had my uncle found out about LeBlanc?

“Look… kid, for the next… year, you might want to steer clear of LeBlanc,” Sōjirō stated. I froze up at those words, feeling horror boil within me, horror that my uncle had found this place and made some kind of threat to Sōjirō. “A frequent customer asked me to do me a favour for him and… well, I agreed. I still don’t know why but I did,” Sōjirō explained. The horror faded away and confusion took its’ place.

“Boss, I don’t understand. What favour could possible mean I’d have to stay away from LeBlanc?” I asked. This favour had to be something shocking, something deeply unsettling; as those thoughts rose up within my mind, Igor’s warning of my fate, my gravity, echoed within my mind which caused a chill to course its’ way across my body and deep into the marrow of my bones.

“Well, he’s close to a family in some small country town somewhere. Apparently, that family has a son who recently got convicted of assault and he’s being sent away from his home and up here to Tokyo. Unfortunately, the customer’s going to be out of the country until next March for a university thing and this kid needs to be looked after during his probation. I… agreed to take him in and he’ll be living here at LeBlanc,” Sōjirō explained. He looked nervous and I cocked my head to the side at his remarks.

“Okay. But I don’t see why I have to stay away from one of the few places that makes me happy just because of some guy?” I commented. Sōjirō blinked owlishly in response to my words, it was an honest admission of my feelings as this place had such a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere that I felt at peace here as much as my empty home. “Also, why isn’t he living at your home? It’s not like you have a family Boss,” I stated. Sōjirō was a bachelor as frequently stated by one especially persistent female customer, plus he had never even implied the existence of a wife, a husband or any children.

“I just… don’t want a criminal in my home is all. Anyway, that’s not why I’m warning you to stay away kid,” Sōjirō gruffly stated. He seemed a bit better which caused my lips to twitch slightly in response. “The other issue is that he’ll be transferring to Shūjin, you’ll probably be forced into seeing him there and I want to keep you as safe as possible,” Sōjirō informed. That caused my eyes to widen at both the revelation that this guy was coming to Shūjin and Sōjirō was trying to keep me safe. “Look, here’s a picture of this guy, look at it if you want. His name’s Amamiya Ren,” Sōjirō stated. He then stood up and moved to get back to his curry and coffee, a small white rectangle left behind, reaching out I flipped it over to reveal… an ordinary looking boy.

‘No. Just because he looks ordinary doesn’t mean anything. Kamoshida looks like a charming, jovial and well meaning athlete, but inside he’s… ugh.’ I thought. Violent shivers of disgust ran across my body with me struggling to suppress the motion as I remembered some of the things I’d witnessed in that depraved Palace. ‘Although now that I think about it, Amamiya’s actually kind of cute… wait! What?!’ I thought.

Practically throwing myself back into the chair – I’m amazed that Sōjirō didn’t give me more than a confused look at my bizarre motion – I raised my hands up to sharply smack the sides of my face a few times. Cute?! What was I thinking? This boy could be incredibly dangerous if he had attacked someone despite appearing to be of a similar age to me.

‘I can’t allow foolish thoughts to distract me. Focus on what’s important Natsumi! Deal with Kamoshida first!’ I ordered myself. With that thought in mind, I focused my attention on my meal and felt my mental energy get recharged, if I could take this food into the Metaverse it could probably recharge my Soul Power quicker than resting and in greater quantities than the Soul Drops or energy bars could. ‘Now that I’m recharged, it’s back to the grind.’ I decided.

Standing up, I paid for my meal and proceeded to leave the building with a wave to Sōjirō.

*Persona 5 Royal*

This was not good, it was only the day after Sōjirō had warned me about the transfer student, yet the whispering gossip that permeated the hallways and classrooms of Shūjin were all focused on one thing, one topic that kept being spun around and around until the air buzzed with echoes of continually repeated words… a transfer student with a criminal record.

‘How?! How can everyone seem to know about Amamiya? There’s only one student I’m aware of at Shūjin who has law enforcement connections, but it’s doubtful she’d have been told. The principal would know and maybe some teachers… but would they have really told everyone?’ I thought. Teachers weren’t perfect beings, but I didn’t believe that any of them could be so cruel to someone that they’d never met.

Well, maybe it had been Kamoshida since he was cruel enough. Even though Amamiya had been convicted of committing a serious crime, it could have been an accident or a misunderstanding just as easily as it could have been serious and intentional; to have ruined Amamiya’s chance at peace was wrong and exactly why I had decided against telling anyone about the whole situation.

My thoughts had so distracted me that I didn’t see the person I ended up slamming into. I stumbled backwards but quickly regained my footing, the other person unfortunately ended up falling over with a small cry escaping lips, I looked up and paled slightly when I saw who it was that I’d inadvertently knocked over; a second year student by the name of Suzui Shiho, Takamaki’s only friend… and she was also a volleyball player, meaning she was covered in injuries.

“Sorry about that Suzui-san,” I softly admitted. Suzui had brown eyes and black hair that was tied in a ponytail by a pink elastic band with her fringe being parted to her left and pinned there with two grey hairpins. Suzui wore her uniform without the black jacket nor the suspenders, the sleeves of her white turtleneck sweater were rolled up to her elbows and she wore the standard uniform skirt. Underneath her skirt, she wore black athletic shorts, wrapped around her elbows were dark braces with a black knee brace on her right leg. She wore white running shoes with red designs and white ankle socks, wounds littered parts of her face.

“It’s fine Chiba-san,” Suzui softly stated. I held my hand out to the girl and she took it allowing me to pull her back onto her feet, but I didn’t let go yet for I was too distracted by the wounds she had acquired because of that disgusting man. “Um… Chiba-san, is everything okay?” Suzui asked. Her voice had gone incredibly timid, so I forced myself to release her hand and stepped around her.

“I’m sorry Suzui-san, so sorry,” I whispered. Before she could ask me what I meant, I walked around as my hands curled tightly into fists at the thought of what Kamoshida had done to her, Mishima and the rest of the volleyball team; Suzui had once been a cheerful and outgoing girl before joining that team but now she’d been broken down and reduced into a terrified shell, just like all the others had been.

‘I need to deal with him. I’ve got to find that Treasure.’ I thought. Striding out of the building I reached my entry point and focused on my mantra.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall, Ouvrard’s Palace had been easy compared to Kamoshida’s due to the presence of traps, broken off areas and stronger Shadows being in his. I could only do small trips due to my lack of medical recourses, and the inability to find more without rousing suspicion from my uncle; there was also the fact that some Shadows were resistant to my attacks which meant I was lucky to escape from that place at times.

The rumbling of the train came to a stop safely and the air was filled with grateful sighs, there’d been an accident just yesterday, so all of the trains were delayed as a result and the passengers were probably just glad that they weren’t on a train struck with the next mental breakdown. The doors sprung open and the mad jostling and shoving to escape the tin can turned potential death trap began; as I tried to get out, an elbow slammed into my ribs as a foot struck my ankle, causing me to lose my balance and crash against the platform.

Or at least, that’s what I thought would happen. Instead, a hand latched onto my arm near the elbow which jerked my inertia to a rough halt and whoever the hand belonged to swiftly pulled me from the cluster of shoving to somewhere less crowded. My heart was hammering so loudly in my chest that it took longer than necessary to hear a soft male voice close by, asking if I was alright.

“Yes, I’m fine…,” I admitted. As I did, I turned to face the person only for shock to hit me like a truck in the face I found which had been why my words had trailed off. The boy was tall and slim although he looked to be roughly my age with pale skin, ear length black hair that was so messy and wavy that I felt an itch to run a brush – or at least my fingers – through it, the fringe fell over his eyes but that didn’t stop me from seeing the grey eyes that gazed out at me with concern glimmering in the irises from behind his black rimmed glasses. “Thank you,” I finally managed to get out.

“It’s no problem, I’m just glad you’re okay,” Amamiya Ren admitted. His voice was deep, gentle and smooth, in fact his whole demeanour with his slightly slouched posture gave off a vibe of being soft and quiet, but there was a certain thing hovering behind him that made it known there was something more to him than others could see. “I have to get going, take care,” Amamiya stated. With that he proceeded to take off, his Shūjin uniform with a white turtle neck shirt was easy for me to follow.

‘He really is cute and his voice is so nice.’ I thought. When realisation of my thoughts hit me, I covered my eyes with my hand. ‘Natsumi!!! Will you get a grip! By the eighty million gods, you have a job to do! Focus on that instead of the transfer student!’ I mentally ordered myself. Honestly, I couldn’t believe I was getting so easily distracted just because of some new guy.

With my mind calm, I was able to focus on what I’d seen behind Amamiya, a swirling blaze of blue fire that looked to be trying to take shape but couldn’t hold it. That blue fire looked identical to the flames that had brought Phantom to me, which made me wonder if Amamiya was a Persona user; I’d seen others with that same blue fire but never one that blazed as brilliant as Amamiya’s had.

‘If he is, that’s at least one worry off of my mind. I won’t have two Palace Rulers causing trouble.’ I thought. I had managed to calm myself down fully from the unexpected meeting with the person that I’d been warned about; quickly moving towards the steps leading to the street level of Aoyama-Itchome, I ascended them and suddenly felt a droplet of rain burst apart on my head.

Pausing briefly to pull out my umbrella and open it over my head, I quickly finished my climb out of the underground, only to be met with a peculiar sight. Amamiya hadn’t got very far as he was currently seeking refuge under the slight overhang of a building from the drizzling rain; but talking to him was the school’s resident troublemaker and one of the few to openly hate Kamoshida, Sakamoto Ryūji.

Sakamoto had short spiky hair that had been dyed blond yet was a natural black colour, and dark brown eyes. His hair had a noticeable widow's peak and his eyebrows are unusual in that he lacked the outer sides, he was also fairly muscular. He wore a modified version of the winter uniform, the standard black blazer was unbuttoned to reveal a yellow t-shirt with a comic style star symbol and the word 'ZOMG!' printed on it, the plaid trousers were rolled up to reveal his ankles and the black suspenders hung down instead of being worn on his shoulders and he supplanted them with a white belt, his white sneakers had a rising sun flag motif. I had every intention of walking passed them when my footsteps halted as a familiar sensation swept over me.

‘HOW!? How did I enter the Metaverse!?’ I panicked. I hadn’t been thinking about it at all, not the mantra or even a random string of thoughts that could lead me to entering it accidentally. I started to look around in a wild fashion, panic clear on my face as my heart thundered like a war drum within my chest at unexpectedly slipping into the Metaverse.

Nothing. There wasn’t a single sign or hint of the Metaverse around this place, but that simply made me more worried since I was so close to Kamoshida’s Palace. With a grim expression replacing the panicked one, I turned around and set off towards Shūjin with worry bubbling in my heart at the implication of what had happened.

As I walked down a small alleyway that connected to Shūjin, I saw that strange rippling, jumping purple water that followed all footsteps in the Metaverse. A stunted exclamation drew my attention and when I looked towards it, my eyes flew wide before I dived into the shadows and quickly closed my umbrella. Kamoshida’s gaudy castle looking Palace was there, but in front of it where Sakamoto and Amamiya.

‘How did they get in here?!! I can’t bring people in with my eyes! So, how?!’ I panicked. First there was the blue flames around Amamiya and now this, it was so unexpected that I was struggling to wrap my head around these events, even with Igor’s warning of those who would be my enemies and allies rattling around in my mind.

“We didn’t… come the wrong way though…,” Sakamoto commented. Those two needed to walk away otherwise they’d be in danger, but I couldn’t get closer to them otherwise my clothes would transform which they might see. “Yeah, this should be right… what’s going on here? Guess we’ll just have to go and ask,” Sakamoto commented.

At that, I had to resist the urge to face palm as a response to those ridiculous words. Amamiya could be forgiven but come on Sakamoto! You attend this school – sometimes – you know it doesn’t look like this! Quickly poking my head out from my hiding place, I saw the two of them had moved further into the Palace.

‘Blast it!’ I mentally hissed. Getting to my feet, I ran into the Palace’s boundaries and blue flames instantly clothed me in my War Maiden’s outfit; I quickly exchanged my school bag for my nisun-nobi that I’d managed to bring and hide within the Palace’s boundaries and its’ accompanying quiver. When those two were secured, I quickly rushed deeper into the Palace’s surrounding area.

The main door was slightly open, causing worry to bubble up at the danger those two boys had stumbled into. Darting to the side, I quickly removed the mesh covering off a vent and then hauled myself through said vent into a room that connected to the main entryway, but immediately my ears caught the sound of frantic cries for help.

Bursting out of the room, I ran for the entrance only to find it empty and the cries were now silenced. Gritting my teeth, I ran in the direction I could faintly hear noise coming from and to my luck saw a Shadow – taking the appearance of a knight this time – up ahead. Unfortunately, it also saw me and immediately charged towards me.

I quickly summoned Phantom and then ran forward, slamming the tip of my naginata into the ground and used it to vault myself up and over the Shadow whilst ripping its’ mask off. A Jack-o-Lantern, a floating entity in ragged clothing with a pumpkin for a head and holding onto a lantern in its’ right hand; its’ Fire attacks were my weakness and rendered it resistant to all of my Earth based spells.

“Gry!” I called. Immediately, the heavy pressure of my single target Gravity spell slammed the Shadow into the nearby wall, I marched over and knocked an arrow, drawing the string back as I pointed it at the Shadow. “The two boys who were just captured, where were they taken? Tell me and I’ll let you go!” I demanded. Without the mask, the Palace’s hold – and therefore the Ruler’s hold – weakened, so the Shadow was more likely to answer positively to my demand.

“Okay! I’ll tell you! They were taken to the dungeons! The deepest part!” The Jack-o-Lantern cried. Relaxing my stance, I slid my arrow away and the Shadow vanished; Phantom returned to mask form and I pulled out my notebook, flipping to the ever expanding rough map of this place, I quickly mapped out a route then put the notebook away and pulled my naginata free of the stones it had been embedded in.

I started sprinting through the corridors, taking care to peek around corners, whilst avoiding as many fights as possible in order to reach Amamiya and Sakamoto as fast as possible. Eventually, I reached the dungeon’s furthest part which had hills as if it was outside with sparse plant life and gushing rivers dyed purple and blue, but these could only be crossed by old cages in some places whilst others had bridges.

“Stop it!” A male voice cried. I snapped my head in its’ direction and leapt across the shallow gap, once on the opposite side I twisted my body and ran as fast as I could; upon reaching the cell they were in, the Shadows’ presence made it obvious, I used the bars to stop my momentum whilst twisting my body around to look inside at the scene that lay before me.

A group of three Shadows stood in the cell, all three were leaning back but otherwise unmoving, as if they’d stumbled away from something before ice had stiffened them. Shadow Kamoshida was also there, in his repulsive get-up of a shimmery red-pink cloak that was fur line at the edges and printed with hearts, under which was nothing but an item that resembled a pair of women’s underwear, Sakamoto was collapsed on the floor behind the Shadow. All of them were staring at Amamiya who stood against the wall opposite Sakamoto and his hands were pressing against his face. The glasses he’d worn were gone and instead a white, birdlike domino mask with black designs around the eyes reminiscent of full eyeliner and sharp lashes were in their place.

“Pull it off!” I called. Amamiya froze his movements to look at me as calls echoed in my ears, but their words were nonsense to me, for I only had eyes for Amamiya. “If you want to live, tear off that mask!” I insisted. He seemed to understand and his hands scrabbled to get underneath; soon they did and the mask came off with a gush of blood – ooh! Phantom pains – and a bellowing cry, Amamiya opened his previously closed eyes which had turned Shadow gold as blue fire surged across his body.

Once the fire moved back, I saw the Rebel’s Armour that Amamiya now wore, he was clad in a high-necked waistcoat with gold accents, black pants that were cinched, over this was a black ankle-length tailcoat, brown-black ankle high boots with pointed toe ends and tall heels covered his feet and a pair of red gloves were over his hands. The flames faded away completely to reveal the Persona, it had a very tall top hat, with a long-horned mask for its’ face as it appeared to not have a head, a cropped red eighteenth century-esque suit worn open with the collar popped, stitched heart designs on the shoulders, a white ruffle tie, a black, tailed corset running down its torso; large, black, feathery wings started at around the small of its’ back, wickedly sharp claws ran from its’ hands, red coverings on its legs resembling pants and boots with blade-like heels, chains rattled across its’ form and through the air around it… it made me think of both a demon and a gentleman thief at the same time.

A wide and almost manic grin spread across Amamiya’s face, giving him an almost completely different vibe to the softness that had been present in our first meeting. Amamiya then raised his hand up and proceeded to flick them, this caused his Persona to beat its’ wings which proceeded to throw the guards back even further than before.

“Nicely done for a newbie,” I complimented. With the Shadows knocked down, I easily made my way into the cell as Shadow Kamoshida ran away; the wild smirk that had been on Amamiya’s face faded as I spotted Sakamoto gapping in shock at the Persona hovering near Amamiya. Speaking of the transfer student, Amamiya lifted his head so that his grey eyes could focus on the Persona he’d now fully manifested.

“Give me your power Arsène!” Amamiya commanded. His voice was different now, its’ tone was firmer and whilst not loud, it certainly grabbed your attention; his gaze then dropped to meet mine. “Who are you?” Amamiya asked. An inquisitive note rang within his voice, but I heard no hostility which might have been because I had shown him how to bring forth the power to help him escape.

“Who the hell are you? Are you with this pesky intruder? Guards!” Shadow Kamoshida yelled. I quickly pivoted around and saw two of the Shadows climb back to their feet. “Start by killing those two!” Shadow Kamoshida ordered. The Shadows tore out of their armour as black and red goo before reforming into Jack-o-Lanterns. “You’ll learn the true strength of my men!” Shadow Kamoshida declared.

“Questions will have to wait. For now, prepare your weapon,” I warned. I quickly set my stance and lift my naginata up, but spotted the confused look Amamiya sent me in the corner of my eye. “The dagger in your right hand,” I clarified. The boy finally took notice of the new weight resting in his right hand and lifted it up to gaze at the glinting steel.

This was going to be difficult; with Sakamoto here, he needed to be protected from the Shadows’ attacks, Amamiya was inexperienced in this kind of combat – and his stance showed he had no clue how to use his dagger – and with Shadow Kamoshida here, I couldn’t risk using Phantom otherwise Kamoshida’s subconscious guard against me would go up. I had to help Amamiya and end this battle quickly for everyone’s benefit.

“E…Eiha,” Amamiya faintly spoke. He reached one glove clad hand out towards a Jack-o-Lantern, immediately a surge of red and black energy that looked like screaming faces surged upwards to twist around it; I’d been unfortunately hit by that type of Spell before and I recognised it as Curse Magic which meant neither of us would strike at the weaknesses of these Shadows, still it at least caused some damage to it.

Darting over, I slashed my weapon through the injured Jack-o-Lantern causing it to dissipate into smoke. I quickly pivoted around and found the other Shadow had floated over to Amamiya and smacked its’ lantern into the boy’s form. Amamiya stumbled back from the sudden burst of pain that his body would be feeling at the attack, I was just thankful that he had the Rebel’s Armour otherwise his injury would be much worse than it currently was.

Releasing my grip on the naginata caused it to vanish in blue fire as I knocked an arrow quickly and pointed it at the Jack-o-Lantern. Releasing the arrow allowed it to fly forward and pierce into the Shadow, causing it to sway from side to side before dropping down to the ground; Amamiya took advantage of its’ exposed state and swung his dagger down. The Rebel’s Weapon cleaved through the Shadow, causing it to disperse into smoke just like the other one did.

“What… what was that just now?” Sakamoto asked. He seemed stupefied by what had just happened, not that he could be blamed as this was one crazy experience, as for Amamiya he was looking over his vastly different outfit since he was no longer focused on the need for survival; Shadow Kamoshida moved towards me and Amamiya with a curse on his lips, I stepped in from of Amamiya to protect him given his distracted state but that was when Sakamoto suddenly leapt to his feet.

The blonde delinquent then charged at Shadow Kamoshida before any of us could react, the two collided and the Shadow was knocked to the ground. Sakamoto rightly called him a ‘son of a bitch’, but I was more concerned by what had just clattered to the floor as a result of Sakamoto tackling Shadow Kamoshida the way that he had.

“The key! Quickly!” I insisted. Those three words caught the two boys onto the key’s existence with my finger outstretched to point at it, Sakamoto grabbed the key as all of us darted out of the cell, Amamiya wisely swung the door closed behind him and Sakamoto quickly sealed the cell; Shadow Kamoshida scrambled up and grabbed the bars.

“Damn you! You bastards!” Shadow Kamoshida yelled. To shut him up and satisfy a desire that I’d had for months now, I proceeded to ram my fist hard into Kamoshida’s face, the blow sent him sprawling to the ground and I turned around to face Sakamoto and Amamiya who were staring at me with different emotions in their eyes.

“Toss the key and let’s get out of here!” I ordered. A jumpy and slightly scared sounding ‘yes’ got out of Sakamoto and he promptly tossed the keys into the nearby river whilst I passed Amamiya his glasses. “This way,” I called. I motioned for the two of them to follow after me as I faced towards the exit.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

Since I won’t be posting tomorrow, Merry Christmas everyone.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 9: - Escape the Castle

My intention had been to run as fast as possible from the dungeons and get out of this Palace so that the defenceless Sakamoto and inexperienced Amamiya wouldn’t be put in danger. But the moment I turned to face the hill to get us out of here, a shocked yelp came from behind me; fearing the worst, I twisted around to face the two behind me only to receive a shock that made my mouth open as my eyes widened.

“His clothes! They just went back to normal! What the eff is going on!?” Sakamoto yelled. Amamiya’s Rebel’s Armour had vanished, returning him to his ordinary clothing and that wasn’t good; the masks were the only way to summon our Personas and without the power granted by his other self, then Amamiya would be defenceless against any Shadows that came after us and that put us in a dangerous position.

“Now isn’t the time Sakamoto-san!” I responded. Sakamoto flinched and yet the confusion in his eyes was apparent, but I didn’t have the time to answer all the questions he likely had. “Those creatures we fought in there, there are more of them in this castle. Without that outfit, especially the mask, Amamiya-san can’t fight. Which means we have to sneak out of here since unless really strong those things more often than not always appear in at least groups of twos, so I can’t protect both of you. Stay close to me, preferably behind me,” I explained. My tone was slightly panicked about the situation, but I needed to stay as calm as possible to get these two to safety.

“We’ll need you to lead us out then,” Amamiya insisted. His aura had changed once more, going back to being slightly more timid but much more assertive than the one that he had when we’d initially spoke; a loud yelling and banging echoed towards us which likely meant that Kamoshida was calling for his guards to come and stop us from escaping.

“Let’s get out of here before more of Kamoshida’s goons show up,” Sakamoto suggested. Nodding my head, I motioned for the two of them to follow me back up the hill towards the shallow gap that I had jumped over in order to reach them; turning around I reached my left hand out to them and Amamiya jumped, he cleared it easily and I moved my arm behind him to ensure he got pass, snapping my hand back I moved my hand in a hurrying motion for Sakamoto to hurry up.

He looked nervous, not that this was surprising, but he took a deep breath and bounced slightly as he backed up. Charging forward he leapt and I lunged forward to seize his forearm, I dragging him to the edge and turned as he moved forward with a slight paling to his skin. Moving passed them and through the door I’d left open on my way here, I hurried up the slope until we came to a trio of cages to cross.

“Ah hell no! We can’t get across that! They’ll snap in half!” Sakamoto exclaimed. I looked back and saw that even Amamiya looked nervous, not that I blamed them since I’d been a bit disbelieving when trying to cross them the first time, but the Metaverse continued to prove it was a world where the saying, mind over matter, truly ruled.

“I don’t have the time for details Sakamoto-san but just know this is a place where your mind can affect thing. Believe you can cross those cages and you will,” I insisted. The blonde still looked nervous, but a clanging echoed behind us and I looked over, seeing that Amamiya was already hopping across the cage tops to the other side with a surprising amount of ease; he reached the other side and turned around to face us.

“Hurry!” Amamiya insisted. I pushed Sakamoto towards the cages and he gulped but ran up to them, jumping across them with more or less the same ease as Amamiya; once he was safely across, I make my way across the cages to the other bank and darted down the hill towards the next door that I had left open to aid in escaping this place quicker, only to find that it had been locked.

“Blast! Kamoshida’s knights must have sealed it,” I muttered. Turning around, I moved passed the boys and into an empty cell that happened to be open; thankfully this was the same cell I’d made a hole in back during one of my early visits as I mapped the place. “Over here, we’ll need to crawl through!” I called. I willed my naginata to vanish into blue flames and then slid my bow and quiver through the hole, I quickly started to crawl through and emerged into an empty cell.

“Crap! My bag’s stuck!” Sakamoto exclaimed. I returned my weapons to their proper place as Amamiya emerged, he turned back around to help Sakamoto work through whilst I kept a look out for Shadows who might hear us; once the blonde got his bag free, he exited the crawl space and stood up, so I quickly motioned for the two to follow after me.

Instead of heading down the hill like we had been doing for the last few paths we’d come across, I instead guided the two across a bridge – a proper one thankfully – as the downhill way was fairly obviously thus likely to be guarded if Shadow Kamoshida’s cries had reached this far. On the other hand, the other side of the drawbridge connected to a less used area and that would enable us to get out easier.

“Is this… a drawbridge?” Amamiya softly asked. I glanced back at the boy who seemed a little spooked, not that I blamed him although at least he was more controlled about it that the near panic attack state that Sakamoto seemed to be heading towards, we descended a hill once more when the clanking of metal started to irritate my ears and I glanced in the direction that it was coming from.

“Quick! Hide!” I insisted. I violently motioned for Amamiya and Sakamoto to hurry up and shoved them behind the nearby pile of boxes and barrels that were just abandoned; I ducked down once they were safely hidden with a tight grip on my naginata with my left hand hovering over my mask just in case we got spotted; thankfully the Shadows just ran up the opposite hill and towards the deeper jail part. “Okay, they’re gone. Let’s get moving,” I whispered. Keeping a low voice would keep us safer from being discovery.

“Hang on!” Sakamoto exclaimed. I turned around to look at the blonde with Amamiya also looking confused as to why he’d stopped us form moving away. “I’ve been listening to you talk and I swear you’re that chick from class two-d. Chiba Natsumi,” Sakamoto announced. I was admittedly rather surprised that Sakamoto had managed to figure out who I was just from my voice especially since its’ normally dormant steel was baked into each word instead of the soft tone he would have been used to hearing.

“And if I am?” I challenged. Sakamoto apparently hadn’t been prepared for me to respond in such a manner from his slightly open mouth and blinking eyes. “I won’t deny your accusation Sakamoto-san, but please don’t loudly yell my name for everyone to hear, I’ve kept my identity a secret from that vulgar man far too long to let you mess it up by being loud,” I requested. Sakamoto’s jaw clacked shut as he continued to stare at me.

“Whoever you are,” Amamiya softly spoke up. This caused the two of us to look at the boy who was shyly looking down, but his right hand tightly gripped his bag’s straps. “We need to get out of here. Those… knights are looking for us, so we can’t stay around here for much longer,” Amamiya insisted. His voice was gentle but resolute as he said those words.

“Yeah! I ain’t playing around with this anymore! We gotta find a way out this goddamn place!” Sakamoto declared. Rising to my feet, I moved towards the arch that was near us and up the steps, I heard the two boys following after me which I was glad for; the stairs were a spiral so I couldn’t clearly see what was ahead of us which meant that I moved slower to ensure we were safe as we ascended.

“If this goes up, you think it leads to the exit?” Sakamoto asked. However, I heard heavy breathing escaping him which caused me to pause and I looked around to check on him, finding that he was holding onto his leg… oh, that’s right; Sakamoto had ended up breaking his leg somehow – I suspected Kamoshida – and the old wound was likely causing him pain to this day since he still moved with a limp.

“Yes, this way will get us out. It’s how I got to you,” I reassured. A small smile came across Sakamoto’s lips, likely relieved that this was a sure escape path. “Are you okay, Sakamoto-san?” I asked. The blonde ended up blinking in surprise at my words, we weren’t even acquaintances, so he was likely not expecting me to express concern to him.

“I’m fine. I can keep up,” Sakamoto reassured. My lips were pressed tightly together at his words, but I nodded my head; Amamiya was look between us, likely confused by the conversation but we didn’t have time to delay beyond what I’d done, turning around I continued to rush up the steps with the other two following after me until we reached the top. “I-Is this… the exit!?” Sakamoto asked.

“Not yet. We still have a little more to go, deep breaths Sakamoto-san,” I reassured. Pushing the door open I quickly looked left, since right was a dead end, to ensure no one was there and step out of the doorway with the other two following only for them to openly gape at the blue water that was gushing right in front of us.

“Dude… you gotta be jokin’…,” Sakamoto commented. It truly was insane, more than Ouvrard’s Palace had been, I shook my head in disagreement whilst Amamiya had been shocked into silence by the absurd sight. “What the hell is this place?” Sakamoto wondered. That was too much for me to explain in this current situation and honestly, they didn’t need to be dragged further into the madness than they already were.

“A place we need to get out from,” I answered. I moved to the doorway that would lead us out and frown deeply at what I saw, a group of cognitions of the volleyball team imprisoned in cages suspended over the rushing water and there was no way for either boy to avoid seeing them and it was the best way to get out of here.

“H-Hey… look…,” Sakamoto breathed. A trace of fear in his voice, not that I blamed him since this aspect alongside another that the two had been fortunate to not come across yet were so highly disturbing that they made me nauseous whenever I came to them. “We really did hear people screamin’… so we ain’t the only ones who got captured!” Sakamoto stated. That was wrong, not that he knew, these were mere cognitive imitations just like the me that I’d run into in Ouvrard’s Palace so saving them was pointless, I don’t even know what they’d become if they left this place. “Is uh… is he okay?” Sakamoto asked.

“We’re vulnerable enough as is Sakamoto-san! I can’t protect you two in a fight; even more people would strip away our ability to move quickly and quietly! We need to go and we need to go, now,” I insisted. Sakamoto gulped slightly as I gave the cognition a pitying look, their lives here were painful almost like they were trapped in an eternal nightmare. “We’re almost at the exit. One more bridge and some stairs then we’re free,” I soothed. With those words I pushed passed the cages.

Striding to the bridge that would let me get to the main hallway, I stopped shut and nearly bit my tongue to kill a curse that was poised on my lips. The bridge, another drawbridge, had been retracted and I’d never needed to drop it from this side. That meant I didn’t know the mechanism needed to lower it, I scowled and moved over to the creepy statue of Shadow Kamoshida nestled beside the drawbridge as I looked it over.

“Another dead end?” Sakamoto commented. I could feel both boys with their eyes on me as I checked the side of the draw bridge and the statue to try and see a connection between them. “I thought this was supposed to be the way out Chiba! How the hell’re we supposed to get outta here!?” Sakamoto yelled. His loudness wasn’t helping, apart from distracting me it also ran the high risk from bringing more Shadows down upon us.

“Hey, you there,” A voice called. I perked up, having never heard that voice before and I turned my gaze from the statue and bridge to cells it was coming from. “Blondie! Frizzy Hair! Warrior Girl! Look over here!” The voice insisted. I moved away and looked at the source of the voice only to take a couple of steps back in surprise at the sight that greeted me in one of the cages.

Inside of the cell was an anthropomorphic and biped cat-like creature with a large spheroidal head and tuxedo style patterning. The fur was predominantly black, except on the limbs and tail which appeared to be white alongside the bottom front half of the face around his mouth which was also white. The creature’s entire body was the same height as its’ head with stubby legs, the curvature of its’ limb muscles was more extreme, with the only difference being that it has smaller hands and feet in comparison. A black mask covered much of the face with the outside of its’ ears included, the creature’s eyes were elliptic shaped with white sclerae, blue irises and black pupils. The outer ears were black with white inner ears and a lemon-coloured scarf was wrapped around the neck, a utility belt was secured around the hips, with two golden buttons and two bags attached. There were tufts of fur within the inside of the ears, around the shoulders and on the chest with the paw pads being pink in colour.

This wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d seen in the Metaverse, I’d seen weirder but it was so mundanely weird that it kind of spooked me a little, most weird things were so over the top I kind of expected them, a bipedal animal that talked and didn’t try to attack me on sight was novel. The weirdest thing was that I felt some kind of odd familiarity with the creature and its’ eyes made me think of the Velvet Room’s comforting blue aesthetic.

“What is this thing?!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Him being weirded out by the creature was no surprise since he wasn’t used to the weirdness of the Metaverse as much as I was and even I was weirded out by the creature; I glanced over at Amamiya to find him silently gaping at the entity with a slight cock of his head as he stared at the cat like entity.

“You’re not soldiers of this castle, right!? Get me out of here! Look, the key’s right there!” The creature demanded. It sounded like a young boy… or maybe a girl… I couldn’t be sure since its’ voice was in that odd range were the two kind of overlapped; what I did know was that the creature sounded desperate to escape, which meant it couldn’t possibly be a cognition as they didn’t care about escaping at all, just listlessly enduring the hell they lived through here.

“We’re trying to get the hell out of here!” Sakamoto yelled. I sharply shushed him; we didn’t need anyone figuring out we were here because Sakamoto couldn’t keep his voice down. “I mean, you obviously look like an enemy too!” Sakamoto accused. Amamiya looked at Sakamoto with a furrowed brow before glancing over to me as I shook my head in annoyed dismay, the appearance of enemies was knights, yes; creepy cat looking creatures, not so much. Plus, it was locked up, how did that mean it was an enemy?

“I’m locked up here, so how can I be your enemy!? Help me out!” The creature insisted. The fact that its’ words almost mimicked my thoughts was a little bizarre but that could just as easily be a coincidence; I quickly cast my head about to try and spot any approaching enemies since Sakamoto and the cat creature were being surprisingly loud and we could be ambushed at any second.

“A… cat?” Amamiya asked. I stumbled slightly in my observation before looking back at the black haired boy who had an almost innocently cute expression on his face as he stared at the creature, how had it take him this long to realise the creature was a cat? “Do all city cats look like this?” Amamiya asked. Sakamoto looked flabbergasted by this comment, whilst I wondered just how weird this boy though the city was.

“I am not a cat! Say that again and I’ll make you regret it!” The creature snapped. Apparently, it didn’t like being called out on its’ cat-like appearance but then clanging sound echoed to my ears and I immediately put myself in front of the two boys and raised my hand to my mask, ready to pull it off at the drop of a hat. “That movement!” The creature exclaimed. I glanced at the creature out the corner of my eye, surprise pulsing through me that it understood what my move meant… did it have experience with Persona users? Or could this creature be…

“They’re catching up already!” Sakamoto panicked. I jolted and snapped my attention back to the important matter at hand, asking this creature about its’ knowledge could come later, the important thing was to keep the defenceless people safe from harm. “Shit, there’s still no service. Ain’t there any way to contact someone outside!?” Sakamoto asked. Oh yeah, I hadn’t told then cell phones don’t work here. “How the hell do we get out!?” Sakamoto demanded. Could he tone it down for five minutes? His yelling would only draw the guards nearer.

“Hey, you three! You want to know where the exit is? Let me out and I’ll take you there. You don’t want to get caught and executed, right?” The creature proposed. If this entity really did know the way out, then it had been snooping around the castle same as me, but what was such an odd creature even doing inside of the Metaverse, let alone a Palace, to begin with.

“Can you really help us?” Amamiya asked. His tone was firm as he asked that question, the creature gave a positive answer, but I heard the doubt in Sakamoto’s accusation of it being ‘all talk’, I focused on keeping myself ready. “What exactly do we have to lose? I’m letting it out,” Amamiya decided. How did such a soft and gentle sounding boy have such a commanding presence? It was a baffling mystery to me.

“If you’re letting it out, do it fast, we don’t have the time to be standing around here. And cat creature, if you try anything to endanger these boys, I’ll make sure to deal with you,” I warned. My tone dripping with certainty as I gave the creature a look to show it that I was extremely serious about my stance on this matter, I promised to get those two out of here and I would keep that promise, my own self be damned.

“On my honour as a gentleman, I won’t hurt either of them or you!” The creature answered. So, the creature viewed itself as a male, fair enough then. “But I am not a cat!” The creature protested. Until I got a name, cat creature was what he will be called and he would have to deal with it; jangling echoed behind me and then creaking followed it. “Ahhhh… freedom tastes so great,” The creature sighed. How long had that thing been locked up here? I certainly don’t recall seeing him the last time I’d been down in the dungeons… though that had been some time ago.

“Now, where’s the exit, you monster cat!?” Sakamoto demanded. I wanted to hang my head in disbelief at the false blonde, this entity was willing to help us and yet Sakamoto was treating him as if the cat creature had been the one to throw him in prison and attempt to execute him instead of Kamoshida’s Shadow; the cat creature spun around and proceeded to narrow his eyes into a sharp glare at those words.

“Don’t call me a cat! I am Morgana!” The cat creature declared. Sakamoto then threatened to lock the cat up again in response whilst demanding the cat hurry up; seriously, this might just make the cat not want to help us in the end. “A-alright, sheesh!” Morgana answered. He looked rather subdued in the face of Sakamoto’s unreasonable rage but soon perked up as his ears twitched and flicked slightly. “Follow me and stay quiet,” Morgana insisted. His voice was quieter but audible enough for us to hear.

Morgana proceeded to hop forward with a slightly bouncy stride towards the creepy statue that was resting by the bridge, that at least meant I’d probably been right in my analysis that the statue would allow us to get out of this place. I quickly strode over to him with shuffling footsteps echoing behind me as the two boys followed me, Morgana looked at us as Sakamoto proceeded to ask him what the cat creature was doing.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m lowering the bridge,” Morgana answered. He proceeded to turn to face me and Amamiya fully. “Frizzy Hair, Warrior Girl. It seems like both of you pick up on things faster than Blondie over here. One of you try checking around the mouth of this statue, okay?” Morgana suggested. Hearing that almost make me want to groan in annoyance at this fact, so I just shook my head.

“So, it was the same way as the other side,” I muttered. Reaching my left hand forward, I stuck it into the crevice near the chin and I pulled down on it; creaking sounded as chains rattled and gears spun, the bridge began to lower itself down so that the two sides could connect and allow us to cross the rushing water that would have swept us away if we tried to swim; I needed to start bringing rope, or find some kind of grapple hook.

“How were we supposed to know to do that!?” Sakamoto protested. Morgana called the blonde an amateur and insisted that we get moving, I started jogging quickly across the wooden panels, tightly gripping my naginata as my heart pounded in my chest; the likelihood of Shadows showing up was immensely high due to all the yelling and other loud noises.

Unfortunately, this was the fastest way out, it was our best bet to get the two boys to safety and I didn’t want to risk trying to find another route only to run into danger. Rattling sounded behind me as I moved forward, only to grind to a halt and drop into a fighting stance as a Shadow walked out right in front of us from the door that had been near the bridge.

“A-Aah! Shit! Shit! It’s them!” Sakamoto panicked. A flash of heat flared behind me and I looked back, feeling immense relief when I saw that Amamiya’s Rebel Armour had been restored – perhaps the danger had manifested it - which meant there was at least one other person would be capable of fighting off the Shadow, better for protecting Sakamoto who had proceeded to fall over in response to his fright.

“Tch! You amateur!” Morgana snapped. He hopped forward so that he was in front of me and Amamiya. “Stay still,” Morgana ordered. He then cast his blue eyes towards me and Amamiya. “Hey, you two! You can fight, right? Let’s go!” Morgana insisted. Perhaps there were three of us that could fight, smiling slightly I raised my hand to my mask fully intending to use my full power now that Shadow Kamoshida wasn’t skulking about thus endangering future infiltrations.

“Come Zorro!/Sing Phantom!” Morgana and I declared. His paw like hand raised to his mask and a surge of fire sprang from it as I pulled my mask off and it transformed into blue fire, swirling behind me to appear as Phantom with that dark and mysterious smirk of his firmly pressed upon his translucent lips; beside him another Persona manifested, very different yet similar to the one that I possessed.

This Persona was tall and completely clad in black clothing, a bulky upper body surrounded by a fine jacket inlaid with silvery looking designs, yet the lower body was tapered and slimmer with tall boots that had a point at the toe much like Amamiya’s boots were. A thick silver belt wrapped around its’ waist, a black cape billowed behind him much like Phantom’s black cloak did; sharp yellow coloured sclera and blue-ish eyes gazed out from behind a black masked face which rested above a thick black moustache. A fine rapier of gleaming metal was held within the Persona’s right hand.

“You’re the girl from the train!” Amamiya realised. With my features on full display it was no surprise that he’d figure it out, especially since he would have recognised my butterfly hairclip; I decided not to respond to Sakamoto’s panicked exclamation about me and Morgana possessing a Persona since the Shadow in front of us briefly transformed into black ooze before remerging as a Jack-o-Lantern, followed by a Silky, looking like a pale green-grey skinned woman in a large red dress and an Incubus, a demon looking creature with bat wings and a leering gaze that focused on me.

“Morgana! Advance warning! Amamiya, the boy you’ve been referring to as Frizzy Hair, only got his Persona, today! He’s literally a novice,” I warned. We needed to be careful in this fight, we were an even split in regard to numbers, but one false move could put Amamiya and Sakamoto in danger, Morgana seemed pretty confident, so he was likely experienced with his Persona, but how experienced was the worrying bit, if his confidence was actually cockiness then I had three liabilities in this fight.

“And you?” Morgana asked. Not cocky then, that was a relief, he’d wisely gauged that I was clearly more experienced than the other two, but he had been concerned about how experienced I was, that at least meant he was taking factors into account when looking at the enemies we were facing and how best to take them down.

“Little over two months. My Persona, Phantom, has Earth, Gravity and Support spells. Amamiya’s Persona, Arsène, has Curse spells. What can Zorro do?” I responded. The Shadows weren’t making any move yet, clearly content to just let us strategize, Shadows could either lunge at the first sign of a fight, run away or just languish idly… they were bizarre but then that summed up the Metaverse in general.

“Wind and Healing,” Morgana answered. Oh, nice; with the Wind magic that meant a fourth avenue of attack and the healing – which I’d only found in enemies and Lavenza so far – would ensure that our wounds could be patched up as soon as. “With that combination, we will promptly shut them up,” Morgana decided. He was right, with the different spells that we possessed, we’d be able to strike at the weak spots of two Shadows with ease.

“They’ve blocked our ability to advance. They’re definitely out for blood this time. We need to fight like our lives depend on it,” I warned. The trio of Shadows might have been content to hover, but they were clearly against letting us escape from this Palace from their positions which meant if we tried to push ourselves passed them, they’d just unleash a hail of attacks upon us which would wound us before we could possibly climb the stairs.

“Remove the mask,” Amamiya muttered. I looked over at him and saw him gently take the mask off, causing it to burst into flames and manifest into Arsène who I think smirked ruefully at the creatures facing us. “Eiha,” Amamiya spoke. His hand extended and Arsène moved, the red clad Persona dropped down and pressed its’ hand against the ground which caused cursed energy to surge upwards, but it hit the Incubus, something not weak but not resistant to Curse-type spells and attacks.

“Warrior Girl was right, you are an amateur,” Morgana commented. Despite that he was happily jumping about and the line of his mouth was curled into a smirk, implying he was hardly worried. “This is how you fight! Garu!” Morgana declared. Zorro slashed its’ sword, sending out a storm of wind that briefly twisted around the Jack-o-Lantern and slashed it repeatedly before dissipating; when it vanished, the Jack-o-Lantern dropped to the ground, dazed and wobbly. “Strike at an enemy’s weakness to knock them down. Use that opening to strike again! That’s the most basic of basics! Remember it well!” Morgana declared.

‘Those words.’ I thought. They were almost identical to when Lavenza had explained weaknesses to me back in January, the bit about basic of basics was new, but the rest of it was her words practically verbatim. I snapped my attention back to the fight when Morgana used the opportunity presented by the dazed Jack-o-Lantern to unleash his Garu spell again which tore through the Shade and reduced it to ash.

“Gry!” I declared. Phantom extended his arms and the green energy flew forward and slammed into Silky, rattling it around briefly before it dropped to the ground in a state identical to the Jack-o-Lantern. “Tera!” I announced. Phantom quickly shifted his attention to the Incubus and proceeded to unleash a storm of rocks that pounded into its’ body before turning it to dust.

The Silky’s dress fluttered as it rose back up, but still appeared to be slightly dazed from the attack but it recovered and I saw ice starting to gather in front of its’ red covered body. A slight yelp of worry escaped me and I jumped out of the way, my jump landed me behind Amamiya and Morgana but safely away from the ice shards that had been coming towards me; although both of them looked back at me with surprise in their eyes.

“What? I get cold easy,” I explained. Amamiya was confused but it looked like Morgana understood, Ice was a weakness of my own, Amamiya frowned before turning back around and summoning Arsène to unleash another bolt of cursed energy, the Silky had the same affinity for Curses as the Incubus, but its’ already wounded body caused it to start flagging.

“Time to end this!” Morgana declared. With a rush of wind, the Silky was turned into smoke, dropping money onto the ground in the process which I quickly gathered up. “Not bad, Frizzy Hair, your Persona’s pretty powerful. As for Warrior Girl, you certainly know the ebb and flow of battle,” Morgana acknowledged. Sakamoto had wisely moved to another area when the fight started but with it over, now he re-joined us.

“Persona? Y’mean that thing that comes outta you three all dramatic-like?” Sakamoto asked. I hadn’t wanted to delay us by explaining what Personas were and all that to a rookie and an outsider especially since we were so deep within Kamoshida’s Palace that it put us in a dangerous situation, too dangerous to be hanging around chatting; but here was different, we were near the exit and only one knight had shown up despite all the commotion so we probably had time.

“Yes. You saw how Frizzy Hair and Warrior Girl here took of their masks to summon it, right? Well, everybody wears a mask deep within their heart. By removing that-,” Morgana began to explain. But he was cut off when blue flames surrounded Amamiya and when they faded his Rebel’s Armour had vanished again. This wasn’t good, why wasn’t the transformation stabilising? Had Amamiya not fully rebelled yet in a part of his heart? “Hm, it looks like you don’t have full control over your power yet. The transformation shouldn’t dissolve like that. After all-,” Morgana began to explain. At least he was confused as well.

“Rrgh, that’s enough!” Sakamoto suddenly yelled. I looked up at him and saw he was tightly gripping his short hair. “This crap doesn’t make any sense!” Sakamoto snapped. Morgana got annoyed with him and demanded he stay still and listen for once whilst still calling him Blondie. “Don’t call me Blondie! My name’s Sakamoto-!” Sakamoto began to yell.

“Quiet!” I hissed. Darting over, I slapped a hand over Sakamoto’s mouth, silencing him as clanking reached my ears from somewhere behind us. “More knights. We need to move, now! The exit is up the stairs,” I insisted. Releasing my grip over Sakamoto’s mouth, I turned around and faced the stairs that would lead us out of here. “Amamiya, take these. They’ll restore your health if you get injured in battle,” I insisted. I extended my hand which held three of the medicinal ointments I had, Amamiya nodded and took the three items.

With him having taken the medicines, I darted towards the stairs and climbed up them, seeing that the route was clear of any Shadows but unfortunately the drawbridge that led away from this place was drawn up just like the last one. More cells lined our route, but I detected the faint trace of security in the air, implying that there was a safe room nearby, but now wasn’t the time to focus upon it.

“Hold on a sec!” Sakamoto yelled. I was forced to a stop and turned around to see that Sakamoto was staring at another of the cognitions trapped within a cell, completely broken thanks to Shadow Kamoshida’s sadistic nature and unable to stand up despite his struggles. “I feel like I’ve seen what this dude’s wearin’ before,” Sakamoto admitted. I should hope so since that was Shūjin’s P.E. uniform. “Dammit! I’m too flustered! I can’t remember anything right now!” Sakamoto exclaimed.

“We need to keep moving,” I insisted. Turning around I looked at the bridge only to hear Sakamoto called out to me, so I turned back to look at him. “What is it Sakamoto? We’re still in danger, especially the longer we stand around here,” I warned. With their masks attached, the Shadows were connected to each other and the Ruler which gave the Ruler an intricate security system, ambushing the enemies and tearing of their masks weakened that security system and also prevented reinforcements from knowing where intruders were and thus allowing the Shadows to ambush us more easily; meaning the Shadows knew where we were thanks to the attack just now.

“But… who are these guys?” Sakamoto asked. Morgana proceeded to look at me with wide eyes as I pinched the bridge of my nose, completely distressed by the fact that Sakamoto was focusing on other things instead of escaping, I couldn’t – and personally didn’t want to – explain the insanity of the Metaverse and Palaces to two boys that might never find their way back in here, even if Amamiya did have a Persona, I knew of no guaranteed way to travel to the Metaverse outside of my eyes.

“Do you really think you have time to worry about other people right now!?” Morgana exclaimed. He had likely realised how little both of these boys knew about the world they had tumbled into and decided to focus on redirecting them to escaping. “Besides they’re-,” Morgana began to speak. But a loud bellow drew our attention as the drawbridge we needed to cross slammed down, only to reveal a Shadow on the other side who quickly charged over to our side. “Shoot! We’ve been found!” Morgana hissed. And it was a convincing cat hiss.

“Let’s fight!” Amamiya insisted. Looking over at him, I saw his Rebel’s Armour return once more – this was so weird – and a hard expression was in his grey eyes; at least he was prepared to face whatever enemy was likely to interfere with our attempts to escape from the Palace since that would make our escape attempts much easier in the long run, Morgana claimed to like this decision as the Shadows dissolved and reformed into a duo of Pixies, causing me to let out a laugh.

“Bad choice to send them. Those are weak to Curse attacks,” I commented. I flicked my eyes over to Amamiya still holding a grin on my face fit to match my Persona’s own expression. “Your time to show off Amamiya,” I encouraged. The grey eyed boy blinked in confusion at my words before seeming to understand as he reached for his mask and removed it, allowing the gentlemanly demon to manifest behind him.

“Arsène, ravage them!” Amamiya commanded. The Persona responded to the violent command and unleashed his Eiha spell upon a Pixie, causing it to drop to the ground and Amamiya used the opportunity to repeat the attack upon the other one; with both of the Pixies on the ground in such a dazed state they would be unable to retaliate for a brief time but that brief moment was all we would need.

“Morgana! Let’s end them!” I insisted. Morgana let out an agreement as he summoned out Zorro, on the other hand I dissipated my naginata and prepared an arrow, losing the weapon allowed it to pierce into the Pixie who dissolved into black smoke with the Garu spell from Zorro eliminating the other one completely; the fight ended and once more Amamiya returned to his normal appearance.

“Alright! Let’s get away before more show up!” Morgana insisted. I retrieve my arrow and slid it back into the quiver as I pocketed the money and summoned my naginata back to me, with the drawbridge having been lowered we could now cross it and move towards the exit it wasn’t too far from our location now, hopefully we’d avoid any more fights between here and there.

“Hold on, we can’t just leave these guys here!” Sakamoto protested. I turned to look at him and saw that he was still standing beside the cage holding the cognition of a volleyball team player, Amamiya had a slight frown on his face as he looked at the individual locked within the cell; explaining would take too long! If I could then I would have sat them down to talk, but escaping took priority!

“You really don’t get it, do you? Hrgh… there’s no time to explain,” Morgana decided. He sounded irritated by these two wanting to hang around instead of escaping, not that I blame him since he had only just been freed from his prison. “Look, I’m going. If you don’t want to follow, be my guest!” Morgana snapped. I, however, wasn’t giving them a choice in the matter as I walked over and seized Sakamoto’s left arm with my right hand and Amamiya’s right arm with my left.

“Oh, they’re coming, even if I have to drag them out of here,” I answered. With that, I pulled both boys along with me as the odd cat creature bounded across the bridge, I could feel Sakamoto struggling against me so I kept a tight grip on his arm, but Amamiya didn’t struggle so I kept a firm but gentle grip on his arm. There was no point being overly harsh to someone who wasn’t causing me any trouble unlike

“Damnit! Fine, Chiba! I’m coming!” Sakamoto protested. I could hear the frustration in his voice but believing he wasn’t about to do something ridiculous, I moved him in front of me and then let go; I repeated the motion with Amamiya and took a single step back from them so that there was more distance between the three of us.

“Go, follow Morgana. I’ll cover our backs,” I insisted. Removing my bow and arrow, I twisted my body so that I could focus on any coming attacks from behind whilst still being able to move forward; a warm hand clasped around my wrist and I jerked, looking over to see Amamiya looking at me with brilliant grey eyes that swam with uncertainty.

“Will you be okay?” Amamiya asked. His tone was soft and filled with worry, it actually made my heart flutter a bit that this basically a stranger was worried about me even though I was no better than a stranger to him; assault… that sounded so laughable to my ears now that I spent such a short time in his company, labelled as self-defence I could believe it, but a violent attack, I don’t think Amamiya had it in his heart to hurt a human.

“I’ll be just fine, Amamiya-san. I don’t need a rookie worrying about me,” I softly reassured. Amamiya didn’t seem convinced as he pulled his hand back and I saw him slowly walking away, but soon enough he sped up and I followed after him. We made our way through a door and Morgana announced we were close, darting up the stairs we returned to the entrance hall that the two boys had been captured in, I just hope Shadow Kamoshida wasn’t there.

“Other side of the hall! First door on the left! It’s where I got in,” I called. The cat creature bounded over and quickly pulled the door open, allowing the rest of us to pile in and I gratefully slid my weapon away, moving my arms and hands in relaxed circles now that they no longer needed to remain so tense, we were almost free and safe.

“How do we get out of here? There aren’t even any windows!” Sakamoto asked. I had covered up the vent when I came in, all to prevent any guards from figuring out my entry point since this place wasn’t a safe room thus the Shadows could technically come and go as they please in this room; better safe than sorry after all.

“Um… how about the vent?” Amamiya suggested. I gave the boy a smile and easily leapt on top of the bookcase above which the vent rested, gripping the mesh I pulled it off and placed it to the side; Morgana claimed such a thing was ‘the most basic of basics’, he seemed to like saying those words, I extended a hand down so that the boys could have an anchor when they climbed up.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I encouraged. Sakamoto moved over and gripped my hand, I pulled him up and pushed him gently towards the vent which he quickly proceeded to crawl through, I turned back to Amamiya but found the transfer student was instead focused on Morgana who was looking at both of us.

“Thank you for your help, Morgana-san,” Amamiya expressed. He even bowed towards the cat creature, Morgana’s large eyes blinked in surprise as if he couldn’t believe what Amamiya had done just now; the ravenette gave the strange entity no chance to respond as he turned to me and gripped my hand allowing me to repeat the processing of pulling him up.

“Many thanks Morgana, take care of yourself and don’t get caught again,” I insisted. Amamiya crawled through the ventilation shaft and I followed him, once at the edge I dropped down and quickly swapped my bow and quiver for my school bag. “We need to head for the street outside the alleyway! Follow me!” I ordered. The street had been the entry point so that was how we got out of here.

“Okay!/Right!” Sakamoto and Amamiya answered. With that I proceeded to guide them out of the Palace’s boundaries, my outfit vanishing in blue flames as I left the danger zone.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 10: - Just a Dream?

Emerging back into the physical world, I was practically wheezing from all the exertion and the fact that I felt mentally drained; no surprise since I’d used my Persona and had to deal with more complications than I normally had to endure. I looked over at the two boys who I’d escaped Kamoshida’s Palace with and found that Sakamoto was hunched over and breathing deeply, no doubt in pain from his leg whilst Amamiya was stood up, but his chest and shoulders fell and rose rapidly.

“Did we make it?” Sakamoto asked. A quick look around proved we were back in the physical world, I couldn’t sense the ominous energy that permeated the atmosphere of the Metaverse plus the people here were walking around as if nothing was amiss and I didn’t typically see this many people even as cognitions in the Metaverse, plus with no deformities added to them it further backed up the possibilities we had successfully returned. Amamiya suddenly pulled out his phone which caused me to raise an eyebrow at it.

You have returned to the real world. Welcome back. I blinked owlishly at those mechanical words, they’d definitely emanated from the phone, but how did the phone know we had even moved into another world and then come back; Sakamoto had a perplexed expression on his face whilst Amamiya seemed baffled by the insanity his phone was currently spitting out at the three of us.

“Huh? Returned? Does that mean we got away?” Sakamoto asked. I’d never had anything like this happen to me during my two months of experience but the sensation of exiting the Metaverse had enveloped us so I could only guess that we had been able to return to the physical world; every other piece of physical stimuli helped to support that thought as well.

“Probably,” Amamiya whispered. His voice had lost all of its’ authority, its’ confidence, actually his posture had changed as well to the point where it almost looked like he was curling in on himself; I frowned slightly at this since it almost made me think of a hermit crab, Amamiya curling up inside of a shell to protect himself, I didn’t know why he had seemed so strong and confident in the Metaverse only to become so shy and withdrawn here? Was it a product of his cognition? Or something else?

“I dunno what to think anymore,” Sakamoto lamented. Amamiya tucked his phone away as Sakamoto perked up. “What was all that anyways? That castle, and Kamoshida and that weird cat! The hell’s goin’ on!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. Very, very loudly at that, I felt a wave of fear rush over me at how loud the false blonde was being about what we had just gone through in the physical world.

“Shhhh! Sakamoto-san! Be quiet!” I pleaded. My tone had gone back to the normal that Sakamoto was used to, causing both boys to look at me with wide eyes, likely at my softer cadence that the steely one I’d been using before, but right now I was worried; worried that Sakamoto would draw unwanted attention to us and his words could run the risk of someone getting nosey if he wasn’t careful.

“What’s with the yelling? Are you students of Shūjin?” A voice demanded. I looked over and saw two police officers walking over to us – argh!! These were the worst people to have drawn the attention of! – one of them was pushing a bike and seemed placid whilst the other had an aggressive expression to his face, meaning he had likely been the one to call out to us. “Cutting classes, are we?” The officer demanded.

“Huh? No!” Sakamoto answered. I looked at Sakamoto, wondering what he was going to say in response to the officer’s accusation. “We were tryin’ to get to school, and we ended up a-,” Sakamoto began to explain. Realising he was going for the truth, I subtly moved over and stamped on his foot, causing the boy to fall quiet as pain lanced through his appendage especially as I rubbed my foot from side to side slightly to ensure Sakamoto stayed quiet.

“My apologises officer,” I calmly spoke. I bowed slightly to the two men which cause them both to look at me as I released Sakamoto’s foot from my assault on it, mentally apologising to the blonde. “We’re actually late because of the new transfer student beside me,” I lied… sort of. I gestured towards Amamiya who I could feel was giving me a panicked look. “He’s new to Tokyo and I fear that exposure to our chaotic lifestyle had made him unwell, he was rather pale and sickly earlier so me and my classmate here who happened to be passing by took him to rest. Honestly, the new student really should have headed home but he insisted he felt well enough to go to school so the two of us were escorting him there, just to make sure he wasn’t hurt,” I lied. Thankfully, awakening a Persona was draining business so Amamiya did look exhausted enough that most people would believe he was ill.

“I see, that’s very kind of the both of you. Although it’s basically fourth period now I believe, but if it is this young man’s first day, I can understand his determination to get there at least for a brief time. You three should hurry to your school now,” The placid officer encouraged. He had a gentle smile on his face that caused a flash of a memory to scorch my mind, but I maintained my composure as I gave the man a kind smile.

“Thank you, officer,” I chimed. Turning around, I gripped both boys by the hand, being extra firm with Sakamoto. “Come along you two, it’s time for us to head to school,” I insisted. With that, I dragged the two of them away, Sakamoto limping and stumbling whilst Amamiya trailed but easily kept moving; I heard the two officers talking behind me but I didn’t pay attention to their words and instead kept us moving along the same path we had taken to reach Kamoshida’s Palace.

“Chiba! Why’d you lie like that? Why not tell them about the castle?” Sakamoto demanded. I didn’t answer the question, choosing to instead focus on getting them to school, we emerged from the little alleyway and I heard sounds of shock escape the two boys who I had dragged here as they looked at the sight in front of them.

“What castle, Sakamoto-san?” I asked. We had reached the front of Shūjin which – since we were in the physical world – had its’ true appearance displayed to us; I turned to look at the duo and I saw both of them were openly gaping at the sight with Amamiya even pulling his glasses off and rubbing his eyes, I briefly saw him peak out between his hands before hiding his eyes and putting the glasses back on, but the rapid blinking proved that nothing had changed.

“Is this for real? You brought us the same way, I’m sure of it Chiba… what’s goin’ on here?” Sakamoto asked. There wasn’t much I could tell them in such an exposed place and even though Sakamoto had gone inside the Metaverse, I didn’t want to tell him anything that might make him liable to try and find a new way in, without a Persona he was vulnerable. It didn’t matter that before Amamiya he had the strongest blue flames hovering behind him, the Persona had not been awakened which meant he couldn’t truly fight, weapons only did a small amount of damage compared to the devastation a Persona’s spell or skills could conjure.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you,” A voice called. I turned around to see a teacher… um… oh boy, it was one I saw so rarely that I’d forgotten his name. “We received a call from the police,” The teacher admitted. Sakamoto complained about being snitched on with a kick to the ground in frustration. “It’s rare not to see you alone. But why are you with him Chiba-san?” The teacher asked. His expression of indignant rage had shifted to one of perplexed concern as he look at me, which was no surprise since Sakamoto had a delinquent reputation whilst I was basically an honours student.

“If the police already called you Sensei, then you should be aware of the situation. Amamiya-san fell ill and I was near him when it happened, I convinced Sakamoto-san to help me take care of Amamiya-san. My apologises for not contacting the school, I had asked Sakamoto-san to do it but it appears he might not have heard me,” I lied. Honestly, I didn’t like doing this, lying so much left me with a vile taste in my mouth but the secret of the Metaverse was too dangerous to go swinging around without control, especially if someone were to believe it.

“Always trying to help others, aren’t we Chiba-san,” A vile voice called. I fought to keep my expression under control but that did nothing to stop the tight curling of the hand around my bag’s straps; Sakamoto squawked Kamoshida’s name in surprise whilst I heard a shocked gasp escape from Amamiya, thankfully neither of them said anything else.

“Yes,” I answered. My steely bite coming back as I fought not to narrow my eyes into a glare at the sight of this depraved beast. “I will not stand idly by whilst others are suffering, no matter who’s toes I may step on to do so,” I stated. Kamoshida’s eyes flashed, ever since seeing him about to hurt poor Mishima, I’d been pretty passive-aggressive to him which caused him to not like me, but for some reason he hadn’t attempted to do anything to me… small favours, I guess.

“As for you Sakamoto, you seem so carefree,” Kamoshida stated. I didn’t like where this was going, he was likely going to say something to rile up Sakamoto. “Quite a difference from when you did morning practice for the track team,” Kamoshida stated. Oh seriously?! Salt in the wound much! I could sense Sakamoto getting riled up just by those words, a quick look showed a tense and black expression settling over his face as he dropped into a stance.

“Shuddup! It’s your fault that-,” Sakamoto began to snarl. I quickly moved over, stepping in front of Kamoshida to block Sakamoto’s view of him and I gripped his shoulders in a firm manner but not one to cause pain. “Chiba?” Sakamoto asked. I shook my head in a slow and methodical manner, whilst keeping my grip steady; I didn’t want Sakamoto to get harmed in any way by Kamoshida, simply because Kamoshida simply wasn’t worth it.

“How dare you speak that way to Kamoshida-san! There’s not much leeway left for you; you know?” The teacher spoke. I moved to the side to allow them to see Sakamoto who kept trembling with barely contained rage, I saw Amamiya looking on worriedly, his mouth was open, but it was almost like someone had stolen his voice from him just as his earlier confidence had also vanished like smoke.

“He’s the one who provoked me!” Sakamoto protested. The teacher threatened to expel Sakamoto which caused my mouth to open slightly in shock, just how much damn control did Kamoshida have over the other teachers? The teacher added on that Sakamoto would have to explain himself. “What!? This is bullshit!” Sakamoto protested. Kamoshida put on that disgustingly fake smile that charmed so many other as he looked at the teacher.

“Come now, I should have been more considerate, let’s just say we’re both to blame,” Kamoshida insisted. I wanted to say so many things right there and then about how only Kamoshida was to blame since it was his fault for dissolving the track team but going beyond my passive-aggressive motions and into an actual confrontation would just cause trouble for my infiltration later on down the line.

“Well, if you say so…,” The teacher agreed. He then turned back around to look at me with calmer eyes than he had been practically glaring at Sakamoto with before. “Chiba-san, since it’s you… I’ll overlook this one event, but please don’t get too involved,” The teacher said. I pressed my lips together as I simply inclined my head for an answer. “Sakamoto, you’re coming with me. It’s undeniable that you’re extremely late,” The teacher insisted.

“Fine,” Sakamoto complied. A scowling pout on his lips and his posture back into the slouch he typically had; I moved up the steps and into the building, already feeling more drained than normal but that was a result of the Metaverse before coming to school, I could only hope things would be easier for the rest of the day.

‘I’ll need to deal with Sakamoto and Amamiya, they somehow made their own way into the Metaverse and one of them awakened a Persona. The question is what, do I ask Amamiya for help in stealing the Treasure? Or should I just leave him alone? There’s also Morgana to contend with, I’ll likely see him again when I go in there next time, but what could that odd little creature be up to?’ I thought. Entering into my classroom, I settled into my chair – second from the left as you faced the front and second from the back – and promptly splayed myself out over the top of it, feeling too exhausted to focus on anything.

“Chiba-san, are you okay?” A soft voice asked. I lifted my head up and saw Mishima hovering beside me, a worried look on his bruised face, which caused sorrow to fill my eyes, he didn’t need to be suffering like this and then worrying about others; he had a good heart though, that was one of the reasons I wanted to stop Kamoshida so much, because someone as kind as Mishima didn’t deserve to suffer just like someone as vibrant as Suzui didn’t deserve to be degraded.

“Alright class, settle down,” Kawakami-sensei’s voice chimed. I looked up seeing my homeroom and Japanese teacher step inside; Kawakami Sadayo-sensei was a youthful-looking woman of medium height with a slender build, she had dark brown hair that was rather unkempt, dark brown eyes and consistently had a somewhat long and sleepy face which made me worry about if she was taking care of herself. Kawakami-sensei wore a yellow long-sleeved shirt striped with white and red horizontal lines, a blue denim skirt and white kitten heel pumps. She took her place at the desk in front of the class, but following after her was Amamiya!

‘My… class. Of all the classes to put him in, it’s this one?! Igor, if this is that gravity-fate thing you mentioned, this is taking it a little too far.’ I thought. I calmed my mind after that and focused on Amamiya who was pulling into himself even more now, his grey eyes warily darting over the silent students who were scrutinising him heavily; Kawakami-sensei introduced Amamiya to us and claimed he not been present earlier in the day due to being unwell… I wonder if Kawakami-sensei had made that up or if Amamiya had kept to my lie.

“Nice to meet you,” Amamiya spoke. His voice was barely above that of a mumbled whisper but the silence let everyone hear it; however people immediately started to talk about his criminal record which caused Amamiya’s eyes to widened as his mouth opened slightly and his skin seem to rush paler than it already was… it seemed Sakamoto hadn’t warned him about the leakage and so he’d been completely unprepared for the cruel judgment people would now be throwing at him.

“Uuh, so…,” Kawakami-sensei spoke. The poor woman looked like she was floundering for a lifeline. “Your seat will be… hmm…,” Kawakami-sensei spoke. Her eyes darting around the room, likely looking for where the new student could sit even though there was only a single open seat available for him to occupy.

“The seat next to me is open Kawakami-sensei, Amamiya-san can sit there,” I offered. Kawakami-sensei brightened instantly whilst Amamiya’s eyes locked on me and widened slightly; murmured whispers started up, but I paid no attention to them, instead I kept myself calm and composed as Amamiya’s grey eyes practically burned into my form with unspoken questions.

“Thank you, Chiba-san. Amamiya-kun please sit beside Chiba-san, can you please share your textbooks with him?” Kawakami-sensei asked. I nodded my head, Amamiya looked fretful as he stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and hunched himself over, he began to walk towards his seat with his head down and I felt my heart start to ache because he looked so afraid at that moment as if someone was going to attack him; verbally or physically, it didn’t matter.

“Lies,” A female voice hissed. I lifted an eyebrow at that sound, I looked over and saw that Amamiya had frozen in his movements right beside Takamaki’s desk who was right in front of him; I noticed the surprised glimmer in Amamiya’s grey eyes but there was a hint of recognition in them, implying the two had met yet I couldn’t imagine when that had happened.

“Huh? You’re that girl…,” Amamiya whispered. His tone was soft and airy but I’m certain that the other students around the duo would have been able to hear him given that I had; Takamaki said no more as she turned her face away from Amamiya, the messy ravenette moved away from the desk and slid into his own seat but just as I wrapped my hands around my textbook to hand it to Amamiya the whispers started.

“Did you catch that? Do those two know each other?” One female voice whispered. I furrowed my eyebrows at those words as my grip suddenly tightened, poor Takamai was already suffering because of whatever Kamoshida was doing to her, but now this ridiculous rumour was spiralling around school about the two of them dating; I wanted to hurl whenever I heard that thing. “Eww… does that mean he hit on her before transferring here?” The same student accused.

“That mean’s she’s cheating on him with Kamoshida-sensei. Then again, this is Takamaki-san we’re talking about,” Another female voice accused. I handed the textbook over with a rigid expression upon my face as I stared dead ahead, trying to hold myself back from snapping at the arrogant duo of girls; they judged Takamaki based upon her appearance, I might not speak to Takamaki much but she had never been anything but polite and mature towards me.

“For real. That side of the room is totally awful,” The first girl stated. Ever since awakening Phantom and refusing to blind myself to the wrongs I used to, I ended up hearing and seeing more cruelty and that caused the anger that used to be solely directed at my accursed uncle to flare whenever those showed up; thankfully Kawakami-sensei drew attention back to her before she started the last lesson of the day – the train crash yesterday had shortened the school day – so I focused my attention there.

“Oh, right! The volleyball rally’s in two days… everyone just changed classes, so make sure you use that time to get to know each other. Well then, let’s get class started. Who’s on duty today?” Kawakami-sensei spoke. The volleyball rally, a student thing that was just to allow Kamoshida to stroke his overly inflated ego; Mishima stood up and started the lesson by calling us to rise.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Class ended and with it school, I was still exhausted but thankful to finally be able to go home and rest up. A soft thud came and I looked up to see my loaned textbook was back on my desk, it had been easy to get through the lesson without it so Amamiya had kept it all to himself. I kept myself from looking at him as I took the book back.

A heavy silence pressed upon me as I felt Amamiya’s eyes boring into me, but I didn’t want to run the risk of him trying to ask about the Palace in this place. I stalwartly ignored him – despite how cruel that was and I mentally kicked myself a few time – until he finally moved away. I lifted my head and saw him leave the room, packing my stuff I stood up and made to leave as well but kept my head down as I moved.

“Hm? What’s wrong?” Kawakami-sensei suddenly asked. I looked up and saw the woman was stood in front of me but her back was turned to me which meant I wasn’t the one she was speaking to; I moved myself around and I saw that the person she was talking to was Amamiya who had his right hand pressed to his forehead as if he had a headache of some kind.

“Is this… a castle?” Amamiya asked. That must have meant that his brain had superimposed the image of the castle over the school, my eyes would occasionally slip the details in after I realised what was happening in the other world, although why would such a thing be happening to someone without such an ability like mine? Amamiya dropped his hand and started to turn towards our teacher, so I ducked behind the door in order to not be seen.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kawakami-sensei sighed. The woman seemed exhausted, more so than she regularly did which caused my lips to pull into a frown. “Also… it seems like people are already talking about you, but I’m not the one who told them. I can’t even catch a break… why do I have to deal with this?” Kawakami-sensei complained. This must have been stressful for her to deal with. “You should head straight home without stopping by anywhere. Sakura-san sounded pretty angry,” Kawakami-sensei stated. Why would Sōjirō be angry at Amamiya? Was it because of his probation? “Oh, and about Sakamoto-kun. Don’t get involved-,” Kawakami-sensei began to warn. But cut herself off suddenly. “Speak of the devil… what do you want? I heard the police caught you cutting classes today,” Kawakami-sensei muttered. Ah, Sakamoto had shown up.

“Ugh… it was nothin’,” Sakamoto stated. Well at least he wasn’t trying to tell anyone about the Palace, Kawakami-sensei brought up that Sakamoto still had blonde hair instead of his natural black. “Sorry ‘bout that,” Sakamoto commented. He didn’t sound particularly sorry when he said those words, silence followed and so I poked my head out slightly and saw Sakamoto had moved closer to Amamiya and whispering something to him; Sakamoto pulled away so I ducked back behind the door before he could see me.

“See? That’s why I don’t want you getting involved. Understood?” Kawakami-sensei insisted. With that, she proceeded to walk away from the doorway, peeking out I saw Amamiya was staring at something slightly ahead; stepping out so that I was behind the boy and couldn’t be seen in his peripheral vision I saw that the people he was starting at happened to be Kamoshida and our worthless principal Kobayakawa, an overweight and bald middle-aged man with dark eyes, he wore a beige suit with a white undershirt and a red bow tie.

“Why did you allow a student like him to transfer here? He’s already started associating with Sakamoto. And from what I saw, he’s being a bad influence on Chiba,” Kamoshida commented. My mouth unhinged at those words, how dare he! How dare that vile scumbag claim such a lie! I’d only known Amamiya for a few… hours – I think – so how could he be ‘influencing’ me!? Kamoshida had no qualms about attempting to ruin peoples’ lives even when they had done nothing. “A student with a criminal record and the culprit of an assault case. At this rate, it’d be pointless how much I contribute to the school,” Kamoshida commented.

“Now don’t be like that… this school counts on you, Kamoshida-kun. You are our star. Still, a steady build-up is necessary behind such brilliance as well,” Kobayakawa commented. That man seemed to only care about the reputation of the school, not the actual people who came here; Kamoshida claimed Kobayakawa’s troubles never seemed to end before vowing to answer the ‘expectations’ Kobayakawa had of him and with that the two of them walked off in separate directions.

Amamiya also began to move, with him heading towards the stairs but he went up instead of down, frowning slightly out of worry that this could be due to what they experienced, I proceeded to follow after the boy. My tailing of Amamiya led me all the way to the rooftop, which we weren’t normally allowed onto and it was typically locked but now it was unlocked and Amamiya slipped through the door; I walked up to it and opened the door a tiny fraction so that I could hear what was being said without being seen.

“There you are. Sorry for callin’ you up here like this. I bet Kawakami already told you stuff like, ‘don’t get involved with him’ huh?” Sakamoto commented. He was right on the money for that claim since that had been exactly what was said before Sakamoto had shown up; with only a small crack I couldn’t see either of them thus couldn’t try and read their expressions and body language to try and figure out what they might have been feeling.

“She said you’re trouble. How did you know?” Amamiya asked. His voice was soft but a bit louder, firmer… stronger than the shy one he’d been speaking with since we had got out of the Palace; I wonder if this was some sort of traumatic response to the fact that he was arrested on what I was becoming convinced were false charges.

“Figured as much. Then again, we’re in the same boat. I heard you got a criminal record. Everyone’s talkin’ about it. No wonder you were so gutsy,” Sakamoto complimented. Of course, the delinquent wasn’t averse to the fact that someone had a criminal record – true or not – and would act so collected, a slight creaking reached my ears before the others continued talking. “What was all that, that happened? You know, how we almost got killed at a castle… it wasn’t a dream… right? You remember it too, yeah?” Sakamoto asked. I felt my breath catch at his words, if they could dismiss it as a dream then they wouldn’t try to return to the Metaverse and both of them would be safe from further harm.

“Yeah… I remember. But that girl… Chiba-san, I think you called her. Wouldn’t it be better to ask her, she seemed to know more about that castle than either of us,” Amamiya spoke up. I perked up hearing those words, if they did try to ask me then I was going to have to avoid them in order to keep them safe which would make an attempted infiltration even harder than it normally would be.

“Chiba… yeah, askin’ her would probably be best but the thing is she’s not exactly the most open individual. I don’t know if she’d even answer us. Besides, I’m a delinquent and you’re the transfer student with a criminal record, if either of us try talkin’ to the Yamato Nadeshiko of school… well, rumours and trouble would start circlin’,” Sakamoto answered. I really hated that title; I don’t know why people started to use it as it wasn’t like I asked them to.

“What should we do then?” Amamiya asked. If they weren’t going to approach me, that was for the best as they’d be less likely to accidentally stumble upon the Metaverse again if they stayed away from me without me having to start running away from them; of course, that would be entirely upon to them and I wouldn’t manipulate them just to protect them as much a physically possible.

“Just ‘cause we both remember it doesn’t mean much though. But, even if it was a dream, you saved me from Kamoshida. So yeah… thanks Amamiya,” Sakamoto stated. A smile twitched the corners of my lips, for all the troublesome rumours and foul language that Sakamoto spewed on occasion, he was a good person; this act proved that there was something very kind about him that he rarely allowed other people to see.

“It was nothing,” Amamiya responded. There was a shy note to his voice, but I think if I had been looking, I’m sure there would have been a smile stretching across his face, he now knew there was at least one person who wouldn’t judge him by the criminal record; that would be important for Amamiya’s survival of the foul rumours currently spinning around the school.

“But man, that Kamoshida we saw there…,” Sakamoto stated. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave a slight shudder in response to those words. “You prolly don’t know about it, but there are some rumours about him,” Sakamoto revealed. Amamiya repeated the name that had been spoken. “You know, the guy we met at the school gates. The ripped one. That asshole who was all full of himself at the castle. No one says anything against him ‘cause he’s some medallist who took the volleyball team to nationals and he acts all friendly. The way Kamoshida was king of that castle felt crazy real ‘cause of that… I wonder if we can go back to that castle again,” Sakamoto explained. This wasn’t good... or so I thought until Sakamoto let out an annoyed groan. “Forget it! Must’ve all been a dream! It has to be!” Sakamoto declared. More creaking sounded along with a slight echo of foot falls. “Sorry to drag you out here like this. That’s all I had to say. You know, we might be pretty similar. I feel like we’re gonna get along just fine as ‘troublemakers’. I’m Sakamoto Ryūji. I’ll come talk if I see you around, don’t ignore me, all right?” Sakamoto stated.

“Okay, I’m Amamiya Ren,” Amamiya responded. Smiling with relief that they would stay away from the Metaverse of their own will, I closed the door and moved away down the steps; my impromptu visit to the Metaverse had drained me so I’d skip going this afternoon and just go home for now.

Tomorrow the work would continue.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

See you all in the New Year.

Chapter 11: - Return to the Castle

Walking down the pathway, I thought over what I would need to do today when I went into the Palace. I brought rope with me in order to climb passed a broken part that I’d discovered in the trip before Amamiya and Sakamoto had stumbled into the Palace. With that and my bow I should be able to climb up the tower it was in and head deep into the castle towards where the Treasure might be.

“Chiba-san?” A voice called. Remembering what I’d been told only a few days ago, I knew who it had to be and so I turned to face the speaker who, as I suspected, happened to be Amamiya; Amamiya was looking at me with surprise in his grey eyes. “What are you doing here?” Amamiya asked. I seriously don’t know how Sōjirō expected me to avoid Amamiya given the slight distance between my home and LeBlanc.

“I live in that direction,” I explained. I gestured up the road that I had just come down before focusing my attention on the messy ravenette, how his hair was so unruly when his uniform was so neat, I didn’t understand. “Shall we walk together Amamiya-san? We’re both headed for the train station after all,” I suggested. We were probably going to end up doing just that, but it would be nice to offer him the option of company.

“Are you sure about that? Being seen with a criminal?” Amamiya questioned. A grim expression on his face as his eyes drifted down to the side, the tension along his muscles were an obvious sign of anger; reaching out I hooked my arm around his and immediately set off towards the station, forcing the boy to stumble slight before he started to move willing. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Amamiya muttered.

I smiled slightly and unhooked my arm, but my hand stayed close to him ready to reach out for him again if he tried to run off. He never did, although there was no conversation flowing between the two of us, yet the silence was strangely peaceful and comforting, I didn’t understand why but I did like it. Eventually we reached the train station and slipped on board the metal contraptions.

Squished together in the train car, me and Amamiya had barely any room to move with each of us hugging our school bags close to our fronts to keep them safe. Chatter from around us was focused on the train crash that had happened recently which had involved charging into the station at top speed, it was definitely another incident of a psychotic breakdown, someone thought the bad economy and depressing news was to blame but I wasn’t entirely convinced of that fact.

As soon as it stopped, we stumbled out and immediately headed over to the line we would need to take towards Aoyama-Itchome, Amamiya kept pace with me the entire time. Or was it perhaps the other way around as Amamiya was taller than me with a longer stride, yet we never fell out of walking synch with each other; we reached the platform and gathered behind a sizeable group of other Shūjin students.

“Look, isn’t that her?” A female voice commented. I wasn’t particularly bothered by the chatter of other individuals especially since it was likely silly gossip that was exaggerated in some manner; the person who responded to the girl asked if it was the person with a red ribbon. “She’s so thin… it’s not fair, I’ve got my hair in a ponytail too…,” The girl complained. That made no sense in my opinion, a train pulled in and the doors opened, we shuffled and crushed ourselves onto the train which was just as packed as the other one.

“Chiba-san,” Amamiya’s soft voice spoke. I felt warm air wash over my ear and a hand on my shoulder, I jumped slightly at the sensation before glancing over my shoulder at the boy. “There’s a seat there, take it,” Amamiya insisted. I blinked in surprise at his words, but before I could respond he gave me a slight push forward and I ended up stumbling into the seat, rearranging myself to get comfortable as the train started to move.

“Thank you, Amamiya-san,” I stated. That was extremely kind of him, especially since he wouldn’t be used to the crushing surroundings of the train ride like me and just about every other city resident; Amamiya gave me a soft and gentle smile in response, the train ride was pretty dull especially since I had brought a book to read through and the surrounding chatter was mind-numbingly boring with nothing I could use to help me; suddenly the person I was sat beside stood up.

“Please, take my seat,” The person offered. It was a female voice and young sounding, so this girl was probably around the same age as me, the girl had dark red hair tied into a ponytail with a bright red ribbon and was talking to an elderly woman stood in front of her. “My station’s coming up,” The girl explained. This was likely to prevent any attempt to argue from the elderly woman.

“Are ya sure? Then…,” The woman stated. The girl moved out of the way but before the woman could make a move to take the seat, the man in a business suit who had been stood beside her, immediately dropped down into the seat with such speed that the red haired girl couldn’t help but whisper out an impressed admiration for the speed that had been displayed by the man.

“I mean, excuse me, that seat was for this lady-,” The girl attempted to speak. However, the man gave her one dull look before proceeding to hang his head and drop fast asleep, snores softly emanated from the man which caused me to give him a disbelieving look at how he was acting. “Oh…,” The girl trailed off. She clearly didn’t know how to respond to this situation.

“Want me to wake him up?” Amamiya spoke up. I looked up and saw that the boy was looking at the girl and seemed more okay than the previous times, he wasn’t hunched over although that might have been because of his need to grip the rail in order to remain stood up due to the shaking and bouncing of the train.

“It’s alright. I can understand his position as well,” The girl responded. His position, frankly I didn’t understand what she meant by that, the man was actually rather rude; even if he was tired, he was in close enough proximity to hear the girl offer her seat to someone else, he had selfishly taken it without consideration for what the elderly woman was feeling. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be any help,” The girl stated.

“Take my hand miss,” I called. This caused the trio to look at me as I help out my hand to the woman, she looked baffled but took a hold of it and I proceeded to pull slowly but firmly; as I pulled, I stood up and pivoted, spinning the woman around and down so that she could softly land in the seat although her eyes blinked slightly in shock. “My stop’s next so I don’t need the seat anymore, you take it,” I insisted.

“Oh, thank you dearie, that’s very kind of you,” The woman stated. Giving her a smile, I reached for one of the handholds to keep myself up right until the train came to a stop at Aoyama-Itchome; once it did, I exited the train with Amamiya in front of me, we quickly walked off towards the stairs moving over the area we had initially met at.

“Pardon me!” A female voice called. I turned around as did Amamiya and I saw the red haired girl had run up to us; her fringe hung over her forehead with a slight curl to the left, she had matching red eyes with pink lips and fair skin, I noticed that she wore the Shūjin Academy wintertime uniform with black tights and red loafers. “Thank you so much for earlier,” The girl admitted. She even went so far as to bow to us, even though it didn’t seem like such a thing that required going so far as to bow.

“With what?” Amamiya asked. He reached up to brush a messy curl of black hair out of his eyes as he looked at the girl who rose up from her bow; I also cocked my head to the side since I was confounded by the way that this girl was acting, plus even though she wore the student uniform of our school I hadn’t seen her before, then again her pin did signify that she was a first year and I’d barely interacted with them but surely her vibrant red hair would have stood out.

“For speaking up when I offered my seat on the train. And for allowing that lady to take your seat,” The girl stated. He eyes had been on Amamiya at first before sliding over to me when she moved to the second part of her statement and I swear a sparkle appeared in her eyes. “Both of you are second years at Shūjin High School, correct? I’m a first year there myself. Thanking you totally slipped my mind back on the train and I didn’t want to be rude to my senpais. Please, excuse me!” The girl stated.  She then walked around us and towards the stairs.

“And I thought I was formal,” I admitted. That girl took it to a whole different level, with that out of the way I proceeded to head towards school with Amamiya moving alongside me, thankfully there was no accidentally dip into the Metaverse this time and we both safely made it to the school.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“I’m the social studies teacher, Ushimaru. I’ll be teaching you the rules of society this year,” The teacher spoke. A tall man with a stern and square appearance with slightly tan-ish looking skin tone, he wore glasses over his dark eyes, his black hair was slicked back and he wore a white shirt with black pants held up by braces with a blue tie that hung down to his pants. “Hmph… you all look like you’ve been spoiled growing up. Can’t wait to see who disappoints me the most this year. A certain dictionary defines a year as ‘a Period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments’. The book’s title is about as cynically satirical as the rest of it. It’s The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce,” Ushimaru-sensei spoke.

Ushimaru-sensei was the worst teacher – apart from Kamoshida – not that he was bad at teaching but because he was completely, absolutely and absurdly strict. He had taught social studies to me last year and I had been forced to witness as he chunked pieces of chalk at students so fast that they could barely be dodged if he thought they weren’t paying attention in his class.

“Hey, new kid!” Ushimaru-sensei called. Amamiya jerked upright at those words, he had seemed to be staring off into space in a slumped position before getting called on but now he sat upright and looked directly at Ushimaru-sensei. “Tell me what the Devil’s Dictionary defined as the chief factor in the progress of the human race,” Ushimaru-sensei insisted.

“Villains,” Amamiya answered. It was calm and thoughtful but loud enough for him to be heard from his position near the back of the class; that happened to be the right answer, well technically Ushimaru-sensei did say malefactors was the specific answer but clearly ‘villains’ was an equally acceptable answer and he seemed surprised that Amamiya had actually known the answer.

“Sure, villains can affect the course of history. But remember that this definition is a sardonic witticism, nothing more. Here in the real world, villains don’t push humanity forward. All they do us spread chaos and strife,” Ushimaru-sensei lectured. The rest of the students seemed surprised that Amamiya had got it right and started to question the rumours that surrounded him. “I know you’ve all heard the reports of these agitators stirring up trouble. We don’t have any room for criminals here. Not in school and not in society. Am I clear?” Ushimaru-sensei stated. His eyes seemed to be cutting into Amamiya as he said those words and I saw one of Amamiya’s hands curl into a tight fist in response.

The bell rung indicating our next lesson which was P.E. – ugh… if it wasn’t for the fact it looked suspicious, I would honestly skip that class every time it came around – was now. Gripping my bag, I stood up and walked out of the classroom, heading over to the practice building where our clubs and gym were housed involved heading down to walk across the courtyard but at least I could savour a few moments of freedom.

Entering into the changing room I swapped into the gym uniform of a white shirt with short sleeves, a pair of red tracksuit pants and a matching red jacket. Stepping out I had to fight hard to avoid rolling my eyes when I saw a volleyball net was set up, that seemed to be all we did during this lesson to the point it had become ridiculous, I might not understand why physical education was important but at least my middle school made it varied.

I practically squashed myself against the wall, hoping to stay out of sight to avoid Kamoshida, thankfully my ghost like existence hadn’t completely faded so as more people filed in, I was able to blend in with them. Kamoshida strutted around like some overblown peacock – actually that might be an insult to peacocks – as he went about selected students and one of them was Amamiya. With the students selected the rest of us drifted to the edges to watch this absurdity.

“To you!” Kamoshida declared. He spiked the volleyball intentionally hard; it spun rapidly through the air towards Amamiya who was thrown off balance from blocking it, but Kamoshida didn’t relent enough for him to recover, with a malicious curl of his lips, he sent another hard strike flying at the ravenette. “Come on!” Kamoshida yelled. The strike slammed into Amamiya’s shoulder and his already flaky balance caused him to slide to the floor with his left knee keeping him up right. “What’s wrong? If you play like that at the rally tomorrow, the girls will laugh at you!” Kamoshida declared.

I snorted and rolled my eyes at his words, that man was a pig… apologises to the pigs, he didn’t know a damn thing about how to treat women or girls and it was aggravating to hear him talk like that. I noticed his eyes drift to the isolated Takamaki who was twirling a lock of one of her ponytails before proceeding to focus back on Amamiya who had recovered but seemed to be in pain from the hard strikes sent flying at him.

“Quit slacking, newbie!” Kamoshida ordered. He then proceeded to send another sharp spike slicing towards Amamiya and it struck the boy, but this time it struck him on the face; Amamiya stumbled back as the ball rebounded and tore the glasses from his face, the objects clattered to the floor as Amamiya stopped himself from going back any further, but his head hung down.

His shoulders were slouched down giving him a crumpled posture but then Amamiya lifted his head and whilst I couldn’t see what happened, something on Amamiya’s face spooked Kamoshida. In fact, it spooked him enough for Kamoshida to freeze in silence for a couple of seconds before calling out to Mishima, but he stuttered at the first word.

My eyes were wide as I watched Amamiya bend down, keeping his head low, and scoop up his glasses which he settled back onto his face with an almost relieved manner.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The final bell for school ended and I quickly moved to pack myself away, I did not want to get entangled in any kind of real world delays, I could finally continue with my infiltration of the Palace without needing to worry about two boys. I slid the bag over my shoulder and immediately proceeded to walk out, weaving through the students until I reached the stairway and I quickly took a few steps downwards.

“Hey there, Takamaki!” Kamoshida’s voice called. I paused on the steps I had just descended and felt extremely tempted to rush back up and help Takamaki get away from him but doing so would only be a small and brief relief, instead I steeled myself and headed outside of the building and straight towards the alleyway I’d passed through yesterday when dragging Amamiya and Sakamoto to school after our escape; focusing myself, I entered into the Metaverse.

Opening my eyes, I found myself in front of the Palace and walked inside, my clothes changed to my War Maiden outfit and I picked up my bow as per usual, stuffing my bag into the hideaway that I had made. I began to make my way towards the entry point when I heard voices coming from behind me… two voices that were far too familiar to me and I pivoted around marching back towards the entrance.

“Are you kidding me!?” I exclaimed. Sakamoto, in his regular clothes, and Amamiya, clad in his Rebel’s Armour, proceeded to jump slightly apparently startled by my sudden appearance. “After what you went through the last time, you came back?! How did you even get here?! Haven’t you realised the danger you’re in just by being here?!” I lectured. Honestly, though my words were harsh, they were born of fear, fear that they were going to get hurt because they had decided to come back here.

“Well, I couldn’t just ignore this! If this is connected to Kamoshida, then I’m not going to stand back and let him get away with this!” Sakamoto exclaimed. He had a fierce fire burning in his eyes and the blue flames of his dormant Persona raged, looking as if they were trying to take shape in that moment but it wasn’t enough; Sakamoto wasn’t ready to rebel yet, but he was getting close, very close, I turned my eyes to look at Amamiya who gazed at me.

“I’m not going to ignore someone who hurts others the way he does, I’m not going to ignore wrongs committed right in front of me,” Amamiya insisted. He spoke with that firm conviction that had been in his voice yesterday, the confidence that had seemed to desert him when we had returned to the physical world, it wasn’t like my steely tone at all which I just hid… I wonder why?

“If you two are this determined to get yourselves killed, I won’t stop you,” I muttered. Sakamoto yelped and went pale whilst Amamiya’s eyes widened in slightly frightened shock. “What? It could happen and thinking it can’t, is a folly on your parts. Especially you Sakamoto-san, without a Persona and Rebel’s Armour, you’re incapable of fighting back and extremely vulnerable to a Shadow’s attacks. If you really want to come, then you need to stay close to me. As for you Amamiya-san, you don’t get to hang back like last time, you’ll be fighting with me right from the get-go,” I insisted.

“Got it/Understood,” Sakamoto and Amamiya responded. Even though I had warned them of the possibility of death and they had been scared, neither of them had started to run away; I sighed heavily, realising that these two were going to going to stick with me, I turned and motioned for them to follow after me and we headed back towards the front door.

“So, we did make it back… that means that what happened yesterday was for real too,” Sakamoto acknowledged. He then proceeded to look over and saw that Amamiya was dressed in his Rebel’s Armour. “Yeargh! Those clothes!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Amamiya looked down and his eyes widened as he lifted is glove clad hand up to look at it. “This happened last time too, huh? What’s with that outfit?” Sakamoto questioned.

“You two only realised that now? This is why I want Amamiya-san fighting, his rebellion has stabilised now which means I’m not going to be walking on eggshells worrying about being attacked by Shadows, the knights we kept seeing, since there’s two of us and only one defenceless individual,” I explained. Both of them looked at me in confusion as I pinched my nose to keep calm since these two were rookies. “Look, I can’t explain here because the Shadows could attack at any moment, if we get somewhere safe inside, and those do exist, then I’ll explain a bit more. But for now, just know that outfit signifies Amamiya-san as someone who can fight without being eliminated in one strike in this place,” I explained.

“You jealous?” Amamiya asked. The corners of his lips kicked up into a teasing smile and I arched an eyebrow, it was almost like he became a slightly different person in this place, was that an impact of entering a world of cognition and thus his own mental image of himself was completely different to the one he allowed others to see… or did Amamiya and Sakamoto have that good of a understanding already that he could comfortably tease the blonde.

“I-I ain’t jealous,” Sakamoto protested. That indicated that he probably was a little jealous of Amamiya’s capability. “What’s goin’ on here!? This makes no effin’ sense at all,” Sakamoto stated. Welcome to the Metaverse Sakamoto, where physics and common sense are chunked out the window to the nearest cannon and blasted far away from this place.

“Hey!” A familiar voice called. Twisting around, I quickly dropped into a fighting stance before breathing a sigh of relief when I saw Morgana peeking out from behind a corner, he then hopped over to us and came to a stop beside me. “Stop making a commotion,” Morgana insisted. Sakamoto recognised the cat creature. “The Shadows started acting up, so I came here wondering what it could be… to think you guys would come back to the entrance when you barely managed to escape,” Morgana commented. His forearms or forelegs were crossed over his chest.

“I know Morgana, but these two were determined to come back and I’d already expended more than enough energy trying to deal with this place, one hiccup won’t put me off,” I acknowledged. Morgana looked at me as I shrugged my shoulders alongside speaking my words; even though I hadn’t found the Treasure yet, I refused to give up on it and walk away especially when it would be turning a blind eye which I had vowed never to do again.

“What is this place? Is it the school?” Sakamoto asked. Surprising, alongside his delinquent reputation it was kind of a running gag in the school that Sakamoto was hopeless when it came to academic stuff and was always in the bottom of the school rankings when it came to exams, I don’t know if he was actually dumb or just awful at studying but either way him asking a sensible question was something I hadn’t expected.

“That’s right,” Me and Morgana answered at the same time. Sakamoto seemed surprised by this comment and immediately protested this since the building in front of us was obviously a castle, of course he did this loud enough that I was tempted to slap my hand over his mouth once more to avoid drawing attention to us.

“This castle is the school, but only to this castle’s Ruler,” Morgana explained. Sakamoto got confused by this, but he’d probably figure it out before too long since he was well acquainted with Kamoshida’s warped personality in the real world. “I think you called him Kamoshida? This is how his distorted heat views that school,” Morgana explained. I don’t know how much these two would understand with an incomplete explanation.

“Kamoshida… distorted...,” Sakamoto repeated. He and Amamiya proceeded to exchange a look before Sakamoto suddenly stamped his foot and looked down at Morgana with annoyance in his eyes. “Explain it in a way that makes sense!” Sakamoto demanded. In response Morgana’s expression dropped into one of annoyance with his large eyes becoming slightly hooded to express this annoyance.

“I shouldn’t have expected a moron to get it,” Morgana stated. Sakamoto took offense to this, albeit accurate, comment; but before anyone could react any further a piercing wailing scream reached up to the air, causing it to tremble with the sound, Amamiya who’d been silently watching dropped immediately into a stance as his dagger manifested in his hand with a burst of blue fire, Sakamoto jumped in fright as all eyes moved over to the castle door.

“What was that!?” Sakamoto asked. With all the times I’d infiltrated this place, there was only one option as to what had been the source of that sound and it caused my left hand to tighten into a fist as I glared at the building; Morgana seemed to realise the source of the sound as the cat creature writhed in place slightly, seemingly expressing a discomfort with this knowledge, not that he could be blamed for that.

“It must be the slaves captive here,” Morgana stated. His expression grim as he said those words, Sakamoto was initially disbelieving before realising from the dark expressions that me and Morgana wore that it was very real; he also realised that the cognitions were people who attended our school. “They’re most likely being tortured on Kamoshida’s orders. It’s nothing out of the ordinary; it’s like that every day here. What’s more, you three escaped yesterday. He must have lost his temper quite a bit,” Morgana acknowledged. I had to learn to tune the screams out every time I came here or repeatedly remind myself that they were nothing more than convincing looking marionettes.

“That son of a bitch!” Sakamoto snarled. I spoke the boy’s surname, seeing the fury that twisted across his face, another scream cut through the air. “This is bullshit!” Sakamoto bellowed. He then charged at the door and slammed his body into it, although the door didn’t even budge in response. “You hear me, Kamoshida!?” Sakamoto yelled. I walked up to the boy and grabbed a hold of his shoulder.

“I get that you’re angry Sakamoto-san but doing that won’t open the door and even if it did, going in that way is far too dangerous, the Shadows will be on us like flies on honey,” I warned. Sakamoto still looked angry, but he moved away from the door and back to the rest of us as Amamiya looked incredibly uncomfortable from how he was twitching, but he clearly had more control over his impulses than Sakamoto did.

“Hey, Chiba, Mona-Mona,” Sakamoto called. I nodded my head to show I heard him whilst Morgana protested to the shortening of his name by reminding Sakamoto of what it was. “Do either of you know where those voices are comin’ from?” Sakamoto asked. I furrowed my eyebrows at this, wondering what Sakamoto could possibly be thinking by asking that question.

“You want me to take you to them?” Morgana asked. He then turned his attention towards me and Amamiya. “Well, I guess I could guide you there. But only if those two come with us,” Morgana insisted. He nodded his head towards us to clearly indicate exactly who he was talking about when he said those words.

“I was hoping to push into an area I hadn’t explored today since I lost the chance yesterday. But I’m not going to leave you to stumble around with Sakamoto-san and Amamiya-san, my main concern is getting these two out safely. I’ll come with,” I answered. It was another delay, but I refused to let anyone else get hurt when I could stop it, there was enough I couldn’t stop in the physical world.

“I’ll also come, but I have to know, why us?” Amamiya asked. I was glad that he was coming along otherwise I’d been too concerned about what he was doing to properly focus since it was apparent that these other two could get into the Metaverse via a currently unknown ability which meant forcing him out would be pointless.

“I just want to get a better look at your powers,” Morgana answered. That seemed reasonable, I was also curious as to what the cat creature was capable of as he might prove to be a valuable ally in stealing the Treasure if I could convince him to stick around to help me; I didn’t know his reasons for being here but hopefully they wouldn’t clash if we formed an alliance.

“Thanks for doing this you two,” Sakamoto admitted. I gave the blonde a small smile in response to his words, I walked over to the vent we had moved through yesterday and quickly uncovered it. “Back in the same way we got out, huh?” Sakamoto asked. I set the vent covering to the side and turned to face the boy who had joined me along with Amamiya and Morgana.

“The Shadows haven’t caught me using it yet, so I see no reason to change it,” I answered. Morgana chirped about how not barging in through the entrance was a ‘basic of phantom thievery’. “Phantom Thievery?” I repeated. I looked at the cat creature with a slightly raised eyebrow in response to his words, did this cat view himself as a thief.

“I’ll make sure to teach you as we go. Come on, follow me!” Morgana insisted. However right as he made to jump onto the barrel beside the vent to reach it, I reached out and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck causing him to yelp in shock and writhe for a bit before stilling. “Why did you stop me? And so painfully?” Morgana asked. He did look like he was in pain and I felt bad about doing that.

“Sorry Morgana, but there’s something I need to clarify before we go any further,” I admitted. Adjusting the cat creature so that I could settle him onto my shoulder which he seemed content to stay on, I focused on the source of my concern as I had just realised something. “Amamiya-san, I have to ask, can you see clearly?” I wondered. Amamiya blinked his grey eyes in response to my question, so I reached up to tap my mask. “It doesn’t look like that mask has any lens in it, if your vision is faulty then it could endanger your ability to fight,” I explained.

“Oh, that,” Amamiya acknowledged. He shuffled slightly and reached a hand back to rub the back of his neck in a manner that was kind of adorable, I mentally slapped myself a few times and refocused on the boy who seemed embarrassed about something. “I don’t actually have bad eyesight,” Amamiya revealed. I blinked my eyes in shock whilst Sakamoto stared at him with a slightly open mouth.

“But why do you wear glasses?” Sakamoto asked. I agreed with the question, if Amamiya had perfectly fine eyesight, then there should have been no reason for him to wear the glasses; Amamiya looked sheepish as he kicked his pointed boot at the ground whilst keeping his head tilted downwards, I couldn’t tell if he was shy, embarrassed or just uncomfortable.

“My eyes. They’re unusually sharp… it scares strangers. So, I wear false glasses to stop that from happening,” Amamiya admitted. I blinked my eyes at that, wondering how sharp eyes could cause people to become scared; but then the memory of how Kamoshida flinched backwards when Amamiya had lifted his head up after having his glasses knocked off, so maybe they really were scary.

“So long as you’re good to fight, that’s what matters most,” I insisted. I then turned my gaze towards Morgana who had quietly remained on my shoulder. “We’re good to go now Morgana,” I insisted. That was all the cat creature needed to leap off my shoulder and into the vent, vanishing my naginata, I leapt into the vent and moved into the room; sounds indicated that the other two had followed me.

“Man, this place is as creepy as always,” Sakamoto commented. An accurate analysis of how bizarre this place was; Morgana insisted that we do exactly as he says and he immediately took off out of the room, moving out I looked to both sides and saw no signs of Shadows, I then jogged after Morgana with the other two following me. “Hey… we went by here when we came in the front,” Sakamoto commented. We stopped moving just as the surroundings shimmered and changed to the inside of the front entrance of school. “What the!? I was seein’ double or something just now! Was that Shūjin!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. The scenery changed back to the gaudy entrance hall.

“We already told you. This place is the school but viewed through Kamoshida’s twisted up heart. We don’t have the time to stand around here though, we might run into a Shadow at any moment. This way to the dungeons,” I insisted. We kept moving, descending back down to the stairs that would lead us to the dungeons where Sakamoto had seen the cognitions for the second time; however, we ran into a problem when a Shadow barred our path.

“Down! Down!” Morgana hissed out in a whisper. I threw myself back and ducked behind a beam near the edge of the rushing river that cut through the Palace. “Shoot… I had a feeling there would be guards here,” Morgana softly commented. The three boys were all gathered near the doorway with Sakamoto the furthest back and stood up, Morgana slightly bent down near the edge of the door and Amamiya crouched down and pressed up against the door.

“With a Shadow here, we’re going to have to fight our way forward if we want to reach the dungeons,” I admitted. Twisting around I peeked out behind the pillar and saw the Shadow had turned around and walked away from us; Sakamoto was appropriately nervous as he asked if I was ‘for real’ whilst stuttering slightly at the start.

“Oh boy. I’ll just teach you the basics of battle for now. You’d better not forget all this,” Morgana warned. Since we were going to be pushing into more fights now than when we were escaping, it made sense to warn Amamiya ahead of time. “Always try to ambush enemies instead of rushing everyone headlong. Attack from behind whenever you can. You’ll need to rip their masks off to momentarily break the control that the Palace’s Ruler has over them. If you succeed, your opponent will be caught off guard, allowing us to jump in for a pre-emptive attack,” Morgana insisted.

“So, we wanna get the jump on ‘em and make the first strike… okay, got it!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Thankfully it wasn’t that loud so the Shadow wouldn’t be draw to the sound, however I proceeded to give the blonde an unimpressed look since it seemed he had forgotten my warning about fighting at the front of the castle.

“Sakamoto, you will solely be watching. You don’t have a Persona,” I reminded. I then looked over and saw a nervous looking Amamiya glancing back at us and then at the patrolling guard. “Would you like a demonstration?” I offered. Amamiya looked at me in silence for a few moments before nodding his head; I took a deep breath and focused on the guard who had turned away from us.

Pulling myself out from behind the pillar, I softly began to creep forward, keeping my body low and my stance wide in order to ensure it was stable as I approached my enemies. Once I was near enough, I focused my mind on the goal I wanted to achieve. I sprung into the air and landed firmly on the Shadow’s shoulders, arcing my hand into a claw shape.

“Let’s see what you really look like!” I declared. Lashing my hand down, I sunk the fingertips into the mask’s edge and dragged the object free, leaping from the shoulders I landed safely on the floor and immediately called my naginata as the Shadow dissolved into black and red goo before coming back as a Jack-o-Lantern.

“Morgana! Lead with a Wind attack!” Amamiya ordered. I looked back, surprised by the authority in the voice, Morgana hesitated for a moment before he summoned out Zorro and unleashed a burst of wind directly at the Jack-o-Lantern, sending it tumbling to the floor before it could recover from its’ distress of me ripping the mask off. “Arsène!” Amamiya called. His Persona appeared and slashed out with its’ sharp heels, cutting apart the Shadow and dissipating it.

“Alright, let’s keep moving,” I stated. We were near the bridge and quickly crossed over it until we reached the cells that we had been previously at, but there was a slight issue that we were immediately greeted with; the cells were completely empty of the cognitions that had been trapped within them the previous day.

“Why ain’t anyone here?” Sakamoto asked. He checked in the nearest cell by moving over and looking inside for a few moments. “Dammit! They were here before! Where’d they go?!” Sakamoto demanded. Morgana immediately hissed at the blonde to be quiet. “Oh yeah, there were more of ‘em further into!” Sakamoto exclaimed. He seemed to have not even heard what Morgana had just said and then took off away from the three of us.

“If they aren’t here, then they must have been transferred,” I commented. Footsteps echoed back to us and I turned to see a panicked Sakamoto rushing up to us exclaiming about lots of footsteps coming towards us. “Thankfully, there is a safe room right over there, meaning we can hide in it,” I informed. I pointed in its’ direction and then marched over to the slightly shimmery door that was pressed into the walls, I pushed the door open and motioned the other three inside which they promptly rush to comply with, I then ducked in and shut the door behind me.

“The Shadows won’t be able to come in here,” Morgana commented. The cat creature hopped onto the table that was present as Sakamoto hunched over breaking heavily likely from his unexpected sprint, Amamiya stuffed his hands into his pockets and I leant against the table’s edge; the room was rather bland with a brown table and chairs set and what looked to be a bookcase, Sakamoto pulled himself up, still gasping for breath as he fixed his brown eyes onto Morgana.

“How can you tell?” Sakamoto wheezily asked. He looked exhausted from his run away from us and then back to us, honestly he was lucky that he had managed to get away from the Shadows before any of them had seen him and been able to attack him due to his current defenceless state; I hope he wouldn’t keep running off otherwise I was tying him to myself or Amamiya.

“There’s a lack of distortion here, meaning the Ruler’s control over this area in the physical world is weak which is reflected here in these safe rooms,” Morgana explained. As if to punctuate the statement, the surroundings flickered, fading to a classroom before changing back to the safe room we were currently inside.

“Is this a classroom?!” Sakamoto asked. That should have been fairly obvious from how the room’s physical setting had looked with a blackboard and desk for the teacher, it just happened to be lacking the desks and chairs for students since the table and chairs of the safe room had taken up the floor instead of them appearing, almost all safe rooms in this place were classrooms since it was where Kamoshida’s real world influence was the weakest.

“Now do you understand? This place is another reality that the Ruler’s heart projects,” Morgana explained. Sakamoto claimed that this made no sense with him looking to be incredibly distressed by the information he was being given. “One could say it’s a world in which one’s distorted desires have materialised. I call such a place, a Palace,” Morgana explained. Interesting, to use the same terminology that me and the Velvet Room denizens even though I had never met him… and then there were his eyes, that familiar blue colour.

“The distortion is based on the fact that the real Kamoshida perceives our school as his own castle,” I added on. Sakamoto was baffled by the knowledge that it had become this way through sheer thought, baffled enough to start laughing. “I’m not joking Sakamoto. Morgana already said this is another reality. As a whole, it’s called the Metaverse and is a place where a person’s cognition, their mental perception of things, places or even actions can affect them,” I stated.

“That son of a bitch!” Sakamoto suddenly yelled. I was so glad this was a safe room otherwise I’d be worried about being found by Shadows, Morgana stated that Sakamoto really hated Kamoshida, this caused Sakamoto to whip around to face the cat creature with a boiling magma rage shimmering within his brown eyes and a dark expression twisting across his face. “Hate doesn’t even cover how I feel! Everything is that asshole’s fault!” Sakamoto declared.

“I don’t know what happened between you two, but don’t let your emotions get the better of you. His lackeys are everywhere inside this castle,” Morgana warned. His eyes then drifted over to Amamiya who was quiet as he watched us. “You’re curious about your outfit, aren’t you?” Morgana asked. Amamiya looked down at himself and pulled out his hands.

“Honestly… yes, why am I dressed like this?” Amamiya asked. He seemed confused about why he was dressed in the manner that he was, admittedly it was a little unusual but that was only because of how different it was to my own outfit; Sakamoto admitted that he was also curious about the outfit change, seemingly calming down at the change of topic and focus.

“That is a result of being in this world. A Palace is born from the Ruler’s distortion, as a result that tends to distort anything that enters this place like the Shadows, they’re actually things born of human stories and tales but entering this place twists them to fit the Ruler’s cognition. In order to remain unaffected, a Persona is necessary since it grants the wielder a mask to protect them and armour to support them. A Persona is born of a Will of Rebellion, therefore the Rebel’s Armour takes the form of what the person believes a rebel looks like. This is the image of rebellion held in your heart and this is mine,” I explained. I gestured to our two outfits when I spoke my last sentence.

“Uuugh, I’m so fed up with all this! I’m more curious about you, Morgana, than their clothes! What the hell are you anyways!?” Sakamoto demanded. I wonder if my explanation had been too over the head, a quick glance at Amamiya showed he was inspecting his outfit before smiling slightly, okay so it had likely only gone over Sakamoto’s head than it had Amamiya’s.

“I’m a human, an honest to god human!” Morgana declared. I proceeded to look at the cat creature with a disbelieving look on my face, simply because it was too weird, how could this entity be a human when he looked nothing like a human; even Sakamoto pointed out how he was more cat than human. “This is, well… it’s because I lost my true form… I think,” Morgana justified. Had it taken him so long to rebel and awaken Zorro that he’d been trapped in his distortion or was it something else? I wish I could find Igor and Lavenza. “But I do know how to regain my true form. The reason why I snuck in here was for a preliminary investigation of those means. Well, I ended up getting caught though,” Morgana explained. He then proceeded to jump into the air as a fierce expression took over the morose look that had been on his face moments ago. “Besides, I’ve been tortured by Kamoshida too! I’m going to make him pay for sure!” Morgana declared.

“What is this, a manga? This is seriously crazy,” Sakamoto stated. Morgana insisted we get going and insisted he would be relying upon both me and Amamiya this time. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna force it all on you two. I thought it might help, so…,” Sakamoto stated. He then reached inside a pocket and pulled out a gun, causing me to jump back in surprise. “I bought this just in case! It’s a model gun though, so it only makes sounds!” Sakamoto explained. I let out a thankful breath of air before relaxing.

“A model… it looks really real though,” Amamiya acknowledged. That was exactly why it had frightened me so, even though I had never seen a real one, it had seemed convincing enough to startle me slightly… wait convincing enough, if the Shadows or even Shadow Kamoshida saw this, then how would they react, would their cognition cause it to fire, after all it was everyone’s cognition that affected things not just one person’s perception.

“Yeah, since it looks real, it’ll at least fake ‘em out. I also brought some medicine too. You know what they say: ‘Providin’ is pre… something’. Huh? Huh?” Sakamoto commented. He pulled out the medicines that he brought with him so I took a hold of them and slipped them into one of my skirt’s pockets as Morgana claimed Sakamoto had planned this from the start.

“You might as well take the gun, Amamiya, better for you to have it than Sakamoto. Once we’re all good, we can continue with the infiltration,” I suggested. Amamiya took a hold of the gun with his left hand and tucked it into his coat pocket; I turned to the door and moved over to it pressing my ear against the door and I heard mutterings from outside. “I think guards are still out there, keep quiet,” I insisted. I then silently pulled the door open slightly.

“Hm, I thought I just heard something move over there… guess it was my imagination. And what of the slaves?” One of the three knights outside asked. Another, though I couldn’t tell which, responded that they were in the training hall and commented that they were screaming in pain by now. “Very well. By the way, I heard we may have intruders around. Stay on your guard,” the knight insisted. With that the three split up, two darted over the bridge while one went further into the dungeon.

“Did you hear that?” Morgana asked. I opened the door fully and the four of us scurried out to occupy the space the knights had been in previously, Sakamoto confirmed that they had mentioned a training hall. “I think that’s just a little further ahead. Let’s go!” Morgana insisted. With a round of agreement from all of us, we turned to face the area the single Shadow had rushed in.

Pulling my notebook out of my pocket, I flicked through until I reached the map page and started to unfold it into its’ much larger form, Sakamoto let out a yelp in surprise at the object’s size since it displayed a rough but comprehensive enough map of the Palace I had explored with lots of staples and Sellotape holding the different pieces of paper together.

“A map, you actually drew a map of this place,” Morgana commented. The cat creature bounded over to me as I set the object on the ground and knelt beside it, mentally tracing the route we would need to take in order to reach the training hall, I’d been near it but never inside as the door had been locked when I was near it. “That’s pretty impressive,” Morgana commented.

“It’s just a sketch, nothing to get surprised about,” I insisted. With my tracing finished, I folded the sketch back up and closed my notebook whilst rising to my feet. “Down the stairs at the end and turn left, that will lead us in the direction of the training hall,” I explained. I tucked the object away as Amamiya nodded his head.

With our direction set, we proceeded to move towards the stairs before Amamiya suddenly stopped and threw his arm out in order to keep any of us who were behind from getting ahead of him, me and Morgana were watching the rear and sides for an ambush with Sakamoto between our triangle shaped arrangement. Darting out of position I saw that down at the bottom of the steps was a Shadow marching about in direct eyesight of us and that meant if we got within a certain distance, it would see us.

“There’s a guard on duty here, as Warrior Girl said, the way to the training hall is just beyond those bars,” Morgana lamented. He had also moved up to stand beside us, Sakamoto asked if we were going to fight it. “Seems like it. Just don’t let it notice you beforehand, if it does the Palace’s security level will rise,” Morgana explained. However, the other two seemed baffled by this phrasing they’d just heard.

“The Shadows are under the command of the Ruler, but that is achieved by the masks they wear. Those masks act as threads connecting the Shadows to each other and the Ruler, if we’re spotted then even if we beat that Shadow other Shadows will be sent to our location and the Ruler will be more alert causing more Shadows to appear, the more we get seen then the harder it will be to infiltrate the Palace,” I explained. The two boys had concerned looks on their faces.

“A-And what do we do if that happens? Run away?” Sakamoto suggested. He seemed really nervous but given that he was the only one of us who couldn’t fight, he had every right to be concerned about an increase in Shadows since that would made the fights occur more often and put him in a much more precarious position than the current low level of security would be putting him in.

“What if we ambush the enemies we come across if we do cause an increase?” Amamiya suggested. I looked over at the boy and raised an eyebrow in surprise at his suggestion. “If the masks connect the Shadows to each other and the Ruler, then when we tear off the masks during an ambush that should disrupt the connection and not disturb either of the others,” Amamiya reasoned. It was a pretty sound suggestion, a possibility I had never considered since I’d always just hid from Shadows and ambushed them as much as possible.

“It could work, we won’t know unless we try but I’d rather we avoid raising the security level at all, it’ll cause less trouble that way,” Morgana insisted. Sakamoto claimed it sounded complicated, but we just decided to start our descent down the stairs, it was slow going as we kept ourselves pressed against the wall to minimise being seen as much as possible and only moving down when the knight had turned away.

Once we reached the base of the steps, Amamiya darted out from our position, moving with an almost elegant grace as he seemed to glide over the stones underfoot until he reached the knight. Pouncing up onto the knight’s shoulders, he maintained his balance as the knight briefly writhed about in surprise at the sudden appearance of someone on its’ shoulders.

“I’ll reveal your true form!” Amamiya declared. He tore the mask off and then jumped off the knight as it turned to goo and reformed as two Mandrakes, pinkish bodies that looked more like roots and made me question how they stood up, a green neck and forehead shaped like leaves, blank white faces and red flower petals draping down like hair.

“Mandrakes! They’re weak to Fire which we can’t hit them with. Unfortunately, they’re also resistant to my Earth spells,” I warned. Since that was the case there was at least one thing I could so, quickly pulling of my mask, Phantom appeared behind me. “Makakaja,” I called. I focused the Support spell so that it would effect Amamiya, a pale greenish glow of light surrounded him an upwards surging fashion. “I’ve raised your magical attack; it won’t last long but your Spells will hit harder now!” I advised.

Amamiya’s answer was to pull of his mask and summon out Arsène, the demonic gentleman proceeded to unleash a wave of cursed energy at one of the Mandrakes, the attack was enough to send it stumbling back. Morgana pulled out Zorro and had his Garu Spell tear into the Mandrake that hadn’t been injured, the attack didn’t send it stumbling but that was expected.

The less dazed Mandrake proceeded to flip onto its’ back and then pounced forward with its’ lower roots stretched out. It ploughed into Amamiya, sending him stumbling backwards as he gasped for air, the other Mandrake managed to recover but it clearly wasn’t in any state to attack just yet. Thankfully, the case wasn’t the same for Amamiya who got back up to his feet and immediately unleashed Arsène once more.

Sending out a boiling surge of cursed magic, the Persona cleaved through the still strong Mandrake, weakening it further. A swift sword swing from Morgana and a quick Gry Spell from me finished of the two Shadows. Gathering up the dropped money, I motioned towards the door that we needed to take, Amamiya carefully pushed it open as we gathered behind the ravenette in case an enemy was on the other side.

Luckily there wasn’t, although we had entered a room lit only by torches that cast eerie shadows around us since they burned with an odd combination of purple and yellow flames and it was filled with a sort of ominous silence that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Sakamoto and Morgana discussed our destination which thankfully broke the oppressive silence briefly, we descended down the steps and tried to go further when Amamiya suddenly threw himself backwards, almost falling over in the process.

I lunged forward and looped my arms around the boy, keeping him up right when his flailing arms hadn’t helped to keep him up. Morgana edged forward and looked around the corner before turning back and mouthing guards at me, that would explain why Amamiya had thrown himself backwards, in an attempt to avoid being seen.

“Hey, have you seen anyone who looks like an intruder?” A voice asked. A negative answer came, I removed my arms from Amamiya who had regained his footing and crouched low moving up to the edge with the other three gathering close to me; Morgana quietly complained about how it would be impossible to dodge them given the close confines and lack of hiding places around the corner.

“Then, what do we do? Should we try and take ‘em down like before?” Sakamoto asked. His voice was strained in an attempt to be as quiet as possible, Morgana shook his head and warned how we still had a way to go and conserving energy was best. “I-I see… sorry…,” Sakamoto responded. I reached back and patted the boy on the shoulder.

“No need, this is new to you, there’s a lot for you to learn even if it is as a spectator,” I reassured. The two boys were so out of their depths that it couldn’t even be spun into being a joke, I couldn’t even imagine how Sakamoto was feeling at being in this situation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was similar to how I felt when first witnessing Shadow Ouvrard and her malicious opera of madness.

“Dammit, I wish I could fight… I’d at least be able to help out a little bit. But all I got is this toy from earlier, I’m such a loser,” Sakamoto bemoaned. His face was twisted up into a strained and sorrowful expression as he spoke those words; I couldn’t believe he was saying such things, a loser was the furthest thing from my mind when I considered Sakamoto, he had been considerate enough to get a hold of medicines for us and whilst the model gun might not be the most useful thing in the world, it still showed that he cared enough to think of something that might just scare the Shadows.

“Huh? Do you mean that gun?” Morgana asked. Sakamoto confirmed this and admitted that whilst it looked real, it didn’t even shoot anything. “I see. Well, there is a way,” Morgana decided. His eyes seemed to sparkle as he said those words causing me to raise my eyebrow in silent questioning. “Okay, we’ll use that to take down the enemies!” Morgana declared. His voice had gone slightly higher than it had before but not enough to draw attention.

“What!? Were you listenin’ to me? It don’t even shoot pellets,” Sakamoto protested. His voice had gone much louder than Morgana’s had but either these Shadows were partially deaf, or we were just really lucky because they still didn’t react; clanking sounded which indicated that someone had moved away from us as footsteps came closer to us implying that a Shadow was moving towards us.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure this’ll work. Attack away, Frizzy Hair!” Morgana encouraged. Amamiya looked unconvinced but shrugged his shoulders and darted out form the hiding place, the sudden appearance startled the Shadow enough for Amamiya to swing his dagger – crudely and badly enough that I flinched away at the sight – into the mask’s edge and pry it off; the goo revealed a Jack-o-Lantern, Mandrake and Pixie. “You have the gun with you, right? Point it at a Shadow and fire!” Morgana insisted.

Amamiya released his dagger causing it to vanish into blue fire and pulled the gun from his coat pocket, he pointed it at the Jack-o-Lantern and squeezed the trigger. I jumped in shock when a bang went off and something flew at the Jack-o-Lantern, pushing it back and causing it to bob and weave as if it had been hit by something painful.

“Wh-What?!” Amamiya and Sakamoto exclaimed in unison. I had thought it might be possible to make the gun work from cognition, but I hadn’t actually expected it happen; since neither of them were as experienced in this world’s bizarre rules they probably hadn’t expected anything to happen at all, Morgana on the other hand was happily bouncing around and smirking in a delighted manner.

“How about that!? Surprised? There are plenty of instances where rapid fire’s going to be more useful than swinging your dagger. Of course, you can run out of ammo, but using it all up does more good than letting it collect dust!” Morgana explained. Amamiya still seemed baffled by the fact that the model worked like a real gun as he stared at it. “Alright, I’ll show you my weapon too!” Morgana declared.

The cat creature suddenly pulled out a slingshot that seemed almost as big as him so I wondered where he had hidden it. He pulled back on the item’s elasticated band and quickly let it fly forward, carrying a pellet into the Jack-o-Lantern, forcing it to dissipate and then switched his attention to the Mandrake who was only mildly injured by it. Deciding to take the flow of battle, I pulled out my bow and knocked an arrow, the projectile sliced through the air and pierced the Pixie, forcing it to vanish and allowing me to unleash another arrow at the Mandrake dissipating it as well.

“Whoa! Did that toy gun just shoot real freakin’ BULLETS!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. Morgana filled him in on how the cognition of the enemies had transformed the toy into a real gun because of how realistic it looked, admitting that it wouldn’t have worked if it was shoddy. “I don’t get it,” Sakamoto admitted. It was probably going to take him a while to understand the complexities of this crazy place.

“Their brains perceived it a real because it looks real. Of course, that comes with the problem of an ammunition capacity limiting its’ usage in battle. But they’ll probably expect you not to use an empty weapon so the ammunition will likely be restored in each fight,” I admitted. I picked up my arrow and slid it back into the quiver and then noticed the group looking at me. “Oh, mine’s real in the physical world,” I clarified.

“Chiba, how the effin’ hell do you have a real bow?” Sakamoto asked. The answer of ‘bought it’ surprised Sakamoto so much that he silently gaped like a fish for several seconds; that was when a voice reached us demanding to know what was happening where we were and before we could hide, another Shadow showed up.

Quickly acting, I pulled my bow and arrow out, firing it into the crack of the mask, disorientating the Shadow and allowing Morgana to dart over and pry the mask off with his sword. Only a single Mandrake came out so we simply buried ammunition into it one after another until it vanished, Amamiya was admiring the gun before tucking it away into his pocket with care since he now realised what it could do.

“I wasn’t sure whether or not to bring it at first, but I’m sure glad I did,” Sakamoto admitted. I picked up my arrow and returned it to the quiver, glad to see that Sakamoto was no longer considering himself a loser simply for bringing a gun to the infiltration since it had proven to be so helpful in such a short amount of time already.

“Thank you, Sakamoto-san, this gun will be a real help,” Amamiya stated. Sakamoto seemed embarrassed as he rubbed the back of his neck, but he had a grin on his face at the same time; Morgana admitted how lucky the addition of a firearm was to have for the infiltration although he did admit that it working here was down to dumb luck as much as anything else.

“Did you really have to put it like that?” Sakamoto complained. A mildly irritated expression on his face, admittedly I had to agree with the blonde since it was a bit mean of the cat creature to phrase it the way that he had, it could be read as him mildly insulting Sakamoto which we didn’t need to do since Sakamoto was kind of known for having a hair trigger temper at school.

“Quit griping, Blondie. You’re still getting praised,” Morgana insisted. Sakamoto still looked annoyed by those words, but Morgana turned his attention to us. “Oh, by the way, we should decide how we divvy up our roles in battle from here on out. As you can see, there are quite a lot of enemies. It’ll be important to coordinate our moves well. I can keep providing intel for us, but you should decide how we fight, Frizzy Hair,” Morgana decided.

“What?!” Amamiya exclaimed. His eyes were wide and he looked down at Morgana with his complexion running a little paler than it normally was which caused me to raise an eyebrow in a silent questioning manner. “W-Why me? Shouldn’t it be you or Chiba-san? Both of you are much more experienced than I am at this fighting!” Amamiya protested. His red glove clad hands rose up in a shaky manner, as if gesturing for the situation to keep away from him.

“Um… well I don’t know, to be honest,” Morgana admitted. That only seemed to make Amamiya feel even worse from the slightly parted mouth and the wider eyes which made me convinced they would drop out if they got any wider. “I just have a good feeling that you’re the perfect candidate to lead us,” Morgana explained. That was a weird thing to say given how little he knew of Amamiya and it certainly didn’t help to reassure Amamiya.

“You’re fast,” I spoke up. Amamiya looked at me, a slight note of calm coming to his posture. “I don’t mean physically but mentally. You instantly ordered a Wind Spell attack on a Jack-o-Lantern after a brief fight where you learned its’ weakness. You only needed one display of an ambush to learn how to do it yourself. Arsène is the most powerful Persona I’ve seen. You being the leader isn’t that inconceivable,” I explained. I then walked over and settled a comforting hand on Amamiya’s shoulder. “Besides, me and Morgana will be there to help you should you ever need it. You lead us and we will support you as a safety net,” I reassured.

“Okay… okay, I’ll try. But if it looks like I’m doing a bad job, one of you two had better take over,” Amamiya insisted. A confirmation of agreement came from both me and Morgana and with that, we turned to face the next area; we followed the pathway down before coming upon a knight, another successful ambush revealed two Jack-o-Lanterns which were down by one blast of Wind from Morgana to one of them and a combined Gravity and Curse strike from me and Amamiya on the other.

We crossed the bridge to the next area but had to duck behind the corner of the arch that block a Shadow from a vision, Morgana had managed to sniff it out before we got into trouble by being spotted. We couldn’t risk peeking around the corner but given the route we’d taken, I knew this was absolutely the door that was outside the Training Hall… typical, there being a road block to a place we needed to reach urgently.

“A guard… this is definitely where we need to be going, too…,” Morgana muttered. Sakamoto asked if we were going to take it down. “I guess that’s our only chance. But wait, this might be a good time… okay, I’ve decided! I’m going to teach you two a special way to fight enemies!” Morgana quietly declared. Amamiya softly asked if it was a new technique. “Something like that! Let’s go!” Morgana insisted. We dived out of the corner and I rammed my naginata into the mask and pried it free, revealing a Pixie.

“Listen, there’s a distinct flow to battles. Let me show you. After all, seeing is… something? First! Knock down all the enemies! Everything starts at that crucial step!” Morgana explained. He then whipped out his slingshot and fired a pellet at the Pixie, dropping it to the ground like a sack of rocks. “Alright! Now we rush in for an All-Out Attack!” Morgana declared. As he said those words a surge of power rushed through me that left my entire body tingling with a seemingly infinite well of energy; Morgana then leapt into the air in an arch and swung his sabre down hard to the Pixie, shrugging my shoulders I followed the cat creature with Amamiya right behind me, bringing our weapons down onto the Pixie in a forceful flaying that dissipated it as surely as any of Amamiya’s Curse Spells.

“Okay, Morgana. What exactly was that insanity we just unleashed?” I questioned. I had never felt such a sensation even when landing my own strikes on a Shadow’s weakness, was it something that only came from working with other Persona users? If so, that would explain why I’d never felt that rush of power before since I’d been reluctant to draw potential Persona users into this world for risk of what would happen if they never Awakened to their potential. Elizabeth didn’t technically count since she used a Compendium instead of her own Persona. But if the requirement for its’ usage was true, how did Morgana know about it? Had he worked with other Persona users before us?

“I told you; it’s called an All-Out Attack. If you manage to knock all the enemies down, you might be able to use it to beat them all at once,” Morgana explained. Sakamoto agreed that the battle had been over quick. “It’s a concentrated attack on defenceless enemies, after all. Now as I mentioned before Frizzy Hair, I want you to be the head of our command. You can decide when we use this. Strike the enemy’s weakness, knock them all down, then do an All-Out Attack! That’s the ideal pattern of battle,” Morgana added on.

“Alright,” Amamiya agreed. He still looked a little unsettled by another addition to his mantle of leadership, but nothing like before when it had been given to him; Sakamoto darted passed us and proceeded to push open the door that had been guarded by the Shadow so that we could slip inside the building. “Is this it?” Amamiya asked. I nodded my head as an answer.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 12: - Hoist the Flag!

“Kamoshida’s… Training Hall… of Love? What kinda bullshit is this?!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Not that I blamed him, Kamoshida wouldn’t know what love was if someone tattooed the all the literary definitions of it over their fists and then punched him with it, repeatedly. With a small scowl on my face, I moved around the wooden table and benches that were sat outside the door and pushed open the metal door that barred our way.

The moment it opened, something reached my ears… a sound like something swinging fast through the air stirring it up and then striking something with significant force. Screams carried through the air alongside that sound and I felt my blood chill at the possibility of what was ahead, red banners hung from the cold stone walls that enveloped us, an eerie mist drifted over the floor that was lower down.

I carefully made my way to the steps, descending down them and seeing the cells surrounding the sides of this so-called training hall. The sound was getting louder and when I crossed the bridge, to reach one set of the cells, I realised the sound was coming from the cell in front of me which Sakamoto also realised. The blonde darted passed me to look through the bars before letting out a small and terrified scream whilst jumping backwards, the rest of us rushed over and the sight I saw made me feel sick.

The inside was a depressed area allowing us to look down on the scene from above, it was set up like for a volleyball match, net stretching across the centre of the wooden floors and people in the Shūjin tracksuit filled the area. But instead of playing volleyball, some of the cognitions were forced to hold onto the netting whilst Shadows swung wooden poles into their backs! I clamped a hand over my mouth in an attempt to suppress the nausea that was rising up inside of me.

“Dammit! This is bullshit!” Sakamoto protested. He looked torn between rage and tears, a glisten in his eyes at odds with the flames that also burned there; Morgana immediately ordered Sakamoto to keep his voice down, but the Shadows inside didn’t even respond to the sounds and instead continued with their macabre actions. “But this is beyond messed up!” Sakamoto protested. I managed to pull my hand away from my mouth, but it was mechanical and robotic in movements as my stomach still churned with the desire to throw up. “How do I open this?” Sakamoto asked.

“Stop it!” A feeble voice cried. I looked into the cell once more, to an area that was right beside the cell bars, seeing a bruised and battered cognition walk up to us. “Leave us alone… it’s useless,” The Cognition protested. Sakamoto was shocked into mostly silence and this allowed another cognition to walk over and spout an agreement with the other one that basically amount to the fact that they didn’t want to get executed.

“You’re telling me you want to stay in a place like this?!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Oh shoot, we hadn’t informed Sakamoto that the people in here outside of the four of us were just puppets, I’d been far too focused on the staying alive, protecting Sakamoto and helping Morgana to mentor Amamiya facets that I hadn’t stopped to question why Sakamoto had wanted to come to this location in the first place.

“Wait a minute… were you planning on taking these guys out of here?” Morgana asked. It seems the cat creature had also just caught on to the fact Sakamoto was still oblivious to the cognitions’ true nature; Sakamoto made the fine point that they couldn’t just be left here… had they actually been physical people instead of an amalgamation of distorted thoughts. “How stupid can you be?” Morgana questioned.

“They aren’t real Sakamoto,” I spoke up. I cut across whatever angry comment Sakamoto had been about to spit out at Morgana. “We already told you how this castle is the school viewed through Kamoshida’s distorted heart. Down there…,” I added on. I gestured towards the cognitions, so he knew what I meant. “Are simply recreations of the actual flesh and blood people who attend Shūjin. They’re called cognitions, distorted thoughts given shape and a minor amount of free will but only based upon what the Ruler believes about them. They are nothing like us,” I finished up.

“So… they’re people… made from how Kamoshida… views the real ones,” Amamiya rationalised. I turned to look at the boy who gave a disgusted side look to the sight beside us but seemed more than happy to focus on the new information. “If they are just thought, then saving them wouldn’t help at all. It’s more like they’re very convincing dolls,” Amamiya stated.

“The hell!? Why’s it gotta be so complicated!?” Sakamoto protested. He seemed to have calmed down until he realised something and an angry looked once more descended upon his face. “So, the school’s a castle and the students are slaves. It’s so on point that it makes me laugh. This really is the inside of that asshole’s head,” Sakamoto hissed. His hatred for Kamoshida laced every word he had spoken.

“Yes, and the unfortunate truth is that if this is how Kamoshida views them in here, it’s how they’re treated in reality,” I admitted. Morgana practically wilted at that, shoulders dropping and his ears flattening to the back of his head. “I already knew the rumours of physical abuse were true… but this is vile… Kamoshida truly is a degenerate,” I commented.

“Oh yeah, now I remember! These guys are on the volleyball team! The one Kamoshida coaches!” Sakamoto exclaimed. It seemed he had finally understood what the significance of this meant, his head then almost mechanically turned to me. “Wait, the rumours are true?” Sakamoto asked. I nodded my head to confirm this, “Then why didn’t you-!” Sakamoto began to yell before shaking his head and cooling off. “Nah, even if it’s you Chiba, no one would listen and your life would be as screwed as mine by that bastard!” Sakamoto realised. A frown curled onto my lips at those words, Sakamoto had realised it without needing to say anything, he might not be book smart but he had a lot of common sense.

“This is truly awful, I can’t believe someone would treat real people like this,” Morgana whispered. Amamiya had said nothing, so I glanced at him and saw a hard and cold look on his face as he glared down into the pit, his grey eyes burned with a sort of cold fury as his entire posture radiated with anger. “They must be physically abused every day. There’s no way they’d be so beat up normally,” Morgana admitted.

“If they’re true, wouldn’t this be somethin’ to report to the police?” Sakamoto suggested. He then reached into his pocket and pulled his white cased phone out. “I’ll use these guys as evidence,” Sakamoto decided. Knowing what he was going to do I reached out and gently covered his phone, causing the blonde to look over at me in surprise.

“You think I didn’t already try it; phones don’t work in this world. We can’t take a picture of them, otherwise I would have done so earlier and gone to the police,” I revealed. Removing my hand, I allowed Sakamoto to look and he saw that the phone was indeed not functioning like it used to, a quick look at Amamiya showed he had his own silver cased phone out to check the same thing

“It really isn’t workin’. We can use the navigation app but the camera’s a no go!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. The words ‘navigation app’ got repeated by me and Morgana as I looked confusingly between the two boys, confused by what they were talking about, there was no such thing as an app that let one enter the Metaverse, after all no one without a Persona should know it exists without having been brought in. “That’s what we used to come here,” Sakamoto confirmed.

“I’ve got an idea in mind to streamline your ability to search for Palaces my dear, it’ll take a bit of time, but rest assured it will come in handy,” Igor’s voice echoed in my mind. He had been trying to help me when I angrily muttered about the long delay of finding out the form of Kamoshida’s Palace… but if this app was Igor’s finished project, then why hadn’t he given it to me? Oh, where had you gone?

“Whatever you do is fine but we’re going to get caught if we stand around like this. We need to head back!” Morgana insisted. With that bit of encouragement and warning, Sakamoto vowed to memorise all the faces he saw in the accursed cell; I glanced around and noticed some other cells that had sounds coming out of them.

“There are others, do you want to look?” I asked. Sakamoto agreed and Amamiya followed quickly after, I guided them to the next cell and we looked inside seeing a treadmill like object running at a fast speed with three cognitions running on it, behind them was a giant spinning spiked roll that the treadmill would be dragging them back to and in front of them hanging in the air was a teapot with the spout pointing at the cognitions. “What on earth?” I asked. The previous one was horrific, but this was bizarrely so, I heard one of the cognitions beg for water.

“Not givin’ athletes water even for tough trainin’ is a common thing in the real world too. That sack of shit! I’m gonna try and memorise all these guys’ faces before we go back,” Sakamoto answered. The blonde gripped the bars of the cell tight and stared down at the cognitions’ faces, desperately attempting to fulfil his self-imposed task of memorising the faces to better aid those in the physical world.

“Maybe, but that’s probably done to try and help build endurance. This is straight up torture,” Amamiya commented. A scowl was firmly fixed onto his lips as he glared down at the sight, Sakamoto eventually pulled back and we moved down to the final cell; only for Amamiya to jump back slightly when we saw what was inside as my nausea returned with a vengeance, Morgana’s ears flicked back with a small moan slipping from him and Sakamoto practically tried to squeeze himself through the bars of the cell.

“The hell? This ain’t trainin’ at all… it’s just violence!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Not that he could be blamed, a single cognition was hanging from the ceiling of the cell over a volleyball set up and a freaking cannon was strapped to the wall, launching volleyballs at the cognition who couldn’t even try and swing to avoid them, this scene kept repeating in a vicious cycle of load, launch, strike, reload as the cognition kept screaming his pain. “This mean he’s doin’ something similar in reality too, right? Damn that bastard!” Sakamoto hissed.

“The harsh spikes,” I realised. Sakamoto spun around to look at me as did Amamiya and Morgana. “Kamoshida has the awful habit of harshly spiking balls at students, I’ve seen him do it in P.E. to Mishima-san and even today on Amamiya-san,” I explained. Amamiya realised what I meant as his hands curled into fists.

“Just how much of a monster is he?” Amamiya hissed. None of us had an answer for him but the scenes we’d been forced to endure would say something pretty ugly about this man. “You better hurry up Sakamoto,” Amamiya insisted. Sakamoto insisted he knew and turned back to staring into the cell. “Are you okay Chiba-san?” Amamiya asked. His tone had gone soft, similar to how it was in the physical world but with a touch of sternness to it, his hand rested gently on my shoulder as he peered down at me.

“No… I most certainly am not okay Amamiya-san. I knew he was a degenerate beast, but this… this is beyond anything I’d ever considered. Kamoshida must be stopped,” I answered. My hands curled into tight fists, bunching up the skirt I wore; no words escaped Amamiya, but his hand slid down the sheer covering on my shoulders to press against the area between my shoulder blades and moved in soothing rubs. “Thank you for worrying Amamiya-san,” I admitted. It was kind of him to care.

“Okay! I got them! Let’s book it!” Sakamoto declared. He spun around and froze when he saw me and Amamiya then walked up to me. “Chiba, you okay? You look pale,” Sakamoto asked. I gave a short and sharp nod as an answer, Morgana encouraged us to escape and we all proceeded to face the pathway out of this place; our back track was quite easy as we came across no Shadows and easily came out into the dungeons where the cognitions had been imprisoned before. “Alright, we’re back. We gotta get outta here, quick!” Sakamoto insisted.

“The watch post near the training hall has ceased reporting!” A voice bellowed. All of us jumped and turned to face its’ direction with slightly panicked looks on our faces, seriously that was too close and too well timed. “Chances of intruder activity are extremely high! All personnel increase security measures!” The voice added on.

“And that is our cue to run like hell,” I suggested. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance as a knight showed up and we were all forced to dive behind boxes to avoid being discovered. “We can’t use a shortcut with this high a security level, we’re going to have to leave the way we got in,” I insisted. The boys looked confused but now was no time to explain shortcuts, we were forced to stealth our way back through the dungeons and out to the entrance hall stairway that connected down to the dungeons.

“The exit’s this way! Let’s hurry!” Morgana insisted. We ran up the stairs and into the hallway, only to come across an immediate problem as not only did several knights cut into our path, including one clad in gold unlike the dull grey the others wore which identified it as a captain, but Shadow Kamoshida was there as well; all four of us pulled up in shock as Shadow Kamoshida glared at us with disdain in his eyes and I immediately summoned my naginata to my side.

“You knaves again? To think you’d make the same mistake again. You’re hopeless!” Shadow Kamoshida spat. Sakamoto moved forward and snapped that the school wasn’t Kamoshida’s castle and he had successfully memorised the cognitions’ faces. “It seems it’s true when they say ‘barking dogs seldom bite’. How far the star runner of the track team has fallen,” Kamoshida mocked.

“And like you didn’t have a hand in that,” I accused. Venom laced each word as I snarled at the dark echo of Kamoshida’s warped and twisted beliefs and desires; Shadow Kamoshida looked over at me with those disturbed gold eyes and I saw the lecherous look appear within them. “You’re the kind of twisted, pathetic, lowly mongrel who’d destroy anything you have no control over if it threatened you,” I snapped.

“Hah, all I’m doing is speaking of the ‘Track Traitor’ who acted in violence, ending his teammates’ dreams,” Shadow Kamoshida responded. A mocking note of sympathy within his voice as his gold eyes cut to a Sakamoto who was practically vibrating with barely contained rage. “Oh, I can imagine the pain of the others who were dragged under with your… selfish act,” Shadow Kamoshida carried on.

“Violence? Track Traitor?” Amamiya-san asked. Shadow Kamoshida let out a mocking laugh as he seemed to find it funny that Amamiya was accompanying Sakamoto without knowing about Sakamoto’s past; I tightened my grip around the naginata I held, wondering if I should say anything about this situation to Amamiya but it wasn’t my place to speak of another’s life.

“He betrayed his teammates and crushed their hopes, yet he still carries on as carefree as ever,” Shadow Kamoshida lied. That was a bold-faced lie, Sakamoto wasn’t carefree, he had burdened himself with the regret of what had happen to the track team and held such anger towards Kamoshida that it seemed Sakamoto had no way to find any joy with his life due to the pain he’d endured because of this scum.

“That’s not true!” Sakamoto yelled. His face was twisted up in pain as he glared at Shadow Kamoshida, but the damned pervert claimed that Amamiya had blindly trusted Sakamoto and been led right to his death; with that he turned away from us and ordered his men to ‘dispose’ of us, I immediately spun around and slammed my hand into Sakamoto sternum.

With my normal physical strength and the enhancement of cognition, I forced Sakamoto to go sliding back from the encirclement that we’d been trapped within just as the ordinary knights transformed into Bicorns, black horses with white manes, two curled green horns, red eyes and gold capped hooves. Me, Amamiya and Morgana immediately dropped into stances as I put my back against Amamiya’s and nudged Morgana so that he stood at our sides.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you ‘cause King Kamoshida told us! I’ll kill you ‘cause that’s what he wants!” A Bicorn howled. He reared up and flailed his front legs at us, he then charged and rammed into Amamiya – I felt the vibration pass through him to me – which caused Amamiya to slump over from the sensations I could feel; the other two proceeded to do the same to me and Morgana, Morgana dodged it at the last second and I managed to block it in time.

“Don’t use Arsène’s Curse spell! They’re resistant to it!” I warned. Their weakness was electricity, which we also didn’t have access to, I quickly flung a Tera at the nearest Bicorn, the bang of a gun echoed behind me as Morgana used his wind to attack a different one; but as if to make the situation worse more knights charged up to surround us.

They unleashed a collective attack as one, each ploughing into one of us several times in quick succession. I tried to block and dodge them as much as possible, but eventually I was forced to the ground, collapsing into a heap. Amamiya was already on the ground with a knight captain stomping on his chest, an ordinary knight pinned me down and Morgana was eventually knocked down only for Shadow Kamoshida to step on the cat creature and pin him down as well, Morgana tried to insult Shadow Kamoshida but couldn’t finish it.

“I bet you simply came here on a whim and ended up like this. Isn’t that right?” Shadow Kamoshida asked. I twisted my head around to look at Sakamoto who was slumped to the floor on his knees, a weak no escaped from him in response. “What a worthless piece of trash, getting emotional so quickly… how dare you raise your hand at me,” Shadow Kamoshida mocked. A mocking smirk with the glimmer of teeth appearing at the edge of the upper lip. “Though it was only temporary, have you forgotten my kindness in supervising track practice?” Shadow Kamoshida asked.

“Wasn’t no practice! It was physical abuse! You just didn’t like our team!” Sakamoto yelled. He fell forward and slammed his fists into the red carpet beneath him, Shadow Kamoshida claimed that only he needed to achieve results; I lifted my arms up and started to try and push the knight’s armoured foot off of me, but cognition was a powerful thing and all the things I knew about the lack of proper leverage, the implied weight of the knight and my own strength prevented me from believing I could push him off.

“That coach who got fired was hopeless too. Had he not opposed me with a sound argument, I would’ve settled it with only breaking his star’s leg,” Shadow Kamoshida admitted. That got Sakamoto’s attention as he lifted his head up to look at the Shadow with surprise in wide brown eyes. “Do you need me to deal with your other leg too? The school will call it self-defence anyway!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. Are you kidding? Someone at school knew Kamoshida had broken Sakamoto’s leg and just covered it up! How could they be that heartless?!

“Dammit… am I gonna lose again?” Sakamoto whispered. His eyes were downcast as his expression twisted into one of pain, tears started to bleed into his eyes. “Not only can I not run anymore… the track team is gone too ‘cause of this asshole,” Sakamoto admitted. Morgana realised that this was the source of Sakamoto’s deep rage for Kamoshida, he had suffered perhaps more than anyone at Kamoshida’s disgusting hands.

“Once these three are dealt with, you’re next,” Shadow Kamoshida announced. He then proceeded to start laughing in that egotistical manner that irritated my ears, we were in serious trouble if we didn’t manage to escape from our predicament and escape from this Palace; if I could just reach my mask then I might be able to use Phantom to get us out of here.

“Are you going to let him talk to you like that!? You can’t forgive him, right?! You have to stand up for yourself!” Amamiya yelled. Sakamoto lifted his head as he looked at Amamiya who was struggling as much as I was to try and escape from his own entrapment, if there was ever a time for Sakamoto to Awaken his Persona, it was here and now! Facing down the one that caused him so much pain, so much suffering, who took away his happiness… if we wanted to escape with any certainty, Sakamoto had to rebel!

“Rebel!” I yelled. Sakamoto looked at me, his eyes wide with surprise. “You had the potential within you all along! You only needed to rebel! Find your reason to fight back against this unfair world! And rebel!” I encouraged. The words must have finally clicked into place as Sakamoto pulled himself upright, tears fading as rage swelled.

“You’re both right. Everything that was important to me was taken by him… I’ll never get ‘em back!” Sakamoto admitted. Shadow Kamoshida started to run his mouth but I couldn’t care less about what was being said by that filth. “No… that’s what you are,” Sakamoto stated. An almost deadly calm surrounded the blonde as he pushed himself to his feet. “All you think about is using people, you’re the real scumbag, Kamoshida!” Sakamoto snapped. He then began to approach the Ruler who ordered one of his knights to silence Sakamoto. “Stop lookin’ down on me with that stupid smile on your face!” Sakamoto ordered.

It was enough. The fire surged so brightly at that moment and Sakamoto immediately began to scream in pain, his eyes became the same eerie gold as any Shadow and he reached up to grip his head. His fingers dug in tightly as he collapsed back onto his knees, his forehead pressed against the ground as he writhed back and forth across it, eventually rolling over onto his back. Sakamoto must have been listening to his Persona call to him before eventually rolling back onto his front and pushing up onto his knees.

When Sakamoto lifted his head up, a skull mask covering the entirety of his face from the top of his mouth upwards in a pale greyish-white shade was planted there. The Knight Captain was dismissive of Sakamoto and seemed prepared to cut off Amamiya’s head, but as for Sakamoto he didn’t need any information from us, instead Sakamoto easily raised his hands and gripped the mask’s edge, quickly pulling it off and allowing blood to drip down his face briefly before the blue fire surged forward to consume him.

When the fire faded and moved back behind, Sakamoto’s outfit had been transformed into his Rebel’s Armour, which consisted of a black jacket with elbow pads and pants with knee pads; looped around the waist was a double-sided holster belt with ammo on each side, a red ascot was twisted around his neck, sturdy black combat boots and a pair of yellow gloves with metal plates running across the knuckles. Then the fire completely diminished and Sakamoto’s Persona could finally be seen.

The Persona looked like a cartoonish caricature of classic pirates in media, with an eyepatch, prosthetic right arm and captain's hat with a skull and crossbones design. It wore a blue shirt, a pair of black pants with golden trim, white boots, and a long flowing red cape. The torso was covered by a grey harness that ended in a pair of cutlasses just below the neck with a pair of anchor ornaments on chains dangling from the harness. The face was nothing but a skull with a red-yellow eye, the frame was also extremely thin, implying that the Persona’s entire body was nothing but a skeleton beneath the clothes. The left hand was covered by a yellow glove but with sharp jagged nails whilst the cannon that replaced the right hand is golden.

The flying pirate ship was barely large enough to carry the Persona, comparable in size to a surfboard. It was seemingly made of black wood and had both of its masts torn off with the rigging nets had also been torn off and flying in the wind, similar to the Persona’s cape. The black sails of the ship, which would normally be on the masts, had seemingly been tied and wrapped up on the bow of the ship. The ship's hull has been decorated with a large grinning face with manic red-yellow eyes similar to the Persona’s own eye, sharp white teeth and a toothy grin. Small gold cannons adorn the ship's sides. Lastly, there appears to be figurehead of a golden angelic woman adorning the bow of the ship.

“Ugh… this one as well?” Shadow Kamoshida asked. The force of the Awakening had sent the three that had been pining us down flying backwards; scrambling up to my feet I quickly moved to stand with Sakamoto as did Amamiya and Morgana. I saw that along the back of Sakamoto’s jacket was what appears to be a metal vertebral column attached to it, the Rebel’s Armour was certainly odd but no odder than mine or Amamiya’s was.

“Right on. Wassup Persona. This effin’ rocks. Now that I got this power, it’s time for payback,” Sakamoto commented. He had a wild grin on his face, likely running high on the adrenaline of having unleashed his Persona. “Yo, I’m ready. Bring it!” Sakamoto dared. The guard captain grew angry and crashed his sword down on the chequered floor, transforming into a massive, horned, red armoured knight with a white fur trimmed cape sat upon a massive black horse with a spear in hand, this was known as Eligor. “Blast him away… Captain Kidd!” Sakamoto commanded.

In response to the command, the Persona lifted its’ cannon arm and pointed it right at Eligor, firing off a powerful buzzing energy that I realised was Electricity, unfortunately for us the damn Shadow managed to dodge the attack which was only a problem for us since this Shadow, like the Bicorn, was weak to Electricity Magic.

“What troublemakers that bother King Kamoshida with trifling matters!” Eligor snarled. I looked over at Sakamoto and saw that clutched within his hand was a steel pipe, likely meant to be his Rebel’s Weapon but since a gun hadn’t been brought in with him that meant he only possessed that weapon plus his Persona’s methods of attack.

“Kamoshida’s cognition ain’t changin’ right? Then I’ll act like the troublemaker I am!” Sakamoto declared. I didn’t blame him for feeling that way and at least now that troublemaking spirit of his was being a benefit to him and the rest of us. “Let’s do this, Captain Kidd!” Sakamoto ordered. As if to make things difficult for us, Eligor thrust his spear into the air and two Bicorns surged into existence on either side of the massive horseman, looking rather pitiful by comparison.

“Yes, yes Eligor. Summon more creatures weak to Electricity,” I snidely commented. With that said I proceeded to cast a glance over at the person who’d been named our leader. “We need to be careful, Eligor’s resistant to Curse Spells as well,” I explained. Amamiya gave me a quick side glance, but I saw understanding in his eyes as he gripped his dagger.

“But you said he’s weak to Electricity!” Sakamoto declared. A wide grin on his face; without waiting for any kind of orders from Amamiya, who seemed accepting from the grin on his face, Sakamoto proceeded to blast the three Shadows with individual bolts of electricity which would only chew through his Soul Power faster but without a multi-target spell there wasn’t much to do; Sakamoto didn’t attack after knocking down the third animal.

“Arsène!” Amamiya called. The demonic gentleman manifested and swung out his sharp bladed heels to cut apart a Bicorn, which dissipated into smoke, I quickly summoned out Phantom and cast Makakaja on Morgana to raise his magical attack; Morgana was grinning as he unleashed an empowered Garu spell that tore through the remaining Bicorn leaving Eligor all alone as he climbed to his feet.

Eligor’s horse released a high whiny as he swung out his spear, slicing through Sakamoto who went stumbling back as a result on the attack but thankfully he stayed standing up. An annoyed look appeared on Sakamoto’s face as he unleashed another bolt of Electricity straight at Eligor which forced the horse to its’ knees as Eligor slumped forward slightly.

“Everyone! Attack now!” Amamiya commanded. He darted out front, his dagger tightly gripped in his hand as he leapt at the downed Shadow, the three of us quickly followed after him and we hacked and slashed – or clubbed in Sakamoto’s case – as fast as we could in order to deal as much damaged as possible; the moment Eligor began to move we leapt backwards as the horse shakily climbed to its’ feet and the armoured man pushed himself upright.

“One more strike and that should be enough!” I called out. Amamiya passed up the opportunity and instead had Morgana head out, since he was still empowered by my support spell his magic would be much greater than anyone else’s unless I cast a second Makakaja but clearly Amamiya deemed that a waste; Morgana unleashed a furious Garu that sliced through the knight’s last bit of resistance.

“I am… a loyal subject… of the glorious King Kamoshida… so why… have I lost!?” Eligor protested. He was lying practically flat against the neck of his horse whose head was also bent down rather close to the floor of the entryway; Sakamoto was grinning as he slung his pipe over his shoulders, seemingly at ease and satisfied with what was happening at the moment.

“It just proves that Kamoshida ain’t anything special,” Sakamoto commented. And with one final bolt of Electricity magic, Eligor was reduced to smoke, at that moment Sakamoto hunched over and started to breath heavily, likely since the adrenaline rush was wearing off and he had exhausted his Soul Power a fair bit. “How… ‘bout that!?” Sakamoto declared.

“Whoa… so Sakamoto had the potential too,” Morgana breathed. He was likely surprised by the revelation that he’d met three people who wielded Personas in the place that he had been imprisoned; Sakamoto declared his refusal to forgive Kamoshida even if he did apologise but Shadow Kamoshida didn’t seem to be even concerned by the fact that we’d been able to take out his guard captain.

“I told you that this is my castle. It seems you still don’t understand,” Shadow Kamoshida commented. At that moment clinking heels came and I looked over to see Takamaki walking over to Kamoshida, but she was dressed so revealing that I was positive this was a Cognition; a pink-purple animal print set of underwear with a matching cat eared headband that bore a golden tiara and pink-purple heels was all that she wore.

“Wh- Takamaki!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. His eyes had gone wide as his mouth unhinged in shock; Morgana’s fur seemed to be standing on end as well from the quick glance I shot him, meanwhile Amamiya was looking down with a rather prominent red blush staining his cheeks from what I can see underneath his mask.

“Oh… wha…what a meow-velous and beautiful girl…,” Morgana commented. But then, as if to add more evidence to the fact that this had to be a cognition, Takamaki proceeded to lean against Kamoshida in an intimate manner that almost caused me to gag in disgust at the sight; Sakamoto snapped out of his state and appropriately demanded to know what was going on.

“Something seems off,” Amamiya stated. His blush had faded somewhat but at least he seemed to be more level headed now since the initial shock of this Cognitive Takamaki’s appearance had faded now; at least even he had caught onto the fact that this Takamaki wasn’t acting anything like the beautiful blonde who we shared a class with.

“Yeah, now that you mention it… but why is she even here!?” Sakamoto questioned. He clearly hadn’t figured out that this was a Cognition yet, but we had far more pressing concerns when Kamoshida turned to look at Cognitive Takamaki and cupped her chin. “Hey! Let go of her, you perv!” Sakamoto snapped. This image was made even worse by the fact that Cognitive Takamaki seemed to be leaning into the touch which the real Takamaki would never do.

“How many times must I tell you until you understand?” Shadow Kamoshida questioned. He proceeded to look at us whilst still holding onto Cognitive Takamaki. “This is my castle, a place in which I can do whatever I want. Everyone wishes to be loved by me. That is, everyone besides slow-witted thieves like you,” Shadow Kamoshida stated. Frankly, we were the only sane people in this entire building.

“Takamaki! Say somethin’!” Sakamoto protested. Yet his voice sounded panicky, like he seemed to be worried about what was wrong with Takamaki, not that I could blame him given how disturbingly disgusting the scene was; Morgana thankfully chose that moment to inform Sakamoto of the fact that this was a Cognitive being instead of the actual Takamaki.

“Are you jealous?” Shadow Kamoshida asked. A foul smirk curling on his lips as he looked between Amamiya and Sakamoto. “Well, I’m not surprised. Women aren’t drawn to problematic punks like you,” Shadow Kamoshida stated. The disgusted feeling that had been growing within me proceeded to break the proverbial dam.

“Oh, I’m going to be sick!” I snapped. This was such a disgusting sight to witness for so many reasons I didn’t even bother listing them. “I’d rather be with any of these three who I barely know over a scumbag like you any day!” I snarled. The sensation of eyes pressed on me, but I ignored them as I glared at Kamoshida. “Also, Sakamoto told you to get your hands off!” I declared. Moving quickly, I knocked an arrow and loosed it right into the Cognitive Takamaki, turning her into smoke.

“My kitten! Damn you! Guards! Clean them up this instant!” Shadow Kamoshida roared. In response, a lot of Shadows manifested, easily more than ten from the quick count I managed to do of them; Morgana made the suggestion for us to run since we were vastly outnumbered and Sakamoto was exhausted.

“We’re not gonna do anything and just run!?” Sakamoto protested. Amamiya grabbed a hold of Sakamoto’s arm with a surprisingly tight grip and a tense expression on his face; likely he didn’t want to run but then again neither did I but with the imbalance of fighters there was no way we could stay here and expect to get out of the fight safely.

“Just shut up and go! We can’t die here!” Amamiya snapped. Morgana expressed a relief that Amamiya possessed a level head and Sakamoto reluctantly agreed as we proceeded to run to the entrance we used to get in, all the while Sakamoto declared we’d exposed Kamoshida’s actions whilst the Shadow responded that he looked forward to torturing us and dared us to come after him.

We quickly sprinted into the room and I slammed the door closed whilst shoving the table in front of it. Once that was done, I scrambled out the vent to join the other three who were gathered at roughly the boundary of the Palace; Sakamoto was hunched over and gasping for air, Morgana was slumped on the ground whilst Amamiya stood up straight, but even he was wheezing from the exertion of running.

“Anyways!” Sakamoto declared. He pushed himself up and turned to look at the rest of us. “I don’t remember changin’ into this!” Sakamoto exclaimed. His gloved hands gestured to his new attire, apparently he hadn’t been paying much attention to us when this fact had been explained back in the Safe Room, or he’d forgotten it completely due to everything else that had happened after that event.

“It looks good on you,” Amamiya complimented. To be fair, he wasn’t wrong, the aesthetics of the outfit did seem to mesh well with Sakamoto’s bleached hair and his general atmosphere as an individual, in fact Sakamoto’s Persona being a pirate captain also fit in with him as well just as the gentlemanly Personas of Amamiya and Morgana fit the two of them as well.

“Yeah, you look like a thug,” I commented. Sakamoto had briefly gone embarrassed when Amamiya had complimented him, but now he stood up straighter and proceeded to glare and pout at me at the same time; this was not helped by the fact that Amamiya covered his mouth with a gloved hand as his shoulders jumped up and down, indicating a suppressed laugh.

“At least it’s better than Amamiya’s magician attire!” Sakamoto commented. Amamiya raised an eyebrow in response to that comment as I shook my head. “Although yours is pretty nice Chiba,” Sakamoto commented. His eyes were trailing down my form, so I reached out and grabbed tufts of blonde head in order to yank his head up which caused him to yelp slightly at the pain.

“Mine eyes are up here, Blondie,” I stated. A frown curling at my lips as I released my grip on Sakamoto’s hair, he rubbed his head, but I’d hardly been holding it tight enough to hurt beyond the initial shock of pain; at that moment the voices of Shadows echoed towards us causing my muscles to tense up as Morgana finally pushed himself onto his feet.

“Quiet!” Morgana snapped. We all dropped into stances as we heard the Shadows still searching for us; we relaxed our stances and Sakamoto expressed a feeling of confusion as to what was going on. “We told you before. When a Persona-user opposes a Palace’s ruler and becomes a threat to them, this happens. It’s to prevent you from being affected by the distortions,” Morgana explained. Sakamoto wondered if his mask was a skull as he traced his hands across it. “Your appearance reflects your inner self. It’s the rebel that slumbers within you… not that you’ll get it,” Morgana added on.

“Nope,” Sakamoto agreed. Hanging his head down slightly as his shoulders drooped forward, Morgana demanded he stop asking questions and just accept what was going on then. “Easy for you to say,” Sakamoto protested. However, something seemed to startle Sakamoto as he stood up straighter and his eyes were wide behind his mask. “Wait, we’re in deep shit!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Morgana immediately ordered Sakamoto to be quiet. “We might’ve gotten away here, but we’re still screwed with Kamoshida at the real school,” Sakamoto worried.

“You aren’t,” I calmly stated. Both boys proceeded to look at me as I moved my arms behind me to cross over. “Kamoshida won’t remember any of the events that transpired here with any clarity, the most we’ll get is a sensation of him not trusting us but that’ll be nothing new so it shouldn’t affect us as badly, I just try to avoid it as much as possible since it makes infiltrations easier,” I admitted.

“So, we’re okay?” Sakamoto asked. Morgana took that chance to ask if the real Kamoshida had recalled anything about the execution and Sakamoto’s expression clearly gave Morgana all the answer that he needed. “Alright! Now that we know that, all we gotta do is-,” Sakamoto began to say. He even started to rotate his right arm backwards, but then someone cut him off.

“Wait! I guided you as promised. It’s your turn to cooperate with me,” Morgana insisted. I looked down at the cat creature, curious as to what it could possibly mean by those words. “That’s why I was super nice about teaching you two idiots everything,” Morgana stated. However, Sakamoto seemed thoroughly confused by this mention of cooperation. “Don’t you remember? I originally came here for an investigation. I need to erase the distortion from my body and regain my real form! That’s why we must delve deep into Mementos and-,” Morgana explained. My eyes flew wide at the mention of everyone’s Palace, yet Sakamoto cut Morgana off.

“Whoa, hold up. What’re you goin’ on and on about?” Sakamoto asked. Amamiya looked equally baffled by the words that Morgana was speaking. “We never said anything about helping you out,” Sakamoto stated. Morgana was shocked enough by this comment that he jerked backwards and almost ended up toppling over due to how fast he had moved.

“Huh? Don’t tell me… are you not going to repay the hospitality I showed you?” Morgana questioned. He managed to straighten himself up and locked his eyes on Amamiya. “Especially you! You’re going to up and leave, even though you’re already part of my master plan!?” Morgana protested. To delve into Mementos’ depths, I’d never been able to get passed the first barrier at the bottom, so it was something I was curious about, but dealing with Kamoshida was more important.

“I… um… well…,” Amamiya spoke. However, he seemed flustered by the sudden things being hurled his way by Morgana as his head hung down slightly. “Please let me think about this Morgana-san,” Amamiya requested. He seemed rather nervous about the possibility of being so important to the cat creature’s plan and I felt my heart twist a little at seeing him dissolve into shyness again after being so bold moments ago.

“Is it because I’m not human? Because I’m like a cat? Is that why you’re making a fool of me!?” Morgana exclaimed. He jumped up and down a few times with his arms moving in a rather agitated manner, I saw Amamiya shrinking further in and decided to step in; quite literally as I put myself between Amamiya and Morgana with my left hand extended back as if to curl around the ravenette behind me.

“I’m sorry Morgana, but I can’t help you. Whatever your problem is, it isn’t as urgent to solve as stopping Kamoshida is to me. Perhaps if I didn’t have him to deal with, I’d help, but right now that’s simply impossible for me to do,” I explained. My face was impassive as I said those words with my voice taking on the more soothing tone that I normally reserved for the world outside of the Metaverse.

“Like Chiba said, we’re busy!” Sakamoto snapped. He then moved in order to crouch down in front of Morgana. “Thanks for everything, cat. You’ve got guts, bein’ a cat and all! See you around!” Sakamoto declared. With that, we proceeded to rush out of the Palace after I swapped my bow and bag back around.

*Persona 5 Royal*

You have returned to the real world. Welcome back. That same voice from before chimed, I lifted myself up and looked back at Amamiya to find he had his phone in hand again meaning it was likely the source of the voice, Sakamoto expressed relief that we had returned; I felt the same way since we had been dumped into a rather sticky situation before managing to get away.

“I dragged you two around a lot, huh? Sorry about that,” Sakamoto apologised. I shrugged my shoulders in response since it wasn’t that big of a deal. “Ugh, I’m dead tired… how you two holdin’ up?” Sakamoto asked. His exhaustion was natural since the Awakening was so exhausting to experience given that I’d nearly toppled over.

“I could use a nap,” Amamiya admitted. Even though he had already experienced his Awakening, the exhaustion was a common thing to endure after going into the Metaverse and fighting there; Sakamoto admitted that he was probably going to be sleeping like a rock when he finally got back to his home.

“Exhaustion will become a regular thing if you continue to fight in the Metaverse,” I spoke up. Both boys turned their eyes to me as I shouldered my bag. “When we use our Personas’ Spells, we expend Soul Power, spiritual energy to charge the abilities, the Skills take Life Energy instead. That translate to exhaustion both mentally and physically here in the physical world. Sleeping or good food and drinks can help us feel better, there might be other stuff but that’s all I’ve been able to find,” I explained. Thankfully both of them seemed to understand this concept so didn’t press for questions.

“Still… damn, if what we saw was for real, this is gonna get good!” Sakamoto declared. A wide and happy grin spread across his face, totally different to the expression of rage from before, he looked so happy, like a burst of sunshine. “I totally remember the faces of the guys Kamoshida was treatin’ like slaves. Once we make ‘em fess up to any physical abuse, Kamoshida will be done,” Sakamoto decided. His face then took on a serious expression as he looked between the two of us. “So… wanna help me look for these guys or any witnesses?” Sakamoto asked.

“Sure, I’ll help,” Amamiya agreed. He was looking a bit more confident than before, standing straighter than he had been when Morgana had been yelling at him and he seemed more sure of himself, his eyes were focused on Sakamoto who grinned and then they both turned to look at me as they waited for the answer that I was going to give.

“You two aren’t going to cut me out of this. I’ve been going after Kamoshida for longer than you two, I’m seeing this through to the end,” I decided. If possible, an even bigger grin proceeded to stretch across Sakamoto’s face as a much gentler smile curved across Amamiya’s own lips; I had certainly never expected to gain allies to help me combat Kamoshida but at least now I had them and I wasn’t about to lose them since they could be helpful in reaching the Treasure.

“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Sakamoto declared. But then he suddenly lost his sunlight grin and looked down at the concrete beneath our feet. “Hey, so… if you’re thinkin’ of layin’ low ‘cause you got a record, I don’t think that’ll help. Everyone already knows. They totally got you pegged as a criminal,” Sakamoto admitted. That would explain the loss of vibrancy, this was certainly an awkward topic to bring up.

“How’d that happen?” Amamiya questioned. He reached a hand up to rake through his thick black locks as his grey eyes practically bore holes into the ground. “How did everyone find out about that?” Amamiya questioned. My lips pulled into a frown at his words, his life could have been quiet and easy but instead now it was chaotic and messy due to someone leaking the information about his record.

“Kamoshida opened his damn mouth!” Sakamoto snapped. An angry snarl appeared on his lips as his eyes narrowed into a glare whilst he crossed his arms; I nodded my head in agreement to those words, Kamoshida was the most likely source of the leakage about the criminal record; Amamiya lifted his eyes to look between the two of us.

“Seriously? But why?!” Amamiya asked. His eyes were wide as his skin seemed to pale slightly at the implication of what Sakamoto had just revealed to him, I wished there was some way I could comfort him, but I didn’t exactly know how to do that so all I was forced to do was wait silently as Amamiya processed the new information that he was unexpectedly given.

“No one else besides a teacher could’ve leaked it that fast! It doesn’t matter if it’s a student or a club; that asshole just wrecks things he doesn’t agree with. Just like he did with me!” Sakamoto explained. His angry expression remained strong for a few moments before relaxing as his tension fell away from his stance. “No one’ll take anything I say seriously. Still, Chiba knows the rumours about him getting’ physical are real and after seein’ Kamoshida’s distorted heart thing in person, there’s no way I can just sit back!” Sakamoto insisted.

“Of course,” Amamiya stated. I gave a firm nod of my head to show my own agreement, Sakamoto got excited about this fact and went so far as to pump his fist in excitement; I felt a strength coming from Sakamoto and his excited energy, something that was strong and firm but still with room to grown… I didn’t quite understand this sensation, but I don’t think it was anything bad due to the sensation of energy coming of it. That was slightly ruined by the sudden rumbling I heard from Sakamoto’s stomach.

“Oh… right. I haven’t eaten anything since lunch,” Sakamoto acknowledged. No wonder the boy was hungry, especially after having used so much energy just now. “It’d be weird splittin’ off now, so why don’t we grab a bite somewhere?” Sakamoto suggested. Amamiya agreed and I shrugged my shoulders since I wasn’t bothered which caused Sakamoto to grin. “Just follow me. I mean, I totally gotta here about your past, Amamiya!” Sakamoto insisted.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sakamoto guided us to a nice restaurant; we got some bowls of piping hot food and Amamiya proceeded to explain his past to us as Sakamoto ravenously dug into the meal whilst I calmly ate away at mine. Amamiya didn’t really touch his food as he continued to explain what had happened to him late in the February of this year, eventually something Amamiya said caused both of us to freeze in eating.

“WHAT!? The hell, man? How much shittier can that asshole get!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. His voice was rather loud, but it wasn’t like he was saying anything specifically about stuff that should be kept secret; even if I didn’t use such vulgar language, I couldn’t fault the words that had been spoken since they were quite aligned with my own feelings on the matter.

“Yeah… but please calm down Sakamoto-san,” Amamiya insisted. His voice was calm, but I got the sense that he was rather upset about what happened, upset and angry from the way his right hand was tightly gripping the chopsticks and a cold fire seemed to burn within his grey eyes; Sakamoto went to open his mouth, but I shook my head slightly, hoping the blonde would keep quiet about whatever he wanted to say.

“It’s wrong what happened to you Amamiya-san. There’s no doubt about that. Whoever hurt you abused whatever power he had, that was wrong. You did the right thing, not ignoring an injustice committed in front of you,” I stated. Amamiya looked at me with his grey eyes softening at my words as Sakamoto kept quiet whilst eating some of his meal; a soft whisper of words escaped Amamiay’s parted lips and I could only assume he had said thank you.

“So… you left your hometown and… you’re living here now, huh?” Sakamoto stated. Amamiya nodded his head and we proceeded to eat our meals in silence for a brief moment “We might be more alike than I originally thought Amamiya,” Sakamoto commented. This caused Amamiya to stop as he looked at the blonde.

“How so?” Amamiya asked. He proceeded to look at Sakamoto who looked a little uncertain as he seemed to be struggling to find the words, he reached his hand back and proceeded to rub at the back of his neck as his brown eyes looked around to try and find the words that would help him to explain why he said those words as me and Amamiya remained silent.

“Uh, it’s not exactly ‘how’ but… y’know. I guess it’s how we’re treated like a pain in the ass by the people around us, like we don’t belong. I did something stupid at school before, too,” Sakamoto acknowledged. I looked down at my meal as I continued eating, I suppose these two were alike, but I wasn’t like either of them. “The place you’re livin’ now is in… Yongen-Jaya, right? It’s rush hour on the subways. I suggest you kill some time before headin’ home,” Sakamoto suggested. However, he suddenly took notice of the fact that Amamiya hadn’t eaten much of his food. “What the hell, man. You barely touched your food,” Sakamoto stated. He then opened up a box and used some tongs to remove some ginger and put it on Amamiya’s food.

“What are you doing?” Amamiya asked. He looked slightly annoyed as he stared down at his bowl, or more specifically at the ginger that had been dropped onto his meal unexpectedly, but there didn’t seem to be any real intensity behind the look like when he had been speaking about the vile man who’d been responsible for the criminal record.

“Just lemme do it. I gotta thank you for helpin’ me. You too Chiba,” Sakamoto stated. I barely managed to snatch my bowl out the way in time to avoid Sakamoto dropping a helping of ginger onto it, Sakamoto looked annoyed at me pulling my bowl away as I gave him an unimpressed look meanwhile Amamiya proceeded to smile softly at the scene.

“No thank you, Sakamoto-san,” I answered. Sakamoto pulled back and returned the ginger to its’ tin, allowing me to safely put my bowl back onto the counter which I soon returned to eating; I didn’t particularly like excessively spicy foods and unfortunately ginger tended to make that food rather spicy, so I didn’t want Sakamoto dumping a ridiculous amount of ginger onto it.

“Anyway, I got both of your backs like both of you got mine from tomorrow on,” Sakamoto insisted. He was smiling as he said that before adopting a serious expression. “As long as we do something about Kamoshida, I’m sure we’ll all feel better about bein’ at school,” Sakamoto stated. It was sensible as Kamoshida was the cause of the trouble running amok at school. “Oh yeah!” Sakamoto suddenly exclaimed. He proceeded to pull out his phone as he looked at us. “Tell me your numbers. Chat ID too. And both of you can call me Ryūji. Okay Ren-Ren, Natsumi,” Sakamoto insisted.

“I think I’ll stick with Sakamoto,” Amamiya stated. A ‘same’ came from me as I pulled out my phone with Amamiya doing the same thing, Sakamoto proceeded to call us assholes, but we still proceeded to exchange details, even though I had set up the Chat app, I hadn’t really used it since I didn’t have anyone to connect with. Sakamoto insisted that we start first thing the next day, he complained about the volleyball rally by saying it made him want to gag.

“As disgusting as it might be Sakamoto-san, it’s only thanks to that, that we have no classes in the afternoon which we can use to walk around without anyone getting suspicious,” I pointed out. Sakamoto nodded his head but it didn’t erase the scowl on his face as we decided to work out the details tomorrow. “I know I’m not like the two of you, but I promise to pull my weight,” I stated.

“What are you talking about?” Sakamoto asked. I looked up confused at the blonde. “I’ve seen how the others at school treat you. You might not be treated like a pain in the ass, but people avoid you almost like you don’t belong there either. So, you’re just like us, you know,” Sakamoto stated. I blinked slightly in surprise at his words having not expected him to say such things towards me, or that he had watched how others treated me. “C’mon, both of you, you gotta eat more. There’s tons of ginger here,” Sakamoto insisted. This time I wasn’t fast enough to save my meal and got an unfortunate amount of ginger piled atop my food.

Although, maybe this time around the food wasn’t as spicy as it might normally have been.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I reached my home, feeling the exhaustion of being in the Metaverse make itself more apparent as it pressed upon my bones. I dragged myself up the steps to my room and dropped off my bag at the desk, my eyes were already starting to droop from the exhaustion but a faint buzzing from my phone caught my attention; I pulled the object out and saw that I had a chat notification on the lock screen, so I opened the device.

Ryūji: Hey, I decided to create a group chat for us and messaged you two.

Ryūji: Can you two see this?

Ren: Yep.

Natsumi: Yes.

Ryūji: I’m gonna be counting on you two tomorrow, okay?

Natsumi: Same to you.

Ren: Got it.

Ryūji: We’ve come this far, so you two gotta stick with me to the end.

Ryūji: Let’s save those guys who’ve been getting abused. The three of us together.

I was just about to close my phone and set about getting myself sorted for bed when I noticed something eerie. There was a mysterious little app symbol that took the appearance of a red eyeball surrounded by black detailing… it reminded me eerily of Mementos and that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up; I moved to uninstall the mysterious app when a new chat message popped up.

Ryūji: Hey, Ren-Ren, that thingy on your phone was some red eyeball icon, right?

My eyes widened at this, as I realised he was probably referring to the same strange eyeball looking app that had decided to show up on my own phone. Could this be the navigation app that they had mentioned back in that disturbing training hall? The thing that Igor had been planning to use to streamline my Metaverse travelling abilities.

Ren: Right. Why do you ask?

Ryūji: Well, we ended up at that weird place when we used this nav app, right?

Ryūji: I found it on my phone. I don’t remember installing it!

Natsumi: Seriously? It’s on my phone too. If this app can get into the Metaverse, that’s great.

Natsumi: But majorly creepy that it randomly showed up on our phones.

Natsumi: By the way Sakamoto-san, that place is called a Palace, please remember the terminology.

Ren: I’d tell the both of us to delete it, but it came back after I did that.

Ren: Twice.

Ryūji: Think it’s being downloaded on its’ own somehow?

Ryūji: It’s dangerous to use something without knowing what it is…

Ryūji: But with it, we can go to the weird place, right?

Natsumi: That seems to be the case from what you two told me.

Natsumi: And need I repeat, it’s called a Palace.

Ren: Chiba-san is right, we can enter the Palace, but it’ll depend on how we use it.

Ryūji: Well first, we gotta find evidence of the beatings.

Ryūji: I’m counting on you two, alright? Don’t go ditching school on me.

Natsumi: Sakamoto-san, when have you ever known me to ditch school?

Ren: Don’t worry, I’ll be there.

With that I closed the chat and decided to return to getting myself sorted for bed, leaving the creepy Mementos looking app alone for the time being.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 13: - Turning a Blind Eye

This walking to school with Amamiya might end up becoming a regular thing, as once more we had met at the intersection between my home and LeBlanc. I’d been unable to sleep on the first day due to stress and had caught an earlier train to Shibuya before wandering around slightly, but now the stress had faded slightly – likely thanks to Amamiya, Morgana and Sakamoto – so I was sleeping better.

Currently we were outside on the pathway towards Shūjin, I could sense people giving us odd stares since me and Amamiya were maintaining an even pace, never out walking or slowing down the other yet no conversation flowed between us. Not that we could since our discussion would be spied upon as surely as we were despite being silent and the potential of our plans getting back to Kamoshida had to be avoided as much as possible.

“How annoying, we’ve barely started high school and already they’re making us play at a volleyball rally,” A student up ahead commented. The speaker must have been a first year since even a second year would’ve know about this since it also happened last year. “And why are they pitting us against the teachers’ team? Kamoshida-sensei’s going to crush us,” The same student added on. Ouch, that was going to be painful for them, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Kamoshida routinely hurt them just to break their will to fight back.

“Come on! We get to see his technique live and in person. We should totally get spiked on,” The student beside the previous one commented. Amamiya visibly flinched at the comment, thankfully he wasn’t bruised from taking that ball to the face yesterday, whilst I shook my head in disbelief at the insanity of some people, that student’s delusions would be horrifically smashed if he ever met Kamoshida in private.

“Yeah, okay. You’re gonna get your face smashed in. Just look at how banged up the volleyball team is. What the hell goes on during their practices?” The other student commented. Those first years were the only ones who would visibly speak up about how bizarre somethings were, but once Kamoshida sunk his claws into them, they’d be too scared to speak up about the insanity of what they were surrounded by.

We arrived at class and settled down; I gave Amamiya a look who returned it with a firm nod. All three of us were prepared for today, all that mattered now was getting through the classes between now and the rally, as much as I hated that thing it was the best time for us to do the investigation. I tried to focus on the lessons but the nervous energy pulsing through me caused a few distracted moments that required subtle nudges from Amamiya to poke me out of and I returned it to him when I spotted him drifting away.

“Okay, listen up everyone,” Kawakami-sensei called. The lesson was drawing to a close, so this was likely about that accursed rally we had to attend – I was glad that me, Amamiya and Sakamoto were ditching at some point – this afternoon. “As you all know, today is the volleyball rally. Head to the gymnasium once you’ve changed. Got it?” Kawakami-sensei stated.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Cheering and commotion irritated my ears with the squeaking of gym shoes on wood floors gliding underneath all other sounds. Kamoshida spiked the ball and Mishima was barely able to block it with his arms. But the force was still too much and he ended up stumbling back as the ball bounced away; a whistle was blown and I continued to move through the crowd as I looked around, eventually spotting the two boys I was looking for I made my way over as the teachers congratulated Kamoshida.

“As if his ego needs to be inflated anymore,” I commented. As I did, I leant against the wall and continued to read the book I had in hand; well not really, it would be too suspicious to speak to them openly so I used the book as a cover to converse with my co-conspirators, a barely stifled laugh and a hum of agreement greeted my ears in response to my words which caused my lips to twitch upwards slightly.

“Oh, talk about hitting a nail on the head Natsumi,” Sakamoto agreed. A quick glance showed that Amamiya was smiling slightly, the game got back on but none of us were particularly interested in the match; I was more concerned with attempting to figure out who were members of the volleyball team from behind my book, the obvious two were Mishima and Suzui but who were the others. “Still sticks out, hasn’t changed a bit,” Sakamoto suddenly commented.

I lifted my head up to look at the boy. The sleeves of his gym shirt and the legs on his gym pants were folded up, the sleeves up to his armpits and the legs up to slightly below his knees; Amamiya on the other hand wore the whole outfit with everything straight out but the jacket was unzipped. Sakamoto’s eyes proved that he wasn’t looking at me and his comment wouldn’t make sense on me… ah, so that’s who it was. I turned to look over at Takamaki, her blue eyes cast to the ground as she fiddled with one of her ponytails.

“Pretty boring right?” Sakamoto asked. Amamiya simply chuckled at this commented, as I returning to my silent searching; as I looked around, I spotted Mishima who was slowly stepping backwards, his eyes cast to the ground but right at that moment a hard spike by Kamoshida slammed straight into Mishima’s face and the boy was completely unprepared, resulting in him tipping over and crashing hard against the flooring.

“Mishima-san,” I breathed out. Tucking my book away and completely uncaring of creating a scene, I started to move forward when a hand grabbed my wrist, I looked back and saw a grim faced Amamiya stopping me, but the tightly curled right hand showed he was seconds away from running out himself; Kamoshida was completely unconcerned for a few moments before deciding to check on Mishima, I really wondered how people could be so fooled by him.

“Don’t worry Natsumi, he’ll pay soon enough,” Sakamoto vowed. I pressed my lips into a thin line and nodded my head in agreement before slumping back against the wall, Amamiya had released my wrist, but his fingers remained pressed against my hand. It was a comfort to feel the light pressure, the knowledge that someone understood what I was feeling as I looked on at the scene.

“Alright, let’s resume the match!” Kamoshida called. I looked over and noticed Takamaki staring at Kamoshida with a dark look within his eyes; with a quick exchange of look we decided it was time to bail on this pointless rally, I proceeded to slip out first unnoticed as always by those around me and made my way to a small seating area in the courtyard with vending machines around it.

“That asshole’s actin’ like a king over here too…,” Sakamoto grumbled. He and Amamiya proceeded to stand slightly in front of me and to either side which created a slight triangle. “Get to know each other better, my ass. It’s just a one-man show for him to stroke his ego. Oh, oh, and how he acted like he was worried about Mishima? What an abusive d-bag!” Sakamoto added on. He was stewing within his anger from the glare upon his face and tension in his arms, his hands were currently shoved in pockets, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were curled into fists.

“True, true and true, Sakamoto-san. But we can’t get distracted, do you remember the faces from yesterday?” Amamiya pointed out. Of course, he was equally as tense not that I was much more relaxed than either of the boys, all of us might have different reasons but we wanted Kamoshida to be stopped; Sakamoto took in a deep breath and only slightly relaxed at the change in topic, but at least he was slightly calmer than moments ago.

“Yeah, I remember them. Now’s our chance to go look for the guys we saw were slaves yesterday. Let’s look for the faces we saw at the castle. All members of the team should be here today,” Sakamoto suggested. His face softening much more as he focused on something much more useful than violently spewing insults at Kamoshida, no matter how much the depraved beats had deserved those comments.

“Since everyone is here today, would you like me to ask the female members?” I suggested. Both boys proceeded to look at me. “They might be more willing to talk to another girl than either of you, and let’s be honest… the reputations you two have frighten most people so they might clam up before you can ask anything,” I suggested. Sakamoto rubbed the back of his neck and Amamiya looked at the ground in response to my words and I felt my lips pull into a frown as I clasped my hands and pressed them tightly to my chest as I looked down. “I’m sorry if my words were unkind,” I apologised.

“No, they weren’t,” Amamiya soothed. His voice pulled my gaze upwards and I saw he was looking at me with a very kind look within his grey eyes, giving them a soft cast. “You were just being honest Chiba-san, neither of us can fault you for that. You’re probably also right that the girls would be more willing to talk to you,” Amamiya added on. He was completely relaxed as he said those words with a gentle aura coming off of him.

“He’s right Natsumi,” Sakamoto spoke up. I turned to look at him and saw that he had a bright smile on his face and he no long seemed unsettled. “Okay then, me and Ren will tackle the guys whilst Natsumi handles the girls! I’m sure we’ll find someone to spill about Kamoshida’s physical abuse. Just you wait, asshole,” Sakamoto declared.

“Where are we searching?” Amamiya asked. Sakamoto admitted that the first person he identified had been a student in class D so insisted the two of them start there, although admitted that they might be in trouble since people were avoiding them, causing Amamiya to grimace slightly. “What about you, Chiba-san? Do you know where to start?” Amamiya asked. I nodded my head as an answer to the question, causing Amamiya to raise an eyebrow in surprise.

“I can tell who’s on the team by their injuries. I should be fine in locating them,” I admitted. With that said, we proceeded to split up once getting into the main building, the boys headed upstairs whilst I stared to comb the first floor, might as well since I was already here, however it seemed that there weren’t any female volleyball players hanging around on this floor.

“Everyone’s saying a lot of bad stuff about that transfer student in your class, Ann,” Suzui’s soft voice stated. I cast my eyes over to where I had heard the girl’s voice as I slumped against the wall to avoid being spotted in my spying, Suzui was stood with Takamaki only a short distance away from me; deciding to listen in on them for now, I adjusted my position so that I could face them more but made it seem like I wasn’t listening to them, thank you books.

“I know,” Takamaki grumbled. She reached her hands up and began to massage her temples as if the event was causing her stress. “I hate rumours already, but these are only getting more and more complex as time goes on,” Takamaki stated. Given how she was the subject of several cruel and absurd rumours, her hatred for rumours was understandable.

“I wonder if he’s alright… I hope he’s not letting it get to him too much,” Suzui stated. Now that was a rare opinion, sure me and Sakamoto didn’t believe it, but I’d already decided to reserve judgment and Sakamoto had got to know Amamiya before the rumours struck; everyone else had judged the ravenette before he got here and damned him for an event they knew nothing about, so for someone to be concerned for Amamiya was a surprise.

“That’s just like you Shiho,” Takamaki stated. From my viewpoint, I could just spy the slightest curve of her lips as she continued to look at her friend. “Always worrying about other people before yourself. Kind of like when you were there for me,” Takamaki added on. So, this was a habit of Suzui’s… I could faintly remember her speaking to me a few times at the start of last year, but both my reluctance to drag people into my crazy private life and Suzui’s mounting pain from volleyball practice prevented it from going further.

Moving over to the stairs, I proceeded to head up them and started to wander around, looking for the volleyball members I had yet to speak to. True, I could ask Suzui but given her current injuries and the fact that she practically attached at the hip to Takamaki, it wouldn’t be advisable to ask her with the blonde model hanging around.

“Do you think Suzui-san’s been acting strange lately? She’s been sighing a lot. She used to be a lot happier when we were first years. Plus, those bruises… I think she’s in trouble,” A female voice spoke. Glancing over, I saw a bored looking student near the wide window we had with another female student, it was honestly a surprise that someone not a first year was speaking up about someone’s odd behaviour.

“She’s trying to become a volleyball starter, isn’t she? I heard she takes private lessons with Kamoshida-sensei every day,” The other female student stated. A surge of worry pulse through me, private lessons? The memory of Mishima about to be struck by Kamoshida hit me full force and I could feel a clamminess grow on my friends, had I stumbled upon one of these ‘private lessons’ at that time. “Apparently, she’s been a really good player ever since she was in middle school. Anyway, acting sad like that while keeping Kamoshida-sensei to herself is kind of arrogant, don’t you think,” The second female student added on. Oh great, one of the deluded ones. With the insanity coming, I moved away to save myself, but at that moment my phone buzzed.

Ryūji: How it going? Oh, Natsumi, me and Ren split up to make the searching go faster.

Natsumi: Okay. As for the searching, not good, it’s almost like they’re hiding.

Ren: Mine aren’t talking, the third year refused to say anything.

Ren: And apparently there’s a rumour going around that I carry a knife.

Natsumi: Could be the Déjà vu effect. Kamoshida might be spreading it around after seeing you fight with a dagger in the Palace.

Natsumi: Although they are two different things, people seem to mix them up often.

Ryūji: Deja what?

Natsumi: Dé.Jà Vu! It’s French for already seen.

Ryūji: Well, why didn’t you just say that?!

Ryūji: Anyway… it seems everyone’s too freaked out about Kamoshida.

Ren: What about the first years, I heard someone talking outside and I think it was a first year because he sounded suspect of the volleyball team’s injuries?

Natsumi: Fair point. They won’t be indoctrinated into Kamoshida’s nonsense yet.

Natsumi: That means brainwashed, Sakamoto-san.

Ryūji: I knew that!

Ryūji: Speaking of first years, I got a lead on a new member in that year, since he’s just joined, he won’t be wrapped up in Kamoshida’s web of bullshit like Natsumi said.

Ryūji: Go ask around with the first years! See if you can find him Ren!

Ren: Got it.

Natsumi: I’ll keep asking the girls, maybe someone will open up.

I slipped my phone away and tried to think about where more volleyball players could be located as there didn’t seem to be any female members hanging around on this floor. The only place I hadn’t checked by this point was the third floor, the first years might also be the best bet to get some information as Amamiya had stated, I started to make my way over to the stairway.

“When I was on the first floor just now, I saw someone who was all bandaged up,” A female voice commented. I looked over and saw two more female students just around the corner, so I leant against the wall behind the corner; the other student with her proceeded to speak up about how the injured individual was probably a part of the volleyball team and how even the third years got ‘worked hard’.

Sensing no more talk coming, I pushed away and started to make my way up the third level where hopefully I’d finally be able to find some answers. I spotted a duo of girls that seemed like they could be athletes from how their physiques were structured, I began to move over to them in order to see if they could possibly be a part of the volleyball team and maybe the answers I hoped for.

“Practice has just been so hard, I haven’t been getting any-,” One of the girls began to speak. However, she suddenly stopped when her companion spotted I was standing there, the girl proceeded to turn around in order to look at me, I spotted her confused expression. “Huh? What do you want?” The girl asked. The other girl also seemed to be confused about why I had suddenly appeared.

“Are you on the volleyball team?” I asked. Best to get straight to the point of this conversation, I wasn’t entirely sure how much time I happened to have left before the announcement came for the end of it, I needed to see if I could get the information before that time proceeded to run out; of course, that depended on these girls actually being volleyball players.

“Um… no we’re not. Why are you asking?” The girl asked. Her answer caused my lips to pull into a frown, I gave the simple answer of ‘no reason’ and proceeded to move away from them in order to continue combing the floor for any signs of the students that I needed to locate. With none to be found on this side of the building, I slipped through into the Practice building half to try and continue my search before I ran out of time.

Attention! Attention! All matches have concluded. Please get ready to go home for today. The school announcement system declared, it didn’t take long for my phone to start buzzing so I moved over to another area and proceed to pull it out so that I could check the message, hoping that one of the other two had more look than I did.

Ryūji: Dammit, we’re outta time. How’d it go?

Natsumi: No dice. There’s one girl I didn’t ask but… well it’s complicated with her.

Ren: Take a wild guess.

Ryūji: So, you didn’t have any luck either.

Ryūji: Mkay, let’s regroup for now. See both of you in the courtyard?

Putting my phone away, I made my way back to the courtyard and settled myself into one of the benches, feeling rather exhausted from the fruitless searching that had been done and wishing for some of Sōjirō’s coffee to give me an energy boost. Closing my eyes in order to rest for a few moments, I heard a set of footsteps arrive near me before a clunking and rattling echoed from one of the vending machines.

A cool sensation pressed against my hand and I opened my eyes, seeing Amamiya stood there with a carbonated drink in his hand which he tried to press into my hand. Smiling with tired effort, I sat up right and took the drink which had enough caffeine to perk me up slightly after the mentally taxing effort of a lesson in futility. Amamiya leaned against the vending machine beside me and was fiddling with his own drink and kept shooting me side glances.

“Can I talk to you for a sec, Amamiya-kun?” Takamaki demanded. It might have been phrased like a question, but her abrupt arrival and demeanour made it feel more like a demand; I looked at Amamiya who shot me a glance out the corner of his eye. “I don’t mind if Chiba-san hears, it’s not something I need to hide from her,” Takamaki added on. Her blue eyes had a rather intense emotion burning within them, I don’t think she was taking no for an answer.

“What is it, Takamaki-san?” Amamiya calmly asked. I remained seated but slightly adjusted myself so that I’d be able to stand up swiftly if this conversation got a bit confrontational. “Just to warn you, I am busy. So, I can’t stick around for long,” Amamiya added on. That was likely a ploy to get Takamaki to leave before we started to discuss anything we’d learned within the Palace.

“I’ll be quick. What’s with you?” Takamaki asked. She proceeded to cross her arms and cocked her hip to the right; it was a well known fact that Takamaki was a part time model and that pose seemed almost instinctual instead of deliberate in the easy flow of the motion. “Like, how you were late the other day was a lie and all,” Takamaki accused. I don’t know how she knew it was a lie, but it would be best to cover our tracks as much as possible.

“Now hold on a minute there Takamaki-san,” I stated. Pushing myself up, I remained stood beside Amamiya with my hands clasping the bottle in front of me as Takamaki turned her eyes to me. “By saying that, you’re calling me a liar. I’m the one who found Amamiya ill outside of the train station and the only other Shūjin student around was Sakamoto-san. So, why did you say it was a lie?” I calmly added on.

“Oh… um, I’m sorry Chiba-san, I didn’t realise… I met Amamiya-kun outside the station briefly before… well I went on ahead. That must have been before you came out,” Takamaki stated. She had changed position; her arms were un-crossed with her right gripping the elbow of her left and she looked more sheepish than before. “There’s also that weird rumour about you too, Amamiya-kun,” Takamaki added on.

“Weird? You’ll have to be a bit more specific, Takamaki-san. I’ve heard more than enough ludicrous rumours about me since coming here,” Amamiya stated. A faint note of bitterness hung in his voice and I felt my heart ache for Amamiya, now that I knew the story behind his criminal record, I knew it was so undeserved that being slapped with it was the truly criminal thing; whoever had done it was a monster.

“Whaddya want with him?!” Sakamoto’s voice suddenly demanded. There was an odd note of anger, well not odd since Sakamoto seemed angry more often than not since the track team’s disbandment but odd that it was slung at Takamaki, speaking of which the blonde girl jumped slightly and spun around to face Sakamoto as me and Amamiya looked over at him.

“Right back at you. You’re not even in our class,” Takamaki challenged. There seemed to be some almost static like tension sparking between these two which caused me to shuffle my feet as Amamiya also seemed nervous about what the two of us should do if things got even worse between the two blondes. Perhaps there was some history between these two based upon Sakamoto’s comment from earlier in the gym. “And why are you bothering Chiba-san?” Takamaki asked.

“We just happened to get to know each other and Natsumi,” Sakamoto stated. Takamaki’s mouth hung open in silence, likely due to the fact that Sakamoto had used my first name; she soon recovered and proceeded to demand what Sakamoto was planning to do to Kamoshida. “Huh?!” Sakamoto exclaimed. No surprise there, even I raised my eyebrows in shock because it sounded like Takamaki was defending Kamoshida… but if he was blackmailing her, then why? “I see. I getcha,” Sakamoto stated. A dark look coming over his face as he spoke. “You’re all buddy-buddy with Kamoshida after all,” Sakamoto accused.

“This has nothing to do with you Sakamoto!” Takamaki yelled. Her stance had moved to being combative, even if it would fail in real combat, but Sakamoto didn’t stop as he claimed that if Takamaki knew what Kamoshida was ‘doin’ behind your back’ then she’d dump Kamoshida immediately. “Behind my back? What’s that supposed to mean” Takamaki questioned.

“Do you really think the volleyball team’s injuries are ordinary?” I spoke up. I took a sip of my drink as Takamaki turned to look at me with an ashen face and wide eyes that seemed almost terrified. “Think about it and you’ll come to the same terrifying answer that we did,” I added on. Her eyes suddenly narrowed into burning coals and a red flush came across her skin, likely born of anger.

“Anyway, people are already talking about you guys! I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but no one’s going to help you!” Takamaki snapped. Suddenly the anger faded and her muscles drooped as her eyes soften to the point they were almost filled with worry. “I’m warning you, just in case. That’s all,” Takamaki stated. With her piece said, the blonde model proceeded to march away looking as if she was carrying a great burden.

“Why’s she gotta be so aggressive all the time?” Sakamoto questioned. He seemed to be annoyed by the way that Takamaki was acting which caused me to press my lips against each other since it seemed like Sakamoto had been just as aggressive as Takamaki during that little confrontation that we’d witnessed, both of them had thrown some accusation at each other that were rather cruel in retrospect.

“Not like you helped Sakamoto-san. You brought up those absurd rumours about her and Kamoshida, which aren’t true… at least not from Takamaki’s side of things,” I commented. Sakamoto turned to look at me with a glum look upon his face, a cooling hand rested on my shoulder and I glanced over to see the obvious source was indeed Amamiya but he wasn’t looking at me, instead focusing on Sakamoto.

“You know her?” Amamiya asked. As it turned out, Sakamoto and Takamaki had both attended the same middle school before turning our attention back to the predicament. “Yeah, not a one of us found out any infor… wait, I did learn something,” Amamiya began to speak before he realised something. Me and Sakamoto focused on him. “When I spoke to the first year, he mentioned something about special training with Mishima-san,” Amamiya admitted.

“Mishima… true, I always see the guy covered in bruises. Let’s go talk to him before he leaves then,” Sakamoto insisted. We proceeded to leave the courtyard and wound our way through the school’s hallways until we spotted Mishima, hurrying towards the door. “Hey, got a second?” Sakamoto called. We came to a stop beside Mishima who turned to look at us.

“Sakamoto?” Mishima asked. He took a step back from the blonde and then looked around, seeing me and Amamiya stood with the blonde, but when he saw Amamiya, I noticed a dark and saddened look appear in his eyes which darted to the ground. “Chiba-san and Amamiya too?!” Mishima questioned. It was probably quite the confusing sight to see us all gathered in front of him as we were.

“C’mon, we just wanna chat,” Sakamoto insisted. He didn’t even wait for a response from Mishima as he crossed his arms and got closer to Mishima. “Kamoshida’s been ‘coaching’ you, huh? You sure it’s not just physical abuse?” Sakamoto questioned. Mishima immediately pulled back as his eyes became shadowed with fear before they hardened up completely as he glared at Sakamoto.

“Certainly not!” Mishima protested. Sakamoto was confused by Mishima suddenly sounding much more polite than he had before when saying those words, before moving on to bring up the spiking incident from the rally. “That was just because I’m not good at the sport,” Mishima attempted to rationalise. However, that just made my mouth open in horror at the nonsense we kept running into, I knew these people were deluded but to think someone actually thought he deserved to be hurt was horrible.

“Even if you aren’t good, that is no excuse for deliberately hurting someone,” Amamiya hissed. His tone had gone rather cold and dark, causing the rest of us to tense up and look back at him which allowed us to see the cold fury that burned within his eyes before it faded away, making me honestly wonder if it had been there to begin with. “You, and the rest of the volleyball team, don’t deserve to be sporting those wounds… wounds that aren’t naturally from playing a sport,” Amamiya pointed out. His tone had gone back to its’ deep calm, now bearing a soothing quality to it.

“They’re from practice!” Mishima protested. He seemed stubbornly determined to play off the wounds as if they were anything other than a violent assault upon his person; Sakamoto even wondered if Kamoshida was forcing Mishima to keep quiet about it. “That’s…,” Mishima began to speak. I truly though he might be about to open up to us about what was happening with Kamoshida.

“What’s going on here?” Kamoshida’s voice suddenly grated. I fought down my revulsion as we all turned to see the foul beast walking over to us, I still stepped closer to Amamiya since I wanted to avoid Kamoshida’s wretched gaze as much as possible and I felt his fingers gently press against my hand. “Mishima, isn’t it time for practice?” Kamoshida asked. Mishima flinched and looked down with ashen skin and a fearful expression on his face.

“I-I’m not feeling well today…,” Mishima claimed. Whether it was the truly from taking a volleyball to the face or a lie to get out of that awful practice, I didn’t know and frankly either one was a bad as each other; of course, Kamoshida insisted that Mishima should quit which caused Mishima to bolt upright in shock as Kamoshida further went on to claim Mishima’s form wouldn’t improve without practice.

“Didn’t you hear? He ain’t feelin’ well!” Sakamoto exclaimed. He moved closer to Kamoshida, but the vile creature didn’t even choose to answer him and instead pushed for Mishima to come to practice; Mishima ended up capitulating to the pressure with a downcast expression, he didn’t want to go but the fear of retribution made it so that he was forced to walk back to the pain.

“As for you,” Kamoshida stated. He moved closer to Sakamoto and loomed over him with a dark look on his face. “Any more trouble and you’ll be gone from this school for sure,” Kamoshida threatened. This man was so damn arrogant, he truly thought he could do anything and no one would oppose him, Sakamoto let a curse slip through his lips. “Same goes for you. Didn’t the principal tell you to keep in line!” Kamoshida snapped. His eyes lifted up to Amamiya as he said those words before moving over to me. “As for you Chiba, you might want to seriously consider who you hang around with,” Kamoshida stated.

“Yes, interesting people with functioning brains. I think I’d prefer their company over the other mindless lemmings in this school,” I stated. Not bothering to see Kamoshida’s reaction, I turned my gaze to a rather downtrodden Mishima. “Mishima-san. I didn’t forget that scene I walked in on a few months back,” I stated. Mishima turned to me with fear plastered on his face, likely wondering where I was going by saying that. “Amamiya-san, Sakamoto-san, I think we should leave now. The air here is started to make me sick,” I stated. As I did, I shot a loathing glance at Kamoshida.

“Just don’t get in the way of my practice. All these unsettling rumours are making the students anxious, after all,” Kamoshida commented. A shuffling came and I looked back seeing that Amamiya had his hands stuffed in his pockets but the tension across his body and the more upright position compared to his typically slouched posture showed that he was feeling anger or tension from that comment.

“Yes. I have to wonder who’s responsible for those rumours,” Amamiya coldly stated. His grey eyes were narrowed behind his glasses as he looked at Kamoshida who had a sneer curl onto his lips; Sakamoto piped up with an accusation of this being Kamoshida’s fault but the vile man ignored both of them as he claimed that this wouldn’t get us anywhere before demanding that Mishima goes with him, whilst commenting that ‘unworthy students’ like us didn’t deserve to be in a school like this one.

“That asshole… he’s gonna pay for this!” Sakamoto declared. Kamoshida had walked away from us by this point and I was quite glad now that he was gone since it felt like the air was clearer, but of course the Déjà vu effect was in full swing since Kamoshida had clearly raised his guard against the three of us, not that our little investigation would be helping much in that manner.

“There’s no point,” Mishima spoke up. All of us turned to look at Mishima who was looking up now instead of practically hiding in himself when Kamoshida was here. “Proving that he’s physically abusing us… is meaningless. Everyone knows… the principal, our parents… they all know and they all keep quiet about it,” Mishima revealed. I felt like iced water had been tossed over me at this admission as Sakamoto honestly believed it was a joke whilst Amamiya silently gaped at Mishima.

I had already suspected that Kobayakawa knew about the abuse since he practically seemed to be licking Kamoshida’s boots whenever the two of them were seen together. But, to think that the volleyball team’s own parents knew that their injuries were the result of abuse but decided not to raise hell was horrific, I didn’t have the words to properly describe how disgusted I felt at that fact.

“Don’t be a pain. You don’t understand what I’m going through. Shouldn’t you of all people know that nothing’s going to help!?” Mishima snapped. Sakamoto could say nothing in response to those words and Mishima made to take off, but I seized a hold of Mishima and proceeded to spin him around so that he was facing me and the furious gleam within my eyes.

“Forced to do something you hate, at the hands of someone who doesn’t give a flying damn, without the help of the people who should be protecting you. Surprising as this may be, I know exactly what you’re going through,” I stated. Mishima’s expression was one of surprise, but he stumbled away from me and turned around to head towards the gym; sighing heavily I proceeded to raise my hands to rub at my scalp.

“What now? Do we quit?” Amamiya asked. His voice going soft and quiet, Sakamoto refused to give up and seemed determined to try and speak to them one more time; with that we proceeded to leave the school and I felt a kind of malaise press on me as I returned to my home and just went about my routine as normal.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Lying on my bed, I stared up at the ceiling, feeling saddened by what had happened today and the reluctance of people to speak up about their abuse. Even when I had been enduring Ouvrard’s cruelty, I still wanted to get away and had someone tried to help me I would’ve agreed but my uncle didn’t care and Naomi couldn’t disobey without suffering repercussions and they were the only ones who knew that were in my life. A chime came from my phone, so I picked it up and opened the Chat.

Ryūji: Hey, this doesn’t make any damn sense.

Ryūji: The principal and even the parents know about the abuse.

Ryuji: Why ain’t anybody speaking up!?

Natsumi: The principal only cares about the school’s ‘image’ so of course the selfish git wouldn’t report an abuse case and instead smother all evidence of it.

Natsumi: As for the parents… I’m clueless.

Ren: Maybe is has to do with volleyball? I can’t see fear or not caring as being enough to keep all of them quiet.

Ryūji: Yeah, that’s probably it. Kamoshida is kinda famous for taking the volleyball team to nationals.

Natsumi: It’s a damn sport! There is no way such a thing is more important than a person’s future!

Ryūji: Got to agree with Natsumi, that don’t give him the right to do whatever he wants!

Ryūji: He’s beating kids up and all they’re allow to do, is endure.

Ren: I agree, it’s completely awful that they have to do this, silently enduring such an awful state of living.

Ryūji: And that follower of his doesn’t give one single shit.

Natsumi: Follower?

Ren: Follower?

I giggled slightly when I saw the response from Amamiya, we had likely both typed at the same time and my message had only got sent seconds before Amamiya sent out his own. It shouldn’t have made me laugh the way it did but maybe after the let down that today had been, even the littlest thing to make me smile was needed.

Ryūji: Takamaki Ann. Ren, you met her in the courtyard, remember?

Ryūji: Both of you should know her. I mean, she is in your class, dudes.

Ryūji: Ugh! What a load of bull! I can’t let it end like this.

Ryūji: I’m gonna try and find someone who knows about what’s going on with Kamoshida during break tomorrow.

Ryūji: Just you watch. I ain’t giving up!

Setting my phone down, I closed my eyes about to go to sleep as a thought occurred to me. Maybe tomorrow, I could try and talk to Suzui, see if she’d be willing to say anything.

*Persona 5 Royal*

School came once more and I’d heard more people talking about Kamoshida, this time a couple of girls who were stupidly infatuated with the man – I don’t know what was so great about him even if you removed his horrid crimes – one had even commented about getting a hold of an autograph from him. However, the other had warned her against it as ‘strange sounds’ were known to come out of the P.E. room, the first girl dismissed it as rumour started by the opposition, but I knew it had to be that ridiculous special training – abuse – that Kamoshida did.

A buzzing startled me out of my concentration and I reached into the pocket of my school jacket and quickly pulled out my phone, all the while trying to make sure I wasn’t spotted by the teacher. Spotting a Chat notification, I quickly opened it up and looked at the message that had been suddenly sent even though it was it was likely about our current Kamoshida situation.

Ryūji: So about that witness…

Ryūji: I was wondering if we could get something outta Takamaki.

Natsumi: We’re in class! Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?!

Ryūji: I just thought of it now.

Ren: Is this because Takamaki-san is with Kamoshida, after all she isn’t on the team.

Natsumi: It’s because of Suzui-san. A second year girl in another class called Suzui Shiho, she’s a really good volleyball player and Takamaki-san’s best friend.

Natsumi: She’s also the girl I didn’t speak to yesterday because she’s always at Takamaki-san’s side and Takamaki-san can be… standoffish when it comes to Kamoshida.

Ryūji: Yeah, I tried to talk to Suzui during break, but I got nothing.

Ryūji: That’s why we should have Takamaki talk to her.

Natsumi: Denied.

Ryūji: What!? Why?!

Ren: Probably because Takamaki-san will not agree to do this for us. Based on what I saw yesterday, I think it’ll be hard to get Takamaki-san to help us.

Ren: How about Chiba-san or me try talking to Suzui-san… I might not do so well though.

Natsumi: Don’t be too sure. I walked passed Suzui-san and Takamaki-san yesterday and Suzui-san was pretty dismissive of the rumours, she even seemed worried about you.

Ren: Really?!

Ren: That’s not something I expected.

With the chat over I slipped away my phone and the lesson proceeded to end, gathering up my stuff I looked at Amamiya who gave me a firm nod. We moved out of the classroom and I walked towards the courtyard’s entrance, since the practice might be starting soon so it was best to find Suzui there. Luckily enough, we happened across Suzui before we ended up reaching the courtyard and were still in the class side of the building.

“Suzui-san,” I called out. The girl jumped, spinning around to face me as she went pale, I saw a brand new bruise resting above her right eye which caused my lips to curl into a frown. “It’s alright Suzui-san, it’s just me,” I reassured. Suzui finally seemed to see me and I sensed all the tension in her frightened form flow out of her body when she saw me, although curious briefly sparked in her eyes as she saw Amamiya standing beside me.

“What is it Chiba-san?” Suzui softly asked. However, she looked downcast slightly and shuffled her feet. “Oh… I’m in the way, aren’t I? Sorry…,” Suzui apologised. I swallowed thickly seeing the girl so beaten down that she actually thought she needed to apologise simply for standing in front of a door, there was no need for her to do that.

“Are you hurt?” Amamiya asked. I was a bit surprised that he spoke first given how shy he sometimes seemed around new people, or in general, Suzui perked up at those words and she lifted up her head in order to focus on Amamiya who was giving Suzui a concerned look as he saw the state her wounds from that depraved monster had left her in.

“Um, well…,” Suzui mumbled. Her eyes drifted down before she realised something. “Hm, you don’t look familiar. Could you be that transfer student from Class D?” Suzui asked. Amamiya tensed up slightly as a grim look appeared on his face, he stiffly nodded his head yet no sign of fear or horror nor an attempt to run away descended upon Suzui. “Um, this might not be any of my business, but don’t let the rumours get to you, okay?” Suzui insisted.

“Why do you say that?” Amamiya asked. He seemed genuinely surprised by this consideration that was being shown towards him, but after the fear and hostility from all the other students bar me and Sakamoto, I’m sure that this must have been a welcomed difference for the boy; I remained silent as I looked between the two of them.

“Well, um… something similar happened to someone I know in the past. My best friend is often misunderstood because of her looks,” Suzui explained. That was all too true, so many rumours were abound regarding Takamaki, yet I couldn’t correlate them with the person shown to me in the few interactions I had with her, I had just decided not to believe those words. “Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to drag on like that. Anyway, I have to go to practice. I’ll see you around,” Suzui commented.

“Suzui-san, wait,” I called. I reached out to the girl, but I didn’t touch her in case she got frightened. “Take this medicine, it should help you,” I insisted. I handed over some of the medicine I used in the Palace, Suzui took it with a small smile before turning and walking away. “Let’s get to Sakamoto, we need to talk about this,” I insisted. We stepped out in order to reach the courtyard which had become the place for us to meet up.

“Dammit. What the hell…,” Sakamoto cursed. He was stood there with his arms crossed and his right leg tapping away at the floor; I don’t think me or Amamiya needed to say anything at all to know that Sakamoto had failed in managing to find anyone to crack about Kamoshida’s abuse, I’d forgotten to ask Suzui but there wasn’t much that could be done about that now that she had headed to practice.

“I take it you found no one willing to talk,” Amamiya commented. Sakamoto looked over at us before throwing his fist back into the vending machine, causing a loud bang to echo out and I ended up jumping in surprise and gripping onto Amamiya’s sleeve. Clearly Sakamoto was more agitated that I’d ever seen him since he had lashed out like that so suddenly. “Calm down Sakamoto-san,” Amamiya insisted.

“All of ‘em keep sayin’ the same shit Mishima was talkin’ about! Kamoshida had to have told ‘em something!” Sakamoto yelled. That was highly likely, he probably realised that we were investigating and decided to shut us down by preventing us from freely speaking to any of the volleyball team members. “At this rate… looks like we’ll have to go to him directly…,” Sakamoto commented. His face was completely tense and agitated about the situation.

“There’s no point. Kamoshida has buried the abuse just like he buried what really happened to you. If we try to go after Kamoshida directly, he’ll just get rid of us like he already threatened,” Amamiya advised. Sakamoto agreed but wanted to know is there was something that we could do. “Going to the cops is pointless and I can’t think of anything else,” Amamiya stated.

“There might be a way,” I spoke up. Both of them turned to look at me as I fiddled with the edging of my skirt. “A way only the three of us could enact,” I explained. Amamiya and Sakamoto looked at each other as I took a deep breath; the real world attempts had hit a dead end like I feared they would which meant the only route left to us was to head into the Metaverse. “We need to head into the Metaverse and-,” I began to speak.

“You’re talking about stealing his Treasure, aren’t you?” A voice commented. I turned around and dropped into a stance as I looked for the source of the voice, it had sounded boyish… or maybe girlish. “I finally found you,” The voice commented. At that moment, a black and white tuxedo cat jumped onto the table, I was rather surprised to see a cat wandering about the school; it had a yellow bandana tied around his neck. “Don’t think you can get away with not paying me back for helping you,” The voice snapped. And as the voice spoke, I swear the cat’s mouth moved and then the cat turned around, revealing Velvet Room blue eyes.

“Morgana!” I exclaimed. I was a little surprised to see the cat creature standing in front of me as… well a literal cat after insisting he was a human back in the Palace, but the voice was the same and those eyes were too unique to get mixed up with anyone else’s; plus the fact that this cat had mentioned both something related to the Metaverse and helping us, it was a fairly safe bet to make.

“How dare you up and leave me the other day!” Morgana chastised. He made it sound like we had committed some kind of unforgivable sin by walking away, I looked at Sakamoto who had lurched back and had wide brown eyes before glancing at Amamiya who was silently gaping with his own grey wides being fairly wide.

“The cat’s talkin’,” Sakamoto stated. Morgana immediately insisted that he was not a cat – your current form would argue otherwise Morgana – and claimed it had happened when he came to this world, before claiming it was trouble finding the three of us. “Wait… you came to our world!? Does that mean you’ve got a phone!?” Sakamoto asked. I doubt that very much since Morgana had been as confused as I was by the navigation app when it was brought up, but his eyes were a solid blue so he wasn’t Betwixt, could there be others with unusual powers like mine that allowed them to slip between worlds?

“You don’t need one when you’re at my level. I did get pretty lost making my escape though…,” Morgana admitted. He then proceeded to start cleaning his front paw; Sakamoto decided to focus on the fact that as a cat, Morgana shouldn’t really be capable of talking in any language we could understand. “How should I know!?” Morgana responded. Sakamoto proceeded to look at us with a pleading look upon his face.

“I think both me and Chiba-san are hearing this too Sakamoto-san, judging by how Chiba-san acted towards Morgana-san,” Amamiya stated. He seemed to have calmed down but then so had I as I watched the cat proceeded to wipe a paw over his ear in order to clean it. “Now, you mentioned something when you interrupted Chiba-san, Morgana-san. What was it?” Amamiya asked.

“You guys are having a rough time of this, hm? I heard you mention something about witnesses,” Morgana clarified. Sakamoto told him to shut up, so I reached out and pinched his arm through the sleeve. “You know, I could tell you a thing or two about what to do about Kamoshida. Chiba was about to suggest the same thing, right?” Morgana suggested.

“God, that condescendin’ attitude! This thing’s gotta be Morgana!” Sakamoto exclaimed. I think we had fairly established that this was the cat creature from the Metaverse, Morgana was rightly annoyed that Sakamoto had still been doubting him. “Ack! Quiet down!” Sakamoto snapped. Talk about pot calling kettle black, Sakamoto was being louder than Morgana currently was being.

Although we soon had a reason to worry as I heard some people mention that they were looking for a cat, although this did reveal only the three of us actually heard Morgana talking, they were walking nearby so we did the wise thing and relocated after Sakamoto forced Amamiya to stuff Morgana into his bag, over the loud protests of said cat. We moved towards the roof as fast as we could to avoid the awkwardness of running into people and them asking why Amamiya’s bag was writhing. Upon reaching the roof Amamiya set his bag on the ground before opening it, allowing Morgana to tip it over and get out.

“Don’t be so rough with me!” Morgana demanded. Sakamoto had grabbed Morgana rather harshly by the scruff of his neck when Sakamoto had picked Morgana up; Sakamoto demanded that be enough and instead focused on the information about Kamoshida. “It has to do with what Chiba was talking about earlier. You’ll need to attack his castle,” Morgana stated.

“Less attack the castle and more steal its’ core,” I clarified. But given that Morgana had once again used the Velvet Room’s terminology for the core made me more curious about his possible connection to it. “As already explained, a Palace is where a person’s distorted desires are made manifest, a Shadow is the truth of that person’s suppressed desires. The core of a Palace, known as a Treasure, is the origin of the distorted desire and the Palace. The Palace is deeply tied to the depths of Kamoshida’s heart even if he isn’t completely aware of what happens there,” I explained.

“Which means if the castle disappears, it would naturally impact the real Kamoshida. Removing the Treasure will cause it to vanish,” Morgana explained. Sakamoto looked a bit doubtful as he asked what would happen. “Since a Palace is a manifestation of a person’s distorted desires, the removal of a Palace would cause the desires to vanish,” Morgana answered.

“Does that mean Kamoshida would become an honest man? If his desires were to vanish, that is,” Amamiya questioned. Morgana quickly confirmed this fact, Sakamoto on the other hand was completely surprised by the fact that Kamoshida would become good; not that he could be blamed since it would be completely unexpected given how long Sakamoto had known of Kamoshida’s depravity.

“Not exactly good. More that he would regrow the conscience that he discarded at some point down the line,” I clarified. Sakamoto proceeded to wonder if this was really getting back at Kamoshida. “Sakamoto-san, with his sense of morality restored, it will also bring a sense of guilt. So much guilt for all the crimes he committed that he won’t be able to keep quiet about it,” I explained.

“Chiba’s right, erasing a Palace essentially means forcing the owner to have a Change of Heart. But that doesn’t mean their crimes will disappear, those will remain even after their warped wants disappear. Kamoshida will become unable to bear the weight of those crimes and he’ll confess them himself!” Morgana happily declared.

“You for real!? That’s possible!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. His face had brightened up as he could finally see a path ahead, even Amamiya seemed happier by the revelation that we could actually do something about Kamoshida’s cruelties that would ensure all would be stopped; Morgana added on that with the erasure of the Palace, all of our actions would be forgotten as well so our involvement wouldn’t be known. “That’s amazing! You are one incredible cat!” Sakamoto declared.

“True, except for the cat part!” Morgana retorted. Sakamoto seemed eager to get going right away but there was one thing we had yet to discuss and they deserved to go into this situation knowing everything, I wasn’t about to hide such an important fact from them; after all if things went wrong then Kamoshida’s fate would be gruesome.

“Hold on!” I called. The two boys looked at me as I clasped my hands behind my back. “Stealing a Treasure has some dangers. Removing the Treasure doesn’t just remove the distorted desires, it is a crystallisation of all desire so removing the Treasure will in turn remove all desire,” I revealed. Amamiya’s face paled as Sakamoto seemed completely baffled by this string of words.

“But… wouldn’t that mean… removing his desire to live?” Amamiya questioned. Sakamoto caught on and proceeded to blanch as he stared at me with fear in his eyes; I solemnly nodded my head to show that he was right. “That mean’s Kamoshida might die if we remove this Treasure!” Amamiya exclaimed. Sakamoto also let out a horrified exclamation at those words, but Morgana hissed in response.

“Will you listen to everything that has to be said first?” Morgana demanded. However, Sakamoto was more focused on the fact that this death might be their fault. “Aren’t you determined enough to face those kinds of risks?” Morgana challenged. I had been, but I had been desperate to escape Ouvrard, these two weren’t exactly in any kind of danger nor suffering directly at Kamoshida’s hands so their desperation wasn’t at the same level mine had been.

“I don’t want to kill him!” Amamiya protested. Sakamoto proceeded to agree with this line of thinking; that had the side effect of disappointing Morgana as I frowned slightly at this, Morgana stated that no one would ever find out. “Doesn’t matter. We’d know we did it, I’m not going to throw away my morals. I maybe be willing to commit sacrilegious acts for my justice, but I won’t abandon my core!” Amamiya declared. Sacrilegious acts? Had Arsène said something like that to him?

“Yeah, people finding out or not isn’t the point! If we go around secretly doin’ whatever we want, we’d be no better than that effin’ Kamoshida!” Sakamoto declared. Morgana pointed out that this was their only option, but decided to leave it for later, without another word Morgana proceeded to run off leaving us alone. “Man, we’re getting’ all worked up for nothing… dammit!” Sakamoto declared. His face then took on a sad expression as he looked between us. “I’ll try and see if I can figure out another way. C’mon, let’s get outta here,” Sakamoto suggested.

‘Looks like I’m back to doing this alone.’ I thought. Surprising, I actually felt sad about being left to tackle this terrible situation all on my lonesome.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 14: - Pain of the Heart

Sakamoto had taken off after we got down from the roof, but I just couldn’t care anymore at the moment, I was too stressed out regarding our dead end of trying to get someone to crack and the boys’ fear of harming Kamoshida – I understood it but my perspective was different due to Ouvrard – to focus. It was probably best I avoid going into the Palace today, Amamiya stood beside me and I could feel his eyes on me but he said nothing. A sudden buzzing came on my phone.

Ryūji: Yo, some of the guys in my class have been talking.

Ryūji: About that Suzui girl… looks like rumours are going around about her and Kamoshida.

Natsumi: Seriously?

Natsumi: Apart from impossible, that’s just disgusting.

Ryūji: But if they’re true, it’s no wonder I couldn’t get her to talk.

“Why do you think they’re impossible?” Amamiya asked. I jerked up, looking at the boy in surprise at his question, then again it was odd for us to be in the same area and actually able to talk about what was being said on the Chat, still it was also nice as I much preferred talking to people in person even though the Chat was convenient for our Metaverse conversations as finding somewhere private could be awkward and time consuming.

“I saw Suzui-san once with Kamoshida. She looked like she would have run for the hills or preferred the ground to swallow her whole if given the choice. In short, she was terrified of being near him. I might not be capable of empathy, but I at least know that this is no mutual relationship if it exists at all,” I explained. I ignored the raised eyebrow that Amamiya had shown when I claimed not to be empathic.

Ryūji: Still, something doesn’t seem right.

Ren: Chiba-san said Suzui-san was afraid of Kamoshida when she’d seen them together once.

Ren: But why do you say that?

Ryūji: Like Natsumi said, it’s impossible.

Ryūji: I’ve known Takamaki and Suzui since middle school.

Ryūji: There’s just no way Kamoshida’s their type, y’know?

Ryūji: So… I gotta wonder where those rumours came from.

Natsumi: People misreading things and making assumptions about half understood events.

Ryūji: I guess we’ll get to it tomorrow. See ya!

“Want to see if we can overhear anything on the way back to the train station?” Amamiya suggested. I nodded my head since it seemed like a good idea and we might get some new information about whatever these awful rumours were saying, moving down the steps we slowly turned towards the pathway to the train station as I heard the words of two female students drifting towards me.

“Takamaki always looks kind of unhappy whenever Kamoshida-sensei talks to her,” One of the students commented. The one right beside her immediately claimed that Takamaki didn’t want people to know how wrapped around her finger he was before calling it gross. “Oh, so that’s what’s going on… I wonder how far they’ve gone together?” The first student commenting. Restraining the desperate urge to gag at such a disgusting suggestion, I shook my head slightly in disbelief we continued our walk away.

“I saw that new transfer student hanging out with Sakamoto-kun. The two of them are so scary,” One female student spoke up. I looked at Amamiya and saw he had gone tense, if these girls ever spoke to him then they’d know there was nothing scary about Amamiya at all; certainly, he had moments of cold rage, but that rage had never been directed at me, so I never felt afraid. Amamiya was also very kind and considerate to other. “But the weird thing was, I saw Chiba-san with them too. Why is a girl like her hanging out with those two?” The girl added on. Oh boy… here we go.

“The transfer student sure doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d have a criminal record. Maybe he’s one of those. You know, the people in those accidents. Maybe he suddenly freaks out and attacks people,” The female student beside her suggested. That was a weird suggestion, but I suppose that wasn’t an entirely impossible thing to happen… except for the fact that Amamiya clearly remembers and was in full control of his actions during the incident. “As for Chiba-san, she doesn’t talk much but maybe she likes to court danger,” The same student added on.

“Huh? I don’t think so. Amamiya-kun’s just been coming to school. Actually, he almost seems normal. And from what I hear, after you have a psychotic breakdown, you go brain dead and die right there,” The first student commented. Amamiya seemed to brighten slightly at the girl’s first part and that news about the psychotic breakdowns was interesting. We decided to continue with our walk.

“Sakamoto’s been asking questions about the volleyball team. Just who does he think he is?” A male student asked. That caused my eyebrows to furrow with tension as Amamiya also went stiff as we glanced at the two conversing students; even if it had been only three days – three days, wow – since I started to know Sakamoto better, but I didn’t like hearing people dismiss him.

“The volleyball team’s never going to tell him anything. They’re all completely loyal to Kamoshida,” The student beside him pointed out. That was unfortunately true from what we’d seen during our investigation, the first student pointed out how the future of the volleyball team was set so they’d obviously back him, oh yes set in pain and suffering with post-traumatic stress highly likely along with injuries that could impede the rest of their lives.

“Speaking of which, I hear Kamoshida’s new favourite girl is someone named Suzui,” The first student added on. I perked up hearing that so this could mean that we might get some information about the Suzui-Kamoshida rumours; the boy beside him spoke up about how Suzui was a regular and her face was swollen badly… nope, nothing we didn’t already know.

“Well, this was a bust. Shall we head off?” I suggested. With no more signs of people languishing and discussing topics that might help us out; we were without any more information and there was an increasing chance I’d have to head into the Palace on my own to find the Treasure and steal it in order to stop Kamoshida for good… well, maybe Morgana could be of some help.

“Sure,” Amamiya agreed. We proceeded to continue with our walk towards the station, easily managing to keep pace with each other. “By the way, do you like to court danger?” Amamiya asked. I glanced up at the ravenette and immediately saw that a curl of his lips that wasn’t quite a smirk nor was it a smile, yet was completely teasing, rested on his lips which caused me to raise an eyebrow even as my lips lightly curled upwards.

“Maybe. But like I said yesterday, you and Sakamoto are interesting to be around,” I answered. If ‘courting danger’ meant being with people who were actively trying to stop a horrid individual from committing more crimes, then I’d gladly court danger a hundred times; Amamiya’s lips curled into a smile and we kept walking.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The ride back to Shibuya had been cramped as usual so I was quite glad to get out into the brief walk me and Amamiya would have before boarding the train that would get us back to Yongen-Jaya. I honestly considered heading to LeBlanc for some time to relax, but I also really wanted to just crawl into my bed and sleep for the next several hours.

“Will you please give it a rest!?” Takamaki’s voice yelled. I twisted around immediately, to see that the blonde girl was stood slightly away from me and Amamiya, but she wasn’t paying any attention to us, instead having her red cased phone pressed firmly against her ear. “I told you; I’m not feeling up to it…,” Takamaki insisted. Amamiya had also stopped and I sensed he was watching Takamaki who turned away from us. “Wait, what!? That’s not what you promised! And you call yourself a teacher!? This has nothing to do with Shiho!” Takamaki exclaimed. Suddenly she froze up and her expression twisted into one that seemed like a harrowing event was happening. “Ah…,” Takamki let out. She then proceeded to crumple to the ground in a ball “Shiho’s… starting position…,” Takamaki breathed out. I could practically see the tears gathering in her bright blue eyes.

“Takamaki-san,” I called out. There was nothing else I could say, things like ‘are you okay?’ or ‘are you alright?’ were stupid to ask after what I had just heard, I walked over to the girl and when the blonde realised I was there, she leapt to her feet and proceeded to scurry away from me as I felt Amamiya hover at my side.

“Wait… were you two listening?” Takamaki accused. It wasn’t like it was wrong, but still her tone could have been a little warmer especially since she had that conversation in a very public place, anyone could have overheard that conversation; Amamiya shuffled slightly in place as I sensed him reach a hand upwards, I simply linked my fingers together in front of me.

“Not on purpose,” Amamiya stated. He was quite right as we hadn’t known that Takamaki would have been right there having a conversation, we might have stopped and listened but given the things she had said, it seemed like she needed someone to be present right now and there hadn’t been anyone else around apart from me and Amamiya who could be guaranteed to reach out to her.

“Haven’t you heard of privacy?” Takamaki challenged. This was a public place! Privacy doesn’t exist in those. “No, I was out of line. Sorry,” Takamaki apologised. Her expression had shifted from anger to remorse as she realised what she had just said, Takamaki reached up to wipe away her budding tears. “So, how much did you hear?” Takamaki asked. She seemed fidgety, likely based on wondering how much we had overheard about her talk.

“You were arguing with a teacher… and Suzui-san was brought up,” I admitted. Takamaki curled in on herself as she breathed out Suzui’s first name before claiming it was nothing, with a wipe away of tears she took off running towards the JL Line. “Go on if you want Amamiya-san. I’m going after her,” I insisted. Takamaki looked like she really shouldn’t be left alone at the moment and I wasn’t about.

“I’m going with you,” Amamiya insisted. I decided not to argue and instead took off towards the JL Line and down the stairs that Takamaki had used, I turned the corner and spotted Takamaki legging it down to the line that would connect to Yongen-Jaya; a quick run down the escalator brought us to the underground walkway and I easily found the blonde girl trying to hide by one of the coloured pillars. “Takamaki-san,” Amamiya called out. The girl proceeded to turn around to face us with anger on her face.

“Stop following me… just leave me alone!” Takamaki yelled. However, neither me nor Amamiya walked away from her, we stood like mountains in the fact of her stormy anger and I saw Takamaki’s face slacken as she realised we weren’t going to walk away; Amamiya walked over and gently reached out a hand yet he didn’t touch her instead his hand remained close enough for Takamaki to reach out to him.

“I can’t and I don’t think Chiba-san can either,” Amamiya stated. His voice was soothingly calming, his hand a clear offer of an anchor but Takamaki wouldn’t be forced to take it and instead she could reach out any time to take it; Takamaki looked at the hand that Amamiya had extended to her with untrusting eyes before looking over at me.

“Why? Why do you, both of you, keep worrying about me?” Takamaki asked. Her expression was twisted into confusion as she looked between the two of us, a small sob escaped from her as she looked at the ground whilst more tears began to gather in her eyes; the stress of whatever she was going through was likely overwhelming her so much, especially if, from what I heard, Suzui was being targeted.

“We just want to talk Takamaki-san. But first, let’s go somewhere else,” I suggested. Takamaki nodded her head and that was all both of us needed; I moved to Takamaki’s left as Amamiya took her right, I cupped her hand whilst Amamiya gently rested his hand on her shoulder and we guided the teary eyed beauty towards a nearby restaurant where we gently set her down in one of the corner booths.

“What the heck? I really don’t get you… either of you…,” Takamaki let out. I moved off and ordered all of us some water which I set on the table and sat beside Takamaki as Amamiya sat across from us. “I don’t have anything to talk about with you two,” Takamaki snapped. I could practically see porcupine spikes jutting out from the model as she looked between the two of us. “It was just an argument,” Takamaki softly insisted. Her anger fading away as her hands curled into white knuckled fists.

“With Kamoshida?” Amamiya questioned. It was probably more direct than necessary, but the evidence of what Takamaki had spoken pointed solely to that individual being the one that she had been arguing with on the phone; Takamaki proceeded to sigh heavily as she vocally realised that we’d heard everything about her argument.

“You’ve heard the rumours… haven’t you? About Kamoshida-sensei?” Takamaki asked. I nodded my head and so did Amamiya, there was no way we hadn’t by this point; Takamaki reached out her hand and began to rub her right pointer finger over a napkin’s surface. “Everyone says we’re getting it on. But that’s so not true, that was him on the other end. I avoided giving him my number for the longest time. He told me to go to his place after this,” Takamaki admitted. I clamped a hand over my mouth in horror as Amamiya’s mouth opened in shock, Takamaki stopped playing with the napkin and then violently wrapped her hand around the napkin. “You know what it means. If I turn him down, he said he’d take my friend off as a regular on the team. I’ve been telling myself this is all for Shiho’s sake, but I can’t take it anymore,” Takamaki revealed. She slumped into the booth seat, Amamiya made some sounds, but it seemed like he couldn’t think of what to say, not that I was any different. “I’ve had enough of this! I hate him! But still… Shiho’s my best friend! She’s all I have in that sorry excuse of a school!” Takamaki declared. Tears budded up and flowed freely from her eyes this time, dropping onto her lap as she shook her head, making her blonde hair flap about. “Tell me, what should I do?” Takamaki asked.

What could we say? This was not something I had any experience with, I’d never really had a friend in this situation before, even back when I did have a friend, the friend I had was too strong willed to let anything like this happen, along with the fact that she could punch out most people’s lights. I lowered my hand from my mouth and clasped my hands together as I tried to think about what to say… what to tell Takamaki?

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,” Takamaki apologised. She proceeded to wipe her eyes to clear the tears away. “It’s not your problem,” Takamaki commented. Amamiya lifted his gaze, which had drifted to the side, to look at Takamaki as the blonde model seemed to have recovered her composure. “What… what am I saying? I’ve barely even talked to either of you before,” Takamaki wondered.

“Maybe that’s why? Because we don’t have any preconceptions about you,” Amamiya suggested. Takamaki’s lips twitched into a small smile even as she kept looking down at the table, the smile quickly faded as she shook her head almost like she was attempting to clear her thoughts regarding what was happening to her.

“You’re so weird. Usually everyone just ignores me,” Takamaki stated. She lifted her head to look directly at Amamiya. “Are you really a bad person? I’ve heard people talking about you, but… I just don’t see it,” Takamaki admitted. Amamiya moved his hand up to the back of his neck and began to rub it as he looked down at the table top.

“He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” I stated. Takamaki lifted her head to look at me with her blue eyes still being misted by her tears as I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s what I think, Amamiya-san is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” I repeated. It might just be my opinion, but it was the conclusion that I had come to based on the exchanges I had with him and events I’d witnessed involving him.

“I kind of a had a feeling they were all just exaggerations,” Takamaki stated. Takamaki turned her attention back to Amamiya who I noticed had turned red on his cheeks. “You seemed lonely, almost like you didn’t belong anywhere,” Takamaki admitted. Amamiya’s blush softened as he tensed up, perhaps at the way Takamaki had managed to read him. “Just like Chiba-san,” Takamaki added on. I looked at the blonde who was softly smiling at the table. “We three are the same in that regard. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for me to talk to both of you,” Takamaki admitted. However, a pained expression twisted its’ way across her face as her grip on the water glass tightened. “Is there really no way for me to help Shiho? I wish he’d just change his mind… like forget about me and everything,” Takamaki wondered. A Change of Heart, that could do it as Kamoshida’s desire for Takamaki would leave then. “As if something like that would ever happen,” Takamaki commented. She released her drink and slumped back into the booth seat.

“Yeah… that’s too convenient,” Amamiya stated. I glanced at him and saw he was looking at the table top with a serious expression on his face, no doubt having come to the same conclusion that I had but given his earlier reluctance, he wouldn’t want to go through with it. “So, what are you going to do now?” Amamiya asked. He lifted his face up which was now more relaxed, but I guess he was trying to turn his mind away from it.

“Well, I feel a bit better now. I’m going to head home,” Takamaki stated. I stood up and moved back so that she could slide out of the booth. “Don’t tell anyone what I told you two, okay?” Takamaki insisted. Her face had taken on a serious expression as he looked between us. “I’ll try and think of a way to persuade Kamoshida. Well… thanks,” Takamaki stated. With that she proceeded to walk away.

Yet as she did, I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The next day and my queasy feeling was only increasing as during the walk to school that morning, I heard two volleyball members mentioning about how Suzui had gone and missed an important meeting, even more so when the volleyball player beside her mentioned how Kamoshida had asked to see Suzui. They dismissed any possibility of a relationship and one of them worried since all they’d had was bad news recently.

First class was Social Studies, but I could barely pay any attention to Ushimaru-sensei as he droned on about the different government branches. After all, I was far too concerned about what to do regarding Kamoshida, first thing was my need to find Morgana and those thoughts occupied my mind more than this lecture… though it probably wasn’t helped by my intense dislike of most things political due to my uncle.

“Have you made up your mind?” Morgana’s voice suddenly came. I barely restrained myself from jumping upright at hearing him, but I did quickly cut my eyes across before eventually finding the little fur ball sticking his head out of Amamiya’s desk and judging by the flung wide arms and stunned expression, Amamiya hadn’t been expecting the ambush. “No matter how much thinking you do, there’s only one option. You’d be better off just listening to me,” Morgana insisted.

“Don’t talk!” Amamiya hissed. He also flung his arms down and made as if to push Morgana back into the desk. “Also, what are you doing in there?” Amamiya wondered. It was a bit counterproductive to order Morgana not to talk and then demanding answers, but I couldn’t fault Amamiya as I had the same question rattling around in my head.

“Hm? Did I hear a cat just now?” Ushimaru-sensei wondered. Everyone began to look around in surprise at his words as Amamiya continued to try and push Morgana back under, who let out a meow from his mouth that sounded more convincing than any human should have a right to sound. “Hm… could that rumoured cat be somewhere nearby?” Ushimaru-sensei wondered. The people in class were starting to get a little excited. “Settle down! We’re in the middle of an important lecture!” Ushimaru demanded. He then turned back to the board right as my phone buzzed.

Ryūji: It’s no use… I can’t think of another way…

Ren: Concentrate on class.

Natsumi: Or are you cutting?

Natsumi: Besides the point, me and Amamiya-san have Ushimaru-sensei, I don’t need torpedo chalk being sent at me.

Ren: Torpedo chalk?

Ryūji: You’ll learn soon enough.

Ryūji: Anyway, I can’t deal with that shit right now. I mean, what’re we gonna do about Kamoshida.

Ryūji: Do we just gotta go along with what that cat says?

Ryūji: Urgh, that damn furball…

“If only he knew I’m reading this too,” Morgana commented. It was a accurate statement, Sakamoto might have chosen different words if he knew that Morgana was actually present and reading the messages we were exchanging… or maybe not, Sakamoto did seem like the kind of person who might blurt out things even in front of the person he was talking about.

“Hey… what’s that!?” A male student suddenly exclaimed. I put my phone away in my pocket when I heard those words as I looked over, Ushimaru-sensei tried to get the student to settle down, but things went quickly downhill when a female student declared that someone was going to jump… of course things when from bad to horrific when Mishima suddenly stood up.

“Suzui…,” Mishima spoke. I bolted up from my seat and moved around to see through the windows and which revealed that unfortunately the words were true; Suzui Shiho was stood on the roof passed the metal fencing that encircled it with her gaze tilted downwards, as if I needed to see any more in order to know her intentions.

Rushing out of the entanglement of desks, I threw open the door and moved out into the hallway, completely uncaring of voices and what they said. I didn’t pause to look at the window and instead made my way towards the stairs, hoping that I would be able to reach the roof before Suzui threw herself from the building’s roof… before she committed suicide!

“SHIHO!!!” Takamaki’s agonised cry was the only thing I heard. A quick look proved I was too late, Suzui had already jumped; I stuffed my hand into my pocket and quickly retrieved my phone to punch in the emergency services number. I continued to run down the stairs as the dial tone blared like a siren in my ear, the moment I was connected I spoke without waiting.

“Ambulance! Shūjin High School! Aoyama-Itchome! A girl just jumped from the roof!” I yelled. The poor operator on the other end swiftly agreed all the while shakily speaking but at least someone was coming; I hung up and put my phone back in as I started to run full pelt towards the courtyard where Suzui would have landed.

‘Be alive Suzui! Please be alive! If not for yourself then for Takamaki!’ I pleaded. I ran right passed every other student, even shoving some of them aside to reach my destination, I slammed open the courtyard door and jumped over the walkway’s railing in order to have a straight shot for Suzui as more students began to flow out into the courtyard.

I dropped down beside her and pressed my head to her chest, and with an almost sobbed gasp of relief escaping my lips the instant I heard a heartbeat. But I didn’t dare risk moving her at all, Suzui could have fractured anything along her spine and I knew enough thanks to my mum’s work as a forensic pathologist that breaks to the spine, if the person was moved incorrectly, could lead to lifelong paralysis.

“Excuse me! Miss!” A voice called. I looked up and felt relieved when I saw a group of paramedics heading towards us. “Is this the girl who jumped?” The lead paramedic calmly asked. I felt old memories starting to boil up seeing those suits again, but I clamped down and shoved them back into the darkest corner of my mind; Suzui was a whole lot damn more important than me getting emotional over my family.

“She’s alive! But she could have damages to her spine!” I exclaimed. My tone was heavy with panic and I think something was stinging the corners of my eyes but I ignored it as I shuffled away to let the paramedics flock around her, I watched with heaving lungs as they set towards carefully moving Suzui in order to prevent aggravating her wounds whilst one paramedic checked her over for any other wounds or signs of blood loss, thankfully the grass was free of such a reddish stain but that just meant her internal injuries could be horrific.

“We need someone to go with her. Are there any teachers around?” The lead paramedic asked. I looked back and saw a massive gathering of students, many of them with their phones out pointed at the scene – are you kidding me?! How disgusting can people be?! This isn’t something to film! – I spotted Takamaki blankly staring at Suzui’s form from the front of the crowd with Amamiya and Sakamoto stuck inside at the middle and Mishima at the back.

Teachers were flowing through the ranks and appeared to be trying to manhandle the students away from the scene but when the paramedic asked that question, they all froze up and looked towards the person who’d spoken. Then, the most utterly absurd thing started to happen, multiple teachers let out weak, pathetic, feeble excuses as to not go with Suzui, one even suggested leaving this to the principal… the principal who was as much responsible for Suzui’s suffering as Kamoshida!

“I’ll go!” I declared. The paramedic looked at me and I stared back with a dead serious expression. “I called the ambulance here, I want to make sure Suzui-san is taken care of,” I insisted. It was also apparent that none of the teachers had enough spine to actually step forward and try to help out the student who had almost died on their watch; I would not be such a coward.

“Let me come too!” Takamaki hysterically cried. I looked over and saw that she looked close to tears, I nodded my head at the paramedics and they agreed for both of us to come, I quickly walked over to Suzui with Takamaki running up to her side as both of us knelt down beside her. “Shiho… why?” Takamaki asked. Her voice sounded close to breaking into tears as she looked down at her friend.

“Ann… I’m sorry. I… I can’t take this… anymore…,” Suzui wheezed out. Her eyes were fluttering rapidly but I could see she was losing the fight to stay conscious; Takamaki leant her head in close as she called out to her best friend. “Kamo…shida… he… he raped me,” Suzui choked out. I felt every nerve in my body stiffen up as my eyes widened in horror at the word that had escaped from Suzui.

“Huh? Kamoshida!?” Takamaki exclaimed. Her own horror was plastered clear on her face, but we could get no more information out of Suzui as her eyes drifted shut. “No! Shiho!?” Takamaki cried. The paramedics took that as their cue to lift Suzui up and into the ambulance, I thrust my left hand out to Takamaki and she took it as I quickly pulled out my phone and opened the Chat as we headed for the ambulance.

Natsumi: Sorry you two, you’ll have to handle today.

Ryūji: Don’t apologise!

Ryūji: Besides, we might have a lead!

Ren: We’ll explain later. Just take care of Suzui-san and Takamaki-san.

Tucking the phone away, I slid into the ambulance as I looked at Suzui, unconscious and with medical apparatus around her to help her breath. Takamaki was as ridged as a statue as she stared with wide yet empty eyes and ashen skin; I looked at Takamaki warily, wondering what to do, eventually I reached a hand out and lay it on her shoulder.

Almost instantaneously, Takamaki all but threw herself into me, sending me swaying back but I kept my seating. I reached my arms up and wrapped them around Takamaki who immediately started to cry, her deep aching sobs permeated the atmosphere as I felt a damp spot being to form on my blazer, but I didn’t let go. I simply firmed up the wrapping of my arms as I rested my head atop Takamaki’s head.

The paramedics were silent as they focused on racing through the bustling streets of Tokyo whilst making sure Suzui stayed in as stable a condition as was possible. But I saw, unlike Takamaki who continued to cry, the grim looks on their faces; whatever assessment they made of Suzui’s condition, it clearly wasn’t good.

When the ambulance slowed to a stop, the paramedics sprung into action, bolting out of the vehicle in a clean and executed manner as they moved to the back and rolled Suzui out. Takamaki had bolted up, her eyes dry for now, once Suzui was out of the vehicle we followed after her as the paramedics rushed her into the building; even though I wanted to avoid those memories, I used the last time I was in a hospital as a guide as to what to do.

Taking a hold of Takamaki’s hand, I guided her in and moved over to the nearest nurse explaining the situation. She gave us directions to where Suzui had been taken and I moved off, my legs marching a quick walk as I weaved between the staff, patients and visitors clogging the hallway as Takamaki tightened her grip on me in order to not be left behind. Once we reached the hallway linked to the intensive care unit, I sat down and Takamaki followed suit.

Heavy shaky breathes rattled out of Takamaki as her manicured fingers tightly gripped the squashy fabric of the bench. The last time I’d been here had been painful as my uncle crushed my heart, but I could at least use that in order to know what not to do for Takamaki. Reaching a hand out, I rested it on her back and slowly began to rub it in circles.

“Let it out Takamaki-san, it’s fine to let it out,” I reassured. Takamaki started to allow choking half-sobs to escape her as her shoulders began to shudder, but her hunch over position didn’t relax and no tears came from her; I continued my soft words as I desperately suppressed the painful memories of why I had been in a hospital three years ago, focusing on the living girl beside me suffering through the anxiety of not knowing whether or not someone dear would survive a horrible event.

“Excuse me, are you two with the young lady from Shūjin?” A voice called. I looked up. Seeing a woman approaching us with a clipboard and a firm expression on her face, Takamaki seized the hand that had been resting in my lap within an iron grip as her whole body started to tremble as the woman’s question received a positive answer. “She’s alive, but I’m afraid she ended up slipping into a coma,” The woman stated. Her expression became grim, a kind of grim I felt was familiar to me. “I’m sorry but… her chances of recovery… they’re slim,” The woman admitted.

“No!” Takamaki cried. She made as if to get up, but her legs gave out and she crumbled to the floor, I moved over and wrapped the blonde in another hug as she broke down into tears once again. “This is his fault! It’s all Kamoshida’s fault!” Takamaki wailed. She was right, Kamoshida’s distortion had caused this to happen, all because he believed he deserved whatever he wanted regardless of truth.

‘That’s it!’ I mentally vowed. This was wrong, more than wrong, it was abhorrent. ‘Kamoshida has gone too far this time! Whether he lives or dies, I don’t care! I’ll rip his distorted desires out on my own if I must!’ I decided. Ouvrard had done awful things to me, but never once had I considered suicide, never had I been pushed to the brink like this.

‘For Suzui-san’s sake! I’ll get justice for her!’ I vowed.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 15: - The Alluring Dancer

“How exactly did you guys end up getting expelled… well, almost expelled?” I asked. It was the afternoon by the time myself and Takamaki had returned to the school and by the time I had managed to meet up with Amamiya and Sakamoto, alongside Morgana, they told me that Kamoshida was having them expelled as soon as he could and Mishima was being carted along.

“We stopped Mishima after he ran off when you and Takamaki when with the medics. He told us ‘bout Kamoshida’s abuse and how he called Suzui out yesterday. It was real bad and I went to confront him. Ren and Mishima followed, that’s how we know Suzui’s in a coma and I almost hit ‘im but Ren stopped me. Kamoshida still decided to expel us though,” Sakamoto explained. I wasn’t angry but maybe slightly annoyed, yet I could hardly fan it to flames of fury, Kamoshida deserved to be punched. “We… er… also found out… Kamoshida forced Mishima… to leak Ren-Ren’s record,” Sakamoto admitted. One more reason to hate that vile teacher.

“I understand. It was reckless, but after what we saw, I can’t blame you. I almost wish Amamiya-san hadn’t stopped you even if it might have made him react worse,” I admitted. Sakamoto’s eyes widened whilst Amamiya shifted his stance, likely because I wasn’t a violent person; looking around quickly I motioned for the other two to come closer. “Before Suzui-san lost consciousness, she managed to tell me and Takamaki-san… Kamoshida… sexually assaulted her,” I whispered.

“THE HELL!!!!” Sakamoto exclaimed. He lurched away from me as if I was diseased, his eyes blown wide with horrified disgust, and even ended up tripping over his own two feet; Amamiya stumbled back, his right hand flying out to support himself off the wall, his eyes wide yet completely unseeing as he was lost within his memories. “We can’t waste time!” Sakamoto declared. He pulled himself up as the horror turned to rage. “We gotta hurry and go to that world and beat the shit outta that asshole!” Sakamoto decided.

“We’re not beating him up. We’re simply stealing his distorted desires,” Morgana pointed out. But this meant they were decided, they now had the resolve to face down the possibility of Kamoshida dying. “Can I assume that you’ve made up your minds about this, about how he might suffer a mental shutdown?” Morgana asked. Mental shutdown, just like what was being reported on the news, could it be that is what was happening, but then how? Only Morgana and I should be able access the Metaverse without the Meta-Nav… or at least I hope it was only us.

“Yes,” Amamiya stated. His voice taking on a steely tone as his eyes hardened into ice pits. “I was committed before Chiba-san revealed that fact, this just gives me extra motivation to ensure his distorted desires are dragged out and he confesses his sins. Suzui-san would have died, if he dies in the process… I can’t say I care much about that possibility,” Amamiya stated. Sakamoto gave a similar response.

“Alright then. We go then,” I agreed. I looked at Amamiya for this part. “Do we head in today?” I asked. Amamiya was the leader of this group, so it would be up to him when we head inside of the Palace to attempt this Change of Heart; Amamiya looked at me but before he could answer, Sakamoto motioned towards me. “Yes Sakamoto-san?” I asked.

“I just wanted to know, is gettin’ rid of a Palace hard? You’ve done it before, right?” Sakamoto asked. However, his brown eyes were not focused on me, instead they were focused on Morgana who was stood on a nearby table; I felt a flutter of nerves move within my stomach as I clasped my hands behind me as I nudged the ground with my shoe covered toe.

“When did I ever say that?” Morgana asked. Sakamoto was confused for a moment before proceeding to freak out about this fact and accused Morgana of pretending to know; I took in a deep breath at those words and decided it might be best to tell them the truth, at least about how I knew what I knew regarding Palaces.

“Yes. I have,” I admitted. All three proceeded to look at me with wide eyes as I tighten my hands’ grip. “I’ve dissipated a Palace before, stealing the Treasure works and the person survived it. Please don’t ask… it’s a little personal for me,” I admitted. I had added on that last bit when I saw Sakamoto opening his mouth, I didn’t feel like speaking about Ouvrard and what she put me through, especially not when we had more important things to focus on.

“Is it true you’re getting expelled?” Takamaki’s voice softly asked. We all turned to look in her direction and my heart hurt when I saw the saddened look on her face, she had her right arm wrapped across her front and the left raised to her face. “Everyone’s talking about it,” Takamaki admitted. Sakamoto didn’t look happy about that bit of information.

“That asshole’s at it again!” Sakamoto growled. He lifted his gaze to pierce into Takamaki after having dropped it to the ground when she first spoke. “So, you came all this way to tell us that?” Sakamoto asked. Takamaki lifted her slightly inclined head as the sad look on her face faded away to give rise to a determined one; behind her, the blue flames that had be naught but a candle in the wind blazed slightly stronger.

“If you’re going to deal with Kamoshida… let me in on it too,” Ann requested. My eyes widened at her words and the others were equally surprised by her words. “I can’t just sit back and do nothing after what happened to Shiho!” Takamaki declared. I couldn’t blame her for that feeling, the tear stain on my jacket and her blaming Kamoshida made me certain of how she felt.

“This has nothing to do with you… don’t butt your head into this,” Sakamoto insisted. His reasoning made sense given that we couldn’t drag Takamaki into the Palace without a Persona, even if we had more people to protect her, it was too dangerous; but his words on the other hand were complete nonsense since it had everything to do Takamaki.

“But it does! Shiho’s my-!” Takamaki began to argue. She stamped her foot down and swung out her right arm as if to brush passed Sakamoto’s objection; but Sakamoto ordered her not to get in our way, Takamaki’s mouth clacked shut as she looked at the ground, frustration on her face, she then turned and ran off, my lips pulled into a frown as I gripped my shoulder when Takamaki had leaned on me earlier.

“That was harsh,” Morgana spoke up. I nodded my head in agreement, Sakamoto didn’t have to be so cruel when he said those words, his motives were kind as Sakamoto stated we couldn’t take her with us. “I hope she doesn’t do anything too crazy. Women can be much bolder than men at times,” Morgana admitted. Takamaki had always appeared level headed so I doubt it would be bad but it was still a worrying possibility.

“We just gotta hurry up and deal with Kamoshida,” Sakamoto insisted. We certainly needed to act before Kamoshida went through with his threat to expel Amamiya, Mishima and Sakamoto or worse, caused another student to attempt suicide… or worse, actually succeed. I turned my gaze to Amamiya who nodded his head in agreement and looked at us.

“And on that, we should head into the Palace,” Amamiya stated. A round of agreement came from us and with Morgana in the bag we headed into the alleyway that would allow us to enter the Palace, we stood facing the school as Morgana leapt out of the bag and onto some metal nearby; I felt a little nervous about doing this but also slightly excited as well.

“The moment we cross over, we’ll treat each other like phantom thieves, so I hope you’re ready,” Morgana stated. I was still baffled by this whole phantom thief thing that Morgana kept mentioning and by how Sakamoto asked about it, he was as confused as me. “Those who covertly sneak in and stylishly steal Treasure, that is what we become!” Morgana declared. His eyes were closed and had this been his form in the Metaverse, I suspect a confident smile would be pulled across his face.

“Phantom Thieves, huh? Not bad,” Amamiya stated. A quick glance showed a small smile curling across his face; Sakamoto proceeded to claim that it sounded cool, he mentioned about the way to get inside of the Palace was by stating its’ owner, real world location and the appearance it would have in the Metaverse… exactly how my eyes worked.

“How the hell’s all this work? Someone make it?” Sakamoto asked. Without the ability to show them the Velvet Room, it would be difficult to explain about Igor and how he had likely made this app, so I kept my mouth shut; Sakamoto had pulled out his phone as he said that, Amamiya suddenly said ‘of course’ which caused me to look at him with a raised eyebrow. “That’s kinda creepy, but eh, seems useful enough. We’ll show that effin’ Kamoshida!” Sakamoto decided.

“Let’s go!” Morgana declared. Amamiya pulled out his phone and I watched as he used the Meta-Nav, feeling the strange sensation that came from entering the Metaverse wash over me.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Alright! Time to bust on through!” Sakamoto declared. He seemed especially determined to get on with this mission – or heist I suppose since we were thieves, why did that make me feel excited? – the Palace rose like an ugly blemish across the breadth of my vision, however a sudden scream startled us from any more conversation and I twisted around.

“What is this!?” Takamaki’s panicked voice exclaimed. I looked and saw the blonde haired girl moving towards us with wide eyes as she openly gaped at the sight; Sakamoto exclaimed her surname and she looked at us “That voice… Sakamoto!? And… are you Amamiya-kun!? And Chiba-san!?” Takamaki questioned. Her blue eyes darted between all of us whilst we simply stared at her in shock… had the Meta-Nav somehow dragged her in with us?

“Wh-Why-Why are you here!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. Stumbling over his words from shock, but at least he could speak since I was still trying to recover that ability and it seemed from their silence Amamiya and Morgana weren’t capable of speech either; Takamaki raised her hands up to grip her head with a panicked expression twisting across her face.

“How should I know!?” Takamaki responded. She then lifted her head and looked at us with terror and annoyance battling in her eyes. “What’s going on? Hey, where are we!? Isn’t this the school!?” Takamaki demanded. Morgana blinked owlishly at Takamaki for several moments before shaking his head and looked over at Sakamoto as Takamaki proceeded to turn around looking at the bizarre surroundings she had suddenly ended up in.

“I see. Perhaps she was dragged in because of that app thing. If multiple people can enter with the person who uses it, it stands to reason it’ll pull in anyone nearby,” Morgana suggested. That was a serious downside, sure it allowed for multiple people to enter but if people with no chance to Awaken a Persona came in then they’d be in serious danger.

“Wait, so this is related to Kamoshida!?” Takamaki exclaimed. Instead of answering, Sakamoto insisted that Takamaki leave. “No!” Takamaki declared. Her face was filled with a furious determination as she stared at us with intensity; sadly, she was being rather loud and that could spell danger for us if she didn’t quiet down soon enough.

“The Shadows are going to find us if you make a scene,” Morgana whisper warned. However, that didn’t help matters as Takamaki immediately freaked out over Morgana talking and proceeded to declare him a monster cat. “Monster?” Morgana repeated. His voice sounded so saddened hearing her say that, in fact he didn’t even refute the cat part like normal.

“You better explain what’s going on! I won’t leave until you do!” Takamaki declared. Exchanging looks, we realised that we didn’t have a choice, Sakamoto stated the obvious that we force her and so the four of us walked over and moved the struggling Takamaki – but given that Sakamoto had accidentally touched her in a not so appropriate place, I don’t entirely blame her – back to the entrance of the Palace and pushed her out of the Palace’s vicinity which should also force her out of the Palace due to its’ proximity to where we entered.

“Right. Next time, we check our surroundings before using that app, we don’t need to drag innocents into this world,” I insisted. Amamiya voiced his agreement as Sakamoto nodded his head, Morgana grumbled about us not being careful with the app by checking it beforehand. “Morgana, this app is a mystery to all of us. Plus, it’s not exactly the kind of tool we can use anywhere in Tokyo,” I pointed out. Even though the Metaverse existed parallel to our world, it couldn’t be access from everywhere, only Palaces and Mementos could let you slip in.

“Ah geez, Takamaki found out right when we were startin’ off… we gotta deal with this fast!” Sakamoto exclaimed. With Takamaki having seen this place, there was the likelihood that she might go around saying things about it which would get us into a serious pickle since she had figured out who we were, any news of the Metaverse getting out would be too scary to consider the implications of what could happen to us.

“That girl’s name is Takamaki Ann, right?” Morgana asked. We all confirmed this for him “Ann-dono,” Morgana muttered. I still heard it and I proceeded to raise an eyebrow at him referring to Takamaki with such a respectful title while using her first name; but he had seemed rather… flustered by the cognition of her that had appeared the last time we had been here, so maybe there was something more going on that I wouldn’t understand.

“I think we need to focus on our objective here,” I insisted. I rapped the end of my naginata shaft on the cobble ground which ended up causing Morgana to flail and jump a little, causing me to raise an eyebrow slightly at his flustered reaction. “It’s fine Morgana, just calm down and breath… now then, you’re the phantom thief expert, what should we do?” I questioned. Morgana settled down and took a look into the building as I sensed the Shadows drawing nearer to us.

“The Shadows have noticed us. You better brace yourselves, got it?” Morgana warned. He then fully turned to face Amamiya. “We’re counting on you, Joker!” Morgana declared. He jumped up with a little wave of his arms, but I was baffled by the name that he had used to refer to Amamiya and from the confusion on Amamiya’s face and uncertainty on Sakamoto’s expression, they felt the same way.

“Joker? That a nickname?” Sakamoto asked. Morgana explained – after chastising Sakamoto for referring to it in a lame manner – that it was a codename and we should be using those instead of our real names when within the Palace, likely to avoid the Déjà vu effect. “So, uh, why’s he Joker?” Sakamoto asked. He reached up to rub at his blonde hair as he stared down at Morgana.

“Because he’s our trump card when it comes to fighting strength,” Morgana explained. Amamiya reached his hand up to ruffle through his messy black hair as he seemed to be thinking about it, before allowing a smirk to rest on his lips as he looked at Morgana; he really was a different person when in the Metaverse, or perhaps he felt comfortable in letting his true self out more in this place.

“Not bad,” Amamiya stated. Morgana smiled in an almost preening manner as Sakamoto complimented the name, Morgana turned his attention to trying to name Sakamoto but decided on the rather insulting Thug – I know I said he looked like one, but that was just mean – Sakamoto disagreed and declared that he would decide it himself. “Please keep it down Sakamoto-san. The Shadows could find us,” Amamiya pleaded.

“Hm… when it come to me, it’s gotta be this mask,” Sakamoto decided. A grin coming onto his face. “Honestly, I actually kinda like it. What if we named me after this?” Sakamoto suggested. He seemed rather keen on his Rebel’s Armour after having seemed unnerved by it the first time he’d be clad within it; plus, the idea to use his mask as the basis certainly played into his whole vibe in this world.

“Fine… why not ‘Skull’ then?” Morgana suggested. He seemed a little upset, but then again Sakamoto had challenged him to a fight after the Thug suggestion, Sakamoto proceeded to agree rather enthusiastically and Morgana proceeded to look at me. “What about Natsumi? What do you want to be called?” Morgana asked. He had succeeded and then struck out so maybe he was a little hesitant to try again.

“How about Tomoe? You know since you look like a warrior. Especially with those metal plates,” Amamiya suggested. It wasn’t a bad idea, but as I looked down at myself, I thought about my outfit which was pretty far from being anything like anyone in Japan would wear, let alone an Onna-musha, frowning slightly I shook my head to reject the idea.

“It’s not bad, but looking at myself, I feel like it just doesn’t fit,” I stated. I continued to look at myself and I felt a few ideas, mostly French thanks for that Ouvrard, but none of them I liked so I continued to think until an idea hit me. “How about Amazon? After the tribe of warrior women from Greek Mythology,” I suggested. Amazons: bold, strong, vibrant warriors who lived by their own rules as opposed to the rules of the other city states of Greece… just the kind of person I wanted to become.

“That sounds so cool,” Sakamoto commented. I smiled as Amamiya gave an approving nod before our gaze fell to the only one left. “What do we do about this one’s codename?” Sakamoto asked. Amamiya seemed uncertain himself and without referencing his cat like appearance, even I was stumped. “How ‘bout Mona?” Sakamoto suggested. Swinging his leg lightly as he spoke.

“Well, if Joker thinks it’s easier to call me that, I’ll go with it,” Morgana stated. I couldn’t tell if he was happy or annoyed by it. “Alright. From here on out, we’re Joker, Amazon, Skull, and Mona. We need to be absolutely thorough about using those code names from now on!” Morgana announced. Nodding our heads in understanding we proceeded to move into the Palace’s entryway as I retrieved my bow and quiver.

“Alright! Time to steal this Treasure thing! Let’s make a dash for it!” Skull declared. With Joker in the lead, we rushed towards the vent and with a little jump Joker grabbed a hold of the vent’s edge before pulling and curling up so his feet entered first and then releasing the edging; Sakamoto was relieved none of the Shadows had found it yet, he clambered up as Mona leapt in with agile motions, I pulled myself up and carefully move in to avoid treading on my skirt.

We dropped down into the room and found that the door was open, that was a little unsettling since it had been closed the last time I was here, but the Shadows could have opened it in the gap between them. Joker began to head out the door when he suddenly dropped back, worrying about what was happening, I summoned my naginata and creeped over to peer around causing my eyes to widen as I looked into the entry hall.

“Hey, look! Ain’t that-” Skull began to speak. However, he was suddenly muffled and I looked back to see Mona – bearing an exasperated expression – covering his mouth since he was being loud as usual; I looked back to the entry hall at the mass gathering of Shadows that stood before Shadow Kamoshida who was basically beefing up his security against us and wanted us dead if we were found. “Hey, Mona. Can’t we just beat the crap outta him and call it a day?” Skull suggested. Very tempting, no matter how you look at it, beating Kamoshida to a pulp was probably tempting to all of us, there was one issue.

“Look at all those soldiers, idiot!” Mona chastised. He looked close to clawing his eyes out. “It’d be suicide. And I’m sure you don’t want a repeat of last time. Besides, don’t you want him to confess his sins? There’s no point beating him up. We need to steal his materialised desires, the Treasure,” Mona pointed out. Skull complied, although sounded reluctant, then proceeded to ask where the Treasure was located.

“Beyond some broken stairs, I think. I haven’t explored that region, but I have everywhere else and it’s not there. The stairs are in that direction,” I commented. As I did, I pointed through the other door that occupied the hallway; we carefully started to creep backwards with me keeping a backward glance over my shoulder in order to prevent us from being ambushed by the knights.

We reached the door and Joker opened it, only to immediately dive backwards and behind the edge of the frame with the rest of us following, a knight had been right behind the door and from the clanking, it had turned around to look at us. That wasn’t good as we were essentially pincered, the Shadows over in the entry hall were still detained by Shadow Kamoshida’s blustering, but at any moment they could come our way.

“Dammit, there’s a guard over here too… whaddya wanna do, should we kick its’ ass?” Skull asked. He was trying to keep his voice low in order to not be silenced again but I could hear from the tremor in his tone that it was a struggle to keep it at the quiet level we needed to remain undetected by the Shadows.

“Hold on,” Mona called. I glanced over at the cat creature who had a sparkle within his eyes. “This might be a good opportunity to teach you something,” Mona decided. I wondered what he could be talking about teaching us, we’d basically filled them in on just about everything already. “Alright, Joker! Are you ready to take it down?” Mona asked.

“Of course!” Joker confidently declared. He darted out and swung his dagger into the mask of the surprised guard, prying it free – note to self, teach Amamiya how to use that weapon soon, this was getting too painful to keep watching – the Shadow split apart into a single Pixie, odd I would have thought there’d be more given the rising Security Level of this Palace.

“Before we perform an All Out Attack, we move into something called a Hold Up. I’ll teach you their practical use now. Instead of straight up defeating enemies, there’s something else we can do. Shadows are beings born from people’s hearts, so naturally, they can talk too. In other words, you can communicate with them. Get it? If you talk to them when they’re cornered, they might offer money or items since they don’t want to die. In fact, talking has a better chance of scoring something great, as opposed to just offing them. Well then, let’s do the first step: Knock all the enemies down and do a Hold Up!” Mona informed.

That was so laughably easy with the Shadow that had appeared before us that there was nothing for most of us to do; Joker unleashed a single Eiha Spell and the winged girl dropped like a ton of rocks. On Mona’s swift instructions, me and him moved to either side of the Pixie and pointed our ranged weapons at her, Skull still lacking one – we need to remedy that soon – hovered at Joker’s shoulder but his pipe was at the ready, Joker calmly pointed his gun at the Pixie, imprisoning her within a triangle of death if she tried to escape.

“Seriously!? You guys are the intruders that King Kamoshida was talking about!?” Pixie snapped. She seemed to be rather annoyed by us attacking her, but I suppose any normal person would be and Shadows reflected people after all. “It can’t get worse than this… what’re you going to do with me?!” Pixie demanded.

“I want an item,” Joker calmly informed. His calm voice and steady gaze would have given anyone the impression that he had done this before, but his posture made it clear this wasn’t the case; his grip on the gun was tight as his form was rigid, perhaps unsettled by the fact that he was threatening someone even if it wasn’t exactly someone made of flesh of blood.

“Huh? So, you’ll let me live if I just give you something?” Pixie asked. Mona clarified we would settle for money as well, then ordered her to cough it up. “But, this happened so suddenly… I actually don’t have anything on me. I-I usually do though, you know!?” Pixie admitted. She sounded panicked when saying those words, likely because we were going to dissipate her since she had nothing.

“W-Wait, what? Oh… this isn’t how I was planning this to go,” Mona exclaimed. A briefly panicked look appeared on his face before he settled himself and tightened his grip on the slingshot he’d unexpectedly loosened in his shock. “Uhhh, if that’s the case… I guess it’s time for you to go to hell,” Mona stated. I almost sighed in exasperation as that was liable to make the Pixie panic and cry for help.

“W-Wait!” Pixie explained. Oh boy, here we go! I tightened my grip on my bow and its’ string, ready to loose the arrow the moment this Shadow tried to call for help, Mona claimed we were in a hurry. “No, wait up! Can’t we work something out? Don’t kill me, please! Won’t you let me go?” Pixie protested. Joker seemed very conflicted by this as he gritted his teeth and his gun slightly trembled.

“You chose the wrong enemy, but if you abandon Kamoshida now, I’ll let you live,” Joker stated. Pixie looked happy at his words and then I felt something a strange kind of tingling sensation originating from Pixie who fluttered her wings and rose back to her feet, the last chains of the Palace seem to almost shatter as Pixie looked at Joker whilst Mona seemed to be freaking out since Pixie had been talking about something happening to her.

“Oh yeah, I remember now! I don’t belong to King Kamoshida. I’m an existence that drifts about in the sea of humanity’s souls… my real name is ‘Pixie’!” Pixie declared. I felt sorry for the Shadows that they were forced to forget themselves thanks to the Palace, but somehow Pixie had regained her identity. “I’m Pixie! From now on, I’ll live on inside your heart!” Pixie declared. And then the strangest thing, yes even stranger than meeting Morgana for the first time, happened.

Pixie was surrounded in blue light which then transformed into Joker’s mask and flew at him, slamming into were his mask was resting on his face in a flash of light. Joker stumbled back a step as he reached up his left hand to press against the object, Mona was appropriately freaking out as Skull stared slack jawed, meanwhile I had pinched myself more than enough time to be convinced this wasn’t some kind of crazy dream I was having.

“Wh-What the hell was that about? The enemy got sucked into Joker’s mask!” Skull exclaimed. I don’t think me or Mona considered berating him for being loud again, we were more focused on the insane impossibility that we’d just witnessed; Mona was too baffled by the sight to come up with any kind of idea all the while I stared at Joker who was tracing his fingers over the mask with his eyes closed.

“Intruders!? Halt!” A knight declared. I jumped to face it and immediately started to berate myself for losing track of our surroundings and allowing us to be ambushed like this; the Shadow proceeded to morph into a duo of Bicorns as Mona jumped back with his hackles practically jumping off his skin as Skull stumbled back with his hand going for his mask, but Joker beat him to it first.

“Pixie!” Joker declared. The Shadow we’d just defeated manifest from Joker’s mask as if she belonged there which caused me to blink in confusion. “Zio!” Joker commanded. The lightning strike hit one of the Shadows, dropping it to its’ knees, Joker repeated the move on the second one; meanwhile Mona was trying to process that Joker had transformed a Shadow into a Persona.

‘A Persona is a Shadow tamed… I suppose that means Shadows could become Personas if convinced to ally with us. But you’re only allowed one Persona per person, so how…,’ I thought. As I did, we moved in for an All Out Attack, easily destroying the two Bicorns as I remembered something, something Igor had told me about my purpose as a member of the Triad. ‘You! You’re the Wild Card I’m meant to protect!’ I realised. I looked at Joker with wide eyes as I recalled the unique nature of the Wild Card, capable of holding a seemingly infinite number of Personas within their heart.

“H-Hey, Mona! Amazon! What was that about!? What did Joker do?” Skull questioned. He seemed completely unable to comprehend what had happened, but without Igor’s tutelage even I would have been baffled by this sudden occurrence; as it was, Mona was unable to fully understand the implications of what he’d witnessed even as he tried to puzzle it out before admitting he’d never seen it before.

“Is this… a good thing?” Joker questioned. He seemed concerned about the other two being so confused by the event, his hand stopped tracing his mask and proceeded to move down to hang at his side, he always seemed to worry about so much and I worried if he had a good family or not, or if his concern stemmed from the unfair branding as a criminal.

“Good? Joker, this is fantastic!” I insisted. Joker lifted his head to look at me as a smile spread across my face, without Igor I’d worried if I would ever find the Wild Card and yet he had found me instead. “You can use multiple Personas, giving you a unique variety of attacks, which can be used to strike an enemy’s weakness if we don’t have it in our Personas. Plus, if we’re up against a Shadow that can attack your weakness, you can cover it simply by switching to another Persona. It makes you completely unpredictable unless someone has knowledge of all your Personas and their respective capabilities,” I explained. Joker seemed bashful at my words as he rubbed the back of his head. “Mona really hit the jackpot by giving you the codename of Joker, a true wild card,” I stated.

“Just as Amazon said, this ability will be a huge advantage in battles. Alright, try to do that even more if the opportunity arises! You better help out too, Skull!” Mona insisted. He was grinning widely as he spoke, showcasing exactly how happy he was with this expected development; Skull cheerfully agreed to hold up every single Shadow that we came across. “Hehe, I like you even more now! I really do have something special after all!” Mona declared. Continuing to look at Joker, I smiled slightly whilst raising my left hand to my chest in a tight fist.

‘I found him, Igor, Lavenza. I don’t know if you two are around to continue cultivating his power, but I’ll do my job and protect him. I’ll protect Amamiya as much as I can.’ I vowed. With that unexpected but happy development, we turned to the closed door and proceeded through it into a hallway containing a barred corridor shooting off from it and another door at the end; with no way to lower the bars and them being impossible to climb we walked by them.

Having learned from previous spooks of the danger behind closed doors, Joker cautious opened this one and slipped through, the room was cramped with pillars and long tables with benches attached, but there was a slight issue of three guards being present. We took to hiding behind the pillars and then individually ambushing each Shadow and beating them, we managed to conduct a Hold Up and Joker seized a hold of a Bicorn mask.

“Joker, look a treasure chest. Let’s open it!” Mona insisted. Shrugging his shoulders Joker walked over to the chest and proceeded to open it, he reached it and pulled out what looked to be a dagger made of silver. “Joker! Your weapon!” Mona exclaimed. Joker lifted up the dagger he held and all we could do was watch as the silver dagger flew into the dagger Joker held, causing the object to transmute into the silver dagger he’d just been holding.

“Our Rebel’s Weapon do that,” I spoke up. Joker turned to look at me as I rested my naginata against my shoulder. “When we encounter a weapon akin to our own, the weapon is absorbed into our Weapon and changed to take on its’ appearance and attributes if it’s stronger than what we currently wield. That’s already happened to mine. It’ll also happen to our Armour,” I explained. Happily patting the reddish wood of my weapon’s handle.

“Nice,” Joker commented. With that we proceeded to move to the door out of the room, which guided us back into a more castle like hallway with a wide and tall corridor that had neat brickwork making up the floor; best of all though was that there was a Safe Room right across from us, Skull commented on its’ appearance but had forgotten its’ name completely.

“A Safe Room,” Me and Mona simultaneously deadpanned. It was pretty annoying that he had forgotten the only place we could actually rest in this place whenever we needed to take a quick breather; Mona reminded Skull that we could strategize inside of it, so we proceeded to duck inside the room which had a chequered floor with a table and chairs at the centre with some more wider couches dotted about and gaudy red fabric that hung down.

“Aren’t there even more Shadows here than before?” Skull pointed out. That was an unfortunate truth as the larger number of Shadows were a noticeable presence; with the increase in Security Level, even if a few ambushes had dropped it slightly, and our prior run amok visits then the raised presence of Shadows was expected but incredibly irritating, nonetheless. “Just gettin’ this far’s been a real pain in my ass!” Skull stated.

“How? We’ve hardly expended Soul Power. We’ve fought a Pixie, Bicorns and Jack-o-Lanterns, all of which we managed to down with a few strikes,” I pointed out. Joker now had Curse, Electricity, Wind and Physical abilities to use to attack along with some Healing Spells for support; we were actually doing alright since we had run into enemies we’d fought before so the two most inexperienced members weren’t thrown off.

“Yeah, but… isn’t it kind of ineffective. It’s great that Joker can help us with the slamming of weakness, but what if we end up against somethin’ without weaknesses we can exploit, or against foes with multiple weakness but none that overlap,” Skull pointed out. His expression was a bit uncomfortable as he scuffed at the stones with his boots.

“It’d be great if we could pass on our follow up move from striking a weakness to someone else, kind of like how a relay passes a baton,” Joker admitted. That made sense, I’d run into more Shadows than these two, so I was aware of the different varieties of danger we’d soon be facing down the further we moved into the Palace.

“It’s all because you guys provoked Kamoshida, you know,” Mona pointed out. He was flat on the floor when we stepped inside but had recovered and pushed himself up. “Still… he seems to be awfully on guard,” Mona admitted. Skull turned the conversation towards how we were meant to steal the Treasure. “Don’t be hasty. First, we need to secure an infiltration route,” Mona stated. Skull was confused by this.

“We need to reach the Safe Room nearest the Treasure’s location. With that, we’ll be able to use the Metaverse’s cognition based reality to create a pathway between the entrance and the Safe Room, but that can only be done to Safe Rooms we know,” I explained. However, Skull stared at me as if I’d suddenly started to speak in French… I’m certain I didn’t since only he was looking at me like that. “We need to find the Safe Room nearest the Treasure and then we can teleport to it from the entrance,” I simplified.

“It’s basically our pathway to the Treasure’s location. But honestly, I think we’ll need a little more manpower in order to accomplish this,” Mona admitted. His expression was a little down as he stared at the ground with an uncertain expression on his face, no surprise there as we could do with other methods of attack in order to consistently strike weakness but with Fire, Ice, Bless, Psy and Nuke as the only attributes we didn’t naturally possess, we’d be majorly reliant on running into Shadows with multiple weakness in order to let Joker convince them to join us in the hopes of finding those elemental attacks.

“Hey, you say you don’t have your memories and all, but somehow you still know about that kinda stuff?” Skull questioned. He then lifted his head from gazing at Mona to look between me and Joker. “Do you think this thing’s really got amnesia?” Skull asked. Mona seemed too earnest, he seemed to believe in just about everything he said, I honestly don’t think he was faking the amnesia bit, maybe the distortion warped his memories of a personal nature, but his experience remained.

“I believe in Mona,” Joker affirmed. I was glad that our leader believed in the cat creature and even Mona seemed happy about being trusted by Joker; Joker simply looked down at the cat creature with a smile upon his face, Sakamoto pointed out that Mona could still end up being nothing more than a stray cat which Mona rejected but he sounded so desperate for that to not be true, just how much was he certain he was human? And how much was it mere wishful thinking?

“I also trust Mona, he’s not done anything to harm us or lead us astray,” I pointed out. Skull shrugged his shoulders at this and I returned my attention to the issue at hand. “We need more manpower, more medicine and a ranged weapon for Skull,” I pointed out. We were in a sticky situation at the moment, but we couldn’t just hover around and do nothing with Joker, Skull and Mishima under threat of expulsion. “Besides that, there’s something you two ne-,” I began to speak. Fully prepared to bring up their lack of capability with their weapons, however voices suddenly cut me off.

We listened in on the discussion and heard two guards talking about a princess who they had suspected was an intruder but now they were taking this princess back to Kamoshida. Skull was concerned but my eyes widened as I connected the dots in my head and dropped down beside Mona with panic on my face.

“Mona, you’re the stealthiest of us all! Can you go out there and check who the princess is? I think I know and that worries me, but I want to be sure,” I requested. Mona agreed and quickly darted out the door as I stood up and pressed my finger against my mouth as I looked at the door, nervous about what might be happening.

“Stuff like the castle and that navigation app are mysterious… but Morgana’s got ‘em both beat,” Skull stated. Me and Joker were quick to point out he should be using Mona’s codename. “Crap! Sorry!” Skull exclaimed. I waved it off as did Joker, we were liable to slip up on occasion right now since this was still new to us, it was best to make sure we kept each other in check. “What was I again? Oh yeah! Skull!” Skull commented. I took a deep breath so to not give into the desire to twist Skull’s ear at that comment.

“This is bad! It’s likely what you feared Amazon!” Mona exclaimed. He darted back into the Safe Room and I gritted my teeth, summoning my naginata to my side, I darted out of the room. “It’s your friend! Ann-dono! She’s been taken by the Shadows!” Mona yelled. The sound of footsteps indicated that the other two were now chasing after me as I ran back to the barred hallway, a hallway I had only been down once and never wanted to go down again but that was likely where Takamaki had been taken by Kamoshida’s Shadow as I heard Takamaki’s fearful voice crying out.

“How?! We sent her home earlier!” Skull exclaimed. There was one way and one way only which Mona pointed out, the possibility that somehow the Meta-Nav had been downloaded onto her phone. “Oh no, don’t tell me it got put on hers just like mine and Amazon’s!? Dammit! We let her out for her own safety and she just came back in by herself!” Skull exclaimed. I figured I might as well tell them about what I knew since Takamaki had landed herself in some serious hot water now.

“Takamaki-san has the potential for a Persona, technically everyone does but it’s tied to their Will of Rebellion. If they don’t want to fight, it never emerges as a Persona. Takamaki-san was like that until today! Suzui-san almost dying sparked a fight in her heart! If the app is drawn to people with powerful a Will of Rebellion, it makes sense it would stick to Takamaki-san,” I informed.

“Could we trigger her Awakening like we did with Skull?” Joker asked. I gave the vague sign of maybe. “If it’s linked to Suzui-san, then if we can convince Takamaki-san to fight for her sake, then it might just work. She could fight back against the man who caused her and her friend so much pain. There’s no more fitting justice than that,” Joker decided. We had arrived at the hallway which had been barred but was now open, so I threw out my arms to stop everyone from advancing. “Amazon?” Joker questioned.

“Up ahead is the place where you’ll see the cognitions of how Kamoshida sees the female members of the volleyball team. Just… brace yourselves okay,” I warned. With that, we headed up to the door at the end of the hallway and we heard Takamaki apologising for touching the armour with Skull stating that Takamaki didn’t understand what was going on. “Neither did you when you first came here, none of us did,” I commented.

“Let’s hurry! We have to save her!” Mona insisted. Joker rushed up and pushed open the door, allowing us to step inside the room which was hued in a disgusting pink atmosphere with red curtains draping down to the ground; strewn about on the ground were cognitions wearing the faces of the female volleyball members, all dressed in revealing clothing and positioned in a manner that was likely supposed to be provocative.

“This is effed up? Is that what he thinks of the girls on the volleyball team!?” Skull demanded. I grimly nodded my head in agreement, this was the horrific truth of how Kamoshida really saw the girls who were on that team; it wasn’t just Ann that disgusting filth saw as an object of desire, but likely every female student he’d come across, thankfully a sudden jump from Mona which had all four legs stuck straight out to the ground despite standing on only two of them distracted my gaze.

“Hey?! That’s-!” Mona exclaimed. He silenced himself with a small cry, I looked over and saw the Real Takamaki chained to a golden cross, surrounded by two knights and one knight captain, behind the Shadows were Shadow Kamoshida and that infernal cognition of Takamaki that I’d destroyed… oh yeah, I forgot cognitions respawn after a little while if you destroy them; we rushed over as Skull called out to Takamaki.

“Just when I was about to start enjoying myself,” Shadow Kamoshida grumbled. Takamaki’s expression slightly brightened by the sight of our arrival, but she was rightly confused by what was going on; however, Skull didn’t answer Takamaki about what was going on, instead deciding to focus on spitting an insult towards Shadow Kamoshida. “How many times are you going to come back?” Shadow Kamoshida questioned. His expression was deeply annoyed by our return.

“As many times as we please! Now let Takamaki go!” I ordered. I dearly wanted to call out Phantom and start tearing these Shadows apart, but with Takamaki cuffed to the cross there was no way I could guarantee that she wouldn’t be harmed by any flying shards of rock or gravity wells; Shadow Kamoshida sneered before turning to look at Takamaki who continued to struggle against her bonds.

“I bet you’re just like those thieves. You came because you’re pissed at me, huh?” Shadow Kamoshida commented. I curled my left hand into a tight fist at his self-satisfied expression. “But, ah… I forget that chick’s name, but it’s your fault she jumped, you know,” Shadow Kamoshida stated. My jaw proceeded to fall open in shock at the audacity of this man, Skull looked ready to rip Shadow Kamoshida apart, so I grabbed a hold of him to stop that as Joker went as still in a statue, but the tightly clenched fists were the only indication of his rage as Takamaki stopped moving to gape at Shadow Kamoshida with a horrified expression on her face. “You were so reluctant to throw yourself onto me that I had her take your place,” Shadow Kamoshida. I was glad we’d all known this beforehand, otherwise I’m not sure what would have happened to the Shadow.

“You bastard!” Takamaki cried. Her blue eyes shone with a furious light yet the blurring of tears in her eyes showed her feelings, however the knight captain moved in closer with his sword pointed threatening at her; Takamaki proceeded to gasp in fear as her misting eyes focused on the weapon pointing at her; Skull cried out and tried to surge forward.

“Take one more step and I’ll kill her on the spot!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. I swiftly tightened my grip on Skull’s jacket and pulled him back slightly so that the Shadow wouldn’t follow through with his threat as I also tightened my grip on my naginata, I looked at Joker and Mona both of whom had looked incredibly fearful. “Just sit back and enjoy the dismantlement show,” Shadow Kamoshida stated.

“No! Don’t!” Takamaki cried. Her voice was high pitched and fearful as the two ordinary knights drew their swords to cross underneath Takamaki’s chin; Shadow Kamoshida’s disgusting face took on a disturbing perverted look as he wondered about starting with Takamaki’s clothing, even worse that infuriating cognition giggled like a pathetic airhead and claimed Shadow Kamoshida was a perv, but she didn’t seem disturbed by this comment.

“H-Hey, what are we gonna do?!” Skull questioned. He seemed completely worried about what to do but with Takamaki imprisoned, we couldn’t recklessly move without endangering her; even Mona saw no way forward as he sadly shook his head despite the painful expression upon his face. “Takamaki!” Skull cried out. He strained against my grip, but I refused to let go and he didn’t put enough force to try and pull himself free.

“Is this… my punishment for what happened to Shiho?” Takamaki softly questioned. Her expression was saddened as she looked down at the ground, Kamoshida seemed pleased by this saddened image that Takamaki was portraying. “Shiho… I’m so sorry…,” Takamaki apologised. The tears were just starting to spill over her eyes and I couldn’t stop myself anymore.

“You can’t give up!” I called. I pushed Skull back behind me as I stepped forward with a fierce expression on my face. “Didn’t you say it was his fault!? That you wanted to get back at him for what he had done to Suzui-san!” I challenged. Takamaki looked at me whilst blinking her bright eyes at me. “He’s right there! You can avenge Suzui-san right now! But you have to rebel! Fight back! If not for your sake! Then for Suzui-san!” I insisted.

“She’s right! You can’t give up! Not now! Or are you just going to listen? As he keeps spouting that nonsense! You won’t even try and pay him back for Suzui-san! You called her your best friend, all you had at this rotten school!” Joker dared. Takamaki blinked her eyes a few times, but instead of the tears falling, she took in a deep breath and seemed to compose herself now, her tears faded away as her face took on an expression of determination.

“You’re right! Letting this piece of shit toy with me… what was I thinking!?” Takamaki declared. She started to struggle once more, pulling at her bindings as much as she was able to and wriggling her wrists to try and find a way out of the cuffs; Shadow Kamoshida started to say something, but I had no interest in his garbage words and neither did Takamaki. “Shut up!” Takamaki ordered. Her head whipped over to look at Shadow Kamoshida, her expression turned into a vicious snarl and yet somehow it didn’t impair her beauty at all. “I’ve had enough of this! You’ve pissed me off, you son of a bitch!” Takamaki declared.

Right at those words, Takamaki lurched forward with her mouth opening into a silent scream as her eyes turned Shadow gold. Smiling at the sight, I knew what was coming, Takamaki began to writhe as best she could whilst being cuffed harshly to the cross, her head swaying from side to side as sharp choked cries of pain escaped from her mouth, but eventually her head proceeded to hang forward as she stopped moving.

“I hear you, Carmen,” Takamaki agreed. Her head snapped up as a blue fire blazing across her face before fading to reveal a red cat shaped mask. “You’re right. No more holding back!” Takamaki declared. Quickly pulling out my bow, I fired off four arrows, one for each cuff and shattering them without wounding Takamaki’s wrists or ankles; I called out what she needed to do and Takamaki’s right hand flew up to grip the left side of her mask.

With one decisive pull, Takamaki tore the mask from her face as blood spewed out, the blue fire swallowed her form before proceeded to flow backwards and into her Persona. Takamaki’s rebel armour was, rather form fitting and revealing at the same time, it consisted of a skin-tight red latex catsuit with a cleavage cut-out and zippers down the front of the suit and her sides, pink gloves, dark red thigh high boots and a clip-on tail on the back of her catsuit.

Her Persona Carmen was a very tall woman with fuchsia coloured skin, she wore a long flowing red ballgown with black gloves and black-red boots. The dress was mostly light red with alternating black and gold trim along its many layers, with it having a black corset with red heart designs and it showed a generous amount of cleavage. Her gloves and boots shared the same colour and heart designs as the corset with several roses growing out of the base of the corset.

Carmen was a brunette with spiralling pigtails, reflecting Takamaki’s own hair style. Her face was covered with a black cat like mask with floral designs along the top and sides and her shoulder pads matched the design of the mask. She also had a cigar in her mouth and a black choker around her neck, there were two figures that seem to be men in tuxedoes and red bow-ties, but their heads were metallic pink boxes, with glowing heart designs for eyes and speakers for mouths. These figures were physically attached to Carmen via a pair of thorny vines that connect to the roses.

With fury blazing in her eyes and now free of chains, Takamaki charged at the nearest Shadow who numbly watched the towering Persona loom over them. With a rather well executed kick, Takamaki separated knight from sword and chased after the weapon by running and jumping for it. She grabbed a hold of the weapon and proceeded to bring it cleaving through the cognition that bore her face. Just as with my attack, the cognition dissipated in black smoke but the sword shattered in the process rendering it useless, Shadow Kamoshida fearfully stumbled away as the knight captain moved forward.

“You know what? I’m not some cheap girl you can toy with… you scumbag,” Takamaki snarled. She tossed the broken blade aside and then her hands became wreathed in blue fire, allowing a whip to manifest in her hands instead, her true Rebel’s Weapon; I stepped forward to stand beside Takamaki, tapping a finger on my weapon’s shaft as the boys also stepped up. “You stole everything from Shiho… you destroyed her… now it’s your turn! I will rob you of everything!” Takamaki vowed.

“How dare you! Enough of your insolence!” The knight captain ordered. He and the two knights proceeded to melt into the black and red goo, but instead of immediately emerging as whatever Shadows were contained, the goo spiralled together into one big puddle before shooting up right into a Shadow I’d never seen before; it was a massive purple skinned humanoid with corded grey-black horns protruding from its’ head, a triangle tipped tail danced behind it as red eyes stared down at us, yellow gloves and boots covered its’ limbs and a white bearded covered its’ chin, however other that the limbs it was completely naked and sat on what looked like a toilet… Shadows disgust me sometimes.

“No, I’ve had enough of you! No one’s going to stop me now! Let’s go, Carmen!” Takamaki responded. I was worried about what Takamaki might do, this thing was giving off an aura of power I’d not seen since Tam Lin and Setanta but it was also much stronger than either of them. Moving forward I grabbed a hold of the girl before she could do anything too risky. “Chiba-san, what are you doing?” Takamaki asked. Her blue eyes moved to look at me as I moved forward to stand in front of her.

“Give me a moment, I need to see this thing, if I don’t then we could be in a lot of danger,” I insisted. I focused my eyes on the creature that had appeared before us, relaxing my mental walls as much as possible to allow all the information to flow into my mind and I learned the Shadow was actually called a Belphegor and it was much more powerful than I anticipated. “This thing is strong! Stronger than we are! Even worse is that it resistant to Electricity and it’ll send Curse flying back at us while healing itself with Gravity!” I warned. Skull would be unable to use magic and Arsène could only use his Skill as a result, I was stuck with only Phantom’s Earth and Support magic.

“Is it weak to anything?” Joker questioned. There was a slightly nervous note within his voice but I could hardly blame him; with two Elements useless, another basically useless and the fact that Belphegor had set its’ giant toilet right in front of the only way out, we weren’t going to be able to flee from it which would be the smartest move and I had been out of Goho-Ms for a while so that meant no way to escape.

“Fire! But only Fire!” I answered. It just had to be one of the Elements we didn’t possess that was it weakness, sometime I wondered if my luck was absolutely terrible or if there was someone trying to mess with me; to be facing down a powerful Shadow that held only one weakness and was basically immune to most of our own Elements, it certainly felt like someone was trying to mess with us.

“How dare you deny King Kamoshida’s love, you selfish lass!? Pay for this insolence with your life!” Belphegor ordered. Love… that was so disgusting a though to be heard spoken that I felt my stomach turn violently; Kamoshida didn’t know the first thing about what love was, not with the way he treated Suzui and Takamaki, nor with the way he envisioned the female volleyball students acting towards him.

“That dirtbag just sees women as sexual outlets! Don’t make me laugh with that ‘love’ bullshit!” Takamaki snapped. She had every right to say those words after all she had endured. “C’mon, Carmen! Let’s give ‘em hell!” Takamaki encouraged. Immediately, fire sprung to life around Carmen who grinned with an almost charming sadistic edge to it as she hurled the fire at Belphegor, the attack hit the Shadow and it dropped to the ground while I gaped in shock at what had just happened.

“Get it!” Joker ordered. I motioned for Takamaki to follow us as we darted in, attacking the Shadow with all of our strength, I noticed that Takamaki didn’t know how to use the whip and settled for harshly stomping on the Shadow or clubbing it with her handle. “Fall back!” Joker commanded. He grabbed Takamaki’s arm and pulled her away as the demonic entity writhed back up onto its’ floating toilet.

It gathered power to itself and from its’ aura I knew what was coming, I grabbed Takamaki and pulled her out of the way. Joker jumped backwards while Mona and Skull also dodged out of the way as shards of ice proceeded to skewer the area where we’d all been standing. I had only pulled Takamaki away due to worrying her affinity might be akin to mine, Takamaki let a soft thanks escape her.

Focusing back on the fight, I tore my mask off releasing Phantom. The ghostly entity manifested and quickly used Makakaja to increase Takamaki’s attack, with her the only one able to hit the weakness, giving her more power was the best idea. Skull charged in and tried to hit Belphegor, but the infernal creature dodged as Skull near enough fell over himself from overswinging. Thankfully he didn’t and managed to scramble out of the way as Mona unleashed a Garu spell.

The spiralling winds didn’t even seem to tickle it, but we didn’t have time to dwell on it. Joker brought out Bicorn and proceeded to have it charge at the Belphegor, impacting the demon in the chest. We had to be cautious of Joker’s health if we wanted to avoid him collapsing from over exhausting his Life Energy. Joker glanced over at Takamaki who didn’t seem to know what to do after all the others had attacked.

“Takamaki! Use your fire!” Joker insisted. Takamaki looked rather unsure, but I gave her a firm squeeze to her hand, Takamaki swallowed thickly before pulling off her mask and allowing Carmen to bombard the Belphegor with fire once more; just like before the demon was unable to dodge them and was knocked down from the force of the blow and it striking its’ weak point.

“Don’t you know even a beautiful rose has thorns!” Ann declared. She was the first one to initiate the All-Out Attack as she lashed out with her whip – it was as badly handled as Joker and Skull’s weapons – to strike first. The rest of us darted in and used our own weapons to unleash a cacophony of attacks to weaken it. However, the Shadow pulled itself back up once more and Joker had us all fall back to avoid being attacked immediately.

The Belphegor rose up and I sensed a concentration of energy surround the Belphegor and focus within it. Whatever that energy, it didn’t hurt us, but it might prove to be dangerous to us if we allowed Belphegor to utilise it. I quickly had Phantom manifest and unleash a Tera Spell at Belphegor which knocked it around a bit. But I couldn’t really tell how much damage we were doing, the only advantage we had was Takamaki’s fire.

“Dammit! We’re getting nowhere!” Skull cursed. His lips were curled into a snarl as he said that. Joker utilised another physical attack to slam Belphegor as Mona healed up his body before the Life Energy drain became too much. “Just go down already!” Skull snapped. He then charged forward and managed to land a blow to Belphegor, but it shrugged it off and instead allowed its’ red eyes zeroed in on Takamaki.

The girl raised her hand up to her mask, but I felt the concentration of energy flare up as it turned icy. Panic spiked through me as I realised that it was targeting Takamaki, having identified her as the most dangerous threat. Pivoting towards her, I quickly started to run towards Takamaki, even if I did raise her magical defence with Phantom, it wouldn’t matter much as she’d be seriously injured and we needed Takamaki in fighting fit condition to win.

“Samakaja!” I declared. Immediately my magical defence rose as I pushed Takamaki out of the way, preventing the ice from striking her but it slammed into me instead. A scream tore from my throat as I felt myself be engulfed in a chilling embrace that had me go flying back, the pain was bad much more than anything I’d ever taken from Lavenza.

My back harshly hit the floor and I’m sure I went skidding backwards, cries of my codename and surname rattled the air as I felt arms loop around me. Yellow danced in my blurry gaze as I stared up at the reddish ceiling of the Palace. Belphegor should have been attacking us, but screeching – like metal on metal – came instead of physical pain although the sound was a torment upon my ears. A sensation of warmth came as I felt two more sets of hands press upon me, although one set felt a little small and oddly shaped, as the icy pain faded.

My vision cleared and I saw both Takamaki and Joker leaning over me with worry fading into relief at the recognition they must have seen in my eyes. I spotted Carmen, Pixie and Zorro above them, meaning that Morgana had to be the other person. The sensation of healing surrounded me on three sides indicating Carmen could heal as well. Looking further back, I saw Skull fending off the Belphegor as best he could.

“Phantom!” I cried. Against the calls of the other, I called out my Persona and had it used its’ Earth magic to give Skull a bit of breathing room. The punk turned around and gave me a grin and thumbs up, my body was still shaking as I pushed myself upright, but I wasn’t going to let them endanger themselves anymore.

“Amazon! Don’t push yourself anymore!” Joker ordered. I felt a warmth appear on my shoulder and saw his red clad hand tightly gripping that area, his face held some worry as I sensed Morgana’s paw pressing against me through the fabric on my legs. I really shouldn’t be making them worry after I took that attack so foolishly, even if it was the best thing to do since I was closest to Takamaki and we needed her more than anyone else except for Joker.

“Takamaki-san, have you got enough strength for one more Fire Spell?” I asked. Takamaki gave me a firm nod before quickly going through with the attack, I yanked out some medicine and quickly choked it down, feeling my Life Energy flow back into me as my body got to repairing the scuffs I’d taken thanks to that accursed Shadow.

Joker led the others into a charge against the downed entity, I remained still after he gave me a hard look, but I refused to simply wait. Preparing my bow, I drew the string back with my left hand and released the arrow. It sliced through the air and plunged deep into the violet skin, the four stopped and looked back at me in surprise as I prepared another arrow. They turned back to the attack as my arrows peppered the Shadow.

To be frank, the combined assault and one last powerful fire attack from Carmen just before my support spell ran out, reduced the Shadow to empty smoke and allowed my arrows to clatter to the ground. I could feel gasping breaths escaping me and from the looks on the other faces, they felt the same way, exhaustion from over usage of their power had clearly drained all of them, especially Takamaki.

“Oh shit!” Shadow Kamoshida exclaimed. The Shadow released how dangerous this situation was and proceeded to flee, Takamaki called out, but she had expended so much energy that when she tried to move and call after him, all she could really do was slip to her knees, I immediately dropped down beside her and place a hand on her shoulder in order to support the girl.

“Why’d you come here, man!? And more importantly, how!?” Skull questioned. Even though those questions were important, now didn’t seem like the best time to be asking them given how exhausted Takamaki currently was; Mona proceeded to chastise Skull for the way that he had spoken to Takamaki, his furious expression softened as he proceeded to look at Takamaki with worry in his blue eyes.

“Are you alright, Ann-dono!?” Mona asked. That address caught Takamaki’s attention as she raised her head and proceeded to repeat it back to Mona, before immediately swinging to wonder how Mona was talking and if he happened to be alive, she then also proceeded to wonder where we happened to be. “J-Just calm down. Everything’s going to be okay; don’t worry,” Mona reassured. But it didn’t seem to work as Takamaki reached her hand out to press against Mona’s rather sizeable head.

“How am I supposed to calm down!?” Takamaki demanded. She then used Mona’s head as a prop in order to push herself upright onto her own feet, but she was still hunched over and was barely supporting her upper body by pressing her hands against her knees. “H-Huh?” Takamaki exclaimed. She bolted up right, as she looked down at herself, likely noticing her Rebel’s Armour. “Why am I dressed like this!? When did I-!” Takamaki began to panic. Her hands pressing against her red clad form and probably trying to cover herself up, before crossing them over her exposed chest and dropping back to the ground in a ball. “Ugh! What’s with this!?” Takamaki exclaimed.

“Breathe Takamaki,” I softly encouraged. I reached out a hand again, firmly pressing it against the girl. “We’ll explain everything, but not here,” I insisted. Quickly looking around, I saw nothing remained in the room before looking back over at Joker. “Giving the situation, I advise a retreat back to the physical world, more Shadows will be coming soon and Takamaki’s in no fit state to fight. Plus, that Belphegor exhausted me,” I admitted.

“Agreed. We fall back, Amazon can you support Takamaki-san?” Joker asked. I nodded my head and immediately looped one of the blonde’s arms around my shoulders before standing up; Skull let out a complaint about being forced to fall back after just starting. “Skull, Mona, cover our backs!” Joker ordered. With that we proceeded to move out of the Palace with Takamaki trying to help me carry her to the escape.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 16: - Preparations to Make

We returned to the physical world and head for Aoyama-Itchome station to discuss what had happened. Sakamoto ran away, to get drinks he said but I suspect it was so he didn’t have to explain everything, so me and Morgana took it in turns to explain about the Metaverse, Shadows, Palaces, Personas and I finally filled them in on my Betwixt status, though I left out the Daughter of Philemon, Triad of Power stuff since I didn’t want to confuse them too much.

“Which one do you want?” Sakamoto asked. He returned with three bottles in his arms, one with a yellow liquid, one with brown and one with red; Takamaki asked for the one that wasn’t carbonated. “Uh, they all are actually,” Sakamoto admitted. Takamaki sighed and proceeded to take the brown coloured drink, I took the red one and Amamiya got the last one. Morgana proceeded to stand his front legs on Amamiya’s shoulder whilst the rest remained inside of the ravenette’s bag… he seems to have got used to it.

“What about me?” Morgana questioned. Sakamoto didn’t seem to understand why Morgana would need a drink so I took of the cap, poured a small bit in and offered it to Morgana – if he really was human, this should be fine – Morgana purred with happiness as he lapped at the liquid. “Have you calmed down, Ann-dono?” Morgana asked. He pulled back from the cap once he finished so I stepped back.

“Um… Morgana, right?” Takamaki asked. She looked at the cat with wide eyes, likely still processing the fact that a cat could be understood by humans. “I really am talking to a cat… this feels so strange…,” Takamaki admitted. She then blinked her eyes and shook her head as she remembered something. “Oh, sorry! You’re not a cat, right?” Takamaki recalled. However, Morgana waved – metaphorically speaking – it off and agreed it was only natural to be confused and demanding so, after so much had happened, would be asking a lot. “Honestly, I still can’t believe what happened… and that power… my Persona,” Takamaki admitted.

“It’s the Will of your Rebellion, Ann-dono. With it, you’ll be able to fight in that other world,” Morgana reassured. Although the station might not be the best place to talk, the naturally noisy atmosphere covered up our rather unusual conversation quite well since we were speaking in low enough tones; people would have to stop and hover if they wanted to listen in on us but me and Morgana would sense if they did plus Takamaki and Sakamoto could look behind me and Amamiya to see if anyone did stop whilst Amamiya could cover Sakamoto’s back since Takamaki was stood in front of a wall.

“So, if what you told me is true, we can make Kamoshida have a Change of Heart, right? Is it really possible? Can we actually force him to confess his crimes?” Takamaki asked. I don’t blame her for her disbelief, it would seem like a dream solution to her so of course she was wary about blindly jumping into the possibility even if it would free her from the monster that thought he had any right to own her.

“Yes. I have personal experience in forcing someone to undergo a Change of Heart, the weight of grief and guilt this forced upon that individual meant that she willingly removed herself from my life,” I admitted. Takamaki stared at me, I could see the burning questions within her eyes, but her lips never once made the move to ask any of them.

“With the volleyball team keepin’ quiet about this, while the teachers and parents turn a blind eye, it’s our only shot. Especially since what happened to Suzui. If guys like us, or even you and Natsumi, try and complain, they’re just gonna shoot us down. Goin’ all in on this plan is the only chance we got,” Sakamoto pointed out. A brief smile came onto Takamaki’s face at the mention of them doing this for Suzui, despite the pain in her eyes.

“Then let me help too. I want to make him pay for what happened to Shiho. He just keeps going like nothing happened, even after what he did to her… I’ll never forgive him,” Takamaki insisted. A steely determination came across her face as she looked at us, but her blue eyes held another emotion, perhaps a plea for us to listen to her, Sakamoto blinked his eyes in confusion as he tried to process what he’d just heard come from Takamaki.

“Wait, did you just say, ‘let me help’? You mean you want us to take you along?” Sakamoto asked. He seemed utterly baffled by the words that had been spoken, Takamaki insisted she could fight too and wouldn’t drag us down and Sakamoto turned to us. “Hey… what should we do?” Sakamoto asked. His brown eyes darting between me and Amamiya.

“She wields Fire, can use healing spells and is another fighter. I see nothing wrong with bringing her along,” I admitted. It would be useful to have a fifth person given that Morgana had been concerned about us not having enough people and with Takamaki’s unique magic abilities, that left only Ice, Nuke, Psy and Bless as the elements we didn’t have but getting a hold of them might be more manageable now.

“It should be fine. She’ll be a great help,” Amamiya affirmed. He given gave a nod of his head, Morgana piped up with his agreement, even reminding us of his concern about manpower, before vowing to protect Takamaki; Takamaki’s expression turned into a serious expression, with her blue eyes almost seeming to catch on fire, as she looked at the three of us.

“Even if you said no, I’d just go in alone,” Takamaki pointed out. The unfortunate thing was, this wasn’t a bluff; with the Meta-Nav on her phone and a clear enough understanding of it to work it, Takamaki could leap back into the Palace whenever she wished and there was every possibility that we’d be completely unaware of it happening which was too risky in my opinion, Takamaki didn’t have the training Lavenza gave me before my first infiltration so it was too dangerous for her to solo it.

“Oh right, she can go by herself… I guess it’d be more dangerous turnin’ her down. Rgh, fine…,” Sakamoto stated. It sounded like he was complaining a bit about Takamaki joining us; I don’t know why since she’d be a big help and was just as much as a victim of Kamoshida as Sakamoto was, sure physical assault and sexual harassment aren’t two things that can be compared, but pain is pain at the end of the day.

“Then it’s decided. Well, I hope we get along!” Takamaki almost cheerfully declared. She then adopted a grave expression on her face yet the fire kept burning within her eyes. “I’m going to make Kamoshida atone for what he did. Not just for Shiho’s sake, but for everything he’s done. I won’t let any more people suffer because of him! I’ll do whatever it takes,” Takamaki declared. At that moment, the sensation of something strong yet still capable of growth flowed from Takamaki’s fighting resolve, causing me to raise an eyebrow in confusion. “Just let me know when you’re heading back in… oh wait! We don’t have each other’s info. Hey, give me your numbers and Chat IDs. And um…,” Takamaki insisted. We quickly exchanged the information and I promptly added Takamaki into the group chat. “I’ll be counting on you guys, then,” Takamaki stated.

“Just as we’ll be counting on you Takamaki-san,” I responded. Morgana claimed it was a pleasure to work with Takamaki, with that the blonde model proceeded to walk away with a renewed bounce in her step and her head held high; it was good to see that she had recovered but I would never forget the way she had been broken down by Kamoshida’s cruelty.

“What a kind girl… such admirable consideration for others and the resolve to cast herself into the jaws of death to achieve her goal. She cares about her friends and she’s beautiful to boot. What a girl! She’s captured my heart,” Morgana sighed. He seemed to have really fallen head over heels for Takamaki, but his comments at least showed this was not a shallow physical attraction and a bit more real.

“Dude,” Sakamoto stated. I looked at the boy, wondering what he was going to say. “You know, it’d be better if this group could get together quick from now on,” Sakamoto stated. Morgana agreed, even pointing out that we could do with a secret hideout to discuss our Phantom Thief activities. “A hideout, huh? I like the sound of that,” Sakamoto stated. The real question was where, it’s not like any of our homes were close by to consider it quick to meet up and there might not be anywhere in Shibuya where we could get decent privacy.

“The school rooftop should work. It seems like nobody goes up there. For the time being that will make the perfect hideout. I can’t contact you from inside a Palace, so I’ll stay in this world. That being said I’ll need someone to take care of me. I’m personally nominating you Joker. You should feel honoured,” Morgana decided. However, Amamiya’s eyes flew wide at those words.

“M-Me!” Amamiya exclaimed. Sakamoto didn’t help when he said that he couldn’t care for Morgana at his place, he then proceeded to leave after stating we’d meet at the hideout tomorrow. “Oh, I hope Sakura-san doesn’t get mad at me,” Amamiya stated. He gripped his head and looked completely put out about the possibility.

“If it doesn’t work out at your place Amamiya, Morgana can always come and stay with me,” I offered. I wasn’t allergic and with no one else in the building it wasn’t like anyone could complain; Amamiya gave me a smile that seemed to be warm and we proceeded to climb aboard the train to start our commute back to Yongen-Jaya.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I sat cross legged on my floor, sorting through information and some items I’d picked up during my time searching for tools to help me in the Metaverse. Even if we didn’t go in tomorrow – I was hoping to convince them against that – then at least I could be prepared with a few elemental magatamas to cover what we didn’t know. A sudden buzzing came from my phone, so I reached over and opened up the Chat.

Ren: I think Morgana will be fine at my place.

Natsumi: That’s good, take care of yourself and him.

Ren: Will do, see you tomorrow.

Natsumi: See you tomorrow.

I guess Sōjirō had allowed Amamiya to keep Morgana at LeBlanc even though it probably wasn’t good for a food business to have a cat wandering about. Well, so long at Morgana didn’t randomly move about there wasn’t any issue with it; I turned my focus back to the tools I had splayed out when my phone buzzed once more. Looking at it, it was another Chat yet this time it happened to be from Takamaki.

Ann: Chiba-san, I wanted to say thank you for everything you did today.

Natsumi: I don’t understand Takamaki-san, why do you need to thank me?

Ann: You were there for me after Shiho jumped.

Ann: And then you were the first to encourage me in that Palace.

Ann: I want to thank you properly. I’ve already thanked Amamiya-kun and Sakamoto.

Natsumi: It’s fine Takamaki-san. I appreciate it.

Natsumi: We’ll try and meet up tomorrow to discuss our next move.

Ann: Alright, see you tomorrow.

Setting the phone down, I gathered up all of my stuff and put it away before spreading the books out in front of me once more and flicking through each of them. This information would come in useful soon enough, I just had to get the other three to listen to me.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The next day, I met up with Amamiya and Morgana, we walked towards the station and got onto the usual train, however by some miraculous event I found that there were two seats open. Acting quickly, I squeezed myself through the crowd with Amamiya following me and quickly claimed one seat, Amamiya took the other and I saw that he seemed to relax marginally, maybe at the relief of being sat down after having to stand for the last few days.

“It’s crowded as usual, but I guess we got lucky and managed to grab a seat,” I commented. Amamiya let out a hum of agreement as he tightly held the bag containing Morgana, glancing around at the cramped surroundings. “I’d advise bringing a book, the journeys can get boring when sat down so it’s a good distraction,” I suggested. As I did, I pulled out a book I was currently reading, Amamiya leaned over to see the book.

“Isn’t that the newest release of Shadowed World?” Amamiya asked. I lifted my gaze to look at him and nodded my head in surprise; Shadowed World had been the first book of a series released two years ago by Mikoto Nami, it had been a runaway hit and personally I loved it myself, her second book Fall of the Goddess had come out last month and I was enjoying it immensely. “Do you mind if I read it with you?” Amamiya asked. I shook my head and shifted the book over so we could share it.

The journey was quite nice as we shared the book before having to stop and change trains. I was rather surprised by sharing an interest with Amamiya, but he had seemed to be enjoying the story along with me and even Morgana got interested and started to read with us. We couldn’t read on the train to school so settled for talking about Shadowed World and this continued even as we walked towards the building.

“What’s wrong, you don’t look so good,” A female voice spoke up. I turned my head around and saw that two girls were standing by the vending machines located in a small cubby outside of the school; one of them looked to be okay but the other girl seemed noticeably unwell, her skin was a sickly pale and she had prominent dark rings circling her eyes.

“I haven’t been feeling well lately. My head’s all foggy and I have no energy,” The ill looking girl admitted. She paused in order to yawn loudly into her hand and I could almost hear the cracking of the joint in her jaw. “I’ve tried every drug at the pharmacy, but nothing works. Do I have some new virus?” The girl wondered. However, a tension soon appeared on her face and her breathing started to pick up rapidly, indicating she was probably panicking. “Is this the onset of a psychotic breakdown?! What should I do?! Am I going to die!?” The girl panickily exclaimed. The other girl immediately started to calm her down and insist they go to the doctor’s clinic.

“Doctors have the best medicine, huh,” Morgana spoke up. I stepped back to look at the cat in the bag whilst Amamiya craned his neck over his shoulder. “Hey, wasn’t that one customer back at LeBlanc a doctor?” Morgana asked. I looked back at Amamiya, wondering if he knew who Morgana was talking about since I don’t recall any doctor being at the café before, so I was a little clueless.

“Do you mean the woman dressed in punk rock clothes?” Amamiya asked. Okay, I’m a little surprised that a country boy like Amamiya knew what punk rock clothes looked like, or maybe I’m just being ignorant since I never been anywhere near the countryside before, so I didn’t know what they were like clothing wise. “So, what if she was a doctor?” Amamiya asked. He sounded honestly confused as to where Morgana was going with this.

“True, she did have an interesting fashion sense, but it might be nice to have some strong medicine to use in the Palace,” Morgana insisted. That was true, if we got a hold of some powerful medicine then it would ease the strain on Morgana and Takamaki to keep us healed, also it would ensure we could be healed if either of those two were knocked out. Sakamoto then came up and greeted us and we finished the walk to school with him.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sitting in class with Ushimaru-sensei talking at the front, I felt a buzzing come from my phone, mentally cursing Sakamoto for his inopportune timing, I pulled out my phone and held it underneath the table in order to ensure that I wasn’t spotted by the strictest teacher we had. A quick glance in the corner of my eye showed Takamaki and Amamiya pulling out their own phones, meaning this was a group Chat.

Ryūji: Hey, we’re meeting up at the hideout after school, right?

Ann: Don’t text now. We’re in class.

Natsumi: Don’t bother Takamaki-san. I’ve already chastised him.

Natsumi: He didn’t listen.

Ryūji: Whoa! You two mean you’re actually listening to all this crap?

Natsumi: Obviously

Ann: Yeah, but none of it is really sticking today…

Ryūji: I know right?

Ren: I can’t blame you two but do try to focus. We’ll draw attention otherwise.

Ryūji: Anyway, hideout after school?

Ann: Where exactly is this ‘hideout’?

Natsumi: It’s the school roof.

Natsumi: If that’s okay with you Takamaki-san?

Ann: Yeah, it’s fine Chiba-san…

Ann: Wait, we can still go up there?

Ryūji: Yeah, I’ll let you in

Ryūji: Welp, I’ll be waiting. Just come on up once school’s over.

Ren: I’ll be there.

“Hey! Amamiya!” Ushimaru-sensei yelled. I jerked up right and quickly hid my phone as Amamiya shot himself back in his chair and seemed to go paler at those words. “Pay attention! Is that how you listen when someone’s talking to you!?” Ushimaru-sensei snapped. Amamiya seemed to become even more pale at the snapped words and I knew exactly what was coming for him.

Ushimaru-sensei pulled his hand back and I could practically see the chalk in his hand glinting in the light. He hurled the arm forward and released the chalk so that it shot through the air, completely ignoring all other individual as it shot forward. The chalk was practically spinning through the air as it cut forward towards Amamiya; suddenly Amamiya ducked down flat against the table and the chalk sailed safely over his head and cracked into the wall behind his head and startling the boy sat behind him.

‘How… did he do that?’ I thought. I’d never seen anyone dodge the torpedo chalk before, I’d never had it thrown at me so I couldn’t say I could do it but when everyone else had been hit by it, the fact that Amamiya had dodged it was kind of impressive; everyone began to mutter impressed about the dodge as a sudden buzzing came on my phone and I stealthily took it out in order to check what had been said.

Ren: I now understand what you guys meant by torpedo chalk.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Once school was done, me along with Amamiya and Takamaki – plus Morgana in the bag – headed up the steps towards the roof, trying to avoid people spotting us too much which could cause unnecessary whispers to start spreading around us. We reached the door and found it was indeed open as Sakamoto promised and the blonde boy was sat upon a chair there, we all gathered around with Takamaki and Morgana perching themselves on the tables, Amamiya leaned against the metal box bolted to the roof as I sat on a chair by some planters growing vegetation… why are there plants here?

“Looks like we’re all here,” Sakamoto stated. I could practically sense his body vibrating with energy from here. “Mkay, let’s get goin’!” Sakamoto insisted. Now was the time to put my foot down, they couldn’t go rushing in and I had to at least try and stop them from doing something reckless when we were still unprepared for the dangers that we’d face deeper within the Palace and potentially the Shadow’s transformation.

“Hold on!” Morgana called. I looked at the cat, surprised at he had opened his mouth before me. “It’s still too early for us to head to the Palace,” Morgana insisted. Well, at least he wanted to stop them from heading inside the Palace like I did, we needed to be much more prepared if we wanted to overcome the dangers, which meant that we had to take the time to ensure those preparations.

“But why? Don’t we just gotta steal that Treasure thing?” Sakamoto protested. He hadn’t enough experience in Palaces to know what was coming the further we went inside, unlike me and possibly Morgana but even if Morgana didn’t know he was cautious enough to at least ensure we had preparations for the challenges coming to face us.

“Don’t underestimate the dangers of the place. We need to prepare,” Morgana insisted. Sakamoto believed our Personas would simply be enough. “That’s exactly what I mean when I say don’t underestimate it. You’ll die if you mess up in there. So, again, we need to prepare before we head in,” Morgana insisted. Let’s see, we needed medicine, ranged weapons for Takamaki and Sakamoto along with training the other three to properly wield their melee weapons.

“But… how exactly are we supposed to do that?” Takamaki calmly asked. At least someone else was thinking about the dangers that would be coming for us, Amamiya had stayed silent during the conversation so far, but he had a contemplative look upon his face showing that he was listening to what we were saying.

“I’m glad you asked, Ann-dono. First, we need to find ranged equipment for you and Ryūji, along with better ranged weapons for Ren and Natsumi,” Morgana stated. Sakamoto proceeded to inform us he knew a ‘kick ass’ place for our weapons. “In that case, you can handle that side of things. The only other thing would be stocking up on medicine. Fatigue is unavoidable in a Palace,” Morgana added on.

“And where can we get medicine?” Takamaki asked. Morgana told her not to worry and quickly claimed that he knew of a place, could that be the doctor he’d been talking about before school started? However, when Morgana immediately suggested that they split up for today, I loudly stomped my foot on the ground, pulling everyone’s attention to me.

“Hold it, Morgana! We’re not done here,” I insisted. Morgana looked at me with wide eyes, probably since this wasn’t normal for me. “There’s no way to put this delicately, so I’ll just come out and say it; all of you, bar Morgana, are horrendous at using your melee weapons. You need training,” I announced. Takamaki blushed bright red as Amamiya flinched slightly, but Sakamoto ended up getting angry.

“Why do we need training? You said that Metaverse is about thought right? So, if we think we can use it, then we can use that,” Sakamoto protested. I sighed heavily and reached up to rub my nose in annoyance, I understood the threats more than they did, but still the fact that Sakamoto assumed thought would be enough to overcome someone with superior skill was worrying and I needed to prove my point to him.

“Shadows are born of stories, mythical and historical. So, what are you going to do when you go up against a superior warrior? There could be Shadows born of stories about war gods in there,” I explained. Sakamoto didn’t seem to understand what I was getting at so with a sigh, I stood to my feet and started to walk around the rooftop before finding an abandoned piece of metal that could substitute for a club. “This will do,” I muttered. Stooping down, I picked it up and turned to throw it at Sakamoto who fumbled but caught it. “Use that to attack me. I’ll show you what training can do against thought,” I insisted.

“What?! Are you crazy!? You could get hurt!” Sakamoto exclaimed. Amamiya and Takamaki also bore distressed looks on their faces, I didn’t say anything and instead adjusted my stance to settle into one prepared for combat with an unflinching expression on my face. “ARGH! Fine! But don’t blame me if you end up in the hospital!” Sakamoto snapped. Takamaki and Amamiya both tried to stop him, their words boiling over each other until nothing made sense; yet Morgana remained silent as he looked between me and Sakamoto.

As for the blonde punk, he decided to not listen to their words and instead proceeded to charge at me blindly like a rushing bull with his arm pulled back and the improvised weapon raised. I waited to a count of three exhalations before he was close enough and then I moved. I snapped my right hand up, seizing his right wrist and stopping his downwards momentum. I pivoted around and rammed my left elbow back into his solar plexus.

The air was forced from his lungs and I felt his grip on the weapon sag. Shooting my left hand forward, I seized the weapon whilst releasing Sakamoto’s wrist. I stepped forward and I pivoted on my heel to face the blonde who had folded over from my strike. I casually rested the metal’s edge on the back of his dyed hair and felt his entire body tense up when he felt the light pressure and coldness of the metal.

“I can see… eight, depending on the weapon, ways to end you without my Persona. Any Shadow that is a skilled warrior or expected to be a skilled warrior will probably see more and react better than me. Someone untrained like the three of you would be easy pickings,” I warned. Removing the improv-weapon, I cast it to the floor and helped Sakamoto to stand up who was looking at me utterly baffled. “Come to my home on Sunday, I can at least ensure you won’t get pummelled into paste by whatever we run across in the Palace,” I insisted.

“Considering, how you proved your point, I’ll go,” Amamiya agreed. Sakamoto seemed grumpy about it, but he also let out an agreement as he clasped the area where I had touched his head with the pipe; I looked at Takamaki who seemed to be gaping in shock at what she had just witnessed before coming back to her senses.

“If you can teach me to do that to Kamoshida, I am so coming,” Takamaki affirmed. A small chuckle escaped me at her words as a big smile came onto the blonde girl’s face.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Returning to Yongen-Jaya, instead of splitting off from Amamiya and Morgana like I had the last few times we’d come back, I instead followed after them. Amamiya looked at me, most likely in confusion at me suddenly deciding to come with them instead of heading to my home; I brushed a lock of my black hair back behind my ear in slight embarrassment.

“I want to meet this doctor that Morgana is likely taking you to,” I admitted. Amamiya shrugged in response, possibly not bothered by the sudden tag along, Morgana popped out of his bag and rested his paws upon Amamiya’s shoulder, he looked at me with a slightly tilted head, but he seemed just as unconcerned about me following as Amamiya was.

“This doctor supposedly prescribes medication after a quick examination. She was sitting in a boot-,” Morgana began to speak. But Amamiya covered his mouth suddenly and I saw a blush spreading brightly across his face; I wonder if he was embarrassed about the fact that he was living at LeBlanc, he hadn’t told me or Sakamoto that was where he happened to be staying so likely didn’t want people to know.

“Isn’t that just a rumour?” Amamiya wondered. I never really needed to visit a doctor, nor did I want to, so I wasn’t sure who the doctor was for Yongen-Jaya or what she was like, so I didn’t know what to say regarding her; however, Morgana wanted us to check out this clinic because of those rumours, with her being the kind of doctor surrounded by such sketchy rumours then she might provide us with medicine.

“True. We need medicine to operate safely in the Palace, but most people get suspicious of people buy large amounts of specific types of medication. But if she is surrounded by suspicious rumours then she probably won’t want to ask questions about why we need that medicine,” I softly admitted. Keeping my voice low in order to avoid people staring at us, I needed to find some way to talk about this openly without getting people looking at me suspiciously.

“She’s somewhere in the neighbourhood, right? Take me to her,” Morgana insisted. He could be a little bossy at time, Amamiya set off and so I followed after him through the narrow streets of Yongen-Jaya’s back alleys, talking to people and we found someone nervously stood outside of the clinic. “This is the clinic that the chief mentioned. Now, how can we get her to give us some medicine?” Morgana wondered.

“We can’t tell her the truth, so we’ve got to make something up,” Amamiya stated. We really couldn’t tell anyone the truth as they’d either not believe us and might consider calling someone about our ‘delusional’ mental state, or they would believe us that that was a can of worms that I would rather avoid opening at any and all possibilities.

“Um… we could try getting a mental stimulant by claiming it’s for entrance exams,” I suggested. Amamiya looked at me in surprise at my suggestion. “Well, it’s the best excuse high schoolers can come up with,” I explained. Despite my words, I was starting to feel a little nervous about meeting this sketchy doctor but when Amamiya boldly went inside, I trailed after him.

The waiting room was ordinary, medical pamphlets and signs pinned up along boards lining the wall, with red covered chairs and a vibrant plant tucked behind the door. I looked to the left and saw a window with glass set to either side which contained a computer and a bunch of files and other office supplies. But sat by the computer was a woman and I understood what Amamiya meant by punk rock.

She had dark blue hair which was styled in a messy bob-cut with a blunt fringe and brown eyes. She has red nail polish on both her fingers. Her outfit consisted of a typical white lab coat that was worn over a short dark green dress, there was a red belt with two rows of holes wrapped around her waist, she also wore a black studded choker which connected to multiple necklaces.

“Is this your first visit?” The woman asked. She sounded kind of sleepy when she spoke, but her eyes were rather sharp as they trailed between Amamiya and me. “Hm? I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before…,” The woman stated. She pointed a coloured nail at Amamiya to clarify who she was referring to.

“You saw me at LeBlanc, it’s nice to meet you,” Amamiya answered. The woman didn’t seem particularly interested as a ‘well, whatever’ came out of her mouth but she then asked why the two of us were here. “We need some medicine, me and my friend have been feeling rather lethargic lately,” Amamiya smoothly lied. I was surprised that he had referred to me as a friend though; we were cooperating together… but I still didn’t know what to think of him or the others beyond comrades.

“Fine. Please head to the exam room,” The woman insisted. She lifted her hand and gestured to the blue door set near the office’s window; Amamiya opened the door and we proceeded to head inside, seeing a computer screen resting in front of x-ray images, medical tomes stuffed into one corner with an IV drip and microscope close to it; a green curtain cut off the area passed there and a bed was pushed up against the wall.

Me and Amamiya each took a seat on a red stool as Amamiya insisted Morgana stay quiet, the doctor soon joined us and sat in her office chair in front of us. This allowed me to see that she wore strappy black platform high heels, with red nail polish on her toes. She conducted a brief examination as Morgana mentioned she did, but despite this it did seem to be a thorough one as well; she did us one at a time and made notes after each analysis with soft mutterings under her breath that I didn’t understand.

“In a case like either of yours, it’s usually just due to stress. I’m going to prescribe you some pain relievers, okay?” The doctor insisted. That wasn’t good, pain relief wasn’t any good for healing within the Metaverse, it had been the first thing I tried and it only made a microscopic difference if any at all. “Actually, I still need to restock those. So, let’s go with sleeping pills instead, sleep is the best medicine anyway,” The doctor admitted. Even worse, sleeping pills would just put us to sleep making us Shadow food. “Which type of pill do you want, a sweet tasting one or a bitter one?” The doctor enquired.

“I want the painkillers,” Amamiya stated. His tone was firm and unwavering, I glanced at him from the corner of my eye and I saw that his eyes were steady and firm, as if we were currently in the Metaverse facing down a Shadow instead of an ordinary, if slightly suspect, doctor; the woman lowered the clipboard she had been writing on and I spotted a displeased look press onto her face.

“Is that right? And I bet you think you should have a year long supply of them too,” The doctor stated. Sarcasm and bite dripped from each syllable that she spoke which caused a nervous fluttering to stir up in my stomach. “Neither of you are sick at all, are you? I’m not as dumb as I look, you know,” The doctor accused. Dumb, if anyone thought this woman looked dumb then they were more delusional than any person had a right to be, this woman was dressed strangely but her intuition was sharp as a freshly forged blade. “I’m guessing you’re here because you heard the rumours about me, huh?” The doctor asked.

“Yes, I did hear about you from rumours. But I really do need that medicine,” Amamiya stated. He was being rather honest with her despite us needing to lie about why we needed that medicine; the woman apparently had a lot of people coming in with ulterior motive, I felt kind of bad now since we were causing her more stress by coming in with suspicious motives that she apparently dealt with far too much.

“I guess high school kids have it tough nowadays too, huh? Well fine. I’ll prescribe you some medication,” The doctor decided. I blinked my eyes in wide surprised as Amamiya also bore a shocked expression, despite knowing we had suspicious motives, she still decided to give us medicine. “But only medicine that will help you recover your health,” The doctor insisted. That was perfect, in my mind, that medicine would have better effects in the Metaverse than painkillers would. “I guess it’s fine. Both of you seem pretty earnest and neither of you look like you’ll be any trouble. This is my private practice. All the medicine I dispense is original. I have a license to make my own formulas. You’ve likely seen them being sold at various hospitals. It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself. So, if that’s okay with you, stop by anytime,” The doctor offered.

“That’ll really help, thank you,” Amamiya admitted. If we had a place to successfully get a hold of medicine, then we wouldn’t need to be concerned about acquiring more medicine if we ran out in the Palace; I expressed my own thanks and she seemed pleased by this, talking about it saving her hassle and being quick on the uptake… why do I have a feeling we’d caught the interest of a dangerous individual?

“You’re pretty weird kids, you know? I wonder what you’re going to use the medicine for…,” The doctor wondered. Oh yeah, very dangerous individual; her contemplation ended and she focused back on us. “Well, as long as you don’t cause me any trouble, it’s not my problem,” The doctor admitted. She gave us some pretty basic medication along with me paying for some capsules that helped with alertness and gel to help relaxation, those two could be useful.

We stepped out into the waiting room and saw an elderly man dressed in a dark brown pinstripe suit jacket and pants with a long sleeved white shirt underneath, he had flattened black hair with dark eyes hidden behind glasses that were likely real and a black briefcase was held in his right hand. I sensed Amamiya slink in close to me, his uncertainty coming on strongly as I squared my shoulders; ironic how now our roles were now reversed. I took Amamiya’s hand and guided him out of the way so that the man could enter the exam room despite the doctor not having called for him; I started to guide Amamiya towards the door.

“What’s the reason for your visit?” The doctor’s voice called. But something in it made me stop short, a cold venom filled tone laced her words, a tone I was much too familiar with speaking myself. “Do you have a cold? Stomach-ache? Athlete’s foot? Whatever it is, you’ll need to take a number,” The doctor stated. Her tone sounded almost mocking, more so than when she had spoken to us at all.

“Enough of this!” The man exclaimed. I looked at Amamiya who also seemed surprised and perhaps suspicious. “You’re the only one who could have developed that type of medicine,” The man accused. We both drifted close to the door, flanking it on either side in order to listen as the doctor claimed ignorance. “Don’t play dumb with me. Rumour has it, it’s a drug so potent it can give a person unlimited power,” The man claimed. I shot Amamiya an amazed look and he seemed stunned as well, unlimited power? If such a thing had even a fraction of that kind of claim here, it’s applications in the Metaverse would be amazing.

“Really? That’s news to me,” The doctor commented. I couldn’t be sure if she was being genuine or still mocking the man, the man started to talk about violation of medical regulations by developing these experimental drugs and herbal remedies… that’s how better medicine was made though, you had to experiment to get something that would work. Perhaps if she had been prescribing these medications to patients without clear clinical trials having been done and the patients had no knowledge of its’ dangers, maybe it be a violation then but not before.

“Are you attempting to create a super stimulant? A drug like that will only become a social issue!” The man exclaimed. He sounded far more like a politician than a doctor and I fought really hard to pull back my anger, the doctor claimed she was just a quack… a quack who performs skilled examinations and can make her own remedies, I’d soon believe my uncle was an honest politician than that claim. “The police may not be taking action, but I imagine the media will soon pick up on it. You intend to ruin my reputation again, huh? You’re a disgrace to the medical community. What’s with that look? That was your mistake, was it not? I won’t be responsible for your criminal actions. Dispose of that ‘medicine’ immediately and resign. The name Takemi Tae will never-,” The man continued to speak. But he suddenly stopped and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Hey, is somebody there?!” The man yelled.

Instantly, Amamiya grabbed my hand and dragged me away from the door, we darted out into the street and swiftly moved away from the clinic so that the man wouldn’t chase after us and get suspicious about what we were doing spying on him. My heart thundered in my chest at the sudden adrenaline that had decided to surge through my body and I felt my hands go a bit clammy, Amamiya was breathing heavily as he kept looking back to see if anyone was coming after us.

“Geez, they almost caught us,” Morgana commented. The cat finally decided to poke his head out of the bag and even on his cat face, I could see the worry he felt. “It sounded like they were talking about something dangerous. Could that woman be hiding some extra strong medicine?” Morgana admitted. I finally felt my heart calm down and noticed that Amamiya was still holding onto my hand.

“Maybe, it sounds sketchy but if it’s true then we could use that,” Amamiya admitted. I wasn’t entirely sure how to bring up that Amamiya was still holding onto me as Morgana proceeded to agree with our leader but the cat insisted we keep the phantom thievery a secret; I slightly moved my captured hand and Amamiya registered the movement. “Oh, sorry Chiba-san!” Amamiya exclaimed. He released my hand gently, not throwing it like he’d been burned despite the scorching blush stretching across his cheeks… then again, like I could talk because I’m sure my own cheeks were crimson red.

“It’s fine Amamiya-san,” I insisted. I tried to settle the bright red blush that was tormenting my cheeks by focusing on my breathing, of course I was distracted when my phone proceeded to buzz so I pulled it out with Amamiya mimicking my actions; guessing that it was a group message I quickly checked the Chat and found what I was expecting.

Ryūji: So you know that store I mentioned, with the model guns?

Ryūji: It’s in Shibuya. I can go with you tomorrow if you want Ren-Ren.

Ren: Sounds good.

Ryūji: Sweet

Ryūji: Welp, let’s figure out where to meet.

Ryūji: You at least know how to get to Shibuya Station, yeah?

                                                 Natsumi: Are you forgetting something, Sakamoto-san?

Ryūji: Eeh? Forgetting what?

Ren: That we’re meeting at Chiba-san’s tomorrow for training in the morning.

Ann: Which means you guys will be meeting there.

Ryūji: Oh?

Ryūji: Yeah, sorry.

Ann: I can’t help you guys with that, the training is still fine though. Can I trust you guys to check the place out for me?

Ryūji: You can’t come?

Ann: Not tomorrow afternoon.

Ann: I made plans to go see Shiho in the hospital.

Ryūji: Ah, gotcha.

Ryūji: Don’t worry, we got this.

Ryūji: Well, seeya at Natsumi’s tomorrow.

“We might be able to get our hands on some decent stuff if this store is the same one that sold your model gun, Ren,” Morgana admitted. I was just a little concerned about my own weapon, I wasn’t using a gun and there wasn’t much that could be done to improve my bow especially since it wasn’t like there was a bow-maker anywhere nearby that could try and make something better, I’d just have to make do with what I currently wielded.

“True, I can only hope things go well. It’s not like I’ve got a lot of cash,” Amamiya admitted. Pulling my purse, I opened it up and pulled out some of the Yen I received from the Shadows and held it out to Amamiya. “Oh, Chiba-san, I couldn’t take your money,” Amamiya insisted. He held up his hands to block the money from reaching him, I slotted my purse away and took a hold of Amamiya’s wrist to place the notes into his hand which I curled around it.

“It’s from Shadows, easily replaced. You don’t have to bother getting me a gun by the way, I’ll stick to my bow,” I insisted. Amamiya’s lips pressed in a straight line and he looked down at the hand clasping the money. “Look, if it bothers you that much, how about you repay me by treating me to some coffee. There’s a lovely café nearby, it’s my favourite,” I insisted. Amamiya smiled softly and nodded his head in agreement; he put the money away and so I led him to LeBlanc’s door.

“Um… this is the place you mentioned?” Amamiya asked. I nodded my head and proceeded to open the door, Sōjirō looked up as I stepped inside and he nodded at me but then his eyes widened when he saw Amamiya step in behind me. “Hello, Sakura-san,” Amamiya softly greeted. He looked between the two of us in stupefied silence and confusion on his face as he tried to understand what was going on.

“Hello Boss, could I have the usual, please?” I requested. Without pause, I glanced over at Amamiya. “What about you Amamiya-san?” I asked. Sōjirō’s eyes widened in shock at the fact that we happened to know each other after he gave me the warning to stay away from the boy; Amamiya let out a stuttered order before I took his hand and guided him over to a booth, thankfully there was no one else in café at this time.

“Do you come here often Chiba-san?” Amamiya asked. A concerned look upon his face as he probably wondered how much I knew about his living situation; it was best to be honest with him by this point since I had pretty much exposed my connection to LeBlanc – not that it’s that big of a deal – I nodded my head, Amamiya’s lips proceeded to press tightly against each other as his expression tensed up quite hard at my response.

“I kind of knew you were living here all along,” I admitted. Amamiya looked down, somewhat embarrassed from the blush on his face and the sheen in his eyes. “I don’t care and I’m sure neither Sakamoto-san nor Takamaki-san will either. We’re all odd in some way, this isn’t that big of a deal,” I reassured. Amamiya looked up as Morgana peered out from the slight opening in the bag.

“Thank you, Chiba-san,” Amamiya spoke. At that, Sōjirō brought over the coffee and set it down, giving me a side glance as I picked up the mug and smiled at Amamiya.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 17: - The Voyage

Everything was prepared. The dojo was already unlocked and I’d prepared food for us to have afterwards, bottles of chilled water alongside a bowl of cool water and several cloths were placed on one of the cabinets that lined the walls. I’d already run through a kata and now, all I could do was anxiously await the arrival of the other thr- no, four, as I’m certain Morgana would tag along even if I couldn’t realistically teach him anything.

A knock reverberated through the house, rising to my feet, I quickly approached the door and opened it, finding all of my comrades stood there dressed in clothing suitable for exercising. Amamiya wore black, Takamaki wore pinkish-red and Sakamoto wore blue; all three stared at my outfit with different ranges of expressions but all at least contained confusion.

“I thought this was a trainin’ session?” Sakamoto commented. Did I really look out of place? I had always trained in haori and hakama, it was comfy; stepping back I urgently waved the trio inside and closed the door behind them, turning around I saw Morgana pop out of the bag that Amamiya was carrying on his shoulder.

“Your outfits are fine. This is just what I prefer to wear,” I stated. The three were looking around the hallway in silence as Morgana wriggled free of the bag to drop to the floor. “Let’s get started, shall we?” I suggested. Stepping passed them, I headed for the dojo and slid the door open. “The weapons are fake, unable to cause real damage but everything else is as the same as a proper weapon. Pick one and we’ll begin,” I explained.

“What the eff Natsumi… what kind of a family do you come from?” Sakamoto asked. A quick look from picking up my favourite naginata showed all three were gaping at the weapon collection; thankfully, the urgent need to stop Kamoshida pushed each of them to their respective Rebel’s Weapon so that they could select one to train with.

Takamaki was first, she picked up a simple whip and came over to me, practically vibrating with energy. Amamiya was next as he came over with a dagger hanging limply in hand, but unlike Takamaki who I couldn’t read at the moment, he was likely nervous about the prospect of what was to come. Sakamoto took the longest, but eventually he selected a mace, close enough I suppose, and came over to join the rest of us.

“I’ll teach each of you what I can about your weapons. I’m no expert but I did do research. Now, who wishes to spar with me first?” I asked. Surprisingly, it was Takamaki who answered the fastest with her hand shooting into the air like it had been dragged there by a piece of invisible string. “Amamiya-san, Sakamoto-san, please stand to the side. Takamaki-san, with me, please,” I requested.

Moving to the centre, me and Takamaki came to a stop, glancing at the blonde allowed me to see how nervous she was becoming despite how excited she had seemed before. Setting my naginata in the floor, I held out my hands to the girl, understand my reasons without the need for words, Takamaki raised her hands so that I could take the weapon that she had selected to use.

“The first thing my father taught me,” I began. My voice slight raised so that everyone could hear me easily. “And what all of you must remember, is that the weapon is an extension of yourself. It is a part of you, not some foreign thing but another limb, as linked to your body as your own heartbeat, your breath. It is not something to fear or revile, embrace and accept it,” I advised. Memories of being with my dad caused a stinging sensation to burn the back of my eyes.

In an attempt to distract myself from the budding tears, I lightly flicked the whip causing it to softly uncoil from its’ curled up state. Taking my right hand, I slid it down the fabric length some distance before stopping and tightening my grip, although I allowed the length of the whip between my right hand and my left hand – which was curled around the handle – to simply hand limply towards the floor.

“A whip is a mid to long range weapon, meaning you should avoid letting enemies get too close. A whip’s anatomy is split into four parts, the handle which is the most important part as it is the link between you and the rest of the weapon,” I started. Releasing the handle, I moved my left hand down to grip the whip’s fabric. “This is the thong. Its’ purpose is to immobilise by wrapping around objects or people,” I continued. Replacing my right hand with my left, I slid the right further down until it neared the tip. “This is the fall, the prime area to use for attacks, strikes from this area deal the most damage. The last bit is the cracker, swung hard enough, it can break the sound barrier,” I finished. I handed the fake whip back to Takamaki. “Now show me what you can do,” I insisted.

Grasping my naginata, I moved away from Takamaki and set my stance. The blonde girl looked nervous, but she managed to swallow it down and she shuffled about with her feet before setting herself into a stance that mimicked my own. I gave the girl a nod, both to reassure her and encourage, whilst ensuring that my grip was tight enough on my weapon.

Swinging her right arm out, Takamaki sent the whip sailing towards me, but the strike was slow and all it took was a flick of the wrist to change my naginata’s position to block the blow and send the whip flying wide. This was repeated a few more times before a block of mine allowed the whip to loop around the shaft, I used that anchor point to pull the whip’s handle free from Takamaki’s grip. The girl pouted in frustration as she started to mess with one of her ponytails.

“Your arm has three joints,” I called. Takamaki perked up at my words and I swapped weapons before walking over to Takamaki. “Shoulder, elbow and wrist. All three can affect the whip’s movements so don’t limit yourself to only using the shoulder. Your stance and grip can also be improved. A grip that alternates between soft and firm is best as when it’s strong you will be less likely to lose your grip while a looser grip aids you in fluidly changing a weapon’s direction,” I advised.

“Okay,” Takamaki responded. I handed the weapon back to her and gave her a pat on the shoulder before turning to the boys; before I could say or do anything, Sakamoto jumped to his feet with a wide grin, a shrug of her shoulders came from Takamaki before she walked to the edge. When Sakamoto stood before me, I held out my hand and he gave me the weapon.

“It’s not an exact match but a mace is still a bludgeoning weapon. Bludgeoning weapons can be wielded one handed or two handed, though that is dependent on the wielder and the impact area known as the head since bludgeoning weapons are typically top heavy,” I explained. I handed the weapon back to Sakamoto. “Bludgeoning weapons are close range but require some speed and force before they can deal damage. Let’s see what you can do,” I finished. With that I turned to walk back to my weapon.

But I didn’t get far; roughly just before the halfway point, pounding footsteps closed in from behind. I quickly threw myself forward into a roll to widen the gap whilst bracing my arms and hands before my face and head. The impact shuddered up my limbs, but I grit my teeth against the pain and used my hands as a springboard to catapult myself further away.

The moment my feet graced the wooden floor, I swept my hands out in an arc. My left grasped the naginata’s shaft, so I twisted around and stood up. Quickly setting my stance and grip, I focused my gaze on Sakamoto. I found the boy teetering slightly but he seemed more focused on me than righting his balance properly, need to correct that before he gets hurt.

“Very good,” I complimented. Surprise slapped Sakamoto so hard in the face that his jaw dropped as my lips twitched up slightly. “Combat is about controlling its’ flow more than anything else. You saw that I was exposed and tried to take advantage. It didn’t work but it was still good. Now, show me more,” I explained. A grin appeared on Sakamoto’s face as he rotated his right shoulder in big circles.

We continued for a few more minutes before I stopped it, by diverting an attack away from me and sharply cracking him on the wrist with the blade of my palm, forcing him to release the mace. Sakamoto had been fast, but his swings were wide and reckless, often almost falling over before he actually ended up doing that on the last few swings when I dodged the blows instead of blocking them.

“Bludgeoning weapons are top heavy, if you overswing the sheer weight will drag you down as you witnessed for yourself. You don’t have the muscular strength to pull it back if that happens when an enemy dodges, try to under-swing instead or stun them with an unexpected attack like a kick or a punch. People get surprised when a person holding a weapon doesn’t use said weapon and Shadows are the same. Grip and stance also need work,” I advised. Handing the dropped weapon to Sakamoto, I looked over to the edge. “Amamiya-san, you’re up,” I pointed out.

The ravenette stood to his feet and began to walk over to me, Sakamoto walked to the edge, pausing briefly to clap a hand on Amamiya’s shoulder with a friendly grin. Amamiya immediately flicked the dagger around so that the handle faced me, but the move was done in a surprisingly dexterous manner which caused me to raise an eyebrow, the dexterity was a surprise but it might serve him well, I took the false blade from his hand.

“Daggers are extremely close range weapons but luckily they don’t rely on speed to maximise damage like the other two. The pommel,” I began. Tapping the orb of wood attached to the end of the handle and then doing the same to the bar that separated the handle and the facsimile of a blade. “And cross guard will stop your hand from sliding off the handle or onto the blade. The handle to grip and the blade to strike,” I explained. I then twisted the dagger around so Amamiya could take it back. “One last thing,” I insisted.

Without any more warning than that, my hand flew up and plucked the glasses off Amamiya’s face before he had a chance to react. As I pulled my hand away, Amamiya attempted to grab for them, but I quickly swung my arm behind my back so that he missed; yet instead of trying to grab at them some more, Amamiya did something different. The hand he had reach out with flew back to latch over his eyes and he tried to curl in on himself.

“I’m sorry,” I admitted. And I was, but this was something necessary that needed to be done even though the twisting of my stomach caused discomfort the longer I looked at Amamiya. “I’m sorry Amamiya-san, but it had to be done. You fight without glasses so it’s better to train without them otherwise the slight change could endanger your life. Their weight and the lens’ presence would be ingrained so that you’ll think and react differently without them,” I explained.

Despite my words, Amamiya showed no sign of movement and instead remained curled over with a hand pressed over his eyes. In fact, the grip of that hand was so tight that it had turned the knuckles bone white and the arm was ridged as steel with not even the slightest gap between his fingers. The words from the boys’ second visit to the Palace rang in my head, the reason why Amamiya wore glasses he didn’t need.

“I see,” I whispered. I slid the glasses across the wood to the other two and then moved in close to Amamiya, gently gripping his shoulders. “I won’t be afraid of your eyes,” I vowed. He’d hidden them because he was sacred, sacred of new people running away from him before they knew the real him; that meant I had to reassure him that I wouldn’t be scared by them.

“Really?” Amamiya questioned. Before I could answer, his hand fell from his eyes revealing the grey irises to me and I realised that he was right; his eyes were sharp, like a fine blade forged by a master smith, yet nothing spurred me to move away, least of all in fear and Amamiya’s eyes widened. “You aren’t afraid?” Amamiya asked. His voice wavered with an emotion I couldn’t identify.

“Of course not, they’re only eyes,” I stated. With that, I moved away from him to prepare myself, once I was set my eyes focused on Amamiya who hadn’t move so much as an inch. “Shall we begin?” I asked. My words snapped Amamiya out of his daze and he quickly settled into his own combat stance as his eyes glowed with resolve.

Amamiya was surprisingly fast as he easily closed the distance between me and him but his movements with the dagger were slow. He was also repetitive as he kept using those same wide moves even after I blocked them several times. Darting in close, I trapped the hand holding the dagger and quickly disarmed him, causing Amamiya to pause in his movements.

“You have good dexterity,” I began. Releasing my grip, I turned to look at him and saw he was looking at the ground shyly instead of the steady fierceness that had been there before. “A dagger is a much lighter weapon than the others, so you can use that dexterity to change its’ angle quickly. Try not to repeat attacks either, especially if they’ve been repelled. Once more grip and stance also need work,” I explained. With that, I turned to Takamaki and Sakamoto. “Now that I’ve evaluated you three, it’s time to train you!” I declared.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Now then, I looked into your background… there’s nothing in there to imply you should have any capability at all with a weapon. Yet, reports state that you and the rest of the Phantom Thieves were all capable of wielding their weapons with some measure of skill. Which means… that someone must have trained each of you in how to wield them. Well, am I right?”

I am thou, thou art I…
Thou hast acquired a new vow.

It shall become the wings of rebellion
that breaketh the chains of captivity.

With the birth of the Voyage Persona,
I have obtained the winds of blessing that
shall lead to freedom and new power.

*Persona 5 Royal*

For the next lesson, I drilled each of them on what I’d mentioned all while adjusting their grip and stance to what was suited to each weapon and what they felt comfortable using. Once they were passable, I decided to have them spar against one another in order to see how each of them did after having participated in the drills.

Currently, me and Amamiya stood to the side as Takamaki and Sakamoto sparred. Takamaki utilised the whip’s length to keep Sakamoto from closing in, but every time she tried to strike Sakamoto, he used his mace to block or divert the attacks. Even though Sakamoto blocked most strikes, Takamaki had prevented the whip from twisting around the mace ensuring it couldn’t be pulled from her hands.

Takamaki swept her false whip back to her and then swiftly pirouetted around before cracking the whip forward. This was a good move as it added more velocity to the strike to come, normally I’d have praised Takamaki for this move except there were two issues; Takamaki had lost control of the fall the further it moved from her and now it was aimed for Sakamoto’s leg, his right leg.

“Sakamoto! JUMP!!!” I roared. Mild surprise fluttered through me at how loud my voice had gone but it was drowned by concern for the blonde boy, Takamaki had gone slack which meant she couldn’t pull the whip back and the distance prevented me or Amamiya from reaching the whip or Sakamoto in time to stop the collision from happening, plus no arrow would be able to affect it no matter how fast I was able to loose it.

To our collective relief, Sakamoto jumped just in time and the whip harmlessly sailed beneath his feet before dropping to the floor in a spiral. Unfortunately, the moment Sakamoto’s feet slammed into the floor, a cry of pain tore from his lips and he dropped to his left knee whilst gripping his right leg as if it had been wounded; Takamaki and Amamiya bolted for the downed boy whilst I dropped my practice weapon and rushed out of the room.

Moving into the kitchen, I quickly grabbed an ice pack and painkillers alongside the four boxes of food. Supplies in hand, I raced back to the dojo and placed the food down to one side along with the medicine; I swiftly removed Sakamoto’s hands from his leg, he had been led down by the other two but refused to loosen his grip which meant he’d been partially sat up before I’d returned.

With the removal of his hands, Sakamoto flopped onto the ground with a pained groan which I ignored and pressed the ice pack over where he’d been gripping the leg. Carefully removing my hands so as to not disturb the pack, I rose to my feet and quickly moved to the cabinet with the water and grabbed a bottle before heading back.

Amamiya had sat Sakamoto up and Takamaki had a couple of tablets in her hand whilst Morgana pressed his paws against the pack… where had he come from? Pushing aside my confusion, I helped Sakamoto sip the water once the tablets were in his mouth by supporting the shaking arm that held the bottle. Soon, Sakamoto finished and I took the bottle from him, feeling myself relax slightly.

“After that, I think we’re done for the day. Each of you has the basics of your weapons down and that will help us during the infiltration,” I decided. Yet, when I looked at the others, I saw that the three humans were exchanging looks that I couldn’t understand but all of them were identical whilst Morgana stared at me with an intense stare. “What?” I asked. Perplexation was clear on my face as I looked at all the others.

“Well… uh… it’s just that… um, how do I…,” Takamaki muttered. She trailed off into unheard mumbles and began to twist and curl a part of her false whip around her fingers; Sakamoto was looking to the side and fidgeting in place as Amamiya – his glasses back on – kept his head tilted down to obscure his vision and prevent me from reading his face; but his body language proved he was as uncomfortable as the other two.

“Where’s your family?” Morgana suddenly asked. I felt as if I’d just been sucker punched by Lavenza as my skin went pale and my eyes widened. “Whilst you were training these guys and Ann-dono, I went for a walk and found this house is empty except for you,” Morgana explained. I drew in a deep breath and abruptly rose to my feet whilst turning away from the four.

“They’ve been dead for two… almost three years now. I live alone,” I answered. I did not wish to see their faces; I despised the looks of pity that people gave me when they learned I was an orphan because after seeing them so many times the looks felt empty. “The boxes have food in them. Enjoy,” I stated. Grabbing a box for myself, I walked into the living room.

Strangely, I felt worried about what the others would do. Would they cut me out of the mission to stop Kamoshida? I didn’t know if they would but the mere idea of it, of being left alone again after these last few days, caused my hand to shake slightly as I tried to grip the chopsticks. Before my thoughts could potentially spiral down more dark paths, a light nudge on my shoulder snapped me out of it.

Glancing up, I saw Takamaki sat to my right with a big smile on her face and a box in her lap, a warmth to my left drew my gaze and I saw Amamiya had taken a seat there. Sakamoto soon appeared, gingerly limping on his right leg, before dropping onto the ground; both of the boys also held a box of food, a sudden weight appeared on my lap and I looked down to find that Morgana was curling himself up.

Light hearted chatter filled the meal, I couldn’t contribute to it so I settled for quietly observing and occasionally offering pieces to the hungry feline in my lap. I was content to soak in the warmth that had been brought to this cold house by these people; sadly, that came to an end all too soon as the food was finished and since the other three had places to be, I told them where they could get clean and change their outfits.

“Hey, Chiba-san,” Takamaki called. I looked up as the girl gave me a gentle smile. “Would you mind coming with me to visit Shiho? I just don’t know if I can face doing that alone yet, plus you were there when she got rush in and…,” Takamaki requested. My eyes were wide as Takamaki trailed off and started to fidget slightly, clearly leaving something unsaid.

“I’ll go with you, Takamaki-san,” I decided. I didn’t feel like staying in this empty building after they left, perhaps later I could but not while their presence was so fresh; I headed up the stairs and found Amamiya stood outside the bathroom, fiddling with his phone before stopping when he saw me approaching his location.

“Thank you for the lessons today, Chiba-san,” Amamiya admitted with a small smile. Sakamoto’s voice faintly echoed a similar statement from inside the bathroom; I nodded my head and continued on to my room with a slight bounce in my step.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We stood in front of the hospital with Takamaki bouncing on the balls of her feet as her hands seemed to be trembling slightly. I gently placed my hand against her spine and pushed her to move forward, she stumbled slightly but quickly caught herself and turned back to look at me with a tension present around the corner of her eyes.

“Go on Takamaki-san, you can’t see Suzui-san if you stay out here,” I insisted. Takamaki nodded her head and seemed to swallow thickly before stepping inside the building as I followed after her; we were easily able to get in to see Suzui but once we reached the hallway where she was, Takamaki ground to a stop. I looked up and saw two people moving towards us, from the dark hair and eyes along with the physical features they shared I could guess that they had to be Suzui’s parents.

Suzui’s mum was dabbing at her eyes with a cloth as Suzui’s father rubbed his wife’s spine with care. He spotted Takamaki and gave her a strained smile with a nod of his head, but Suzui’s mum was completely oblivious as they walked passed us, yet Takamaki remained unmoving as I kept my eyes focused on her. She was stock still as if she had become stone, an empty expression rested on her face as she stared straight ahead yet the tears gathering in her eyes gave some indication of what she might be feeling. I moved in front of her and proceeded to snap my fingers right beside her ears, startling the blonde as she jumped backwards slightly and blinked watery eyes at me.

“You aren’t to blame you know. Kamoshida is the reason Suzui-san is in this situation, you haven’t any reason to be ashamed. Go and see her,” I encouraged. Takamaki nodded and wiped away her tears as she marched down the hallway with her head held high, but the slight tremble of her hands gave away to some lingering emotions. I trailed after her as we drifted closer to Suzui’s room.

‘Once we deal with Kamoshida, then she can get rid of those feelings. She has no reason to feel them but stopping him will help put an end to them.’ I thought. Avenging Suzui, Mishima, Sakamoto, Takamaki, and everyone else who had suffered had to be our primary objective in the days to come.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 18: - Start the Infiltration!

That day, I walked towards school with Amamiya and Morgana as was becoming normal for the two of us. However, this time around the energy between the three of us was filled with a fair amount of tension but given what today was, it was no surprised that we were tense. Once school was done, we’d begin the infiltration to access Kamoshida’s Treasure and hopefully give him a personality check… speaking of which, we had the displeasure of running into the arrogant man at the school gates.

“Good morning. C’mon, hurry up and get to class!” Kamoshida insisted. The fake smile firmly plastered over his face, up until he turned to face the two of us as I desperately tried to keep my face neutral and Amamiya went stiff. “Good morning,” Kamoshida greeted. His tone had shifted from the false happy one to an arrogant one.

“Good morning,” Amamiya greeted. His voice was low, but there was plenty of hidden venom in those words as he fought to keep his eyes from setting into a glare; he then moved forward to go around the man as I swung even wider to stay as far from the scum as possible; Kamoshida claimed Amamiya’s ‘admirable behaviour’ wasn’t going to do him any good once he was expelled.

“Amamiya-san, we should get moving before we’re late for homeroom,” I insisted. Amamiya tersely nodded and follow after me as I let a breath escape from me. “I can’t wait to get started,” I muttered. A hum of agreement slipped passed Amamiya’s lips as we continued our walk until we reached the room we used. Upon entering a soft yawn escaped from someone and I looked over to see Kawakami-sensei stood at the blackboard, her eyes shadowed by what appeared to be exhaustion and the darkening rings around her eyes helped support that.

“Kawakami-sensei, are you alright?” I asked. That only caused my homeroom teacher to jerk upright from her slightly slumped state and she looked at me, but her eyes seemed unfocused until she had blinked several times which focused on me; well, I really don’t think Kawakami-sensei was okay given how she had reacted at that point.

“Yes Chiba-san, I’m fine,” Kawakami-sensei insisted. Like I was about to believe her after that display, but it was clear she didn’t want the matter to be pushed, so I walked away to my seat; the other students filed in with Takamaki giving me and Amamiya encouraging smiles when she saw us and we proceeded to get through homeroom… only for a slight problem to hit when Kawakami-sensei asked to speak to Amamiya and they proceeded to leave the room together.

“Do you think Amamiya-san will be okay?” Takamaki whispered. I glanced over at the blonde before looking back at the door that our teacher and classmate had walked out off, other people were muttering about the event so there was nothing to be concerned about discussing it; I moved my eyes back over to Takamaki and saw Morgana poking his head out, also clearly concerned about what was happening.

“I don’t think it’s Kamoshida’s doing, he’s planning to expel Amamiya so won’t push the matter until the meeting. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this is connected to the expulsion,” I admitted. Takamaki frowned slightly at my words, but soon enough both of them returned for the Japanese lesson we had first and Amamiya didn’t seem worried or even concerned, more likely he was slightly irritated from the tension along his jawline.

During the lesson a buzzing came from my pocket, so I proceeded to slip my phone out and quickly opened it up in order to look at the notification. A Chat message and I was heavily betting that the person responsible was the punk of our little group; unlocking the object I brought the notification up whilst trying to split my attention between the lesson as I moved my pen into my left hand to continue note taking and avoid being called out.

Ryūji: So, I saw Kamoshida at the school gate this morning.

Natsumi: Snap.

Ryūji: He was just standing there looking at me with this shit-eating grin on his face.

Ren: He probably thinks there’s nothing we can do about the expulsion and with Suzui-san’s condition, he’ll never be exposed.

Ann: Ugh, that’s annoying… he’s definitely mocking us.

Ryūji: Honestly, seeing that got me even more fired up about this.

Ryūji: We’re definitely gonna pull this off.

Natsumi: We have to. For Suzui-san, Mishima-san, everyone in this Chat, and the school.

Ann: Yeah. I’m worried about Shiho, but I want to concentrate on our operation too.

Ann: And I won’t let myself get exhausted like last time.

Ren: Chiba-san explained that using our Personas will exhaust us no matter what, which means we’ll need to pace ourselves, striking weakness as much as possible.

Natsumi: Which also means getting you as many Personas as possible.

Natsumi: I’ve already filled Takamaki-san in on the details.

Ryūji: The board meeting’s May 2^nd, right?

Ryūji: We just gotta take care of him before then.

Ren: My mind is made up. I’m ready for this.

Ryūji: Same goes for me.

Ann: Me too!

Ann: I’ll do my best. No going in without me, okay?

Natsumi: No one goes in without the others, we’re all in this together.

Ryūji: Agreed. So Ren, you better let us know if you’re going into the Palace.

Ren: Obviously. I’m going to need everyone’s help for this.

With that, I closed my phone down and proceeded to focus back on the lesson and the rest of the day. The end of the day would kick start everything, all I could do for now was wait.

*Persona 5 Royal*

School ended and so I started to make my way towards the roof in order to meet up with Amamiya, Takamaki and Sakamoto. We decided to head up separately in order to avoid people – Kamoshida – getting suspicious of us and what we might be doing. As I was about to head up the steps, I sensed someone approaching behind me, I turned around and was surprised to see the red haired first year from the train.

“Um… senpai, I was wondering, about that boy I saw you with… do you know the rumours about him?” She asked. I still didn’t know this young girl’s name, then again I had much more pressing matters to be concerning myself with since our little meeting; apparently she had been exposed to the information about the ‘dangerous’ transfer student and somehow she’d been able to connect that to Amamiya.

“I’m well aware of the rumours, but they’re garbage nonsense. I’d advise you to ignore them and anything else anyone says about Amamiya-san. You’ve met him, albeit briefly, use that moment to evaluate him. Not the half stated, untruths of people who’ve never even spoken to him,” I insisted. I then turned and proceeded to head up the stairs to where the others would be waiting for me.

I found Amamiya leaning against the metal box calmly with a fancy looking book in his hand which he was carefully leafing through, I spotted that the title was The Great Thief. Takamaki was messing around on her phone sat on a chair nearby with Morgana proudly sat upon the table’s surface; all we had to wait for was Sakamoto now.

“I’m here!” Sakamoto’s voice exclaimed. The door had swung open and cracked into the bricking of the wall, he scrambled over to sit with the rest of us; he looked like he had rushed up here along with being flustered but he didn’t seem to want to speak about it as he proceeded to look at us. “Okay, so what do we do?” Sakamoto asked.

“I hope you all understand that our time limit is May second,” Morgana stated. Takamaki surmised what our goal was to steal the Treasure, our first objective for the infiltration would be to determine the location of the Treasure; determine location, materialise the Treasure and then get it out of the Palace, those were the steps we needed to take to succeed.

“But wait, what even is a Treasure? I wanna know that before we do anything,” Sakamoto asked. It made sense that they would be curious about the Treasure since they had never experienced it like I had, also from the words he’d said, Morgana likely hadn’t either… and yet he seemed to be filled with knowledge that only someone who’d completed a Palace – apart from its’ success – would be in possession of.

“A Treasure is the physical form of the Palace Ruler’s distorted desires. In other words, it’s the core of the Palace. Once we steal it, the Palace will crumble… I think,” Morgana stated. That was another example of his oddly comprehensive yet somewhat holey knowledge, he knew some things but was unsure about other things.

“Oh, it’ll crumble alright. I had to run for my life to get out of the previous Palace I was in. However, up until we can materialise the Desire, none of us will know what form it’ll take,” I confirmed. Takamaki turned pale while Sakamoto gaped and Amamiya stared at me with wide eyes; luckily, Takamaki recovered and asked where it could be found. “Good question. But all I can say is, no where I’ve already been,” I answered.

“Natsumi’s right. There’s no way of knowing that until we go in and find out. But if I had to guess, I’d say he had it locked up somewhere in the depths of the Palace,” Morgana confirmed. Sakamoto claimed we had to find the Treasure. “Pretty much. There’s just a lot we won’t know until we go in. In any case, our objective is to find the Treasure’s location somewhere in the Palace. Make sure we go about this with time to spare so we can avoid any unforeseen circumstances. I expect great things from you guys,” Morgana insisted.

With that, we proceeded to head out of the school and into the alleyway we had used before to enter the Metaverse.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“But daaamn…,” Skull chimed. We’d materialised and I turned to look at the blonde, wondering what he was doing, only to see him staring at Takamaki in her revealing Rebel’s Armour; Joker was busy handing Takamaki a gun which was larger than his pistol and looked like it need two hands to support, he also gave Skull a gun which had a long barrel that was curled into two cylinders.

“Hm? What’s up?” Takamaki asked. It should have been kind of obvious what was ‘up’ by how Skull was ogling her, I was partially tempted to smack Skull across the head because he was acting rather rudely towards Takamaki – given everything she’d been through – or at least I thought so, it seemed like Takamaki wasn’t even aware of the ogling.

“N-Nothing,” Skull claimed. I gave him a side eye in disbelief. “I-I was just thinkin’ we should choose a codename for you too,” Skull covered. At least he had chosen something reasonably believably, we did need to select a name to give to our new member, although Takamaki was confused. “I’m Skull, Ren’s Joker, Natsumi’s Amazon and that’s Mona,” Skull explained.

“Judging by your costume…,” Mona mused. He was carefully evaluating the possible names we could use for her, given her appearance perhaps a cat themed name would work, especially given her mask and the false tail she happened to possess, but it would also have to be something she was comfortable with as well.

“I mean, she’s got that tail and stuff, so… whadda you think Joker?” Skull asked. I looked at our leader as he also seemed to be contemplating the codename conundrum, his right thumb and forefinger wrapped around his chin as his head was tilted to the side, I was surprised that he was thinking so hard about this, but maybe this one was harder than mine.

“Catgirl,” Joker suggested. I swear, had this been a movie or anime then there would be a record scratch in the sound and crickets chirping, I could only stare at him with a flabbergasted expression as the cogs in my brain ground to a halt while trying to process what had just been said by someone who had seemed pretty insightful in previous interactions.

“We are not calling Takamaki-san that,” I insisted. It sounded rather ridiculous when compared to the other names, even Mona had a degree of impressive connection to it, one could think of the Mona Lisa which would be a perfect compliment to our phantom thief expert, but Catgirl had a kind of childish vibe to it which wasn’t something we wanted to covey.

“Definitely with Natsu- er, I mean Amazon, here guys!” Takamaki agreed. She had seemed horrified by the suggestion but appeared relieved that someone else thought it was a terrible name. “I am so not down with that!” Takamaki protested. Joker scratched the back of his head in embarrassment, perhaps realising how bad the name sounded.

“A cat-themed name would be good though. However, the Shadow Kamoshida has addressed that airhead cognition of you a kitten before,” I admitted. Takamaki’s face twisted up, I could see that even through the mask, at the knowledge I’d given her. “But maybe you could use that,” I suggested. Takamaki seemed confused by my words. “Kamoshida sees you as a kitten, someone weak and incapable of protecting herself. So, what if instead you chose a codename from a predatory cat, a way to prove you can fight back,” I explained.

“Yeah, that actually sounds pretty cool, shoving it in his face that I’m not the kind of girl he thinks I am,” Takamaki agreed. A small smile appeared on her face and I could tell that she was thinking about the possibility of names to use. “If we’re thieves, then how about Panther? That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?” Takamaki suggested.

“She’s a cougar,” Mona claimed. He said it in a dreamy tone so I know he meant no offense by those words, but he really shouldn’t have been saying such a thing to Takamaki, proven true when she kind of exploded and demanded he not call her that; I really hope the Shadows didn’t realise that we were actually here before we had a chance to get inside.

“Welcome to the team Panther,” Joker greeted. Panther settled down and gave a solid nod towards Joker. “Now, let’s focus on Kamoshida!” Joker declared. At least that weird name suggestion had completely derailed him, I guess there was more than just shy and unsure or confident and level-headed to the raven haired Wildcard.

“It’s game time from this point forward. I’ll teach you guys the basics of infiltrating a Palace as we go. First step, Amazon, shortcut,” Mona insisted. Nodding my head, I walked over to a nearby wall and pressed my hand against its’ surface, creating a shortcut was easier done on a wall than thin air due to cognition of how doors were meant to be. “Amazon is creating a shortcut between here and a Safe Room via the Metaverse’s cognition,” Mona explained. Someone – Skull most likely or Panther – had probably been confused.

“I’ll be taking us back to the Safe Room we found before Panther got grabbed by the knights. Once the door manifests, just walk straight through,” I insisted. The door came into focus seconds later, so I grabbed the door and pulled it open; however, when I looked back I saw that Joker’s back was turned towards us and he seemed to just be staring into nothingness. “Um… Joker! Are you okay?” I called. This caused the other three to turn around and finally clock how weird our leader was acting.

“Something wrong? You were just standing around all of a sudden,” Mona wondered. Joker turned around, his eyes looking slightly unfocused as he glanced at us, he seemed kind of confused and perhaps a little sad as well if the sheen in his eyes was anything to go by; but the strangest thing was that I swear I could have sensed the Velvet Room’s ancient song for a brief moment but now it was gone and there was no sign of a door at all.

“Why’re you spacin’ out like that? It’s kinda hard to tell what you’re thinkin’ sometimes,” Skull commented. A soft apology came from Joker as I felt the door trying to seal itself from the sharp tug backwards on my hand, I let out a small sound and this drew the others to my predicament of trying to keep the door open; Joker sprinted forward and through the opening before the other three quickly tailed him, I followed after and pulled the door close behind us.

“Next time, no hanging around when a shortcut is open, those things apparently do not like being forced open for long,” I insisted. I could feel the strain pulsing up my arms at having strained to keep the shortcut accessible, I’d never had to wait before and I don’t know if the self sealing would block us from using that method immediately after, best to avoid such things given the situation.

“Huh? What’s up with this place?” Panther asked. The Safe Room was doing its’ wavy ripple between Metaverse cognition and physical world fact. “Oh, this is that safe place you mentioned, right Amazon?” Panther realised. I gave her a nod to confirm she was right, Mona added on a bit more explanation to that. “I’m still not getting it even though you two explained it,” Panther admitted. Mona handed something to Joker who slipped it into one of his pockets.

“Don’t worry about it, all we need to know is that rooms like this are places we can catch our breath,” Joker insisted. He then turned around and pushed the door open, he swiped his head from left to right before motioning for us to follow him as he slipped out into the hallway; we darted down the hallway for the door we had yet to pass through and Joker carefully pushed it open, revealing a dining room which was much more lavish in comparison.

“We have no idea what awaits us ahead… here you’d better take these. These fine tools have my seal of approval! Use them wisely, alright?” Mona insisted. He handed over six items with three of them being the same and Joker pocketed all of them; with that we proceeded to advance into the room, ducking behind a pillar to avoid being seen by a knight just around the corner.

A quick battle against three Pixies later, where Skull and Panther got to use their new guns, we were able to push onwards to another corner where we found another knight waiting. Another ambush, another battle, a trio of Wind Spells from Mona knocked down the three Jack-O-Lanterns and one All-Out Attack finished it off. We approached the door that would take us out only to find a knight standing right outside, Joker quickly pulled the door closed before it turned around and saw us.

“Another one huh? Okay, now that we’ve expanded our roster, let’s try something!” Mona insisted. All of us proceeded to look down at the cat looking member of team. “It’s a way for us to gain the advantage during a battle. I decided to name it after that thing you mentioned the other day, a Baton Pass. It’ll be better to show you what I mean while we deal with this Shadow,” Mona explained.

The little cat then proceeded to push the door open and motioned for Joker to move. Our leader darted forward and easily leapt onto the Shadow’s shoulders, with one decisive pull the mask came away and Joker leapt backwards to stand beside the rest of us. As for the Shadow, it had reformed into five different Shadows! The group was made up of a Pixie, a Mandrake, a Silky, a Bicorn, and a Jack-O-Lantern.

“Okay, I’ll show you an example first. You better watch closely!” Mona declared. He quickly summoned out Zorro and had it surrounded the pumpkin headed shadow in a veil of wind. “Ha! It’s scary how good I am!” Mona bragged. He then looked at Joker and darted for the boy, a kind of pink glow surrounded his paw, he leapt up and slapped his paw against Joker’s glove clad hand, transferring the pink glow. “The Baton Pass works by gathering our Persona’s energy into our hand. With that energy, we can boost another person’s abilities and allow them to strike a weakness with greater efficiency!” Mona revealed. Oh, that would be incredibly useful. “Now strike the enemy’s weakness and give the Baton Pass a try!” Mona encouraged.

“Skull! You take the Pixie! There’s something I want to try!” Joker ordered. Skull looked surprised but nodded his head, our leader reached his hand up and pulled off his mask. “Agathion!” Joker declared. From his mask manifested a Persona I’d never seen before; it had a blue head with red eyes but most of its’ body was stuffed inside of bronze jar with two handles and a six pointed star on the surface. “Zio!” Joker commanded. The little spirit in a jar unleashed a blast of electricity right at the Bicorn.

I was a little confused as to how Joker had suddenly gained a hold of a brand new Persona – unless this was what Igor meant by cultivation – but more than that was something else. When I looked at Agathion, I had the strangest sensation that there was some kind of bond, a bond that linked it to Skull of all people. That made no sense considering it was Joker’s Persona, but it was like there was a kind of resonance between Skull and Agathion.

The violent bangs of bullets firing jolted me out of my musings as I watched Skull drop the Pixie to the ground. He darted over and slapped his hand against Panther’s, who happily received it. However, as her eyes fell upon the two remaining Shadows, I could see that she looked a little unsure, likely not knowing which one to strike.

“Panther, take the little flower creature out with your fire! I’ll handle the woman in red,” I insisted. Panther shot me a grateful look and she proceeded to do exactly as I told her, blasting the Mandrake with a fiery orb from Carmen; she then proceeded to perform the Baton Pass and the moment it flowed into my hand, I realised something; everyone’s Soul Power had merged together, gathering into a cohesive whole and I could use that whole to power my next Spell instead of just relying upon my own reserves. “Sing Phantom!” I commanded. With a rattling wave of Gravity from my ominous Persona, the Silky dropped and we unleashed an All-Out Attack to clear them up.

“Great teamwork! I knew you guys would nail it,” Mona congratulated. A bright smile curved across his feline face as he said those words. “Improving yourselves is important, but learning to fight as a team is just as vital to our survival. By coordinating our effort, we can take control of the battle as often as possible. Baton Passes will help a lot with that!” Mona added on.

“Plus, at the end of the chain, whoever receives that power can use it in place of their own Soul Power for a Spell, which will help with conserving our energy on this infiltration,” I revealed. The others, Mona included, seemed ecstatic about my revelation as Panther jumped for joy while Skull threw an arm around the shoulders of a grinning Joker.

However, Joker suddenly turned his head and walked over to a nearby vase, he tugged on his red glove and then swiped it at the vase. Surprisingly enough, the vase turned into red petals and in his hand lay what looked to be yarn… made out of silk? Joker seemed surprised but shrugged his shoulders and tucked it away before we pressed on to the doorway further down the hall as Joker picked up something else from another ornament.

Beyond the door lay a large cylinder shaped room that stretched upwards, the staircase’s railings were broken in places despite the fine carpet that stretched across it’s winding length. We climbed up the stairs until we couldn’t move any further thanks to the rather large broken gap that stretched between and up the rest of the stairs, to make things more awkward was that down the hallway was a Shadow and the false sunlight of the Metaverse streamed quite heavily through the windows that lined the rather open corridor.

“Damn… there’s one here too…,” Skull muttered. He was rather annoyed by this event but it was something he’d have to deal with if he wanted to see this infiltration through. “Oh well… guess we just gotta ambush it from behind again,” Skull commented. He sounded like he was tired now, although I guess it could get rather repetitive what we were constantly doing.

“Well sure, if you want to go about it the orthodox way. But there’s a more stylish route!” Mona declared. Once more the cat looking entity drew our confused attention. “See those couches on the sides of the hallway? Hide behind those so you can get closer to the enemy. Once it’s in range, jump on it and rip its’ mask off!” Mona insisted. Had it not been for my experience in Ouvrard’s cavern, I’d think he was joking.

“Whoa… that does sound pretty damn cool,” Skull admitted. However, Panther protested about the fact that this wasn’t a movie. “Yeah. But Amazon says this place primarily works off of thought, so if we think we can do it, we can do!” Skull explained. Panther looked at me and I nodded my head to show that he was right in what he’d said.

“Joker, with your poise, you should be able to pull it off. Give it a try!” Mona insisted. Speaking of our leader, he looked a little nervous as if not sure about how to go about doing what had been asked. Yet, despite his reservations, he crouched low and darted forward, nestling himself within the shadow of a chair; with more skill than I would have thought, Joker darted from shadow to shadow until he met the back of the knight and promptly jumped up to tear off its’ mask.

Enemies we were used to popped out and we made fine work of the Baton Pass to get passed it. Yet, instead of bringing out Arsène to deal with the Pixie, Joker utilised his gun, certainly it lessoned the usage of Soul Power but it was a little odd, especially since I couldn’t actually see the demonic gentleman of a thief hovering anywhere around Joker unlike the other three which I could see.

“Sweet! That totally works!” Skull exclaimed. Even Panther seemed energised by the fact that the Shadows seemed incapable of seeing us when we were in hiding; it would certainly be handy if the others could master this technique since we could avoid unnecessary battles if we end up being low on Life Energy or Soul Power and if our supplies are low as well.

Panther and Skull quickly slipped into hiding at the nearby corner and warned us of an enemy just around it. A quick dash between hiding spots and Joker had the mask off within seconds, we kind of had to given the tight confines and the door being in this section of hallway, there was a large risk of being spotted at that point. A battle against two Mandrakes and a Pixie was easy enough to get through, after Joker pilfered more items from ornaments, we opened the door.

On the other side was a square-ish shaped room with a small square room sealed off in the centre by bars that cut through every arch that could be used to access it. Mounted on two of the pillars on the side we entered were what looked to be ram heads with ominous red eyes and chains with handhold dangling from their mouths.

“Look! There’s something in there!” Skull exclaimed. I looked at the punk and found him pointing into the centre, I focused my eyes and saw that there was a table in the centre with some old paper on top of it. “But the bars’re blockin our way in,” Skull pointed out. Whatever was in there must have been important enough for it to be sectioned off, which meant we had to get to it.

“If he’s protecting it this securely, it has to be important. That means there should be a way in and out of there,” Mona stated. He then turned to face me with a hopeful look in your eyes. “I know you said they allow you to perceive things made of the mind, but do you think your eyes could be of use here Amazon?” Mona asked. I’d never had to use them like this before, so I couldn’t really give him an answer.

“It couldn’t hurt to try,” I responded. Dismissing my naginata in a shower of blue fire, I moved slightly away from the others and took a deep breath, focusing exactly like I did to enter a Palace or Mementos; my mind cleared but I couldn’t think of exactly what to focus my mind on in order to try and find the way into the barred room.

‘Pathway to enter the barred room in Kamoshida’s Palace.’ I chanted. My mind focused as my eyes drifted open, when they did, I saw the footprints pressed into the red carpet that lay beneath our feet. They led right up to the second ram head and congregated there a lot, I reached out and pulled on the chain which caused the red eyes to turn off.

“Uh… nothing happened Amazon,” Skull pointed out. I decided it would be best to ignored him for now and instead proceeded to follow the trail of footprints up the rest of the pathway and around the corner, walking down to the next corner I turned and saw more ram heads, I walked to the second one along from my position and quickly pulled the chain there. The eyes went out and the bars proceeded to retract.

“Well done, Amazon,” Joker congratulated. However, his words of praised were ill timed as the moment I relaxed, I felt a strain press itself into my eyes and I groaned in slight pain, moving back slightly as I reached a gloved hand up to cover my eyes. “Amazon, are you okay?” Joker asked. His tone was filled with worry as hands in gloves – then again that was everyone but Mona so it didn’t narrow it down – rested on my shoulders as I breathed deeply.

“I’m fine, I think my eyes didn’t handle the unexpected strain well,” I admitted. With a few calming breaths, I managed to ease the pain that throbbed within my eyes and pull away from the hands which had belonged to Skull. “Let’s see what we found,” I insisted. We walked in, although Panther and Mona hovered near me likely worried about a relapse; what we found on the table was quite surprising, but it was also very fortunate.

“What the hell? He had it all locked up and shit, but it was just some old map?” Skull questioned. He apparently hadn’t realised the significance of such an object being in the Metaverse, I pulled out my notebook as Joker examined the map we’d discovered; Mona leapt up onto the table in order to get a better look at the object.

“You’re hopeless Skull. Don’t you realise how vital a map is?” Mona pointed out. I proceeded to lay the map I’d sketched beside the map that we had discovered and pulling over the sections that displayed the dungeons and the ground floor. “They’re a definite match. Having this will give us a better grasp of the topography of the Palace. It’s a true necessity for a phantom thief. This should make securing a route much easier,” Mona pointed out. With such a thing, at least I’d be able to stop sketching so much, that took up a surprising chunk of time.

“Wait, does it say where the Treasure is on there?” Panther asked. She eagerly leaned over Joker’s shoulder in order to get a better look at the paper, speaking of our leader he started to flick through the sheets that we had available to us with a stiff look on his face before shaking his head and laying the map down with a dejected sigh.

“No, it looks like this map is incomplete,” Joker admitted. The map being here was a good thing as that at least meant we’d be able to observe the layout of the next area before we reached said area, but the downside was that we couldn’t rely on it this during our infiltration once we reached the end of what the map showed.

“Well, there might be more of it lying around deeper in the Palace,” Mona reassured. That meant that we’d need to search all the rooms we came across if we wanted to find where the rest of the map was located; Skull agreed and suggested we start checking when possible for the missing portion, Joker rolled the map up and handed it to Mona but then Joker fixed a gaze that seemed to be worried upon me.

“Are you alright to continue on Amazon?” Joker asked. He seemed rather concerned about the reaction that using my eyes had caused on me, nothing like this had happened when practicing with Igor or when I had first used them in Ouvrard’s Palace, but that might be because the information reached out to me instead of me having to search for it… when I thought back to it, there had been a slight ache to my eyes when entering the Metaverse for that first time.

“Yes. I’m fine Joker,” I answered. Joker’s expression of concern only intensified and it was supported by all the others sharing worried glances. “If it gets worse, I’ll tell you. But we need to stop Kamoshida as soon as possible, a little bit of soreness in my eyes isn’t a good enough reason for us to fall back,” I insisted.

“Alright, but if it does get worse, we’re pulling back. We might need to stop Kamoshida, but I’m not going to let you guys endanger yourselves for that. We have fourteen days, if we need to stop then we stop,” Joker insisted. With that he walked out of the enclosure with the tails of his coat flourishing behind him.

I smiled slightly at his worry before tailing after him with the others following after me as Mona pulled out the map to examine it.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 19: - Pushing Further In

“Up ahead is a corridor shaped like an L,” Mona warned. Joker carefully pushed open the door that would take us there only to quickly pull it close. “Let me guess, knight on the other side of the door,” Mona commented. It was pretty obvious that was the case when there would have been no other reason for Joker to suddenly pull close the door when we needed to advance in that direction.

“Yeah, and it was looking this way. We need to wait to avoid being detected,” Joker answered. That makes more sense; Joker calmly opened up the door only a small crack and peered through it to assess what the knight on the other side was going to be doing. “Okay, let’s move!” Joker ordered. He pushed the door open and quickly bolted through it toward the enemy, the rest of us tailed after him as Joker leapt up and tore the mask from his face.

“Seriously, these guys again?” Skull questioned. Not surprising given that the Shadows that had popped out happened to be a Pixie, a Mandrake and a Jack-O-Lantern; one gun blast, one Garu Spell and a fireball later strung together by a trio of Baton Passes allowed us to commence an All-Out Attack and clear them out. “You’d think we’d be facing off against stronger guys,” Skull complained.

“Be careful what you wish for Skull. The further into the Palace we move, the stronger the Shadows become, but they also become new which means we won’t know their weakness putting us at a disadvantage. At least until I can see them,” I warned. We kept pushing on and found another knight hiding around the edge, fortunately we used the sneaking advice that Mona gave us to sneak up on the knight and ambush it.

More familiar Shadows were faced down which we easily managed to deal with and proceeded to move towards the door. We stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the main entrance hall, however there was a slight problem as it seemed that the only visible way forward was blocked by some more bars and there didn’t seem to be anything we could use to open the bars with none of us able to reach our arms through to deactivate the ram head on the other side.

“What the heck?! Are we stuck here?” Skull exclaimed. Panther proceeded to shush him due to the fact that there were Shadows down below marching around and could potentially spot us if we weren’t careful; I turned around to look around for any potential hidden stairway with Mona also looking around, we needed that pathway if we wanted to advance and fulfil our goal.

“Guys,” Joker called. I looked around but found that our leader had miraculously disappeared. “Up here,” Joker’s voice came again. I tilted my head up and raised an inquisitive eyebrow when I saw Joker stood on a beam that cut across the air above our heads with a smirk on his face that seemed to be edging towards cockiness. “Use the shelf at the end of the hallway to get up here,” Joker insisted. He also pointed towards our right to indicate where he meant.

There was indeed a white shelf there, Mona hopped over and easily jumped up onto it before climbing up a second time and then walking onto the railing over our heads. I walked over and hauled myself up before joining the other two with Skull being forced to go next by Panther as the blonde girl came up last. We walked down the beam towards the metal top of a chandelier that hung over the entry hall. Looking out there appeared to be two more in close proximity to each other that would allow us to reach the other side.

“Joker, we could use those to cross over,” I pointed out. Joker looked at me and then over to where I was gesturing before nodding his head in agreement, he jumped over to the metal, but it started to swing slightly from the landing. “We’re going to have to take this slowly, one at a time, in order to avoid being caught or the chandeliers snapping,” I admitted. Mona let out a hum of agreement before jumping over to the now unmoving object.

Thankfully Mona’s small size prevented it from moving much which allowed me to jump over, followed by the other two once it had stopped moving. Joker leapt over to the next one which caused the chandelier to swing backwards, I grabbed a hold of the railing in order to keep myself up right as Panther and Skull did the same with Mona holding onto Skull’s leg in place of the railing. I looked over the edge and felt my heart thumping loudly in my chest, not from the heights though as I didn’t fear that, instead it was from the possibility that the swaying might attract attention anyway.

Once it stopped moving, we crossed over individually with Joker now having to hold on as our arrival rocked the chandelier. Once everyone was over the process repeated once again, my mouth ran a little dry at the tension I could feel building across my skin. Joker leapt over to the railing that mirrored the one we had used to reach the chandeliers, all of us carefully made our way over and my heart finally started to calm down from the mad pace it had kicked up to.

“Hey! Look here!” Panther called. Her voice was soft enough that it wouldn’t risk attracting unwanted attention but still enough to catch ours, we looked over at the model and found she was pointing to a window. “There’s no glass there so we can head through it,” Panther commented. Mona hopped over and proceeded to poke his head out the window.

“It leads to the front of the Palace, it might be useful as an escape route or a quick exit,” Mona revealed. That might be handy to have, especially if there didn’t happened to be a Safe Room nearby and we needed to escape quickly. We proceeded to hop down to the floor and moved into the nearby room which had green walls instead of red with tables and chairs scattered about. “Hrm? This feeling… maybe there’s a Safe Room,” Mona commented.

“We also have a chest, but it’s locked,” Skull pointed out. There was a chest there but the padlock on it was quite sizeable, I’d seen a few of them but had never been able to find a key to open them; Mona let out one of his confident laughs before nudging the back of Joker’s leg to move him forward, I saw a faint grimace appear on Joker’s face as he moved closer to the chest.

Once in front of it, he reached into one of his pockets and proceeded to pull out two fine strips of metal which he slid into the keyhole. Tense moments passed as Joker worked his hands in precise movements, occasionally stopping when he seemed to catch something inside and pulled the strips back. His eyebrows were drawn together as a tense expression covered his face until he finally caused a clicking sound to echo and the padlock unlatched.

“Ha! I knew you could do it Joker!” Mona cheered. Joker sighed heavily before looking at the item he had used, needless to say it was completely mangled. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to made some more at some point,” Mona stated. Joker nodded his head before proceeding to throw the items away so that he could reach in and take out the chest’s contents, which was armour that quickly bonded to his own. With that secured, we passed through the doorway into the next part of the castle.

“If the map’s right, we’ve still got a long way to go,” Skull commented. I looked down and saw that Mona had the map out once again and moved it from the area we’d just been in, to the area we were currently standing at, Skull was right as there was a lot more ground to cover and without the full map, we were unfortunately oblivious as to the full scope of the Palace.

“That’s not all, there are an awful lot of patrolling Shadows, too. Now, you can’t just blindly rush into a fight. First you need to ascertain how strong they are,” Mona stated. Skull proceeded to ask exactly how that was supposed to be achieved, Mona proceeded to turn to look at me. “Amazon, you knew that demon from when Panther awoke was strong, can your eyes help with that? Without straining them obviously,” Mona wondered.

“Don’t worry Mona, doing that is easy for me. It’ll be no trouble for my eyes,” I answered. Mona seemed to deflate from relief at my words, with that we carefully watched the knight at the bottom of the stairs as Joker carefully crept forward, with all of us behind him as we approached the knight who rounded the corner.

Slipping into hiding, Joker peered around the corner before darting out to a spot around the corner and then leaping up onto the knight’s shoulders and tearing the mask off. We gathered around our leader as the Shadow reformed itself, this time into a dark purple-black furred cat with piercing green eyes, it was stood on its’ hind legs wearing a red cloak that fluttered around it, a red hat reminiscent of a witch’s hat yet with a white feather curling around it was situated on the head, a grey belt was wrapped around its’ waist and held a red sheath to its’ side, likely a match to the gleaming sword it held, and a pair of red boots with spurs around the ankles covered its’ hind legs.

“What’s this Puss in Boots?” Skull mockingly asked. I also saw that he was going to reach up for his mask, so I quickly grabbed his hand and jerked it downwards in order to prevent him from doing something truly ridiculous, why he hadn’t waited for me to finish up looking this Shadow over, I don’t know; I’m just glad I was fast enough to stop him.

“No. This is called Cait Sith. It’s also resistant to electricity. Zorro and Bicorn are better left to this,” I insisted. I released my grip on him as Joker moved forward and pulled his mask off, revealing Bicorn. The twin horned beast unleashed his own Garu magic onto one of the cats and knocking it flat to the ground. Joker proceeded to pass the job over to Mona who used the Baton Pass strengthening ability to clear off the other Cait Sith. All of us leapt in, forming a star enclosure around the downed Shadow.

“I’m scared mister… what should I do?” Cait Sith wailed. It seemed worried about what was going to happen to it now that we had procced to hem it in as we had; I looked over at Joker wondering what he would possibly be going to do, I wasn’t sure of Cait Sith’s capabilities so it could be something useful or something Joker already had covered.

“Lend me your power,” Joker insisted. He was appeared to be a lot more comfortable with doing this, maybe he had come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t really threatening people and that allowed him to relax, or the determination to stop Kamoshida was superseding everything else such as his uncertainty, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

“Then, let’s talk! I gotta find out if you’re a weird human or not!” Cait Sith declared. That… that was an odd thing to be focused on, oh who am I kidding, the whole darn Metaverse was weird so Shadows being weird about their preferences shouldn’t surprise me in the least; for his part, Joker didn’t look all that bothered at all. “Hey, uh, so you know I’m just a little kid, right? You’re s’posed to go easy on kids! Are you stupid? Do you go to school and get stupid grades?” Cait Sith ranted. Joker seemed to be thinking if his darting eyes were any answered.

“I’m good at P.E.,” Joker answered. I gave the boy a look, trying to understand what our leader was doing – then again, his conversation with Bicorn had been weird as well – with that answer, but the little cat seemed happy with that answer as it cheerfully claimed that the brain was a muscle too… not entirely sure on the facts of that claim but I kept my lips closed as Panther looked a little baffled. Skull just shook his head at her as Mona kept a stiff face.

“Hey, how come you keep coming here? I wanna know. Ain’t people your age suppose’ta be out on dates and stuff instead?” Cait Sith asked. Joker seemed a little more certain as a grin appeared on his face which, actually now that I think it, that grin did seem to be rather char… Natsumi?!! Will you focus on the Shadow you might have to shoot! Goodness girl, stop acting weird!

“Right after this kid,” Joker answered. Was… was he choosing his words based on how the Shadow was or just saying whatever randomness popped into his head? Well, whatever his reasoning, those words seemed to resonate with the Shadow as it insisted that Joker go on his ‘date’ instead, but then I sensed the same power that had come from Pixie when we set her free and Cait Sith jumped to his feet full of renewed energy.

“You know, I’m not really a Shadow! I came from the humans’ sea of souls! My real name is Cait Sith! You and I are the same, mister!” Cait Sith declared. With that, the Shadow broke the chains of the Palace and turned into a mask before flying into Joker’s own mask; we all relaxed and slipped our ranged weapons back to their resting places.

“This one has Fire magic, that’ll be handy for anything with a fire weakness, I was honestly expecting Electricity after what you said about its’ resistance Amazon,” Joker admitted. That was fortunate, with Agathion covering Electricity and Bicorn handling physical and Wind, another type was better than a double up; of course, Arsène and Pixie were suspiciously absent during the battles.

“The more variety, the better for our infiltration,” Mona chimed. Skull let out a loud agreement, however I focused on what I had sensed when the chain broke before the mask transformation, at that moment I had sensed a bond between Cait Sith and Mona, which had felt identical to the one I sensed between Agathion and Skull.

“We should keep moving,” Panther encouraged. We did as she suggested and walked towards the corner at the end only to end up ducking down behind it when a Shadow turned out to be on the other end. “Amazon?” Panther asked. A slightly uncertain note within her voice as she looked at me, however I proceeded to give her a smile and a thumbs up to confirm that we would be safe dealing with this Shadow.

At my confirmation, Joker darted out to engage the enemy which turned out to be a solitary Silky. One well placed Fire spell from Joker’s new Persona later and she was knocked down. We executed our hold up only for Joker to start soothing the unhappy spirit who was quite upset that we had attacked her in the first place. He reassured her and we got a Persona, this one wielding Ice magic which was very nice, but this time there was no sensation of connection.

‘Am I losing my head or something?’ I thought. It wasn’t the best time for me to be potentially losing my mind, but without any explanation as to why I was suddenly sensing these bonds between Joker’s Personas and two of our comrades, their own Personas certainly but not these other ones. We proceeded further down the hallway with Joker swiping more stuff out of ornaments and then up the stairs.

Upon reaching the zenith, we discovered another knight, so the ambush was executed and we got treated to something unexpected. The Shadows that popped out of the goo happened to be a trio of Agathion, which at least meant I got a good look at them since I didn’t really focus on it in the Personas; at least now I knew what its’ affinities were.

“Don’t use guns or electricity! Agathion is resistant. Earth or Wind will work best!” Joker revealed. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow since that was normally me giving out the information, but since he was in possession of an Agathion then it made sense that he’d know the little spirit’s weakness straight away. “Oh, er… sorry Amazon,” Joker mumbled. He clasped the back of his head as he said those words.

“It’s fine. If you’ve got the knowledge, then it helps. Now you said Earth works right?” I responded. Joker nodded so I reached for my mask. “Sing Phantom!” I commanded. Phantom manifest and unleashed a storm of rocks at one of the little jar spirits. “Mona! You’re up!” I called. Darting over, I gathered Phantom’s energy into my hand as Mona leapt into the air, we struck our hands and I felt the energy phase into Mona.

“Zorro!” Mona called. The masked sword wielder appeared and promptly surrounded another of the spirits in a whirl of wind. “Joker! It’s up to you!” Mona decided. Darting over the two of them exchanged a Baton Pass and Joker quickly ended it by having Bicorn surrounded the only remaining floating Shadow with his own windstorm.

“Okay, let’s finish this!” Joker insisted. We all dived in for the All-Out Attack, easily wiping the spirits off the field, we walked through the arch that lay beyond the knight’s patrol area only to come across more arches that had bars slicing across the opening the arches created and a ram’s head hanging next to it and a ram head on the wall that connected to the one containing the arches.

“Seriously!? More bars?” Skull exclaimed. He couldn’t be entirely blamed seeing as this was the third set that we had come across during our little infiltration and since they barred the only visible way forward – Mona was consulting the map at this moment – then we were stuck until we found a way to open it up. Joker walked up to the ram beside the arches and pulled, but nothing happened, he began to walk over to the other ram head only to stop.

“There’s another one over there,” Joker stated. He extended his left hand to point beyond the section of wall that was in that direction, pulling the limb back in, he turned around to face us. “Amazon, I hate to ask this, but we’re going to need your eyes again,” Joker stated. His expression was tense and his hands curled tightly, clearly he didn’t like the idea of using my Betwixt eyes after what had happened the last time.

“Joker, it’s alright. I’ll be fine,” I reassured. Focusing myself, I opened up Second Sight and followed the faint trail of footsteps around the section of wall that had hidden a third ram head and then all the way down until finding a fourth; sharply tugging on the chain hanging I waited for a few moments but received no sound of the bars having been retracted which caused me to frown slightly.

“Maybe it’s like the last one and we need to pull two of them,” Panther suggested. That was the likely case – I hope it doesn’t end up being all four in some kind of special order – so I proceeded to follow the footsteps back around and over to the ram head beside the arches. “But Joker already tried that one, didn’t he?” Panther questioned. Her perplexation was understandable.

“It might be that you have to pull the one Amazon did first, before this one,” Mona suggested. Whatever caused this one to be locked, I reached out and proceeded to pull down on the chain, opening up the bars. “Yep, that was it! Let’s go!” Mona encouraged. I relaxed my eyes and we proceeded to walk through the arch; only to end up stopping still at the sight that greeted up from beyond it.

“Are you eff kiddin’ me?! This has got to be some kind of crazy joke!?” Skull exclaimed. A large room that was set up like it was expecting a feast – complete with cognitive food – surrounded on two sides by arches with bars slicing through those openings as well, thus effectively blocking our way forward once more… this was getting a touch ridiculous by this point. Although at least this time there were two arches open, but they led straight ahead of us and looked to lead to a dead end.

“There are an awful lot of bars in here for being… what looks like a dining room?” Panther agreed. Mona made his own agreement known but immediately pivoted to bringing out the map, he set it upon the table nearest us so that we could gather around and look at it easily, he lifted a paw and pointed to our right with it looking like he was pointed to barred arches beyond the barred arches that were currently trapping us.

“There’s a path beyond those bars there,” Mona stated. Which meant we had to find a way out of this infernal trap and then open up those bars in order for us to move forward; Panther commented on how things were being made tough for us by them, it certainly seemed like Shadow Kamoshida was doing everything in his power to stop us from advancing.

“Eh, it shouldn’t be too hard. Let’s just get it done,” Skull insisted. His arms were carelessly thrown behind his head as he rocked his body back and forth; Joker looked at me with an intensity in his eyes and I figured what he was silently asking; giving our leader a nod to reassure him – which didn’t work if the remaining intensity was anything to go by – I started to focus my eyes once again.

Moving over to one of the ram heads on the set of arches to the right, I pulled on the chain which raised two sets of bars in the arches up. Yet it also dropped the two that had been open when we entered. Joker slipped through the open gap, so we followed after him, but once around I immediately tugged on the chain that lay in the ram’s head directly behind the one I’d just activated. This caused a reverse of before to happen, but it also opened up the two arches directly in front of us.

“Why did you do that Amazon?” Mona asked. The others had been moving forward when Mona spoke up which caused them to turn back around and notice what I had done, Panther immediately looked confused at the actions I had taken while Skull ended up looking between me and the blocked arches alternatively; Joker on the other hand seemed completely calm as he raised an eyebrow in my direction.

“Follow my instincts, my eyes show that the ones who opened up those arches then closed them immediately afterwards. We’re probably going to end up looping around,” I explained. Moving up to the now open arches, I stepped through followed by all the others and immediately activated a third ram’s head which closed the open arches and opened up the ones I had just closed. “Assume there’s a method to the madness,” I reassured. I also relaxed my eyes since we didn’t need them at the moment.

“Vent, we can crawl through there,” Joker suggested. He immediately hopped up and pulled himself inside the square opening, Mona followed shortly after, I climbed up the shelving that lay underneath it and slipped myself inside the dark entrance; it was uncomfortably close, but I was at least able to move forward slightly, dragging myself along using my elbows and hands until I reached the end.

Pulling myself out, I end up catching my foot on the edge of my skirt and tumbled down. Thankfully, Joker’s exceptional reflexes meant that he caught me just before I hit the ground. An embarrassed apology escaped my lips and I wondered about what to do regarding if there were any more vents to crawl through in order to avoid this scene repeating itself once again.

Skull and Panther soon emerged and we ducked into the room at the back of this one, finding a treasure chest which turned out to contain some armour. The armour and Joker’s Armour didn’t start glowing, although that might have been because the armour, he was holding happened to be rather discoloured looking instead of clean like what had been dropped by Tam Lin.

“Hey… that stuff is disgusting. You should get it cleaned somewhere,” Mona complained. He wasn’t wrong either as the fabric was so dirty that I couldn’t even tell what the colour was meant to be. “Come to think of it, I remember seeing a Shadow with one… maybe if we negotiate properly, we can get one,” Mona pointed out. Although his flattened ears and grim expression showed he wasn’t happy about the idea of going around and collecting them.

“Amazon, can we bring stuff from the cognitive world into the real world?” Joker asked. I confirmed this to him and saw a spark get lit within his eyes. “Perhaps I can take this to the laundromat near LeBlanc,” Joker muttered. He then folded it up and tucked it into one of his pockets… did we all just decided that Rebels had infinite pockets or was this another weird quirk of the Metaverse?

Awakening my Second Sight once again, I pulled the chain of the ram head that was in the same room as us, causing bars to rise. We found that all of the bars blocking our way had been raised up, with thankful smiles on their faces I relaxed my eyes – feeling an ache start to press into the organs – and we darted through them.

Of course, we immediately ran into a knight which turned into a pair of Cait Siths when we ambushed it in the kitchen. I could feel my body start to get warm just by being near the flames that were used to make the food, thank goodness my Metaverse affinities didn’t cross over with me. On the other hand, Panther looked completely relaxed as she even seemed to angle herself closer to the flames.

Some Wind spells later along with an All-Out Attack ended the two feline creatures. We approached the doorway at the back as I fruitless fanned myself to try and ward off the incessant heat that seemed to be clinging to me. Joker opened the door only to close it again, signalling that a knight had been facing our direction just like last time. Joker cracked the door open a small amount once more and waited until the knight turned away.

Quickly pushing the door open, Joker darted out and pounced upon the enemy as the rest of us quickly followed after him. A duo of Silky manifested, but a fire ball from Joker and Panther had them knocked down and eliminated quick as we could manage. We walked down to the door at the end of what I think was a wine cellar – without it being underground – that we had walked into. Joker pressed his hand against the door but it wouldn’t budge so he slammed his shoulder against it, only for that to fail and he moved back, cupping his right shoulder as he did.

“That doesn’t look like a lock we can pick,” Skull pointed out. He was gesturing towards a contraption on the door that had two metal bars crossing over the handle area with red lights. Honestly it looked rather advanced for what had been a rather medieval looking environment for the most part; it was rather bizarre to see such a thing.

“Even if we could, we don’t have a lockpick to open it,” Joker stated. He then proceeded to turn around and looked at the room with critical eyes. “Up on the shelves, there’s a vent we could use to reach the other side,” Joker insisted. He then hopped up onto the shelves and leapt over to the one nearest the wall, we followed after him with Mona going in next and I ducked in after him.

“Hey, Skull! If you even dare look up, I’ll kick you into next week!” Panther threatened. Skull promised not to look but insisted Panther get a move on, as I turned around the corner, I saw that Mona had stopped crawling because Joker was crouched by the entrance which prevented the cat from being able to leave the vent.

“What’s wrong?” I quietly asked.  Mona looked back at me with a look in his eyes that I’d come to realise was connected to the appearance of an enemy. “Can we still ambush it?” I wondered. Mona nodded his head with certainty as Joker carefully shuffled himself away from the opening which allowed Mona to move out and I reached the exit, seeing that the knight was on the floor in front of us facing towards a chest.

Reaching back, I gathered my skirt up and stepped out to join the other two, the shelving we stood on was getting a little full, so I ducked down near the opening and shook my head at Panther who had just reached the opening. She shuffled as close as possible and looked around, quickly understanding the situation we were in.

“Let’s take whatever is in that treasure chest too!” Mona quietly insisted. Panther was quick to softly point out how there was a guard present. “That’s okay. Hey, Joker, do you think you can ambush it from here?” Mona questioned. Joker nodded his head and then crouched down before leaping forward to land on the knight’s shoulders. Mona and I scrambled down to join Joker as he pulled the mask off, Panther and Skull quickly joined the rest of us.

A Jack-o-Lantern emerged from the goop, so Joker quickly blasted it with a swirl of wind which knocked it to the ground. However, the strangest thing happened afterwards, Jack-o-Lantern held up its’ lantern as if to use it as a shield against any further attacks from us which caused me to look at Mona who seemed surprised by the event but not as if he hadn’t experienced it before.

“Hee-ho, I surrender! Please have mercy, ho!” Jack-o-Lantern pleaded. My eyes widened in surprise as I’d never expected a Shadow to just suddenly beg for their life after we managed to knock them down; I looked over at Joker who was blinking his grey eyes which clearly showed that he was surprised by the event as much as I was. Skull and Panther were also surprised by the event, meaning only Mona had known that this was a possibility.

“Why don’t you lend me your power?” Joker asked. Unlike the last three Shadows, this one immediately jumped at the chance to join Joker and declared its’ name to him; as he did, I felt that sensation of a bond appear once again, between Jack-o-Lantern and Mona again; this was starting to get really weird and I was wishing that I could find Igor and Lavenza to get some answers.

“I didn’t realise even Shadows beg for their lives… that’s actually kind of surprising,” Panther commented. Since Shadows had different personalities and reacted based upon human perception, maybe certain types of Shadows were more inclined to start begging as opposed to other types of Shadows; Mona wondered if we could purposely create that situation.

“It might be difficult though, there could be a lot of variables as to why a Shadow starts to beg and we may not be able to know them all. It might be best if we focus on what we can do, striking weaknesses and conducting Hold Ups,” I advised. As useful as a Shadow begging was, we couldn’t hinge all hopes of obtaining the Personas Joker would need to fill out his attack capabilities, better to focus on what we knew definitely worked on the Shadows instead.

Joker opened up the chest and pulled out what looked to be a green coloured ring that had the sensation of wind coming off. Mona claimed it had a special power and Joker slipped it on over his red glove. He then moved over to the door and pushed it open, revealing a hallway beyond it and the first door on the right had a mechanism attached to it like the one in the wine cellar but without the red lights and instead possessing a dial that could be turned. Joker twisted the dial which caused the bars on it to slide to the side before he pushed on the door, opening it up.

“Well, at least now we know how to open these doors,” Joker commented. That would at least make it easy if we had to travel some distance back to the Safe Room in order to rest, we kept moving and found our way into another tower, but this time we came across a significant problem in this one, the staircase was rather horrifically broken up in several places which prevented us from ascending up it.

“Man… looks like it’s in pretty bad shape,” Mona stated. That was putting it mildly, there was absolutely no way that any of us could get passed those broken portions, even Mona with his cat like capabilities would be stuck here; thankfully I had brought something due to having found other parts of the castle in states of disrepair like this so I kind of expected it to happen.

“Uhhh, I don’t think we’re goin’ any further this way,” Skull claimed. Panther suggested that we check somewhere else, but this was our only way as all other routes I’d tried ended up in dead ends, any other routes would likely be hidden within the missing map piece. However, Mona drew all of our attention upwards to what looked to be a brass hook held by another ram head. “What about it? Are we throwin’ a rope over that and climb’ it?” Skull wondered.

“Phantom thieves do things a bit more stylishly than that and I know just what’ll do the trick,” Mona stated. However, he turned and saw that I happened to be holding onto a thick coil of rope the end which had been swinging right in his peripheral vision. “That’s… a little too prepared Amazon,” Mona stated. Despite his words, a smile was clear on his fur lined lips which caused me to shrug my shoulders.

“It’s not when I’ve encountered this issue beforehand,” I responded. Hooking the rope over my shoulder, I looked down at the cat creature. “Now, what’s this stylish thing you were mentioning?” I asked. If the method that Mona had would work better than the rope then we’d use that; Mona moved over to Joker and proceeded to strap something onto his left wrist, celebrating that it was a proper fit.

“What did you strap onto me?” Joker asked. Mona explained that it was something he’d been working on in secret and revealed that it was a grappling hook. “I’ll try it,” Joker stated. He moved forward slightly and lifted his left arm, bracing it with his right arm, he fired the grappling hook and it twisted around the hook that lay above us; moving his hand over, he pulled on a portion of the contraption.

In response, Joker was yanked off his feet and into the air, he flipped over the railing when he was close enough to it and easily landed on his feet. He looked down at us as Skull excitedly exclaimed about what had happened; as for me on the other hand, I tied one end of the rope to an arrow and proceeded to prepare to fire it. The arrow sliced through the air and hit the wall behind Joker as the rope uncoiled until the tail end of it just swung slightly off the ground.

“We might be needing more of those grappling hooks Mona, but the rope should work for now,” I stated. Mona agreed, as he did Joker pulled my arrow free and took a hold of the object; all of us proceeded to climb up the rope until we reached Joker’s location and I coiled the rope up again. “Let’s keep moving shall we,” I suggested. Joker nodded and briefly climbed up the stairs to find a treasure chest which gave him another piece of discoloured armour.

We proceeded down the stairs until we reached and entry way, but the moment we did, I blanched and quickly grabbed Joker, dragging him back before he could be spotted by the Shadow at the end of the corridor. The major reason why, was that this particular enemy was surrounded by that same eerie red aura that I’d seen before.

“Of course there are savage Shadows,” I growled. Poking my head forward, I saw the knight standing there with its’ overbearing intensity, Skull commented on how he was bad news. “You’ve no idea how right you are, Skull. Savage Shadows are more powerful than regular Shadows and to make things worse, they’re also more observant, which means that unless we’re completely still when in hiding, they might just spot us,” I warned.

“In that case, it might be best if me or Amazon ambush him, we’re capable of staying still more than any of you,” Mona suggested. Skull agreed as did Panther, Skull was too full of energy while Panther might know how to strike and hold a pose, that didn’t exactly translate to being able to remain still. “What do you think Joker?” Mona asked.

“Amazon, you do it. You seem to have experience with these Shadows,” Joker insisted. Nodding my head, I kept my attention on the Shadow until it turned its’ back on my direction, I quickly darted to the nearest corner and crouched behind it before darting out to duck behind a chair just as the knight turned around; I held my breath with my heart thundering like a drum in my ears as the knight marched passed my location, I wait a few more moments before surging forward.

“Let’s see what you really look like!” I declared. Yanking the mask free, I jumped down to the ground and watched as a red coated horse with an armoured man sat upon his back, it wasn’t Eligor, a blue-grey armour covered his body and a spear was held in its’ hand. “Berith, huh? It nullifies Gun, resists Fire. But you’ve got a weakness to Ice,” I commented. As I had been, the others had made their way over to stand behind the Shadow. “I wouldn’t bother trying to negotiate with this one! They never listen to reason!” I warned.

“Fine then! Silky! Ravage them!” Joker commanded. The housemaid spirit appeared and brought a freezing cold spear of ice to bear upon the Berith, the ice skewered into it which ended up knocking it onto the ground. “Everyone! Charge in!” Joker ordered. I darted in close and swung down my naginata at the creature; Mona, Joker and Skull also moved in and I was rather pleased to see the two boys putting use what I had told them, along with Panther who was lashing out at the Shadow with barely any breath between blows for the creature.

The moment it made the movement to rise, we all dove back. Berith shakily rose to the feet of the horse, so Mona took the chance. He used Zorro to unleash a burst of Wind. Yet Berith didn’t seem to be phased by it, which caused an annoyed grimace to curl upon his lips. Skull proceeded to blast it with electricity, but that had the same results as the Garu spell.

“Amazon! Get ready!” Panther encouraged. I was a bit surprised by the girl’s call. Glancing over, I saw her lash out her whip towards the enemy Shadow. It twirled around a leg of the horse. Panther used that anchor point to yank the Shadow off balance. A sharp whinny escaped the horse and I caught on to what the blonde girl was attempting to do.

Whipping my mask off I immediately used Phantom to slam a bunch of rocks onto the armoured man. Berith was knocked to the floor which surprised us. When Joker made a motion to attack, I shook my head. There was something else I had in mind, I utilised Phantom to increase Joker’s magical attack via Makakaja.

The horse climbed back to its’ feet and Berith immediately lunged forward. His spear gleamed as he thrust it down towards Joker. The raven haired boy did two things at once. He pulled himself out the way whilst raising his dagger towards the spear. This was actually a good thing as Joker dodge didn’t take him out of the way enough, but the raised dagger diverted the attack away from his shoulder. It instead scored across his face.

Joker quickly reacted and proceeded to unleash a frigid blast of his Silky’s Bufu Spell. The Spell’s enhanced state dealt more damage this time and knocked Berith straight to the floor. Instead of starting the All-Out Attack, Joker instead darted for Mona and slapped his hand against the eager cat’s paw. Mona proceeded to unleash his Wind Magic upon the downed Shadow to deal greater damage to it.

Skull pulled off his mask, but instead of using Kidd’s Electricity, he used a new ability. Our battles had strengthened our Personas and for the others that granted new capabilities. Skull could now utilise a Skill. Kidd surged forward and slammed the boat hard into Berith. Panther elected to use her healing magic instead of attack so that Skull’s Life Energy was restored.

I quickly unleashed a pulse of Gravity at the enemy to try and weaken it further, but this damned horseman was holding on quite stubbornly. Berith eventually rose back to his feet and flourished his weapon towards Panther this time. Skull darted over and blocked the attack with his pipe. Panther spun out from behind Skull and snapped her whip out, landing a harsh strike.

The horse stumbled away from the duo as Mona unleashed his Wind upon the Shadow. I decided to refresh the increase of offensive strength upon Joker. A breath of thanks escaped him before he used Silky’s magic to freeze over the Berith once more. With it knocked down again, and appearing a little woozy this time, Joker ordered our All-Out Attack. This action dissipated it into pure smoke.

We all breathed a sigh of relief at the end of that battle, we proceeded to move around until we came upon another Safe Room which Mona had sensed as they moved to help me against Berith. We dropped into the chairs as Joker pulled out a small kit of stamina recovery, he set about doling it out to each of us, but it was only small, so it barely recovered our depleted energy, but it at least did something for our flagging energy reserves.

Departing from the Safe Room, Joker looped us back around to where we fought the Berith as there had bene a barred door hidden behind it. However, there was a slight difference between the ram’s head here and the others we’d encountered, it was surrounded by a golden rectangle which also contained a small circular depression underneath the head. Skull commented about how we knew what to do and reached for the chain.

“Wait!” Mona insisted. As he did, the cat-like creature leapt onto Joker’s shoulder and looked over the contraption as Skull frowned and pulled his hand back. “There’s a round indentation underneath… it looks like it won’t move unless we fill that,” Mona reasoned. Panther commented on how the key we required could be anywhere. “We’d best get looking then,” Mona suggested. He then hopped back onto the ground.

We walked back around to the Safe Room and headed down to the other end of the hall – needing to duck into corners when we found more knights wandering about – we pushed open the door that we found and immediately had to dive for cover when we discovered a knight waiting for us. Joker quickly ambushed it to reveal a murky green coloured horse that floated in the air, it had red eyes and water plants for a mane and lower body.

“It’s a Kelpie! It’s resistant to ice but weak to electricity!” I informed. One short and sharp bolt from Captain Kidd had the creature down on the floor, Joker managed to convince this one to join him as well after a short conversation… although once again I was left floundered by the weirdness of that conversation.

However, as we were preparing to leave, something caught my eye, glancing over I saw it was a simple book which was no surprise since we were in a room with a bookcase, but there was something about this book that stood out. Walking over, I picked it up, flipping it over to try and get more information about it I found that there was no information on the back of the book, so I turned back and looked at the title, The Queen Book? What could that mean?

“What is it? Are you curious about that book? We can just take it if that’s the case,” Mona wondered. I nodded and proceeded to slip the book into one of my pockets and we slipped out the room; we proceeded to stealth through the corridor and room, ambushing each of the knights allowing Joker to gain a hold of an Incubus. We also gained a hold of The Beefcake Book and The Slave Book which gave off the same strange sensation as The Queen Book.

We headed for the corridor that shot off from this end, only to discover another savage Shadow patrolling down it. A quick discussion later and we decided to avoid fighting it given how difficult the last one was, we waited for it to turned around before making our move. Darting into cover, we quickly reached a door on our left which we proceeded to dive through as quickly as possible in order to avoid being seen and Mona swiftly closed it behind us.

“Woah, it’s so musty,” Panther commented. I looked around and saw we were in a library with chairs and tables, a globe and ladders scattered about the room; Mona commented on how fishy it seemed and immediately decided that there was a secret mechanism hidden somewhere. “Do you think it’s linked to those books we’ve been picking up?” Panther asked.

“Maybe. Only one way to find out,” I commented. We immediately spread out in order to look around for the place where these books could go, although I ended up finding a fourth book to join our small collection. “I found another book. This one is called The King Book. Given the surroundings, it’s likely about Kamoshida,” I informed. A small sneer curling on my lips at the thought of holding anything to do with him.

“Come over here then, I think it goes here,” Panther called. I turned and walked over to the girl. “See here, ‘The History of Kamoshida Suguru’, ‘Tracing Kamoshida’s Steps’, ‘Kamoshida’s Heroisms’, ‘Kamoshida’s Law’. It’s all about him… real disgustingly about him,” Panther sneered. A vicious twist of her lips marred her face. I lifted up the fourth book I’d got and found a gap, sliding it in I heard something click.

“Mona! I think we’ve found your secret mechanism. We likely need to slot the books into the cases in order to activate them,” I called. Mona was happy that he had been proven right, I turned around and found Skull and Joker were looking over the other shelves that were in this room until Skull came to a stop rather suddenly.

“Urgh… Amazon. You might want to get over here with that first book. I think I found where it goes,” Skull called. However, his tone sounded rather disturbed, furrowing my eyebrows I made my way over to the bookcase and immediately saw why Skull had been so disturbed by this section of the shelves. “‘Takamaki Ann: The Charming Doll’. He’s disgusting,” Skull sneered. I looked over the other books.

“This one has Suzui-san’s name on it. I recognise a few other names as well; all these books must be on the female students. You said it Skull, he’s disgusting,” I commented. I looked over when something caught my eye and saw Panther standing there, her hands curled into fists as her body vibrated with rage at the sight. “Don’t worry Panther, we’ll stop him. That’s a promise,” I reassured. With that, I slipped the Queen Book into the gap that was there and another click sounded.

“The Slave Book. It goes here,” Joker spoke. His voice was cold though, we turned around to see him standing in front of another section and I could detect the tension curling across his entire body. “This section is about the male students,” Joker admitted. That made sense, pulling out the book I walked over to stand beside him.

“‘Sakamoto Ryūji: The Vulgar Ape’. There’s one here for Skull,” Mona pointed out. That was just rude, but it also showed how little Kamoshida actually thought of the male students, I quickly found the gap and all but threw the book into its’ position; another click resounded and then grinding accompanied it, causing all of us to turned around and watch as a section of the case pulled back and slid away to reveal another room beyond.

“Woah, it opened up,” Skull exclaimed. Joker walked towards it and we followed after him, only to find that the room was barely lit by the candles and two torches inside but it was enough for me to realise that the photographs scattered across the back wall were all of Suzui! “Ugh… the hell is this room? There’re tons of pictures of Suzui in here!” Skull exclaimed. Panther looked horrified by the surroundings as her mouth opened in shock.

“It’s a shrine,” I sneered. The implications of this room caused a nauseous feeling to burn within my stomach. “Are you okay Panther?” I asked. I rested a hand on the red clad girl’s shoulder, seeing tears starting to burn in her eyes as she bent over slightly; drawing in a breath, Panther pulled herself upright and a fire burned within her eyes.

“I’ll be fine. But we definitely need to make him pay. I feel even more motivated to do this now,” Panther insisted. We all agreed to that even without the vocal confirmation of such a feeling, a clinking sound echoed and we turned over finding Joker had lifted something up, it actually looked like some kind of medal.

“Think this could be the key we’re looking for?” Joker asked. Mona agreed and so Joker pocketed the object before turning around with something else in his hand. “We also got the other piece of the map here,” Joker revealed. At least something good came of finding this horror show of a shrine, Joker handed it to Mona who immediately started to leaf through it.

“Yeah, look. It has to be here,” Mona revealed. He had flipped all the way to the back and pulled out a piece that seemed to be referring to a large building that seemed somewhat isolated from the rest of the Palace. “Considering our current position… I’d say we’re about halfway there,” Mona commented. Skull insisted that we hurry over there. “No. Now that we know how much we have left, we can calculate the best way to pace ourselves,” Mona insisted.

“Let’s keep exploring, we can rest or stop when necessary,” Joker insisted. We turned to leave the room, only to run into a rather big problem; that being a knight walking in and immediately spotting us and charging up to confront us, yet when he burst into the goop and two Bicorns manifested, I noticed another pile of goo on the floor.

It was crackling with energy and was black and blue instead black and red. When the Shadow formed, it was another Bicorn, but the abnormal colouring of the goo was reflected on the Bicorn’s body with blue and purple energy cloaking it. Oh, that was not good, it seemed that Mona also recognised the creature for what it was by his unclear comment that only showed he recognised it.

“What’s up with that one? It’s mumblin’ to itself, but… it’s not makin’ any moves,” Skull commented. That was how these Shadows were, Mona warned that this Shadow might be problematic for us. “Alright, then I’ll go take care of it!” Skull declared. He started to charge forward with his weapon raised to make a strike at the dangerous Shadow we’d come across.

“Panther! Stop him!” I called. Thankfully the cat themed girl understood my words and lashed a strike right in front of Skull’s path, forcing the boy to stumble backwards. “First off: That was reckless, especially when you know it’s weak to your magic speciality! Second: Attacking that Shadow will cause it to retaliate against you immediately! We need to eliminate it with one strike!” I warned.

“Alright! Agathion!” Joker declared. He pulled of his mask, manifesting the little jar spirit. “Ravage them! Zio!” Joker called. The lightning bolt slammed into the Shadow which caused it to be taken out – these Shadows took more damage than the others did – the Shadow pulled in on itself, turning into a little orb before erupting outwards and blasting outwards to strike the other two Bicorns with its’ weird energy.

“What the… it exploded?” Skull questioned. He was right to be completely baffled by the occurrence as I had been when eliminating my first such Shadow; Mona insisted that he focus on the battle for now, we quickly eliminated the other two Bicorns and I picked up the Bead that had been dropped, it would recharge all lost Life Energy, so it was handy to have one of these. “Okay, what was that Shadow?” Skull asked.

“I call those scary ones Disaster Shadows. It’s best to strike at their weaknesses and deal with them immediately, or alternatively restrict their movements with ailments and deal with them afterwards. If attacked though, they’ll always strike backwards immediately so we need to be careful. If we run across any more of those, I say that we focus on them first!” Mona pointed out. We could all relax now that the Disaster Shadow was gone.

“Oh, know what? We never ended up using that weird bodybuilding book,” Panther pointed out. It was strange that I’d suddenly been drawn to it only for it to turn out to be unnecessary in solving this puzzle, Skull wasn’t bothered by this. “Still, I wonder why we haven’t used it yet,” Panther wondered. Mona insisted that we focus on pushing further into the Palace.

We slipped out of the hallway, and Joker spotted a chest. He quickly darted for it and grabbed the contents; he made his way back over to us and we all moved into the vacant area of the place. Joker held up the object which turned out to be a mace, Skull’s weapon immediately started to glow brightly before the new weapon was absorbed and replaced the old once. Skull let out a whoop of excitement and started to get in some practice swings with his weapon.

“Hey, Amazon. I think I know where that strange book goes,” Joker stated. He held out his hand and I set it into his, he headed over to a small bookcase out in the open and slotted it into the opening, but it still jutted out. “Something’s blocking it,” Joker commented. He pulled the book out and then reached in, when he pulled his hand out, I saw he was holding a bottle. “Protein?” Joker wondered.

“It can heal us, so it’ll be useful to have on hand,” I commented. Joker nodded and put it away as he stuck the book back into its’ place. “Shall we open up that gate now,” I suggested. Joker nodded his head and we walked over to the blocked door, inserting the medal allowed the chain to be released and one quick tug caused the bars to slide back, thus allowing us to keep moving onwards.

We entered into a room with a set of stairs going down and a red carpet covering the floor with pots of red roses dotted about. Descending down, we found another Safe Room and quickly entered into it so that it could be marked into our minds in order for us to quickly get back to here if we needed to drop out. Stepping back out into the hallway, we down to an arch that had bars, but it was actually open this time around, and through to the door that lay in the room at the end.

“Hold on Joker!” Mona hissed. Which was no surprise as the place he’d been about to step out into happened to be very open, there didn’t appear to be any place that we could find to hide away. “This place is huge… yet there are no guards? That seems suspicious,” Mona commented. There was that too, along with the overall atmosphere, it had changed slightly as if something about this place was special.

“But the Treasure’s up ahead, right? We don’t got a choice but to keep goin’,” Skull pointed out. Mona agreed but he seemed reluctant and instead insisted on us being vigilant if we ended up continuing on; however, he ended up turning to look at Joker, likely wanting to make sure that our leader was on board with moving ahead.

“Let’s go,” Joker insisted. We stepped into the room and immediately came to a stop. “This place, it looks a place of worship,” Joker commented. He was right, what with the long wooden benches, the stained glass, high ceiling, assortment of flora and candles… plus the really big statue of Kamoshida at the other end made it obvious who the source of worship was. As we stood across from it, the surrounding shimmered and waver into their real world counterpart before sliding back.

“Wait, was that… the gym?” Panther asked. It had definitely been the gym and honestly, such a perception of that place made a whole lot of sense – disturbing sense – given who we were dealing with; I’m just surprised that it took us this long to come across the darn thing, I had actually expected it to show up earlier than this, given the cavern had been the piano room with Ouvrard.

“I get it… the gym’s some kinda holy place for him. He’s a god there,” Skull spat. A sneer coated every word as his lips curled into an angry expression, we walked a bit close to the large statue, was it bad I had the itch in my fingers to tear it down? I noticed that the podium the statue stood on was cordoned off by rope looping around it.

“I can’t believe he can think like that! Especially after what he did to Shiho!” Panther exclaimed. A choke cut off any more words and I looked over to see the girl covering her mouth, Skull rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, his expression showing that he at least understood the pain that Panther was enduring at the moment; he lifted his head up to glare at the statue once more.

“God, that bastard makes me so freakin’ sick! Just you wait Kamoshida!” Skull declared. He raised a fist to shake it at the statue, I could feel my own disgust growing within me the longer we spent in this place; I quickly glanced at Joker to see that he was incredibly tense as he stared at the statue, all of us except for Mona had reasons to hate him.

“I see… so you’re the ones who tampered with the library,” A voice claimed. I immediately summoned my naginata and reached up to grip a hold of my mask with the others immediately following my movements. “It seems my time waiting here has paid off,” The voice commented. At that, a knight in golden armour sprang into existence in front of us. “Just as that ape there said, this place is a holy ground for our great King Kamoshida. It is preposterous for miscreants like yourselves to come waltzing in like this!” The Guard Captain declared. Well, that was rude to be calling Skull an ape, but given what we saw in the library that was how Kamoshida viewed the blonde.

The Shadow dissolved into goo before emerging in its’ true form. It was a tall man, hovering off the ground thanks to the pair of red wings, he had tanned skin and blue eyes with no pupils or sclera, chainmail armour, a helmet, greaves and gauntlets covered its’ body. A red feather jutted from the top of its’ helm with a red and white cloth partially wrapped around its’ right side, in its’ hand was a longsword with the sheath for it hanging at the left side.

“You will pay for defying King Kamoshida! With your lives!” The Shadow declared. It then reared its’ sword back and flew down to us, jabbing its’ sword out towards us. Thankfully we all dodged about in order to avoid the strike. Mona complained about having known this would happen, before encouraging us to take it down. I had already anticipated this and had the information already at hand.

“Archangel! It’s weak to Electricity and Curse but nullifies Bless! It’s also more powerful than we are!” I warned. It was strange, the minor creatures might have been somewhat stronger than what I faced in Ouvrard’s Palace, but apart from the Belphegor, all of the most powerful Shadows had actually been weaker than the strongest Shadows I’d faced in my first Palace; perhaps in response to the aura that each Palace sent out… now was not the time to be thinking such things? Especially when the Archangel seemed to strengthen itself.

“Look! He’s trying to do something! It’s important to guard if you think you’re in danger!” Mona advised. If it had managed to increase its’ capabilities, then we were definitely in danger; Mona immediately sent out a blast of wind, but the attack was practically a tickle to the Shadow. Panther used Carmen to blast it with fire, but the same thing as the Wind was the result.

“Captain Kidd!” Skull cried. The pirate Persona manifested and immediately unleashed a blast of Electricity. With Archangel down, Skull darted over to Joker and they crashed hands. Joker pulled off his mask and unleashed Agathion’s own Zio spell upon it. This reduced it to a dizzy state. Taking advantage of its’ distraction was the best thing to do.

Pulling of the mask, I had Phantom boost Skull’s magical offense. But before I could try to do the same to Joker, Archangel fluttered his wings and rose into the air. The angry entity immediately charged forward to swing its’ sword down at me. I swung my naginata up and caught the blade, gripping tightly with my right hand as my left braced the shaft to keep it up.

A small cry came along with the swish of something flying through the air. Suddenly, Archangel was pulled away from me and tossed towards the ugly statue. He rapidly moved his wings to regain balance. Only for a several small ball to be rapid fired at his wings. The damage wasn’t great, but the balls hit hard enough to dislodge some feathers.

I quickly boosted Joker’s magical offense and our leader capitalised on it. He used Agathion again, slamming the Shadow with an empowered burst of Electricity. A quick Baton Pass to Skull allowed the punk to do the exact same with his new strength. Despite this, it felt like we weren’t making any progress on stopping this thing.

We needed a way to deal more damage. But how? I’d already empowered the two main damage dealer – true, I could do the same thing to Mona and Panther, just conservation of Soul Power was important given that I didn’t have much – we needed something else. But what that something else was, I certainly couldn’t provide it.

The Archangel recovered and immediately seemed to charge itself up once again. Whatever that did, I didn’t like the idea of being struck by it. Skull made to pull off his mask, but Joker threw out a hand stopping him. A raised eyebrow was my only sign of curiosity as I kept my eyes on the Shadow. We couldn’t take the risk that it of using our distracted state to attack us and deal significant damage.

“Hold it off! I need to check something in my Personas!” Joker ordered. I nodded my head and immediately darted forward, swinging my naginata towards the Archangel. It glided out of the way, but not enough to avoid all my attack’s swing. A line tore across the right hand wing, sending more feathers fluttering down. The air was broken by a sharp crack that was followed by a whip landing on the Shadow’s left leg.

Mona darted over and swung his arm down to slash through the feathers of the left wing. This destabilised the Shadow as it tilted from side to side. Skull charged in and slammed his foot into the Archangel’s torso. The Shadow was surprised by this and flinched backwards. Allowing Skull to swing his weapon hard into the Shadow, cracking a few links of chainmail. This also sent him stumbling to the ground.

Joker seemed to have found what he was looking for as he marched forward. He pulled his mask off and Jack-o-Lantern appeared. Instead of a burst of fire, Jack-o-Lantern raised its’ lantern and I sensed a weakening energy flowing out of the lantern to twist around the Archangel. I couldn’t tell exactly what had been weakened but whether attack or defence, it would certainly help us in the long run of this.

“I’ve weakened his defensive power! Strike now!” Joker commanded. Skull grinned widely before we were all forced to dodge. The Archangel had surged to its’ feet suddenly and charged towards us. Most of us avoided the attack, but Skull got caught. The sword pierced into his right shoulder, causing a scream to tear from his mouth. “SKULL!” Joker screamed. Skull tumbled to the ground as the Archangel charged itself up again, even with his sword still pierced into the blonde boy.

A sharp and painful scream echoed. Then a tangle of leather whirled around the Shadow and dragged him away, sword and all. Skull began to fall but I got over fast enough to support the boy and slowly lower him to the ground. Mona shot over and quickly used Zorro’s healing ability. Meanwhile Joker took vengeance for Skull by hitting the weakened Archangel with a blast from Agathion’s Zio.

“I’mma okay,” Skull grumbled. However, I didn’t back away until he was properly up on both feet. Once up, the Archangel flew towards us once more. I glided out and clashed my naginata against the sword, blocking it from hurting the others. Of course, Panther took the chance. She struck out hard with her whip into the black of the Shadow, forcing out a scream of pain. “Payback time!” Skull cried.

Deciding to be smart, I flipped away from the Shadow, fully expecting a blast of electrical energy. I also scooped Mona up to ensure he was outside the blast radius. The electrical fury of Skull’s rage thundered down onto the Archangel which quickly dropped the infuriating Shadow to the ground. Skull cast his eyes over his shoulder in order to look at Joker.

“Let’s do it everyone!” Joker encouraged. With that, he led us forward in our collective All-Out Attack. We hacked and slashed. Snapped and cracked with all our strength. Every attack, every move was made in order to stop this Shadow from getting up. We had to stop it if we wanted to move further on with our infiltration. To succeed meant we had to defeat this infernal Shadow and prevent it interfering anymore.

I could feel the Archangel moving, jerking upwards. Joker immediately called for us to fall backwards. But this time I didn’t listen. Instead, I pulled my weapon back and thrust it downwards. Down into the face of the Shadow. The severe damage of that action caused it to burst into a bunch of shadowy particles.

“And don’t come back!” Skull loudly declared.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 20: - The Treasure’s Location

“Didn’t realise those things could be that tough before that toilet demon. That wasn’t as bad, but still,” Skull commented. We were all shaking and shivering slightly after the energy we expended to defeat the Archangel, it hadn’t been as difficult as the Belphegor, but we were just as exhausted since we were already drained by the numerous previous battles that we’d ended up enduring.

“Yeah, it looks like he’s making a concerted effort to stop us now,” Mona admitted. A slight worried note echoed in his voice as he spoke. “Everyone, I’ve helped you learn a few different things so far, but there’s no more time for lesson. I’ll compile some info you’ll need to know for battle, so be sure to take a look later,” Mona added on. However right after he said that several knights emerged, surrounding us in a tight circle.

“What should we do? Head back!?” Panther panicked. Her whip was in her hands, but she looked incredibly unsettled by the prospect of entering into another fight right after the draining one that we had already endured; we couldn’t fight them which meant that we needed to escape from this encirclement and fast.

“No, the Treasure is definitely up ahead and there has to be a path to it somewhere. See anything that could help us get out of here? Keep your eyes sharp!” Mona insisted. I immediately started casting my eyes about the upper area for a hook of some kind as I pulled the rope out from my pocket, ready for the escape once we found a method.

“There!” Joker cried. I twisted around as Joker looked back and I threw one end of the rope towards him, he tightly gripped the rope and wrapped it around his right arm a few times before extending his left; I tossed sections of the rope to the other three who tightly gripped it as the knights took a step forward to press in on us.

A sharp crack followed by a soft plink sound echoed. Shortly after, we were dragged into the air and Joker landed on a section of scaffolding as all of us ended up on the statue. I quickly tightened up all slack on my end in the rope with Joker copying me, the other three used the rope to swing across to Joker’s position. Once they were across, I dropped the rope and proceeded to run and jump over to the scaffolding.

“Whew. That was close. Good going, Joker. That was some expert grappling. And nice work with the rope Amazon,” Mona complimented. Despite his words, I was feeling a little exhausted and the pressure within my eyes was starting to get worse. “And now we can investigate this area! Let’s get to it,” Mona encouraged. We did as he insisted and wandered around the upper area and found a few items that could be useful before emerging into a new area.

“Wait!” I called. Everyone came to a stop and turned around to look at me, likely seeing the paling of my face. “We’re exhausted. I’d normally suggest getting out of here, but we can’t due to the fact that our last Safe Room is stuck behind a bunch of knights and we don’t know where the next one is. From now on, we need to be more cautious in what we do,” I insisted. As I did, I reached up to press my hand against my temple as my eyes started to hurt once again.

“Agreed. We need to focus much more on sneaking around than on fighting the Shadows if we want to reach the Treasure,” Joker stated. He looked to the side with an uncertain expression within his eyes. “Actually, when we find a Safe Room, we should fall back for today, we’re exhausted. All of us and it looks like your eyes are strained Amazon,” Joker added on. I could only nod my head in agreement. We needed the rest, I wasn’t as tired as when I was in Ouvrard’s Palace but still, we continued walking down the corridor at a slower pace when a sound started to irritate my ears.

“Huh? The hell is that?” Skull asked. He was looking around along with everyone else, on the other hand I stepped around a corner and stared across the straight hallway to a balcony that was across from us; the others seemed to realise I was looking at something and moved over to examine it with me, Mona suggested we investigate it, luckily for us there was a hook for the grapple hanging over it.

Joker leapt over and turned around to face us, like at the stairwell I shot the rope over to him and he tied it tightly to the railing. We all swung – or in Mona’s case tightrope walked – over to the other side with me have anchored the other end in the same manner. Once close enough I recognised the eerie atmosphere even if the doors were red with vines growing across the doors instead of red fabric ropes.

“Takamaki...hehehehe......hehehehe...Yes, yes...,” Kamoshida’s voice claimed. Panther jumped in shock and held onto me as all of them whipped their heads around for the man. “Wow...Shake it for me, Suzui,” Kamoshida’s filthy voice continued. Panther stopped being scared and instead a furious rage covered her face as she started to tremble. “I’m the King...no one can stop me!” Kamoshida voice announced. Skull looked like he was about to punch something as Joker’s grey eyes hardened.

“Relax everyone,” I softly reassured. They all turned to look at me. “Those are just his inner thoughts, being projected by the thing behind this door,” I explained. Walking over, I slashed through the vines and proceeded to push the doors open, inside was what I expected, a group of creepy vines pushing up a Red Will Seed like it was some kind of sacred object.

“This room seems different from everywhere else we’ve seen so far,” Panther acknowledged. Skull added on his agreement and proceeded to call the Will Seed a super suspicious thing; on the other hand, Mona seemed to recognise the item… another sign of incredibly accurate knowledge that, given his lack of experience in Palaces, he shouldn’t be in possession of, he was no threat I knew that much but it was a little weirdly jarring.

“This is a Will Seed. It’s one of a set of three. As Palaces are locations that occurred because of the Ruler’s distorted cognitions, anchored to somewhere in the physical world, they’re more unstable than you might expect,” I spoke up. I drifted my hands down to grip the pocket that contained the Crystal of Attachment, if we could locate all three of these Will Seeds, we might be able to get another crystal and whatever power it contained.

“Yes, when these distortions coalesce into form, this is the result. It acts as a support for the Palace’s distortion. Removing them won’t damage the Palace, but it will allow it to dissolve more easily, even with the removal of a Treasure,” Mona added on. It seemed that Skull was having a hard time wrapping his head around the information he’d been given; Mona wondered if he should try to explain it again.

“So, what do we do with it?” Panther asked. I reached into the pocket and proceeded to remove the Crystal, holding it out so that the others could see what it is. “What’s that Amazon?” Panther asked. She reached out a glove coated hand and poked it with her fingers, watching the Crystal roll in my palm slightly.

“This is the Crystal of Attachment. It came from the Will Seeds in the first Palace I collapsed. The three fused into this, it grants me an automatic Makakaja, my increase to magic offense spell, the moment I enter a fight. Attachment was the Distortion that afflicted the Palace Ruler. This will likely be Lust or Desire given… evidence,” I explained. I proceeded to tuck the Crystal back into my pocket. “We should take it; its’ final form will be useful and beside it will cause our Soul Power to regenerate. Which we desperately need,” I added on.

Panther and Skull were nervous about what could happen to us if we did take, but Joker showed no such hesitation. He scooped the Will Seed up and I felt its’ information press into my brain – confirming it was a Will Seed of Lust – Joker pocketed it and we proceeded to leave the room. Joker remained behind as we all crossed over before he undid his end and I pulled it over, a quick grapple brought Joker over to us as I tucked the rope away once again.

We peaked into the two rooms that had been on either side of corridor, finding some dirty armour that seemed to be heavier than the other stuff we found and a Shadow who we walked away from fighting before it spotted us. Reaching a tower, we descended down only to spot a savage Shadow guarding a locked chest, Joker shook his head and we quickly went back up and continued to ascend the steps until we reached a set of doors.

Pushing then open, we stepped into another tower and began to climb up those steps until we reached an opening. We crouched down around the doorway to peer out, spotting a tower nearby that was taller than anything else with massive red flag fluttering from poles jutting out from its’ side. In front of the tower was a small courtyard with a gazebo in the centre and I could see several Shadows – all of the savage variety – marching around. Skull drew everyone’s attention to the massive tower.

“Oh! That matches up with the map. There’s no doubt that’s the tower we’re headed for,” Mona stated. Panther seemed happy as this would mean the Treasure was close by, Skull was eager as he demanded to know where the entrance was. But given that it was crawling with the Shadows, we couldn’t use it to get inside.

“With all those Shadows about, no chance. We need to find another way,” I insisted. Skull let out a groan of annoyance, but Mona seemed to have anticipated this turn of events but still encouraged us to keep moving; Joker quickly glanced around before using his cognition to stealthily move to another hiding area just ahead, each of us quickly followed after him into our own little areas as we gazed into the courtyard.

“Joker, look on top of the gazebo,” Panther quietly informed. I did and immediately spotted a metal ring hanging there. “How do the rest of us get up there?” Panther asked. She had turned her gaze to look at me and Mona as I pursed my lips together, the rope would be far too obvious and visible to the knights so the Security Level would skyrocket and we’d get surrounded again, but the height of the gazebo meant no matter how hard we thought, if even the smallest part of our brain knew we couldn’t make that jump then we couldn’t do it.

“I have an idea,” Joker whispered. He darted over and scooped Mona into his arms before firing the grappling hook and zipping up to the top of the gazebo where he set the cat shaped thief down; that will work. Joker easily darted back down and used the grappling hook to get us all up to the top of the gazebo, one at a time until the Shadows could no longer see us. “I see another ring up at the top, but I probably can’t come back to get you guys if I swing up there,” Joker admitted.

“Take Mona, I think we can use these rocks to jump across,” Skull suggested                                                                  . He pointed to the edge where I saw partitions of stone that were bridged by metal rails with spikes. Joker looked unsure as he glanced at each of us who would be left behind with even Mona seemingly unsettled, but it was the most realistic choice for us to make.

“We’ll be okay, I’ll make sure they don’t get hurt,” I reassured. Joker looked at me and gave a solemn nod before lifting Mona into his arms, the cat still looked distressed even as he settled himself onto Joker’s shoulder. A quick fire of the grappling hook and the two of them were away behind a flagpole and far out of sight. “Right! Let’s move and catch up!” I insisted. With those words, I quickly jumped over to the nearest block of stone and set about making my way the blocks with the others right behind me.

We easily managed to navigate the pathway around and behind the building that blocked the tower, reaching a delipidated cylinder of stone that must have been a former tower. Climbing to the top of it, I spotted a section of stone jutting out of the tower we needed to reach; one quick arrow with rope attached later and we were all safely up onto that block. A thump sounded and I turned around to seek that Joker had landed with Mona slightly in front of him.

“Good to see you guys. While we were waiting, I found the way in and the second Will Seed,” Joker informed. He had pulled out the Will Seed allowing its’ green eyes to peer out at us before tucking it away again; all of us followed Joker’s lead to a window that guided us inside to a rather basic room with pictures on the wall and crates stuffed to the side that led to a vent.

We dropped down to the level below and, after Joker raided a vase, we proceeded through a door that took us into an absolutely crazy area. It had a dark purple lightning to it, with marble pillars that moved up and down as slabs of the floor rose or sunk in seemingly random intervals and there were great hole opening in the floor. The cavern underneath the Opera House had been bizarre but nothing like this at all.

“Wh-what’s going on!?” Panther wondered. It was appropriate as this place seemed to be incredibly destabilised when compared to the others, Mona suspected that the Treasure had to be close since the distortion was stronger… it was almost like this place was attempting to take a form but couldn’t. Did that imply Kamoshida’s distortion was younger than Ouvrard’s had been?

We headed down a corridor that shot off from us, only to find that decorations had been added, in the shape of female torsos. Panther looked like she was about to be sick while I pushed down my revulsion as much as possible, Skull had his eyes turned to the ceiling which required Joker to slightly guide him and Mona hopped along completely oblivious to the disturbing décor.

“Huh… what’s this?” Panther asked. I turned to see the blonde girl staring through the open doors to another room, inside was a section of the room, surrounded by four female torsos and a railing with a white canopy above it all and what looked to be a lever inside the railing; Skull immediately suspected a trap while Mona suggested a hidden room.

We walked over to it, some with a little more trepidation than others, until we were all through the small gap in the railing and Joker pulled the lever down. The gap was sealed and the air was rattled by a rumbling grinding as the object suddenly began to descend downwards until it came to a stop in an area that lacked the oppressive purple shroud to the air and was better lit by the torches bolted to the walls.

“H-Hey, where are we?” Skull asked. Reasonable, especially given that there were no markings as to where we had ended up; we stepped out onto the chequered flooring and headed down the steps, these stairs continued down to what looked to be another lift but with a more degraded appearance and for some reason it wasn’t working when Joker pulled on the leaver. A quick check with my eyes proved there was nothing hidden nearby so we returned up the steps.

“What the heck?! This is disgusting!” Panther shrieked. We all jumped and turned to face the cat masked girl, having returned to the middle area, but seeing her gaze peering down the hallway; I looked down and found myself agreeing with Panther as I saw a painting of Kamoshida, bared chested and hugging himself with sparkles and rose surrounding him… frankly, an utterly revolting sight to behold and I momentarily considered bleaching my eyes.

“Either way… it’s kind of strange that this would be at a dead end,” Mona commented. He was right, but the less I saw of this the better, we approached the object and Joker hesitantly reached a hand out to press against the painting, causing it to shift backwards slightly; Joker pressed firmer and the painting opened up more so we dived through as the painting flipped around behind us.

Surprisingly enough, we ended up out in the entrance hall, having emerged from the picture of Kamoshida in armour that was hung there. Skull was briefly confused by this until Mona reminded him, while sounding slightly annoyed, I was more concerned by the utter lack of Shadows that happened to present; before there’d been scads of them, perhaps as a result of Kamoshida’s shifting cognition or the lowered Security Level, but even so it unnerved me.

“Given the lack of Shadows, we should move quickly to avoid a possible ambush,” I advised. Joker nodded his head and we proceeded to look around an area we’d been unable to do so in, we found a chest containing magic ointment and another ram head chain which was pulled once it was confirmed that there was no chance of us being locked in.

“Oh! Something’s moving!” Panther exclaimed. A softer grinding sound permeated the air, but it was also rather audible which meant whatever the source was had to be close by. “Are those gears?” Panther wondered. If previously stationary gears were now turning, something that had been locked was probably moving again.

We pushed back through the painting and darted towards the lift that hadn’t been working before. But this time it was, the lift immediately started to move downwards, we ended up in an area that reminded me instantly of the dungeon from the stiff brick walls with those disturbing flags. I could also hear the sound of rushing water that echoed towards my ears, Mona perked up with his ears twitching every which way and his eyes darting about.

“I sense something, could it be?” Mona wondered. I didn’t quite understand the reason behind the words, but we pressed onwards, into an open area with cages – empty cages, thankfully – hanging in various places in the empty ring that connected to a door at the end, a Will Seed door with a Shadow stood in front of it. “The final Will Seed!” Mona exclaimed.

“And it’s guarded, we’re going to need to be careful,” I advised. I turned to face the others as they adjusted to face me fully. “That Shadow will be more powerful than anything we faced, except maybe the Belphegor. Here,” I insisted. Reaching into my pockets, I removed some Soul Drops that held them out. “It isn’t much, but our Soul Power should be restored slightly,” I explained. They each took one and swallowed it down quickly as I did the same, with that we proceeded to walk towards the Shadow.

“There you are! You’re not taking another step!” The Guard Captain declared. I could sense a strength emanating from him, but it felt disconnected in some way, as if the Shadow was merely a small part of some bigger whole, a whole that wasn’t present within the Palace; it was a bizarre feeling that I’d never felt before either in Ouvrard’s Palace, Mementos or even here before this fight.

“I guess we’ll just have to step on you first! Let’s do thi-,” Panther declared. However, the Shadow interrupted her when it proceeded to dissolve into goo and re-emerged in a different form, it looked disturbingly like a Slime, but this was solid green and lacked the red eyes of the Slime, plus it was significantly stronger than a Slime. “A-AHHHHHHHHH!” Panther screamed. Given my reaction to Slime, I couldn’t blame her.

“Oh boy, we’ve got a problem!” I declared. I could feel everyone’s eyes me as I looked at the blob creature. “It hasn’t got a single weakness. Even worse, it’s going to heal itself if we blast it Fire and will Nullify Ranged attacks and Curse spells!” I warned. That was ignoring its’ Resistance to Nuke and Reflection of Psy magic, but we didn’t have anything like that, so it seemed pointless to point them out.

“What the eff, just how strong is this thing?!” Skull declared. Despite that, he pulled out Captain Kidd and quickly had it blast the Shadow with a physical attack. We needed to conserve our energy as much as possible, but this enemy was likely going to need a lot of force to defeat it. Panther darted to a different area and proceeded to unleash a series of quick and rapid strikes with her whip.

“I don’t think it is! It feels like it’s a broken off portion of a stronger Shadow! As if the whole Shadow was too strong to be drawn here but this small piece was broken off,” I explained. That was why I couldn’t sense its’ identity like normal. I pulled of my mask allowing Phantom to manifest. I quickly unleashed my Tera Spell to shower it with many sharp rocks. Mona took centre point and proceeded to unleash a swirl of wind upon the bizarre Torn King of Desire, as it insisted on being called.

“Hang on guys! Let’s be smart about this!” Joker ordered. I looked at the boy, wondering what he could be referring to. He answered simply by pulled off his mask after it shimmered slightly and Jack-o-Lantern appeared. “Rakunda!” Joker commanded. The same weakening energy that had been thrown at Archangel swirled around the blob creature. At least this way, we would be able to deal more damage to it.

Unfortunately, the slimy Shadow used its’ opportunity to attack by rolling forward and slamming itself into Mona before the cat could dodge. Naturally, Mona was greatly unhappy about his fur being ruined. But Panther was quick to get revenge for him. She rapidly spun her whip around until it twisted up the creature. Pivoting on her heel, Panther slammed the slimy Shadow into a cage hanging nearby which caused it to slump down in its’ confines.

Joker swapped through his Personas to pull out Agathion. The little jar spirit allowed electrical energy to rain down on the slime. I knew what needed to be done and quickly proceeded to increase Joker’s Magical Attack. Skull charged over and lashed a foot out. I suppose I could be glad the Shadow didn’t suck his limb down into its’ body. He utilised my advice as he smoothly swung his new weapon down to crush into the green slime.

Mona finally recovered from the shock of being smeared with such a viscous substance. He darted over and proceeded to swing his falchion into the creature before leaping back to us. Panther pulled her whip back and shook it to clear off the green goop currently attached to it. The slime creature wasn’t done yet though. It proceeded to roll over once more, but it chose a different target this time. It chose me. I observed its’ approach, keeping myself balanced on the balls of my feet.

The moment it reached me, I jumped into the air. Avoiding the attack completely and preventing it from harming me. I twisted around, willing the world to move how I wanted it to, and thrust my naginata down into the Shadow. A whip’s fall twisted around my arm and I released my naginata to secure my grip on it. Panther pulled back, bringing me to her side as my weapon vanished to return to my hand. With me out of the way, Joker unleashed a blast of Ice from Silky.

Skull proceeded to use Captain Kidd’s Electricity on this supposed Torn King. Mona used his Wind to strike at the slime once again. Panther proceeded to change tactics as she utilised an ailment spell called Dormina which dropped the Shadow into a sleeping state. Joker quickly pulled his mask off, although this was to reinforce the weakening spell instead striking. I quickly used my Makakaja on Mona to boost his offense.

Mona made his move by bringing down more raging whirlwinds. The sleep ailment seemed to vanish as the winds jostled it back to waking. Yet, the creature proceeded to slump down, as if we had struck at its’ weak point, despite it not having a single one. I looked at the others, seeing that they seemed surprised by the event as much as I was… although Mona had a calculating – I think it was at least – looking within his eyes.

“Don’t question it! Attack!” Joker commanded. We all proceeded to dive in and strike at the Shadow as much as possible before it managed to recover from our attack. Joker swung down with a hard pierce before using his dexterity to shift the knife around and pull it up in a ragged tear. Skull swung down from all sorts of angles, utilising his muscles and joints to deliver maximum force. Panther used repeated hard and heavy strike, alongside a few aggressive stamps. Morgana and I slashed and stabbed as much as possible. Until, finally, the Shadow turned into smoke.

“Well, it’s too late for apologises,” Mona commented. He had a gleeful smile upon his face as he hopped about slightly, a wheeze came from someone’s lips and I looked over seeing Panther had slumped down onto the ground and was breathing heavily from the way her shoulders were rising and falling. Skull was slumped over as Joker checked on him before getting a thumbs up from the blonde. He pulled himself upright while I aided Panther in climbing to her feet even as she shivered slightly, likely more from revulsion than actually feeling cold.

“Hell yeah! Let’s swipe this Will Seed and get outta here!” Skull cheered. We approached the door and Joker proceeded to slash open the vines, inside Joker easily swiped the Blue Will Seed; the glow and spin show from when I’d collected the three Will Seeds repeated itself and they all slammed themselves together into the Crystal of Lust.

“Another Crystal. I wonder what affect this one has? Either way, I’m sensing a significant amount of power emanating from it,” Mona spoke up. He was right as the Makakaja effect that I possessed via the Crystal of Attachment was pretty useful given the advantage it gave when we were in combat; I doubt there was anything that could restore our Soul Power but if it could strengthen our physical offense, either defences or restore our health then it would be useful.

“Whatever it is, it might be of use if we end up in a fight,” Joker admitted. He pocketed the Crystal of Lust and we turned around to return to the lift. We returned to the distorted tower and proceeded to start sneaking around, avoiding the enemies as the unfixed nature of this section of the tower actually helped to aid our sneaking… although we had to be quick about it. We were forced to leave a chest behind since it was locked and we entered into a room with a set of stairs.

“The cognition here, despite the crazy distortion, I think a Safe Room might be close,” Mona exclaimed. A sigh of relief escaped all of us and we dived inside, allowing us to return to the physical world for the day, sorely in need of some immediately rest.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The next day, I felt much better after having a decent rest with the others also looking to be the same given how energised some of them seemed to be. It had been a quick discussion, but we all agreed to dive right back in the Palace and continue with our search for the Treasure. I’m fairly certain none of us could stand seeing Kamoshida’s smug, arrogant face hanging around our school and gloating much longer.

“Hi there, everyone. I’m Hiruta, your biology teacher. You much all be shocked by what happened with Suzui-san. It was a shock to me too,” Hiruta-sensei stated. He claimed to be in shock, yet he didn’t seem to be, honestly I was probably rather sensitive about the incident. “Although I can relate to how she felt. Her eyes were devoid of life as they looked upon this sad, hopeless world. Well, I suppose everyone views the world differently. Let’s have a test,” Hiruta-sensei stated. Well like that wasn’t depressing to hear, he proceeded to put up a picture of four lines, two going diagonally and meeting to for a triangle without the bottom line and two vertically which were inside the triangle and labelled with letters, one nearer the non-existent base and one near the point. “Amamiya-san, between Line A and B… which line seems longer?” Hiruta-sensei asked.

“Neither. They’re both the same length,” Amamiya answered. Hiruta-sensei claimed that Amamiya’s eyes saw the truth and went on to explain it was an optical illusion before going on to explain about how we didn’t see the world as it was; the Metaverse had proven that to be true to me plenty of times, especially the cognitions of people. Heck, Hiruta-sensei even went on to claim that the world was merely cognition.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Back in the Palace, Joker quickly warped us to the most recent Safe Room and used a newly crafted lockpick to open the chest we found and retrieved a Bead. We climbed up the steps and stepped into the room finding another distorted room, with more decorations – these of the lower portion of the female body, disgusting! – and knights stomping about.

We easily dived into the shadows and briefly diverted to pop open a chest, we darted our way between hiding spots towards the stairs hidden at the back of the room near a Shadow. We’d agreed to limit our fights as much as possible, there wasn’t long left between our location and the Treasure, but if there were any Shadows like that Thorn King waiting for us then we needed to conserve our energy.

Reaching the next level, we darted through until we located the stairs and timed our movements to avoid being spotted and shot up the stairs and into a room with much better lighting than the previous one. Climbing more stairs brought us to a stretch of open hallway with a Kamoshida statue sporting that infuriating grin to our left and a chest slightly ahead of us. We approached the chest, but before we got rather close, incredibly tall pillars – taller than we could conceivably jump over – completely blocked our path forward and no ring to give us a grappling path out of it.

“Right, then. About face,” Joker suggested. We turned around and headed back to the statue which stood guard outside a wide and tall opened which contained a large metal mesh bridge hanging from the ceiling and leading to another door; Joker approached the entrance. “GAH!!” Joker exclaimed. He threw himself backwards which was thankful due to what had swung down across his path.

“PENDULUMS!! He’s got a bleeding hallway full of pendulums!” I exclaimed. I certainly hadn’t expected to run across such a thing within the Palace, especially after a fairly low-level trap filled infiltration both before and after I’d teamed up with the others. With this, we were completely blocked off and unable to move forward to the Treasure’s location.

“It’s a classic security measure. My tail might be in danger if we try to force our way through,” Mona commented. It’d be more than his tail in danger, there was barely any gap available for us to try and slide underneath if we wanted to advance; that meant we needed to find a way to disable them before anything else. “Hm, this statue looks suspicious,” Mona commented. We turned to look at the statue.

“Yo, you think this controls those pendulum things?” Skull wondered. Joker didn’t answer, instead he simply reached out and proceeded to pull on the jaw like he had for the last one, but nothing happened; a quizzical look appeared on his face and he proceeded to pull on the jaw a few more times just to be sure of it.

“There’s no reaction, if this does control the pendulums, then something about it isn’t working,” Joker admitted. He pulled back and looked at it with a curious glint before moving his hands up to the eyes. “Interesting that the eyes are missing though, the rest have all been meticulously recreated, but this one hasn’t,” Joker mused.

“Brilliant deduction Joker!” Mona cheered. We turned to the cat thief who had a big grin on his face. “The eyes likely form the keys that we need to stop the pendulums and I’m betting the enemies have the keys,” Mona decided. That meant we had to go back into the lower rooms and locate the ones most likely to have the keys.

“In that case, it’s probably the Guard Captains who have them. Let’s go,” Joker decided. He darted away from the statue and back to the stairs, we quickly moved towards the room and carefully pushed the door open; instead of heading down through, we used our perch to scan for any sign of the golden armour of a captain. “No sign, maybe on the lower level,” Joker suggested.

We carefully made our way down only to end up coming across a knight right at the bottom of the stairs. Not one that we were looking for but, we couldn’t find a hiding spot to avoid it, so Joker leapt forward and rammed his knife into the mask’s seam and proceeded to pry the object off. The Shadow dissolved and returned as a duo of pale skinned women but the both of them happened to be rather different beyond that pale skin.

One of them possessed blonde hair, with large white wings stretched out and a black mask covered her eyes, yet the more unsettling fact was that her body was only covered up by thin strips of black leather across her torso and the highest point of her legs with a chain dangling from her neck. The other woman was also blonde but her hair was significantly darker, she wore what appeared to be a leather one piece that only covered her torso, black bat wings extended from behind her, long black gloves and high black boots, a pointed tail hovered behind her as she reclined in the air.

“The brighter blonde is Angel! It’s Strong to Electricity and Nullifies Bless! We need to use Curse or our ranged weapons! The darker blonde is Succubus! It’s strong against Fire and Nullifies Curse. Wind or Bless are our best bets!” I revealed. Joker quickly pointed his gun at Angel and unleashed a single bullet. The projectile tore through one of Angel’s wings and she dropped to the ground; a quick Baton Pass to Mona allowed the cat to knock down the bat winged woman down.

We quickly jumped into a Hold Up and Joker launched into a negotiation with Succubus which allowed him to gain a hold of the woman. However, when he attempted to do the same to Angel, she completely rebuffed his attempts and said something rather weird; Angel claimed that Joker’s ‘soul wasn’t strong enough to contain her’. Joker briefly fumbled before declaring an All-Out Attack on the Angel.

Falling back, the woman fluttered her wings and rose up to hover in front of us. But she seemed distracted by the pain she was. Taking advantage of the of her distracted state, I set up my bow. Quickly releasing an arrow, it pierced into the woman’s shoulder. I used the Baton’s Pass to pass the attack to Skull who hefted his shotgun. A quick blast that filled the air with the acidic smell of gunpowder saw Angel turning into smoke. It was unfortunate that we couldn’t recruit Angel but at least we had Succubus who could provide a new Curse attack since Arsène was still missing.

We soon found the Guard Captain and a quick ambush revealed that the Shadow inside the armour was actually an Eligor. I quickly informed Panther of its’ affinities which would also serve to refresh the other three, with only one weakness but one we had in our possess, we had a plan available to us. I quickly boosted Skull’s magic as Joker and him slammed the creature with Electrical attacks with a Baton Pass in between them. Skull passed it to Panther but instead of continuing it, she instead cast Dormina.

The sleeping spell hit and immediately the red clad knight slumped over along with his horse. Mona proceeded to unleash a blast of wind, which knocked the creature down to the ground. On Joker’s command we proceeded to dive in for an All-Out Attack. We hacked and slashed as much as we could until the Eligor proceeded to diminish into specks of shadow and leaving behind an eye along with the usual stuff.

“R… Randy… right… eye?” I muttered. Joker had scooped up the object but that didn’t stop the confused looks that all of them sent towards me, with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. “That’s what it’s called… this man just disgusts me more and more. Let’s find that last key. The soon we’re out of his head, the saner we’ll all be,” I commented. Looks of agreement passed and we proceeded to make our way back around.

We returned to the level below this one and immediately ran right into a problem, while it seemed that the ordinary knights had proceeded to vanish from the lower level in their place where three Shadows clad in golden armour. Skull immediately complained about the fact that we would have to beat them all in order to find the right eye key.

“That would work, but there should only be one actual guard captain among them. Perhaps your eyes can tell them apart Amazon,” Mona suggested. Before I could even try to examine them, all three of them stomped their way out of the room we were in towards another one. “Looks like they’re gone now… I’ll leave our next move up to you Joker,” Mona stated. I looked at our leader who was staring at the doorway.

“Let’s get moving,” Joker insisted. We moved down the stairs and made our way towards the door that would lead us to the three Shadows we had to examine. “Pretty suspicious, one of them being so high up whilst the other two are on the ground floor,” Joker muttered. I raised my eyes to focus on the Shadow he had mentioned and focused, seeing the red aura surrounding it, distinct from the violent energy that rolled off savage Shadows and I quickly checked the other two gold clad knights.

“It would be, but not if you have my eyes and realise that one is stronger than the other two,” I admitted. Joker gave a sharp nod, we darted between the shadows, moving closer to the area where the Shadow was, before realising we had to divert, to reach one of those disgusting statue decorations and use it as a jumping platform to reach the area the Shadow was located.

A quick grapple aided jump over let us reach a section right above the Shadow, Joker quickly looked at us and we each nodded our heads to show we were ready. Joker dived down onto the guard captain’s shoulders and proceeded to tear the mask off as the rest of us darted down to engage the Eligor that had emerged. We used the same movement plan as against the previous Eligor and it went down just as easily.

“I’m not saying what that thing is called. It’s as disgusting as the other one,” I stated. Skull cheered at the fact that we had both of the eyes, we quickly made our way back to the pendulums where Joker inserted both of those eyes which glowed a yellow light that only made the statue even more eerie. Joker pulled down on the statue’s jaw and the chain attached to it started to coil inwards and I watched as the pendulums swung to a stop out of sight. This caused another cheer from Skull to go up.

We darted into the bridge area and crossed over it, with only a slight diversion to open up a chest that was nearby. We reached the end and immediately ducked into a hiding corner when we spotted an ordinary Shadow up ahead, Joker darted forward and ambushed it, revealing a duo of Angels and an Archangel waiting for us.

“Focus on the Angels!” Joker ordered. He quickly tore of his mask and summoned out Agathion. A quick electrical blast brought the winged man to the ground, which slid into a Baton Pass straight to Mona. After a few slingshot blasts, the Angels dropped alongside the Archangel. With all of them down, we moved into an All-Out Attack which wiped out the Angel, but the Archangel was made of much stronger stuff, though that was hardly a surprise.

A series of back-to-back strikes of Electricity from Skull and then Joker with a Baton Pass between led into some more All-Out Attacks with a few strikes from the rest of us peppered within. Soon enough the Archangel was defeated with only a few healing spells needed and we gathered up what was dropped and popped open the chest there. Turning around we climbed up the stairs leading to the next area, hopefully the area where the Treasure was located. We had to climb more stairs and dealt with another Archangel with two Angels helping out; once they were finished off, we push onwards. This area was clearly more stable than the previous area had been given the lack of ominous lighting and no randomly rising pillars.

We found another chest and a Safe Room, hopefully this would be the one we needed. Joker jumped onto a bookcase and grappled through an area blocked by a pile of boxes and returned with something in his hand. We made our way up another of those disgusting statues before leaping through the opening that led us into a large red carpeted area that looked to be shaped like a U.

“Okay, we’re in!” Skull declared. However, Mona immediately hissed for him to be quiet, although there was a really good reason for that. “Oh shit, it’s Kamoshida!” Skull exclaimed, as quietly as he could. Down below was Shadow Kamoshida stood in front of a throne beneath a chandelier and in front of him was a large group of knights. Thankfully the statue and railings provided cover for the five of us.

“How have you not captured the intruders yet!?” Shadow Kamoshida yelled. A soldier apologised, Mona commented on how the Shadow probably didn’t know we were in the same room as him; we crouched low and started crawling along the balcony area towards the door at the back of the room, no one seemed even aware that we were up here despite being so out in the open.

Joker quickly opened the door and dived through, allowing the rest of us to quickly move through. We emerged into a very short area made of almost golden like stone blocks with golden diamond shapes interspaced with black squares on the flooring. Another doorway was at the end, so we approached it, with everywhere else we’d been, this had to be the place we were looking for.

“This sturdy lookin’ door’s pretty promisin’. Let’s head inside!” Skull insisted. We pushed open the door revealing a pile of golden items tossed about the single windowed brick room, and hovering above the pile of golden items was the hazy, shimmery orb that was indicative of the Treasure; finally, we had found it. “Whoa, what is this place!? Holy shit! That Treasure thing’s gotta be in here!” Skull exclaimed.

“Yeah, it’s right there,” I stated. As I did, I pointed to the shimmery orb that was floating in front of us, the others proceeded to gather around it and I saw that each of them except for Mona looked rather confused by the comment, Mona chimed in with his own agreement to my words and seemed just as relieved to have found it as I felt.

“This cloudy thing? Are you sure?” Joker asked. I nodded my head to show that I was sure about this, its’ form looked identical to the form that Ouvrard’s had before I’d managed to make it solid, hopefully we could do the same thing that I’d done against Ouvrard just with less of an obvious accusation; it’d been risky against Ouvrard, but the risk was increased against Kamoshida.

“Remember, I said we had to materialise the Treasure. Desires are an emotion, thus they’re not exactly something we can physically touch, even our Personas can’t grasp them,” I explained. Joker still seemed confused, but then Mona jumped on top of a golden pot that sat underneath the shimmery orb and turned around to face all of us with a cocky grin curling across his lips.

“Amazon’s correct, Desires by nature have no physical form. Hence, we’ll first need to make the real person aware that their desires are in fact a Treasure. Once they’re conscious that their desires might be stolen, the Treasure will finally show itself,” Mona explained. They seemed to be understanding what Mona was saying, which was a relief as the more they understood, the better for our battle.

“But how do we do that?” Panther asked. A good question, my physical confrontation of Ouvrard had probably only worked due to our circumstances and the fact that I had Lavenza and Igor to help me prepare, I could help them but physically confronting Kamoshida might not work… except for Panther, but like hell I was putting her in such a position after what she’d already been through with him.

“We warn them. Tell them, ‘We’re going to steal your heart’,” Mona explained. That was still the same basic plan I had, this didn’t exactly give us more knowledge than we already had which worried me a little; I bit down lightly on my lip as I thought about what to do, but then Skull’s expression lit up suddenly which caused me to raise an eyebrow.

“So, we’re gonna send a calling card!? That’s totally what a phantom thief would do!” Skull cheerfully exclaimed. That, that might actually work and really well at that, it would protect all of us from being suspected as the people behind it, it might even rattle Kamoshida more than a physical confrontation and still allow our goal to be achieved.

“Once we do that, the Treasure will appear for certain! I think,” Mona revealed. As if having expected this, everyone turned to look at me so I nodded my head to show that they were right about what would happen, allowing them to all relax at this confirmation. “Our infiltration route is secure. All that’s left now is to pump out a calling card in reality, then come back to take the Treasure!” Mona encouraged.

“Let’s do this,” Joker encouraged. Every one of us voice our agreements and we proceeded to leave the room, finding Shadow Kamoshida and the soldier still there; we followed the route we had used to get inside back out to return to the Safe Room and warp our way out.

Tomorrow we could end all of this.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 21: - The King of Lust, Asmodeus

“Morning,” A sleepy voice called. I was stood at the Shibuya station awaiting the train to school with Amamiya and Morgana, turning around I saw a bleary eyes Takamaki walking over to us, even half asleep the girl still moved with a natural grace. “I still feel a little tired from all that hard work. How about you two?” Takamaki asked.

“I know what you mean. Morgana had to bite my fingertips to get me up in time,” Amamiya admitted. Ah, so that’s why his fingertips were a little red and Morgana seemed slightly annoyed, then against we had done a fair amount yesterday and the day before which wouldn’t have gone away easily, so the new guys being tired didn’t surprise me in the least especially.

“I’m fine. But I’ve also been at this longer than you guys, so I’ve built up a tolerance,” I explained. Takamaki seemed a little put out if the pout on her lips was anything to go by. “Anyway, the next step is the calling card. I know we’ve got a few days until the board meeting. What do you want to do about it, Amamiya-san?” I asked.

“Let’s meet up. The sooner we get this done, the better for everyone,” Amamiya decided. Me and Takamaki also agreed about the decision and I quickly sent a message to Sakamoto informing him of the decision right as the train pulled in.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Alright! All that’s left now is to send out the calling card and take Kamoshida’s heart!” Morgana declared. He then turned to look at me as we were all huddled underneath the awning over the door to the roof to avoid the heavy rain falling down. “Natsumi, how exactly did you go about doing the Change of Heart last time?” Morgana asked.

“Unlike this time, I had a personal connection to the Palace Ruler and much easier access to the Palace’s physical location. I also saw the person quite a bit and did a physical confrontation to trigger a change in the cognitive state that would manifest the Treasure. We need to put this calling card in a place where Kamoshida would see it and become unsettled, which also means the wording needs to be carefully chosen as well,” I explained.

“Couldn’t we have just sent one at the beginnin’ of all this?” Sakamoto wondered. However, Morgana shook his little cat head as he turned to face Sakamoto, although Takamaki and Amamiya also looked confused by this, but something tells me that sending the calling card had a few catches attached to it which would make that an impossibility.

“It’s not that simple. A Treasure won’t stay materialised forever. Once the impression is gone, the Treasure will disappear. I think it’ll last around a day, at most,” Morgana revealed. In response to another confusing uncertainty, the other three proceeded to lift their gazes up to me and I immediately threw my hands up in a manner similar to a sign for surrender.

“Don’t look at me. I had a Sunday and saw the Ruler in the morning, I used the confrontation then and bolted in that same afternoon. We still shouldn’t risk it though,” I answered. Sakamoto immediately grumbled about having no time at all. “That’s just how it is Sakamoto-san. We need to just deal with the hand we’ve been dealt,” I reassured.

“Anyways, we can send a callin’ card right now, yeah? Let’s do it and steal that bastard’s heart!” Sakamoto declared. We all agreed with this, if the firm expressions on their faces was anything to go by; but there was one thing that I needed to warn them about before we ended up heading in, whether it happened or not wasn’t the issue.

“There’s something else you need to know,” I spoke up. Everyone focused on me as I looked at them. “If we allow the Treasure to be claimed by the Shadow before we can escape with it, the Shadow will… mutate. I don’t have another word for it. Anyway, the last time, the Shadow changed and I had to fight it. It was honestly one of the worst fights I had been in, and that’s counting the ones from this Palace as well,” I warned.

“Then we need to be careful when we head in,” Amamiya insisted. His face was stern, but I saw a flicker of what could be uncertainty within his eyes. “We’re sending the calling card. We prep it tonight and ensure Kamoshida sees it in the morning, that way like with Chiba-san, we can head in during the afternoon,” Amamiya decided.

“Tomorrow’s finally the day,” Sakamoto breathed. I saw his body untense as his shoulders slumped down, perhaps the knowledge that we were going to be confronting his tormentor at last was making him relax, even Takamaki seemed to slump slightly, if you could call what she did a slump with how elegant it was. All the hard work we’d put in was finally going to pay off and I could at last put this infernal Palace behind me.

“Correct. The effect won’t last that long, are you guys worried?” Morgana asked. A resounding chorus of negative answers came from the rest of us. “Perfect,” Morgana stated. All of us were far too ready to be rid of the vermin that had infested our school and avenge those who had been wronged by his cruel actions.

“We’re going to pull this off, no matter what!” Takamaki declared. Her eyes gleamed with a certain intensity that dared anyone to argue with her, not that those of us gathered here would; Morgana proceeded to ask a rather important question, who was going to craft the calling card necessary to change Kamoshida’s cognitive state.

“Leave it to me!” Sakamoto loudly declared. I gave the boy a sceptical look as Takamaki asked why. “Why? Why wouldn’t it be me!?” Sakamoto questioned. A lot of reasons bounded around my head at why Sakamoto might not be the best person to author the calling card, but I decided to keep my mouth shut as Takamaki raised an eyebrow.

“This is important. Are you sure you can handle the pressure?” Takamaki asked. Morgana voice his own agreement; Sakamoto declared that he wanted to ‘get him good’… whatever that meant? He then started to plead with us to allow him to do it, I still didn’t think it was a wise idea to let him script our threat towards Kamoshida.

“Alright. You can write it Sakamoto-san,” Amamiya decided. I quickly looked at him and saw a slightly pinched expression on his face, as if already regretting the words he had spoken; Sakamoto paid no attention to this as he pumped his fist and eagerly tore of down the stairs before we could say anything else, all of us peered through the stairwell Sakamoto had darted down.

“I hope we didn’t make a mistake,” I admitted.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I was sat down at my desk, trying to get through some schoolwork before going to sleep. With how busy we’d been lately, I’d been distracted and it was only going to get even busier after all of this was done, seven days had passed before Ouvrard confessed, so how long would it take for Kamoshida to crack if we were successful. Shaking my head to disperse the thoughts, I tried to refocus on the assignments. Keyword being try, as the moment I started to focus, my phone chirped.

Ryūji: Man, there’s so much I wanna write on the calling card. It’s kinda tough figuring out what to say.

Ann: Are you sure you’re really capable of this!?

Natsumi: Agreed. Even if we have eleven days as of tomorrow, we can’t risk anything changing and you guys being expelled sooner.

Natsumi: Also, you better not accidentally reveal our actions.

Ren: Please don’t do anything too reckless.

Ryūji: Don’t worry, I got it. I even made a logo for us.

Ann: A logo?

Ryūji: Yup. You’ll get to see it tomorrow.

Ann: Well, that’s worrying.

Ryūji: Anyways, you guys should rest up.

Ryūji: If we screw up tomorrow, we’re totally done for.

Ren: We all need to work together to see this through. Especially if Chiba-san’s warning come true.

Ann: Yup, I’m sure we can do this.

Ryūji: Just remember, we can’t trust any shitty adults.

Ryūji: That’s why we gotta do this ourselves.

Ryūji: Anyway, let’s pull this off and surprise everyone!

Closing the phone, I turned back to my work. Determined to get something done before I turned into my bed for the night.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Suffice to say, Sakamoto had managed to get the calling card churned out and stuck up on the school notice boards. Although it wasn’t just the one, no I had counted over fifty of the things plastered on the notice board and they were not capable of being miss with their eye catching red standing out against the blue felt and plain white papers already there. Naturally everyone was abuzz with talk about it.

“Sir Kamoshida Suguru, the utter bastard of lust. We know how shitty you are and that you put your twisted desires on students that can’t fight back. That’s why we have decided to steal away those desires and make you confess your sins. This will be done tomorrow, so we hope you will be ready. From, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts,” Takamaki read. All four of us – plus Morgana – were stood together with me, Takamaki and Amamiya holding cards in our hands, turning it over I saw the ‘logo’ which consisted of a sharp-toothed grin, masked eyes akin to Morgana’s mask and a top hat a la Arsène, with ‘TAKE YOUR HEART’ scrawled beneath it.

“What did you think of my masterpiece? Not bad, eh?” Sakamoto asked. I kept my head tilted down so that Sakamoto wouldn’t see the utterly unimpressed look on my face, apart from the name of the group and the fact that he had used kanji cut outs instead of his own handwriting, it was horrendous. “I looked up a bunch of similar stuff online for reference,” Sakamoto admitted. I wondered why none of that similar stuff had convince him to write it more… eloquently, I guess.

“Um… yeah… I know what you wanted to say, but… it sounded like an idiot trying to be an adult,” Takamaki deadpanned. Her face was utterly unimpressed as she flipped the copy of the calling card that she had in her hand; Sakamoto in response allowed his shoulders to slump down and I glanced over at the other two members with Morgana lifting his head up to look at Sakamoto.

“Your logo’s a little lacking, too,” Morgana pointed out. It really was, it seemed kind of childishly done if I was honest, nothing that was going to inspire intimidation and fear in a person like we kind of needed to do in order to ensure that the Treasure managed to manifest itself in the Palace; overall, the impact wasn’t the greatest.

“It certainly isn’t something I’d be intimidated by if I was given something like this,” I admitted. Sakamoto looked as if he was going to wilt into the ground at my words, they might have been harsh, but I wasn’t about to lie about how I perceived it; I could only hope that it would still work the way we hoped that it would on Kamoshida.

“Okay, y’know what? Th-that ain’t true! Come on Ren, back me up,” Sakamoto protested. All of us looked at Amamiya, wondering how he’d react to suddenly being called upon, Amamiya’s response was simply to turn his head away, allowing his glasses to hide his eyes. “Hey!” Sakamoto complained. He slumped down as he said that word.

“Who’s responsible for this!?” Kamoshida’s voice demanded. I pivoted around in order to see him, finding that he had arrived behind the gaggle of students at the notice board; Morgana practically meowed his happiness over how Kamoshida was reacting, claiming it was basically proof he knew what the calling card meant.

“I think it’s hittin’ him pretty hard,” Sakamoto gloated. The fact that Kamoshida was being so heavily affected smacked of his cognition being altered, especially when he got angry enough to start accusing all the students gathered of the crime of putting out this card; the students did the wise thing and proceeded to scattered like dust on the wind away from the angered man, which meant when he turned around, only the four of us were there as Morgana stuffed himself back inside the bag.

“Was it you three!?” Kamoshida accused. His face was twisted into anger as he looked at us, Takamaki ducked her head down, but I saw the rage upon her face as her hands twitched and jumped despite the slow and deep breaths she took, to control herself. She was doing so well in controlling herself from reacting to her tormentor’s presence.

“And what if it was?” Amamiya challenged. His voice was soft, his words almost vanishing but there was an undercurrent of hidden strength within those words and Kamoshida easily heard them; Kamoshida called it garbage and claimed that soon the two boys would be expelled, I also didn’t like the way that his eyes lingering on Takamaki or myself as his eyes darkened with that wicked distortion of his. A sudden haze pressed itself onto Kamoshida as his Shadow took shape.

“Come! Steal it, if you can!” Shadow Kamoshida started. Just as quickly, the Shadow’s haze faded away returning my attention to the physical world; I looked over at the others and found that they had wide eyes and stunned expressions on their faces… no way? Could they have somehow experienced what my eyes showed me? Could the Meta-Nav had done that since we were technically inside of the Palace?

“It had an effect, I’m certain of it,” I stated. Just to be sure that they were all aware of the development, Takamaki proceeded to ask if the Treasure had appeared and whether we would be able to seize it today; Morgana had popped back out of the bag after Kamoshida stormed off and his intense blue eyes focused upon Takamaki’s concerned expression.

“It’s not just ‘today’. It’s only today. The impact of seeing a calling card doesn’t last long and it cannot be repeated. This will be our one chance to steal the Treasure,” Morgana warned. Sakamoto was certain we had enough time, now all we had to do now was get through the rest of the school day.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Inside the Palace, Panther marched over to the nearby wall and slammed her hand against the surface, forcing the doorway to manifest and we all darted through. We adjusted our weapons and armour, getting comfortable as Joker gave out some new armour to Skull and Panther which quickly fused to their outfits. Panther spun the Breeze Ring around her finger which would grant her the Garu Spell as Skull clenched and unclenched the hand which bore the Breath Ring which increased his Life Energy. Joker had the Crystal of Lust which gave a higher-level healing ability with only Mona lacking an accessory but he’d been certain he wouldn’t need one.

“Our only objective today is the Treasure! Let’s go!” Mona declared. We darted out the Safe Room and quickly made our way towards the Throne Room, but instead of needing to climb that horrific statue like before, we found the doors were wide open and a quick peak inside proved that there was nobody – no Shadow, no cognitions, no knights – stood there.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here? The door’s just sittin’ open and there aren’t any soldiers around,” Skull questioned. A fine question, but perhaps all of the soldiers had been deployed in order to patrol around in response to our calling card; I noted more of those grotesque statue decorations lining the carpet leading up to the throne’s dais, blooming roses spread their petals over the room from the balcony above us.

“This place is probably undermanned now that they all got assigned elsewhere. Either way, we win as long as we can steal the Treasure! Let’s keep going!” Mona insisted. We charged towards the stairs at the back, easily making our way to the room where the treasure was held and inside, we were confronted by a ridiculously massive king’s style crown.

“Aww yeeeaaaah! The Treasure has appeared!” Mona cheered. Skull immediately commented on its’ ridiculous size. “What do you think!? It’s just as I said! Now we can steal it!” Mona cheered. He seemed incredibly excited about the Treasure’s presence. “Ahh… this shine brings tears to my eyes,” Mona sighed. Weirdly excited about the Treasure’s presence.

“It kinda pisses me off,” Panther stated. None of us could fault her for that particular feeling. “Why’s it so pretty? Isn’t this Kamoshida’s desires?” Panther asked. Ah, that made sense, it was an absurdly shiny object to be staring it… actually I think my eyes were starting to go a bit blurry from the light reflecting off the metal portions of it.

“You kind of answered your own question there, Panther. The crown represents Kamoshida’s Desire to be seen as a king, someone who rules over everyone,” I clarified. However, we were all distracted by the highly unusual purr like call of ‘T-Treasure’ that escaped Mona; I looked down and practically saw stars within his eyes.

“Uh, the cat’s actin’ awfully excited,” Skull pointed out. As if we weren’t already aware of this, but as if to make us even more concerned, Mona – calm, collected, insightful, sneaky, methodical Mona! – threw himself at the crown with a ridiculously cat like sound escaping from his throat and he started to rub himself on the crown, meowing the entire time.

“I’m certain that’s not catnip,” Joker commented. I could only blink my eyes in flabbergasted shock as Mona continued his meowing tirade and rubbing act; Skull even demanded he stop while calling him a stupid cat, that seemed to shock Mona out of whatever weird as heck trance the Treasure had sucked him into and he hopped off the crown back to our feet, his ears pressed flat against his skull and an embarrassed air boiling around him as his front paws pressed against each other.

“Oh, um, yeah… forgive for displaying such an insolent sight in front of two ladies,” Mona apologised. He seemed really embarrassed and had he been in a human form, his cheeks would have been as red as Panther’s suit; Panther asked what was wrong with him to suddenly act in such an out of character way. “I couldn’t stop it either… to think I’d be drawn to human desires this much. Doesn’t that prove that I’m human!?” Mona declared. He’d seemed embarrassed before but now was completely cheerful.

“How should we know!?” Skull challenged. Thankfully, Mona’s brain was back in working order and he quickly had us gather around the crown in order to carry it out of the Palace. “All you do is bark orders. Still, that was easier than I thought! I thought for sure there’d be some insane trap or that crazy transformation Amazon warned us about, or something,” Skull commented. We gathered around the Treasure and found its’ weight was enough that it took the four of us working together to hold it up.

“To think it’d go so well… I’ve even found four Persona users in the process. My judgment was correct. I made the right choice in making a deal with you!” Mona claimed. As he did, I felt a prickle in my sensed, as if something pliant had grown stronger in that moment, something between Joker and Mona; shaking my head to dislodge this I started to move along with the others to get out with Mona guiding my steps since my back was to the stairs.

“Go, go! Let’s go! Ka-Mo-Shi-Da!” An airheaded voice cheered. We had got passed the throne’s dais when it came and I recognised it instantly, having become more familiar with the owner in recent days than before; a bark of ‘Move!’ escaped my lips as I dropped the crown and grabbed Panther who’d been stood to my left, pulling her out of the way as Joker did the same to Skull while Mona bolted to safety beside us by his own legs. All of this in time to avoid a volleyball slamming towards us, courtesy of the scum we’d come to stop.

“I won’t let anyone take this!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. He’s jumped down, landing between throne and crown, which had now shrunk down to a more manageable size as he held it within one hand, tossing it up and down as that stupid cognition of Takamaki charged over and threw her arms around Shadow Kamoshida; the real one stood next to me visible gagged at the sight. “This proves that I am the king of this castle. It is the core of this world!” Shadow Kamoshida declared.

“That rat bastard. That’s really how he sees me, isn’t it!?” Panther cursed. The cognition had one arm draped over Shadow Kamoshida’s shoulder, while the other drew nonsense shapes over Kamoshida’s cape covered chest; Skull called out to the Shadow, rightly calling him a pervert, and accused him of waiting to ambush us.

“I just made it easy to find you. I’ll dispose of you myself. Right here, right now!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. A sneer twisted up his face as he spoke those words, making that face of his look much more fitting for a beast like him than his normal expression came anywhere close to being, I gripped my naginata tightly, ready for the fight to come.

“That’s our line, you sexually-harassin’ d-bag!” Skull spat. However, Shadow Kamoshida claimed that this was a ‘selfish misunderstanding’… considering we were looking at the true core of that depraved, moral-less, disgusting thing posing as a human, nothing about this was a misunderstanding; we knew exactly what was going on here.

“How is it a misunderstanding!?” Panther shrieked. Her eyes burning with fury as she glared at Shadow Kamoshida. “You were doing things, awful things, that you kept a secret from others!” Panther accused. Yet the Shadow didn’t even bat an eye, he simply tossed the crown up into the air and caught it again to repeat the act, seemingly unperturbed by the accusation levelled against him by the most harassed of all his victims.

“People around me were the ones who kept it secret. Adults who want to share in my accomplishments, students who have the drive to become winners… they willingly protect me so that we all may profit from it,” Shadow Kamoshida claimed. Skull immediately demanded to know what this profit was. “There are too many imbeciles who don’t understand that! Including naïve brats like you and that girl who tried to kill herself!” Shadow Kamoshida ranted.

“You’re right,” I admitted. I could feel the shocked gazes of the others staring at me and see the one on Shadow Kamoshida’s face, gods I loved throwing these guys off. “People did protect you so they could leech off of you and what you promised. But, me and the others here and Suzui-san, none of us are like that. We’ll drag your secrets to the light and force you to come clean! You will pay for the crimes you have committed!” I declared. Thrusting my naginata forward so that it pointed at the man, whose sneer returned with intensity.

“Amazon’s right. Shiho was a total idiot… letting you manipulate her, trying to commit suicide… and I’m even more of a dumbass for not realising it!” Panther declared. She pulled out her whip and violently cracked it as she dropped into her stance. “But no matter what kind of fool someone might be… they don’t need your permission to live their lives!” Panther proudly declared. Smirks came to rest on the boys’ faces as they face our enemy with their own stances set.

“Drop the attitude, you mediocre peasant! There is no wrong in using my gifts for my gain!” Shadow Kamoshida snapped. He clearly didn’t like seeing people stand up to him, but he was going to have to deal with it, since we weren’t about to stop any time soon. “I’m a cut above all other humans!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. Oooh, that sentence irritated me more than anything else of the drivel that came out of his mouth, it sounded too close to some nonsense I swear I’d heard my uncle speak.

“‘Above’?” Panther commented. She even allowed a haughty laugh to escape her. “You mean beneath. You’re a goddamn demon obsessed with your sick desires!” Panther spat. However, at that moment, a dark red glow surrounded Kamoshida and I sensed a swell of power coming from him as the man began to chuckle maliciously.

“That’s right! I’m not like you! I’m a demon who rules this world!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. He pulled the cognition of Takamaki close as the red aura surrounded both of them, when it faded Shadow Kamoshida had changed appearance. The Shadow had become a large naked pink demon with multiple arms and legs as well as a thick purple tongue about as long as he was, while wearing his Treasure as a crown and sitting on a monstrous throne with living eyes. At the sides of said throne, lay gigantic golden balls which had chained student slaves connected to them. He wore a red cape on his back, with multiple medals hidden within it and carried golden eating utensils in his lower arms while his upper arms held a riding crop and a wine glass containing wine and the Cognitive Takamaki. In front was a golden trophy with blue… legs, I think, stuck inside of it.

“Oh… that’s big,” I commented. This was much larger than the form that Shadow Ouvrard had taken when she stole back her Treasure, I quickly shook my head and focused on giving out the necessary information. “Don’t expect any weaknesses from me, heck I don’t know if Ailment Spells will work. Stick to attacks and maybe see if Kunda-type Spells will work on them,” I advised.

“I’m allowed to do whatever I want!” Shadow Kamoshida declared. I focused my eyes on him, determined to find out if I was correct in my analysis of his state of weakness; the bad news, I was right, but that just meant we’d have to keep consistently hitting him as hard as we could at every opportunity to deal damage. But there was something else I found out as well.

“Asmodeus… that thing is called Asmodeus,” I muttered. I’d learned that Dantalion was known as the seventy-first demon summoned by the supposed Great King Solomon via his Lesser Key book; could there be a similar history here? Was Asmodeus another demonic figure? And if so, why were these transformations being called by demon names?

“That’s where you’re wrong! We’re going to finish this!” Joker declared. His voice resonated loud and strong within this room and I felt a surge of confidence pulse through me, if we just kept working together like we had been doing, then nothing about this disgusting creature could possibly stop us from winning this battle. The transformed beast didn’t like that if his hideous scream was anything to go by.

“You goddamn, no-good, shitty brats! Haven’t you been taught not to point at people!? Huh!?” Asmodeus challenged. Mona immediately focused on something much more important, pointing out that the Treasure was now securely planted atop the transformed beast’s twisted head; the cat shaped thief even suggested we catch him off guard and steal it, but we’d need to wait until he was sufficiently distracted.

The monstrous Shadow proceeded to crack the riding crop against the ground which caused the chained students to seize volleyballs and proceeded to spike them at me. I spun my naginata around, blade and shaft striking each of the balls. A few were deflected, but a few got through, scoring glancing blows that still burned deeply. Asmodeus suddenly swung his tongue out towards us. Skull barely blocked the blow as Panther dropped below the strike. I jumped over it as Mona flipped backwards. Yet Joker took the blow, a smirk on his lips, the blow seemed to slightly bounce off of him, but he still took the damage.

“Let’s weaken him first,” Joker insisted. He then tore his mask off, allowing a Persona to appear behind him. It was a tiny individual with a long white beard and white hair, a blue robe with a strip of fabric wrapped around the forehead and a small green leaf held up by its’ stalk in the tiny person’s hands. “Rakunda!” Joker declared. With that a weakening energy twisted around Asmodeus, causing a smile to appear on my lips.

Whipping my mask off, I brought Phantom out and quickly cast a Makakaja on Panther. The girl unleashed a burst of fire onto the demon. Skull quickly followed up the attack by having Captain Kidd ram into Asmodeus with his boat. Mona quickly had Zorro twist a storm around the pink skinned beast. Our attacks hadn’t seemed to do much damage, but we had to keep pounding away at him. It was the only way to succeed in defeating him.

The demon proceeded to leer at Panther which caused the girl to fidget in discomfort. Suddenly, the tongue lashed out with the speed of a whip. It pierced into Panther which forced a scream to escape her lips. Mona immediately summoned out Zorro and had the gentlemanly warrior heal up the blonde. She still seemed unsteady, but that did nothing to falter the brief glare she sent at the demon.

Skull followed up the attack by unleashing a blast of electricity at the beast, causing it to flinch backwards. Joker’s mask glowed before he flicked it off, a Slime appeared behind him and proceeded to slam into the creature. I followed up the attack by having Phantom shower Asmodeus with sharp pieces of earth. With the weakened defence then we might be able to succeed much quicker than when I face Ouvrard, especially since he seemed to only be using physical attacks.

Asmodeus suddenly lifted up his golden fork and pierced it into one of the flailing leg looking things. He pulled it out and proceeded to consume it. My mouth unhinged in shock as a green aura proceeded to flow around him and the smoking wounds we had opened up, started to seal. I barely stifled a groan in time as I realised what had happened as the demonic creature made its’ repulsive satisfaction known. Those damnable legs were some kind of healing item.

“He healed himself? Is it from eating one of those… things in the trophy?” Mona wondered. It was certainly concerning that this infuriating entity had a way to heal himself, especially so since it was rather repulsive to watch as well as being irritating. “Then we should destroy that first!” Mona declared. Removing the possibility of him healing was an extremely important step and one that we needed to do it fast.

“Mona! Panther! I want you two to keep dealing damage to Kamoshida while focusing on healing us. Skull! Amazon! The two of you and me will strike at that trophy and get rid of it!” Joker ordered. Without waiting he pulled off his mask, causing a little red skinned girl with brown and orange hair in two ponytails, dressed in Chinese looking clothing, with yellow and pink butterfly wings extending from her back. A blaze of fire suddenly surrounded the trophy when the little girl raised her arms.

“Hey! You don’t know what this is worth, so stop touching it! Don’t do it anymore, got it?! I’ve warned you!” Asmodeus squealed. He then proceeded to retaliate by swing his knife down towards Joker. However, our leader darted out of the way with a casual kind of grace, a smugly satisfied smirk resting on his lips. The knife had become embedded within the ground quite firmly as the pink-skinned beast struggled to tug it free.

“Nice try ugly!” Joker taunted. This only seemed to make Asmodeus angrier, Joker took advantage of the beast’s state and violently swung his weapon across the limb. Asmodeus pulled backwards, taking the knife with him, a howl escaping his lips as it moved. At least Joker had managed to deal damage to the demon and avoid being damaged himself. A breath of relief escaping from me as I refocused myself upon the demon we were here to destroy.

“When someone tells us not to do something, it makes us want to do it more!” Mona cackled. The demonic creature then brought the wine glass over and proceeded to open his fanged mouth to pour some of the red liquid into it – somehow avoiding spilling the cognition of Takamaki into it as well, once finished a fiery aura surrounded him so I used my eyes to immediately check what had just happened.

“We got a problem everyone! That demon just increased its’ physical attack strength!” I warned. He would be able to hit harder now unless we can negate that increase. Pulling my mask off, I had Phantom unleash a pulse of gravitational energy at that infernal trophy. Back-to-back healing radiances pulsed from Carmen and Zorro, as Skull unleashed a blast of electricity upon the trophy.

Asmodeus cracked his riding crop and more volleyballs were spiked at us. But this time they were aimed for Panther. She jumped away from a few of them, but more of them caught solid strikes upon her form. The vile beast then swung down his knife at Mona. Lucky for us, the petite cat thief dodged it easily. Joker flicked off his mask and I saw the little red skinned fairy girl that I realised was called Hua Po appear. A blazing aura surrounded Panther, but it was a defensive increase instead of an offensive one.

Skull had Captain Kidd Lunge at the Trophy; I followed up with a shower of rocks. Panther proceeded to blast Asmodeus with fire. Mona followed this up with a burst of wind. It’d be nice if we could get rid of it before Asmodeus decided to heal himself again. More volleyballs were sent crashing towards us, this time striking Skull. He managed to guard against them, but he still took the damage. A pierce from the knife came flying towards me, but I pirouetted out of the way. I stabbed upwards with my naginata.

The move proceeded to injure the demon once more and it pulled back, taking the knife with it. Joker pulled off his mask and behind him another new Persona manifested, this was a green skinned somewhat humanoid looking entity, but it lacked any identifiable appendages like hands and feet, instead they simply ended in stumps, yet one of those stumps carried what looked to be a boomerang, white eyes looked out from its’ flat face and a white, tattered cloth was tied around its’ waist.

Joker proceeded to unleash a blast of wind from the Persona in order to strike the Trophy once more. But this time around something was different. The cracks that had been appearing on the stupid gold plated nuisance with each attack grew larger. In fact, they grew so large that they curled around the entire object and it broke apart into little pieces as the flailing legs proceeded to dissolve into smoke.

“Ack! No way… this was from when I won the national…,” Asmodeus whined. His entire posture had changed as well, he slumped down in a defeated manner with his tongue drooping towards the floor in a slimy mess. “You think that you can get away with doing such a thing! Do you realise who I am?! I am Kamoshida! Don’t you get it!?” Asmodeus complained. We moved in and proceeded to pin him within a Hold Up, all our ranged weapons pointed squarely at him.

“Yeah, we do. So what?” Joker snapped. The creature claimed us knowing and wilfully doing this was even worse and claimed we would regret this before making a ridiculous proclamation that he was ‘the king’. He was truly a filthy and arrogant man, unable to comprehend the fact that people were willing to defy him instead of bowing to what he thought he was entitled to.

“I always saw you as a condescending hotshot, but right now… you’re just a pathetic loser,” Skull commented. I wonder if it had been somewhat gratifying to the blonde for him to be able to see his tormentor in such a pathetic position; yet if it did, not a sign showed on the boy’s face or within his voice. Instead, he kept his shotgun pointed menacingly at the distorted demon, prepared for any attempts to attack.

“We came all this way to steal that! Will you just give it up and hand it over?” Panther questioned. She gestured violently with her gun in the direction of the crown; she was utterly focused on ensuring the demon was unable to move without her blue eyes catching it. The grip on her gun and tight curl of a finger over her trigger showed how serious she was about ensuring he couldn’t do anything else.

“Silence! I won’t let the likes of you have this!” Asmodeus declared. I know it was childish, but why couldn’t he just give up? His healing trophy had been shattered, an increase to his attack wouldn’t last for long with five of us chipping away at his life and we had three healers to keep an eye on our Life Energy. In short, he was incapable of defeating us, we were taking that Treasure from him.

“You still have the energy to say things like that!?” Mona questioned. It really was a surprise given that with us surrounding him like we were, but perhaps he was still foolishly believing that his ‘kingship’ would be enough to save him from us. Not likely in my opinion, I stopped Ouvrard and I would stop him, I knew none of the others were going to back down now that we were here and fighting.

“You haven’t got a choice in the matter! We’re taking that Treasure and that, is that,” I stated. With that, Joker gave the signal for us to move in and we launched into an All-Out Attack. We hacked, slashed, snapped, clubbed, and generally did everything physically possible to deal as much damage as possible to the demon before he began to wriggle around once more.

“I’m the king! If I’m not, then who is!?” Asmodeus questioned. We quickly moved backwards with each of us setting ourselves up to face whatever was coming next. “How dare you keep defying me… looks like I gotta bring out the big guns! Slaves! Bring over you-know-what!” Asmodeus declared. The chained entities were suddenly released and they scurried away, moving passed us without making any attempts to damage us. “Time for my kill shot from when I was active and rockin’ it! Kill shot, as in I’ll make the kill!” Asmodeus declared.

“Be careful!” I yelled. If this went anything like Dantalion, then he was building up to something big. “He might be preparing for an attack that will bypass all our elemental defences!” I warned. The vile beast cracked the riding crop and screaming for the ball to be brought out immediately; at those words, footsteps smacked against the chequered flooring.

“I-I’m so sorry, King Kamoshida! I-I have it right here!” Mishima’s voice sounded. I snapped my head over and found the wounded boy standing there holding a volleyball in hands, bowed over and shaking terribly; the demon proceeded to insult him and flailed about which caused Mishima to duck his head behind the volleyball.

“M-Mishima!?” Skull exclaimed. Panther was rightly confused as to why he happened to be here of all places, but I doubted that was the real boy, his Will of Rebellion was practically a guttering spark so there was little chance of the Meta-Nav latching onto his phone. But honestly, that did nothing to quell the fire that burning within my heart; this vile, deplorable, wretched, nauseating, vicious, arrogant, worthless piece of degenerate filth only proved himself more and more heinous the longer I spent in this Palace.

“Calm down. That’s only Kamoshida’s cognitive version of him! It’s not the real Mishima!” Mona reassured. This managed to settle the rest of them and we could focus back on the attack that was coming. “It feels like he’s gonna attack! Keep your guard up!” Mona warned. Each of us raised our arms and in some cases weapons up to cross over our bodies and faces, it seemed to create a shimmery barrier in front of each of us.

“Good, Mishima. Now pass it to me! Don’t tell me you can’t even do something as simple as that!” Shadow Kamoshida ordered. Mishima lightly tossed the ball into the air before pushing it back up as it fell back down towards his hands. This allowed Shadow Kamoshida to jump up, oh so he could leave that disgusting throne, and slam his now empty hand against the volleyball that I swear got bigger. It careened down with meteoric force and slammed into the ground. It unleashed a wave of super-heated air and shockwave pressure upon impact. Despite the fiery aspect, I didn’t feel the typical sensation of one of my weaknesses being struck. The barrier in front of me quivered and rattled, until it finally shattered. The shockwaves and air flooded passed to batter into my form, but it could have been worse; I could still fight. “I knew it… I can’t go all-out with Mishima providing the back up! Hey, shit-for brains! Get off my court!” Shadow Kamoshida snapped.

The cognition of Mishima squeaked out an apology before proceeding to run away. If that line of words was anything to go by, then there was every possibility that we would have to deal with that irritating attack once more. We needed to find a way to stop this from consistently happening to us, but that meant we needed to have a strategy meeting. But doing that in the middle of a fight was impossible. Unless…

“Joker, use the smokescreen, we need to talk!” I called. Joker nodded his head and pulled out one. Quickly throwing it at the ground unleashed a billow of smoke that enveloped a wide area. We used this to dash behind one of the statues so that we could safely talk without being attacked by Asmodeus. “We need to find a way to disorientate that creature and weaken him. It’ll provide us with an advantage,” I advised.

“In that case, it might be an idea to steal the Treasure. Especially since that is what we’re after,” Mona suggested. He then twisted around to peer out from behind the statue and raised a paw, though the smoke still lingered, I could faintly make out the upper balcony area. “Look! We can steal it from over there!” Mona explained.

“But that’s impossible. We’ll just-,” Panther began to protest. As she spoke, I saw her looking worriedly at the area Mona had pointed out and then at the creature that had lusted after her; however, I cut off her worried words by gently settling a hand upon her shoulder which caused her to clank her teeth together as she looked over at me with a twist upon her lips.

“It’s only impossible if you believe it is. We can do this,” I reminded. Panther nodded her head in agreement with my words as her lips smoothed out. “As for the one who goes after the Treasure, I recommend Mona. I know he’s our healer, but with Panther and Joker present, Mona’s stealth capabilities and small shape, he’s the best bet to go after it,” I suggested. Thankfully the others backed up my suggestion and so as the four of us ran back out into the open just as the smokescreen faded thanks to a volleyball strike, Mona looped around within the shadows.

“Finally showing yourselves, huh?” Asmodeus commented. We stood against him, all of humans ready to stop him; I darted my eyes over to the edge and saw Mona crouched within the shadow of one of the female torso statues that supported the upper area. All we had to do now was distract the Shadow until Mona was in the right place to take that Treasure back with us. “Next slave, get out here! Hurry up with my damn ball!” Asmodeus demanded.

The clicking of heels came and I quickly looked over to see who it was and I felt my stomach plummet. It was Suzui, or at least Kamoshida’s cognition of Suzui, and she was dressed in a rather horrifying manner… well it was horrifying to those of us opposing Kamoshida’s disgusting nature. The cognition was wearing a fluffy white bikini with matching wristbands and collar, a white rabbit tail and ears, hot pink heels and a crown.

“King Kamoshida, I’ve brought you your ball, just like you asked,” Cognitive Suzui commented. That disgusting piece of filth praised her and claimed all women should just obey his orders, I quickly looked over at Panther to see how she was holding up. Her blue eyes were wide and it looked like she had gone rather pale, the paleness standing out against her red suit and mask.

“N-No way! What’s Shiho doing here!?” Panther questioned. Not that she could be blamed given how horrifying it was to witness this sight especially since this was her best friend she was staring at; I moved over and gripped her shoulder tightly in order to snap her out of the horrified state she had fallen into at seeing this filthy cognition. She yelped in surprise but tore her blue gaze away from the cognition in order to look at me.

“It’s just a cognition, like the Mishima-san from earlier. Don’t get distracted!” I reminded. She swallowed thickly and nodded her head, understanding coming into her eyes as she seemed to be calming down which was a relief to me; we didn’t need one of our healers losing her head at this critical juncture of the fight.

“Dammit, even Suzui too! You’ve gone too far, you piece of shit!” Skull yelled. None of us could argue with his words since it was probably an accurate summary of how each of us were feeling; I truly despised seeming how he thought of my classmates or other students. Seeing my own cognition was horrifying, but this was just a persistent reminder of how badly this thing was distorted.

“You want to see my kill shot again, don’t you?” Asmodeus claimed. As if we wanted to witness such a thing, but I suppose it was better that he focus on something so pointless, rather than realising that Mona was currently missing; I just hope the cat shaped thief would be able to sneak around and reach the crown before things got too dangerous for us.

“I know this might hurt, but everyone, trust me!” Joker insisted. The boy then pulled his mask off and had the humanoid boomerang holder – called Mokoi – unleash a Garu spell that violently tore into the cognition. Its’ scream was painfully real and I heard a whimper escape from Panther. The cognition of Suzui then slumped to her knees and seemed to curl over herself. “That isn’t the real one and a cognition isn’t linked to the real person, Panther was fine both times after her own cognition was destroyed and if we eliminate this cognition of Suzui, we stop his attack!” Joker explained.

“Got it! Let me take the next strike!” Panther insisted. Joker nodded his head and darted over to chain their attacks together with a Baton Pass. “I’m sorry Shiho, for everything!” Panther cried. Despite the pain in her voice, she didn’t relent as fire spewed from Carmen to slam into the cognition. Another painful scream went up, but she still hadn’t dissipated. I pulled off my mask and had Phantom unleash a Gry spell at her and with a final scream, she vanished into smoke.

“Hmph, even Suzui was useless. Looks like I’ll have to give her some special instruction later… one-on-one!” Asmodeus claimed. That caused my stomach to roll with a desire to vomit, I choked it down and settled my ice filled gaze upon the beast that we were here to thrash as I tightened my grip upon the naginata I held. Each of the others were also affected by the disgusting comment he made as they also set themselves.

“Kamoshida! I’ll never forgive you!” Panther yelled. Skull apologised to Suzui and vowed we would beat him – while calling him a bastard as per usual – Joker said nothing, but his gritted teeth gave away the agitation he must have been feeling. We should be able to stop him now given that we’d stopped his supposed ‘kill shot’ from being launched at us once more.

“What’s the matter slaves!? Hurry up and bring me more volleyballs! I can’t serve up my kill shot without any balls!” Asmodeus demanded. However, no footsteps echoed, no voice went up claiming to have the ball, I quickly looked around and found not a single sign of a cognition could be spotted. “Huh? Did I just… am I really out of slaves!?” Asmodeus wondered. I felt an almost wicked smirk curl upon my lips at the fact that he was now exposed.

“Oh, I’m going to enjoy this,” Joker commented. With that, we unleashed our attacks on the pink skinned demon. Fire, Electricity, Gravity, Earth, and Physical bombarded the beast. He retaliated of course with his tongue and knife. We dodged as much as we could but a few of them managed to spear us. When that happened either Panther or Joker through Angel proceeded to heal our wounds. Joker also utilised Slime, Hua Po and Mokoi to boost our capabilities or Koropokkguru – the little man with a leaf – to weaken Asmodeus.

“Now listen up. This school exists because I’m around. You’re the only ones who don’t respect me, you know!” Asmodeus snapped. This beast was so deluded that it was actually something that bordered on funny, or it would if there was anything worth laughing about within his drivel. Our school didn’t exist because of one individual, and certainly not scum like him, plus he thought we were the only ones not to respect him… he was the one lacking respect, respect of a person’s goddamn boundaries!

“And why should we?!” I challenged. Tearing my mask off, I had Phantom slam down more stones upon this filthy demon. “Because you won some medal a long time ago! That’s not enough to earn any kind of respect from me! But my comrades have earned that and more! You are degenerate filth and yet treated as someone to praise, while they have better hearts, souls and minds than you ever could and instead get treated like trash. I won’t let that kind of injustice continue on! Not anymore!” I declared. Mona was now hanging from the top of the statue just below the railing.

“You’re misunderstanding it all! I haven’t sexually harassed anyone! They came on to me because they wanted to get on my good side!” Asmodeus claimed. I felt my mouth unhinge at those words, unable to believe the audacity of this man to claim he hadn’t committed his horrific crimes; Suzui’s suicide attempt was evidence that he was a lying scumbag more than anything else I had. An anguished sound came from my side and I looked over to see Panther, her eyes looked practically aflame after hearing those words.

“Like hell I came on to you! I would never have even looked at you if I hadn’t wanted Shiho’s dream to come true!” Panther retaliated. She ripped her mask off and had Carmen launch fireball after fireball at the disgusting beast. “And even so, I know Shiho had no interest in you at all! You repulsed her! Especially after you beat her so savagely!” Panther snapped. Carmen kept hurling attacks in response to her other side’s violent fury.

“Panther!” Skull bellowed. He darted over and grabbed the girl’s shoulders and lightly shook her by them. “I get that you’re pissed! But keep that up and you won’t be able to clobber him! We gotta do this together! Okay!” Skull exclaimed. His grip didn’t relax but he at least stopped shaking her; Panther on the other hand was breathing heavily as tears tumbled down her face, while her eyes kept the burning look in her eyes focused on the wheezing creature we were here to stop.

“Thanks Skull!” Joker called. The boy stepped forward and brought out Slime to land another blow on Asmodeus. “Panther’s right though. No one would ever be interested in you. You’re nothing but vermin and it’s about time you were punished for your crimes!” Joker declared. An angry tone coursing through all his words as his grey eyes hardened into steel. Skull pivoted around and had Captain Kidd slam into Asmodeus with its’ boat.

Asmodeus yelled in annoyance before slashing out with his knife, but his attack was so easy to read. I easily side stepped the attack and plunged my weapon’s blade into the pink flesh. The demon reeled back in pain at my motion. He recovered and swung his tongue out to slam into each of us. Skull took the hit as Panther dodged. I jumped over as Joker rolled back and darted to heal Skull.

I didn’t wait and instead had Phantom unleash a pulse of gravity upon him. Panther quickly followed up my blow with her own fiery blast. I glanced over and saw Joker helping Skull back to his feet. Skull pulled his mask off and had a blast of Electricity be fired off before Asmodeus could react. Joker also unleashed another physical attack against the demonic nuisance. I could only hope that Mona finally got himself into position.

“Is there one less of you? I knew it! Where’d that cat run off to?” Asmodeus wondered. Ah, so he had finally realised that someone was missing from the group who had been attacking him; all I could see was that Mona was now no longer hanging from the top of the statue which hopefully meant he had reached the railing’s top. We just needed to ensure that the demon didn’t spot the cat before he could execute the plan.

“Beats me, maybe he got scared and ran!” Skull responded. Mona probably wouldn’t be happy to hear such a comment, but it would serve to keep the demon’s attention focus on us; Joker pulled off his mask and had his Angel unleash a brilliant flash of light to pierce into the demon’s twisted body. Mona had climbed onto the railing and threw himself forward, his petite body impacted the crown and sent it hurtling down to the ground.

Asmodeus immediately started to flail about, the wine glass and riding crop dropping from his hands. Those now empty upper arms wildly snatched at the air, but the crown wasn’t even close to where he was grabbing. He wailed about losing his ‘precious’ – why did that sound familiar? – before slumping over in such a dejected manner, it was worse than when we cracked open his trophy.

“I think we can do this!” Panther cheered. And she was right, we jumped in and unleashed every possible level of attack that we could. Surprisingly Asmodeus couldn’t even lift a finger to fight back against us. Instead, he simply let us attack him again and again. With a final ferocious fireball from Panther, smoke began to rise to from his form. I immediately waved everyone back and we got away from the demon as it crumpled down and began to dissolve into smoke.

The crown rolled to a stop in front of us and shrunk back down to its’ original size. Skull began to walk forward to collect it, when Shadow Kamoshida dived out of nowhere, swept the crown up and quickly rolled to his feet all within a few seconds. The coward then scrambled to his feet and darted to the side, so we chased after him, but he didn’t get very far. Instead, he ground to a stop in front of an open window with nothing but the long drop to greet him.

“What’s wrong? Not running away? Why don’t you run? Aren’t you a great athlete?” Panther mockingly asked. Her tone was rather acidic, but given everything this was probably a good outlet for her feelings. Kamoshida stood out on the balcony, no longer flitting from side to side like some demented butterfly yet his back remained towards us.

“It’s always been like this… all those goddamn hyenas forcing their expectation on me! I’m doing this all for them! What’s wrong about demanding a reward for that!?” Shadow Kamoshida complained. Skull rightly called him out on his excuse making, it was honestly pathetic to listen to him trying to push his way out of the situation, out of having to pay for the crimes that he had committed.

“Scared?” Panther asked. Her tone was icy cold as she spoke, lightly playing with a ponytail. “Right now, you’re seeing the same view that Shiho did. I’m sure she was sacred too… except she had no choice but to jump… what will you do?” Panther questioned. She’d moved forward slightly as tension coiled through her body, tension I wasn’t a fan off, so I set my legs apart and gripped the edge of my mask. “Will you jump? Or would you rather die here?” Panther questioned. At that moment Panther’s mask dissolved and Carmen appeared, a fireball in each of her hands.

“Do you want to finish him off? It’s your call,” Mona wondered. No! I couldn’t allow such a thing to happen, none of them knew the consequences of destroying a Shadow like I did, which meant I had to stop them from following through with such an act; Shadow Kamoshida had started blubbering but I didn’t particularly care to hear his words, more concerned about watching Panther’s moves.

“Shut up. I bet everyone told you the same. But you… you took everything from them!” Panther cried. The fireballs shot forward and I moved with them, I got in front and quickly set my stance. Slicing through each fireball allowed them to dissipate harmlessly before they became a threat. “Amazon! What are you doing?!” Panther cried. All of their faces bore expressions of shock, especially for having jumped in front of one of my weaknesses, I simply squared myself up, covering the Shadow from view. “Why are you protecting him?!” Panther demanded.

“I’m not protecting him! I’m protecting you!” I responded. All of them blinked in confusion and looked at each other before focusing on me. “I was told, by my master, that killing a Shadow will kill the person it belongs to by forcing their brain to shut down,” I revealed. Their expressions slackened into shock as Panther realised the full weight of her actions by the fading pallor of her face. “I want you to be aware of that before you make a move. Because Kamoshida will die. I’m not saying you shouldn’t kill him, but can you bear that burden? Withstand the knowledge that his blood will be on your hands. Even if no one but those of us here know about it. You’re a kind person Ann, a very kind and genuinely good hearted person. I don’t want to see you break because of scum like him, even if it’s his death. If you can bear that burden…,” I admitted. I then stepped aside so that she had a clear shot at him. “Then go ahead, roast him. I won’t deny that he deserves it. But it’s up to you in the end,” I finished.

“I accept defeat... you want this? Take it,” Shadow Kamoshida insisted. He threw the crown so that it sailed through the air and was easily caught by Joker. “Go ahead and finish me off. She’s right though, if you do that then my real self will go down too. You have that right, since you’ve won,” Shadow Kamoshida spoke. Panther looked furious, her eyes burning with intense light and another fireball shot forward… and missed the Shadow.

“If his mind shuts down, he can’t admit his crimes,” Panther decided. The mask reformed back onto her face, an anguished expression could be seen but I was relieved she made the choice she did; I moved back over to stand beside the others, feeling a sensation of what might have been pride blooming within my heart as I looked at the red clad girl.

“I’ve lost. You’re through when you lose. What am I… what am I supposed to do now?” Shadow Kamoshida wondered. How pathetic could he possibly be? Everyone gathered in front of him had ‘lost’ at some point, we lost people we loved or places to call home – or a whole memory in Mona’s case – but we managed to pick ourselves up and move forward. Nothing is through when you lose, only when you give up.

“Atone for your sins,” Joker snapped. That was the most appropriate thing for him to do after causing so much pain and suffering, Shadow Kamoshida looked up and I could only hope those words would sink in; we needed the Shadow to re-join with his true self in order to set off the Change of Heart process, but the Shadow had to willingly re-join otherwise it would mean nothing in the long run.

“Alright… I will leave now and return to my real self,” Shadow Kamoshida agreed. I practically deflated when I saw the same glow that had surrounded Shadow Ouvrard after I beat her condense around Shadow Kamoshida “I’ll make certain that I-,” Shadow Kamoshida began to admit. But before he could, the distorted reflection vanished into thin air.

“Okay, now we run!” I insisted. As if my words had summoned it, a rumbling immediately occurred throughout the entire Palace. “And by the way! The warping doesn’t work at this stage!” I added on. Turning, I quickly sprinted towards the doorway that would take us out of the crumbing building with footsteps indicating that the others were quickly tailing after me as fast as they could manage.

We charged through the castle, having reached one of the lowered areas and we darted through the hallway. We dodged out of the way of falling debris, either by arcing around it or jumping over the blockage. Not a one of us faltered in the running as we were desperate to escape, especially since I wasn’t keen on finding out what happens when you manage to go down with the Palace… something told me it wasn’t pleasant.

“We’re gonna die! We’re so gonna die!” Panther screamed. I didn’t stop moving to chastise the girl for her unnecessary panic in an already tense situation. “Hey! What the-?” Panther cried. A sudden cry came from Skull and then I felt a weight on my shoulder, a quick glanced showed it was Mona – in his cat form?! – resting there, before springing off and onto Joker’s shoulder as Skull claimed he was a jerk. Mona’s response was a simple meow.

“Argue later! Run now!” Joker ordered. However, at his words, a cry came from behind me, I quickly pivoted and saw that Skull had collapsed to the floor, holding his wounded leg, all of us had stopped moving to look at our collapsed member. I began to move forward with Panther shortly behind me, but Skull pushed himself up and held out a hand to stop our approach to him with a strained smile upon his face.

“It’s been a while, so I just tripped is all,” Skull reassured. The crumbling accelerated at that moment as the hallway we’d just been through started to collapse at a faster rate; that was enough of a second wind for Skull as he quickly started to run with all of us heading in the same direction towards the exit and safety.

*Persona 5 Royal*

You have returned to the real world. The Meta-Nav chimed, all of us were huffing and puffing – except for Morgana, the lucky fluffball – after that mad dash to escape the Palace, I hadn’t realised how much energy Lavenza had saved me when her and Igor had briefly managed to connect the Velvet Room to the Sanctum. Takamaki rightly claimed that whole experience had sucked.

“Look at the Nav!” Sakamoto insisted. I pulled out my phone and opened up the app, only to find that the app showed that Kamoshida’s warped Palace had been deleted from the list of destinations; that was a sure-fire sign to me that the Palace had been successfully dissolved, the Shadow had been unharmed so Kamoshida shouldn’t suffer a mental shutdown and his desires would be stopped.

“What about the Treasure!?” Morgana asked. In response to the slightly panicked question, Amamiya reached into his pocket and pulled out the Treasure’s true form, this time it was an Olympic gold medal; naturally, those who hadn’t experienced it were quite confused by the object suddenly becoming something different to what it was within the Palace.

“When Treasures enter the physical world, they revert to their true forms. Much like how Kamoshida viewed the school as a castle, he viewed his medal as a crown,” I explained. Morgana agreed and claimed this had been the source of all of Kamoshida’s desires; just how obsessed could one guy be with a single past glory?

“An Olympic medal. So that perv kept clingin’ to his past glory and couldn’t let it go,” Sakamoto commented. Takamaki proceeded to ask if Kamoshida’s heart had changed but when Morgana only gave her an answer of ‘probably’ Sakamoto got angry. “Our expulsion’s on the line here!” Sakamoto protested. I immediately clamped a hand hard onto his shoulder and pulled him back slightly.

“We’re not psychic Sakamoto-san, we can’t predict how or even when the Change of Heart might occur. I had to wait an entire week before getting confirmation it had worked, we just need to give it time. Spontaneously re-growing a moral compass after years without it certainly can’t an easy process to come to terms with,” I explained. The nerves I’d faced down during that week were already wriggling to the surface, but I had to keep my cool for the moment.

“Natsumi’s right. This is the first successful attempt for me too, so we only have her experience to go on. However, I can safely say there’s no doubt that this has affected Kamoshida’s personality quite a lot. The entire Palace disappeared after all,” Morgana explained. It was quite the piece of evidence for us to use in affirming that something had managed to change.

“Ugh, I feel all antsy! Ain’t there a way to check now?” Sakamoto questioned. I could understand his nerves, I’d been wracked with them immediately after awakening the day after fighting Dantalion – too exhausted and relieved right after to think about it much – and they had only grown more persistent with each passing day as I worried over if I had succeeded.

“I’m worried too, but we can only wait. Perhaps we’ll know more tomorrow at school,” Amamiya soothed. At least he possessed a level head at the moment despite openly admitting that he was quite nervous himself, but then again we were probably all going to be nervous for some time, at least until we had some kind of physical confirmation beyond the Palace poof-ing out of existence.

“Come on, why the gloomy faces? Be happy! We completed this with great success, you know,” Morgana insisted. He was looking at us with what was probably annoyance within his blue gaze, I suppose he was probably the most confident of all of us that this whole event had panned out the way that we planned it to, unlike the rest of us; even I wasn’t too keen about having to wait around for an answer to the question.

“Nerves Morgana. None of us know if everything has been settled yet. Once we know what happened, I’m sure things will change. Now, it’s just a case of playing the waiting game,” I explained. Morgana let out a humming meow as he sat against the ground underneath, likely considering the words that I had said and taking in the expressions of the other three.

“I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine. Remember how Kamoshida’s shadow said that he’s returning to his self in reality? We all know Kamoshida Suguru is scum… still, he did seem to regain his conscience somewhat before he disappeared,” Morgana admitted. The others nodded their head, that was one of the few things that made me think we would be fortunate in succeeding on this Change of Heart.

“It seemed so, in which case, I’m sure it worked,” Amamiya agreed. Morgana pointed out how our actions had definitely saved some people, which was very true, at least now we wouldn’t have to deal with Kamoshida’s damned peacocking and hopefully the volleyball team would have some time to rest and maybe even more afterwards.

“Anyways, I guess we gotta wait.  It all boils down to what’s gonna happen to Kamoshida… or if we’re gettin’ expelled for real,” Sakamoto pointed out. At least now he understood that there was nothing more for us to do until we knew the full extent of what had happened to Kamoshida; all of us proceeded to shoulder our bags as I packed away my bow ready to take back home.

“Let’s go home everyone,” Amamiya suggested.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Returning to my home, I could already feel the stress and weight of the day pounding down on me. I wanted nothing more than to sink into my bed and immediately drift off, but I also needed food if the very loud growl from my stomach was anything to go by. I moved into the kitchen and set about getting my meal when a notification came in. A quick check proved it came from Takamaki.

Ann: Thanks. I finally got to avenge Shiho because of you guys.

Ann: I’m pretty sure there was no way I’d had been able to do anything on my own.

Natsumi: Don’t think so lowly of yourself Takamaki-san

Natsumi: You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for

Ann: Still, thank you. I owe you so much.

Natsumi: Just as we owe you.

Natsumi: Defeating Kamoshida was a team effort after all.

Ann: Speaking of which, I should thank the boys too.

Natsumi: Sleep well Takamaki-san, you’ll probably need it.

Ann: Yeah, I feel exhausted.

Putting the phone down, I set about silencing the noises coming from my stomach. All I could hope was that everything truly did turn out okay.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 22: - The Aftermath

“Whaddup!” Sakamoto’s exhausted voice reached me. I turned around to see the false blonde stumble onto the Aoyama-Itchome platform, completely out of breath and favouring his left leg. “I made it,” Sakamoto sighed with relief as he pushed himself up right. “I slept in, so I ran out without eating breakfast. I feel so weak because of it. After we took down Kamoshida, I just feel so spent and out of gas, you know? You get me, right?” Sakamoto explained. Amamiya nodded his head as Takamaki restrained a yawn in vain.

“Here Sakamoto-san,” I stated. I held out the pastry I’d brought from Yon-Germain, Sakamoto looked at it in surprise. “Amamiya-san and Takamaki-san went through the same thing; it took me dragging one and calling the other to get them out of their beds and they had to miss breakfast too. We got some food outside, but I was up at my usual time, so I don’t need it,” I answered the unspoken question.

“All we can do now is wait for the board meeting,” Takamaki acknowledged. With that, the train rolled into the station and we all piled ourselves onto the tin can.

*Persona 5 Royal*

It was currently dinnertime and I was out in the courtyard with Takamaki, she was slumped against the bench, seemingly tuned out of the surroundings as people muttered. I had wanted to check on her after everything we went through, especially after her seeing the cognition of Suzui. She seemed okay but I couldn’t be too sure.

“Have you seen him at all today?” I asked. Takamaki opened her eyes and gently shook her head, but she seemed completely relieved at the same time, not that I blamed her for feeling that way, the man who had plagued her was missing after our actions; before I could say anything else to her, a voice reached my ears that was coming closer, I turned around as Takamaki sat up and we saw Kawakami-sensei approaching the two of us.

“Study hall will be held instead of P.E. today. I’m letting you know just in case you haven’t heard. Kamoshida-san has taken the day off,” Kawakami-sensei revealed. A gasp escaped Takamaki as my own eyes widened at those words, this situation could imply anything, so I wasn’t about to get my hopes up; Takamaki was off the bench and came to stand beside me.

“You mean he isn’t in school today?” Takamaki asked. A quick glance out the corner of my eye showed her wide blue eyes, which were sparkling with emotion that she fought hard to keep off her face, her hands were flexing open and closed as if she wanted to grab onto something but was desperately restraining herself from doing so. “Do you know what’s going on?” Takamaki asked. Her voice trying to sound calm, but it cracked slightly as she spoke.

“Don’t tell anyone that you heard this from me, but we received word that Kamoshida-san is placing himself under suspension. It’s such an important time before the tournament too. Principal Kobayakawa went to talk to him about it, but he supposedly wasn’t making any sense,” Kawakami-sensei explained. Now that sounded familiar, with that message delivered our homeroom teacher turned and proceeded to walk away from the courtyard.

“It’s working,” I whispered. My vision was then filled with the blue eyes of my fire wielding comrade and the emotions within her eyes had bleed out onto her face which lightened its’ expression but also seemed to be straining it as well. “When I previously collapsed a Palace, the Ruler’s physical self when into seclusion for an entire week and I then heard from another person that, that individual was barely making any coherent sense when they spoke, but enough for the Ruler to confess,” I quietly explained.

“So, you really think it’s happening?” Takamaki questioned. At the moment, it certainly seemed to be going the way we wanted, but I couldn’t really say what exactly was happening since I had never seen Ouvrard in that state, instead I needed to rely upon what my uncle had proceeded to tell me after it had taken effect upon her; I wasn’t getting my hopes up, so I had better do the same to Takamaki.

“Yes, but it’s still too early to tell. The Change of Heart or the mental shutdown. For all we know, they could have similar effects at the start. We just have to wait for the end result,” I answered. Takamaki nodded her head in understanding of my words, we could only wait and hope that Kamoshida’s current situation led to the change we were rather desperate for.

*Persona 5 Royal*

It was the end of the school day and I was packing my stuff away when my phone buzzed, I pulled it out and opened up the Chat to see that Sakamoto had sent a message to the whole group. Now that the Palace had been dissolved, I was a little worried about how long my connection to these four would last once we knew what Kamoshida’s fate was; I didn’t want to be alone anymore, but I still couldn’t connect to people.

Ryūji: Man, all this waiting’s got me so antsy.

Ryūji: We should go on a trip or something. Whaddya think?

Ann: Sorry, I’m gonna have to pass.

Ren: How come Takamaki-san?

Ann: Well, I’m going to be visiting Shiho in the hospital after school for the next few days.

Ann: I can’t do much to help her, but it’ll be nice to at least see her face.

Natsumi: We understand Takamaki-san.

Ren: I’m sure she’ll be okay, but you should go cheer her up.

Ryūji: Yeah, we gotcha, I hope she wakes up soon too.

Ann: Yeah thanks

Ann: I’m totally down to go somewhere once things calm down though.

Natsumi: It would be nice to go somewhere.

Ren: Agreed, we’ll see what we can do.

“Hey Natsumi,” Takamaki’s voice came. I looked up to see the blonde was stood there with what could be a shy expression on her face. “Would you be willing to come with me to see Shiho? It’s just I… I would feel better, if you were there… I understand if you don’t want to but…,” Takamaki rambled. It was a surprise that she had invited me to the hospital again but there must have been something she couldn’t quite articulate that led to the invitation.

“I can come Takamaki-san, I don’t have anything on this afternoon,” I admitted. Takamaki grinned brightly and quickly hooked her left arm through my right arm, the blonde girl proceeded to guide me out of the classroom as we waved goodbye to Amamiya who was smiling at us. I’m certain that people were staring from the slight pressure that I could feel that had nothing to do with a physical weight, but it seemed that Takamaki didn’t even care for the stares as she kept moving.

We made our way to the hospital and sat down in the waiting room in order to be admitted to visit Suzui. Takamaki was nervous however, her fidgeting fingers and bouncing leg were pretty big evidence to her feelings as she seemed to be darting her eyes everywhere and anywhere yet never settling on anything for long. I reached out and grabbed a hold of her hands with one hand and then rested my other upon her bouncing leg in order to still it.

“Calm down Takamaki-san. She’ll be okay,” I reassured. Takamaki nodded her head slightly, swallowing thickly as she did so, yet her face still seemed rather pale. “She’ll be okay, Ann. I promise she will,” I added on. Tightening my grip on where I held her as if to fully impart the will of my words into the world, as if we were in the Metaverse and my cognition could change anything about Suzui’s condition.

“I hope so Natsumi, I really hope so,” Takamaki admitted. At that moment, a receptionist informed us that we could go and see Suzui, I released my grip on Takamaki’s leg but when I tried to pull my other hand back, the blonde quickly tangled it with one of her own preventing me from doing so. I tightened my grip in response to the vice like grasp that was twisted around my hand as we stood up.

Moving through the sterile halls and smelling that chemical scent of this place was starting to dreg up the memories I would have preferred to forget. The only reason I wasn’t tumbling down them like an accursed rabbit hole was thanks to the tight yet steady grip that Takamaki had on my hand. It acted as an anchor for me, keeping me rooted within the present and away from the darkness of my encroaching memories.

“You should consider taking self-defence lessons by the way,” I spoke up. It was something I had been considering for a little while, Takamaki proceeded to look over at me with a sparkle in her eyes as her eyebrows raised slightly. “Just because Kamoshida’s cruelties towards you have stopped doesn’t mean there aren’t other sickos out there. I’d feel better knowing you could protect yourself from that kind of disturbed mind than be vulnerable the next time it could happen,” I explained.

“Good idea. Got any recommendations?” Takamaki asked. Before I could answer, we reached the door that would lead into the room that Suzui had been given, at the door however I managed to wriggle my hand free of Takamaki’s grip once it loosened. The model turned to face me, but I simply motioned my head to the doorway that led inside, Takamaki nodded her head and swallowed her nerves down before going inside; Suzui could only be allowed one visitor at a time so waiting out here was as far as I could go. Really, I think this is what Takamaki had needed me for.

Once the girl had walked through the doorway, my green gaze drifted over to what I could see of Suzui. Her eyes were still closed and her mouth covered by an oxygen mask, an IV stand was positioned near the bed she lay upon with tubes hanging down to connect to the girl’s prone form. Nutrients and fluids were no doubt contained within and allowed to keep the girl alive in her comatose state.

But the longer I looked, the more Suzui’s image started to change. Her hair became shorter, her face somewhat younger and sharpening from feminine to masculine, the bruises faded but were replaced by a peppering of cuts that slowly oozed blood. I took in a shuddering breath as I backed myself up against the wall of the corridor, closing my eyes as if to banish the last memory of my brother but that only seemed to make the focus on it sharper as I recalled the people rushing about trying to save his life.

“Natsumi,” Takamaki’s voice came. I jerked upright as my eyes drifted open to see that Takamaki had returned to my side and she was looking at me with an odd gleam within her eyes; she swiftly moved over and gently lay a hand upon my arm. “Are you okay?” Takamaki asked. Her voice was soft, as if she thought speaking any louder would cause me to break apart, though perhaps in a way she was right.

“I’m… just experiencing some bad memories Takamaki-san, nothing to concern yourself over,” I answered. I had debated lying, but I figured that it was a pointless endeavour when she had seen me so clearly disturbed by something, ergo she would call me out on the lie. I did not however wish to dwell too long on these darker memories.

“Would you like to talk about it?” Takamaki offered. I blinked in surprise at her words, that incident wasn’t ever brought up, hell I resented having to mention it because of Morgana’s snooping the other day, but someone offering to talk about it was something unexpected; even so, I shook my head… it wouldn’t do to dwell so heavily on those days, especially with what was coming this Sunday, I would need my strength and focus for that day so best not to waste it beforehand. “Well, how about we go get some food,” Takamaki decided.

“That would be nice,” I agreed. With that the two of us left the hospital as I started to pack my memories back into the box, they could wait to overwhelm me on another day.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Takamaki had brought me to a rather relaxed restaurant somewhere in Shibuya, it had a pleasant atmosphere that was very different to the hospital’s almost cold aura. We had made an order of food and were currently waiting for it to arrive; I was mindlessly looking around and admiring the place since I’d never been here before, but I could sense Takamaki fiddling with her hair which was starting to become almost like a nervous tic.

“Um… Natsumi,” Takamaki called. I dropped my gaze onto the blonde and saw she had her hands clasped in front of her now instead of fiddling away but that didn’t mean her thumbs weren’t rubbing against each other in consistent circles. “Thank you for coming with me to see Shiho these last two times. I know I haven’t been making much sense when I’ve been asking you to come with me, so I’m really grateful,” Takamaki admitted.

“Of course, Takamaki-san. there’s nothing to thank me for. You must have your reasons for asking me,” I responded. I wouldn’t have been against receiving comfort back on that dark day, so knowing that someone was reaching out a hand for that same comfort in their own darkness… well there was no reason for me to not reach my hand back out to offer it to them, no matter what that comfort might be.

“Yes, I do. The truth is… I’m probably using you as a crutch,” Takamaki admitted. I silently raised my eyebrows in surprise at her words as she looked down at her hands with a thin frown spreading across her lips. “When Shiho jumped, I was so scared that she was going to die. And you were there. I know you probably think you didn’t do much, but to me you did. You were almost like a soothing presence and… at the moment… I just… I don’t think I’m strong enough to see Shiho in her current state without that presence there,” Takamaki admitted. My expression softened at her words.

“I see. If you want me to keep coming with you, I’m not against it. It’s not that much-,” I began to speak. However, my voice was silenced when Takamaki’s hands suddenly shot over and grabbed a hold of my own, I blinked in surprise down at the clasped appendages as confusion rose within me at Takamaki’s sudden and rather unexpected interruption of my words; lifting my gaze up I saw a tense but complicated expression twisting across her face as her eyes started to mist up suddenly.

“It is to me! I’m sorry for using you in that way, but I feel like I really need you there or I might break down! And yet I’m causing you pain just by bringing you to the hospital!” Takamaki declared. My mouth opened but not a single sound escaped from me as I was stunned into silence over the words that had escaped from Takamaki’s lips, I certainly couldn’t have anticipated her saying such things. “Please, you can speak to me about anything Natsumi. You don’t have to hide away from your pain,” Takamaki pleaded. Her blue eyes were still misted quite brightly as they stared into my own green gaze as if trying to get the answer from the organs instead of my voice.

“Thank you for your concern, Takamaki-san, but truly I’m alright,” I insisted. I tried to bring a smile to my face to add extra assurance, but I couldn’t make my lips move in such a manner, the upcoming day of dread was no doubt already sapping my will to smile or perhaps Takamaki’s unexpected plea had momentarily stunned me into being unable to bring such a muscle movement to fruition.

“You’re pretty stubborn you know that,” Takamaki huffed. In response, she released the grip on my hands and slouched back into her seat – somehow making it look graceful, how did she do that so easily? – as she crossed her arms and started to pout slightly; but then she seemed to have a lightbulb moment as she sat up straight and rested her elbows on the table while using the backs of her fingers to support her chin. “Well, if you don’t want to talk about the hospital…,” Takamaki continued. She trailed off as our food was brought over and Takamaki proceeded to spear a piece of dessert on her spoon and then lifted the utensil to point it and the still jiggling pudding at me. “You are telling me more about the things you like!” Takamaki decided. She was grinning brightly as she spoke before taking a hearty bite of the portion she’d scooped up.

“If you insist, though I don’t have much to talk about. Books will be the main thing,” I admitted. A soft giggle lacing my words as I took a bite out of my own meal.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The conversation me and Takamaki had, had over food ended up lasting much longer than I had ever expected a conversation to last. Eventually we had taken note of the dying light and proceeded to split up to return to our homes. I slipped into the empty house I had come to start to resent, my life seemed to have become so loud and noisy lately that the deathly quiet of my house was becoming a burden.

A vibration on my phone snapped me out of my spiralling dark thoughts, I pulled it out and opened it up seeing a Chat notification had come in. I quickly opened it up and found that the person who had started it this time around was actually Takamaki, I lifted a single eyebrow as I wondered what she could have to say after such a long conversation. I opened up the Chat and felt my confusion fade to a soft sort of sadness.

Ann: I went to see Shiho today.

Ann: And I told her we settled things with Kamoshida.

Ann: She still hasn’t regained consciousness… but I had to go make amends.

Ryūji: Whaddya mean! You didn’t do anything wrong, Ann.

Ryūji: Right, Ren? Natsumi?

Natsumi: I agree. You were not at fault for what happened.

Ren: It’s not your fault, Ann. This is Kamoshida’s doing.

Ann: But I wasn’t there when she needed help. I’m a failure as a friend.

Ann: I have to do all I can to make up for that, starting now.

Ann: Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be able to move on.

Natsumi: I… can understand what you mean. I had a friend who suffered something awful, but I couldn’t help her through it.

Natsumi: We lost touch. I hope the same fate doesn’t befall you and Suzui-san.

Ryūji: Man, I didn’t know you were so passionate, Ann.

Ryūji: I totally didn’t notice that back in middle school.

Ann: I think it’s because of you guys. I’m a little embarrassed tough.

Ann: Anyway, Natsumi, Ryūji, Ren… I hope we can keep helping each other out from now on too.

Takamaki seemed to be blaming herself for what happened to Suzui, perhaps too harshly in my opinion. I could only hope that when Suzui woke up, she’d be able to reassure her friend that Takamaki was not to blame for Suzui’s actions. I also hoped that Kamoshida would go through his Change of Heart and confess all his decrepit sins.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 23: - Finally Allowed to Cry

Even though the stress of waiting for Kamoshida to have a Change of Heart – or worse keel over and die but I’m not forgetting that it’s probable – was hanging like a stone weight around my neck, all of us had to keep living normal lives. And as much as I might try to ignore today, I simply couldn’t; after all, this was the day I hated the most out of the many days of the year.

Carding my fingers through my hair, I gently grazed the tips over the edge of the butterfly hairclip, I continued to walk towards the flower shop in the underground mall of Shibuya. Sighing heavily, I slipped my phone into my pocket – muted so I couldn’t be disturbed – as I arrived at the shop. The young woman who ran the store gave me a wane smile as she held out a bouquet of lilies and yellow chrysanthemums that I had ordered for this day and I carefully adjusted the small black case bag that was hung across my shoulders. Leaving the mall, I began to morosely walk down the streets towards my destination, keeping my head low as I moved so that nobody would talk to me, I knew the way by heart now, so I didn’t even need to keep my head up to look.

“Chiba-san?” Amamiya’s voice sounded. I jerked to a stop and looked over at the boy, having not expecting to see him here, he was dressed differently to how I had previously seen him; he wore an unbuttoned black blazer over a cream sweater with black edging, blue jeans and brown, laced oxfords. “Are you okay?” Amamiya asked. Morgana popped his head out of the bag Amamiya was carrying and I spotted what was most likely concern in his blue eyes which echoed the emotion reflecting from Amamiya’s grey irises.

“Please go away Amamiya-san, I want to be left alone,” I requested. I turned away and tried to continue on my sombre walk, I really didn’t want anyone who I knew to be near me today as this was something that I had to do alone; well, tried was the key word as the moment I tried to get away, a firm yet gentle warmth looped around my wrist which tugged me ever so carefully to a stop.

“You might want to be left alone, but I don’t think you should be. You look really sad,” Amamiya insisted. His tone was filled with concern and a stern note, I turned around to see his grey eyes being unwavering as he looked at me and his grip didn’t even slacken once I turned to face him; there was no way I could escape from this situation without causing a scene and even though I wanted to be alone, the energy required to be alone now that I’d been seen just couldn’t be scrounged up.

“Fine,” I weakly stated. Amamiya’s grip slackened, allowing me to pull my wrist free and I began to walk off with my hands cradling the bouquet, Amamiya easily fell into step beside me but he didn’t say anything as I guided him down the pathways that I took every year to reach my destination; I glanced out the corner of my eye and saw he was looking ahead with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

We arrived at the destination, a congregation of gravesites and I walked through the aisles until I came upon a single stone. It was as tall as the others were, this one holding a small bamboo vase that was currently empty of anything along with some holders for incense. On the face of the stone was a large kanji with smaller kanji around it, the smaller kanji read many different names, but my eyes were drawn to four in particular; those were Daichi, Cho, Hikaru, and Mirai whilst the large kanji read Chiba.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Amamiya stated. I looked up and saw the ravenette boy moving away from me a good few grave sites before turning back around so that he could see me; he was well out of ear shot if I spoke quietly enough, but he was still able to see me. Ignoring the slight buoyant feeling in my heart at how considerate Amamiya was being, I turned back to the grave and stepped closer.

Sliding the bouquet of flowers free of the wrapping, I slid them into the bamboo vase, removing from the wrapping a few sticks of sandalwood incense I had put in there I quickly lit them with a lighter. Slotting them into the holder, I stood up and pulled out a bottle of water and gently poured the water over the gravestone.

“Hi Papa, hi Mama, hi Hikaru-niisan, hi Mirai-neechan,” I greeted my family. I reached out to gently rest my fingertips against the wet stone, feeling the dampness transferring to the skin; I never really knew what to say after this point, do I talk to them about my life and how things were going? It wasn’t like I could ask for any advice, after all it wasn’t like the dead could speak and solve issues.

“Would you mind if I asked what happened?” Amamiya asked. I pulled my hand away and turned to find the boy looking down at me, having returned to stand at my side although now that I looked at him, I realised there was a distinct lack of movement within his bag and no sign of the cat he’d previously been carrying about, when and where had Morgana disappeared? “Chiba-san, what happened to your family?” Amamiya clarified. I turned my gaze from him to focus on the gravestone.

“An accident, three years ago. They were coming to pick me up from a school club and that was when some drunkard in a truck ploughed into them,” I answered. My tone was steady as I spoke, empty of all possible feeling as I kept my green eyes staring right at the block of grey stone, another symptom of my uncle’s cruel words striking at my heart and rendering it dead to everything but him.

“Chiba-san, I’m no expert on feelings, but I do know that you shouldn’t be talking like this… as if this isn’t anything than an awful tragedy,” Amamiya protested. I almost felt like scoffing at his words, how else was I meant to act? Their death was a numb point for me, there was no other way for me to react to it beyond this emptiness. It had been the only thing I could think to react without that memory haunting me like the virus it had become.

“I am not allowed to cry. I am not allowed to cry for my loss, that was what I was told by my uncle,” I stated. Because no matter how much I had grown since freeing Phantom to the point of expression positive and negative emotions with more ease, I was still cruelly bound by the shackles that my uncle had wrapped around my heart on that day, I still could not link my heart with other people.

“Chiba-san,” Amamiya spoke. His voice sounded odd, kind of hard and cold, but before I could think more about it a hand seized my arm and forcibly turned and dragged me so that I was facing Amamiya who – despite his glasses – had such a furious look in his eyes that I actually felt a little scared. “That is utter nonsense! Whoever this uncle of yours’ is, you should never listen to him! You were thirteen! A child! And you had just lost your entire family! You have every right to cry!” Amamiya lectured. His tone hadn’t risen any higher than when he was delivering orders as Joker, but I felt like the words hit harder now… maybe because on this side, the boy was always so soft and quiet.

“Every right?” I repeated. No one had ever told me it was alright to cry, that expressing my sorrow through tears was a perfectly natural thing to do; I had been in shock until Uncle Masayoshi had shown up and proceeded to thoroughly stomp my heart into the dust, but now someone who barely knew me was telling me it was alright. That not only was it was fine for me to express sadness, but it was well within my rights to do this. The words that Takamaki had spoken to me the other day, pleading for me not to hide away from my pain also rattled through my skull.

“Yes, Chiba Natsumi, you can cry,” Amamiya softly encouraged. That seemed to be all my heart needed to hear, because the moment those words settled into my mind, the burning sting of tears that I kept holding back for three years rose like a tsunami and tumbled over my eyelids; whether on instinct or choice I leaned into Amamiya as my mouth opened with choked sobs and wails escaping it.

All the while, Amamiya said nothing, but his arms were curled around my torso to keep me upright and his head rested atop mine as my tears poured into his shoulder.

*Persona 5 Royal*

It had taken a while for me to calm down but once that had happened, we relocated to Yoyogi Park, a rather sizeable park located in Shibuya, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom with the pretty petals drifting down to coat the surface of the lake that sat in front of us. We were sat down on a bench in silence, Amamiya’s jacket was draped over his lap seeing as it had a damp spot from my tears, I was currently replenishing the fluid I had lost by having a drink of water.

“I’m so-,” I began to apologise. However, before I could express any more, fingertips pressed against my lips which effectively silenced me; I looked into Amamiya’s eyes and saw that he was giving me a rather stern look as if he was annoyed that I had attempted to apologise to him, for soaking his jacket and using him as a crying post.

“Don’t apologise Chiba-san. You needed to let it out, that’s more important that my jacket getting a little damp,” Amamiya insisted. He then proceeded to pull his hand away from my lips and I looked down a little embarrassed about being reprimanded, even if it was done rather kindly, for something that I had thought he’d see as an inconvenience when that had been completely wrong in the first place. “Now then, care to explain this uncle situation to me?” Amamiya asked.

“Not much to explain, my father was an only child and all of my grandparents from both sides are deceased. He was my only blood relative left and he took me in after my family died. But he isn’t exactly the kindest individual, he’s never beaten me or anything but, what he said on the day they died and everything after… honestly it made me think I was dead inside since I seemed so incapable of expressing my emotions, as if I’d lost my heart somewhere,” I explained. It had been something was I scared of, in fact on some level I was likely still afraid of it.

“You do know that’s nonsense, right?” Amamiya asked. I lifted my gaze to look at him, seeing that he was staring at me with a perplexed look on his face that seemed to contain a trace of fear in his eyes. “You’re not lacking a heart; I’ve seen that several times. You were worried about me and Sakamoto-san in the Palace. You’ve shown how determined you are, how kind you can be. There’s nothing emotionless about you Chiba-san,” Amamiya softly argued. I pulled a jean clad leg into in chest and draped my arms around it as if I was giving it a hug. “Is that why you think you aren’t capable of empathy?” Amamiya inquired.

“Maybe. Sometimes, when I look at people, I can’t comprehend what they’re talking about or why it makes them laugh, cry, smile or get angry… but there are times when I know exactly how that person is feeling, like at the hospital with Takamaki-san and Suzui-san, but when that happens, it’s only ever bad things I understand,” I admitted. A soft sigh came from beside me, but it seemed Amamiya didn’t know what to say in response to my words this time around.

We simply remained sat beside each other in silence as I looked around the park. Moving the bag I carried into my lap, I proceeded to unzip it and extract the camera from within. It was an old camera but then again it had been my sister’s last birthday present and one of the few things I’d managed to save from my uncle’s ruthless purge. She’d always loved taking pictures of things, so it was one way of keeping her close to me. I looped the strap around my neck and proceeded to stand up while turning the device on.

I raised the viewfinder to my eye and peered through it as I lightly repositioned myself in order to capture the best view. Light slanting just right to dapple the blush pink petals that decorated the gleaming water, but not enough for the light to reflect off the water and start blinding me. A quick depression of the button captured the image forever, lowering the object I felt mildly better but then I always did after taking a single photograph on this day.

“Do you enjoy photography?” Amamiya asked. I turned around to face the boy, his head tilted slightly to the side and his eyes gleaming in the light, the glasses on longer obscuring the steel irises; I suddenly raised the camera and quickly snapped a photo of the boy, causing him to blink his eyes rapidly in surprise at my sudden move… actually I was quite surprised by the move myself, I hadn’t expected to suddenly feel the urge to photograph the ravenette.

“I… I don’t actually know. Photography was always my sister’s passion while mine was-,” I began to admit. However, I clamped my mouth shut, stunned that I’d been about to confess to my singing ability to someone I barely knew; Amamiya might have been nothing like Ouvrard or my uncle, but I still wanted to keep that secret close. And yet, there was something about Amamiya that seemed to draw one to him, to encourage a trust between the two of us. “I had other interests, but after Mirai passed, this was one of the things I managed to save,” I admitted.

“Managed to save?” Amamiya repeated. He stood up and moved to stand in front of me and gently rested his surprisingly slender fingers on the backs of my hand. “Did he take everything else from you?” Amamiya asked. His tone edged with that steel that was so common to Joker’s commanding tone, it was almost making me wonder if the boy had a multiple personality disorder, or if he was burying his true personality within Joker and creating this facsimile to not suffer as he already had.

“No, I have other things, but a lot was taken from me, including their pictures. I can’t even remember what they look like,” I admitted. Tension appeared within Amamiya’s muscles as I said those words, I was probably going to have to watch that I didn’t mention my uncle’s name in front of him; even if my uncle didn’t have a Palace, Amamiya might just find him and well, Amamiya seemed to possess a strong moral compass which might just lead him to confront my uncle and that would end badly for the ravenette. “By the way, apologises for the sudden photo-op,” I stated. A small smile cracked across Amamiya’s severe countenance.

“It’s no problem, Chiba-san, but why exactly did you decide to randomly take a picture of me?” Amamiya asked. He proceeded to step back and a smile that was rather different to the small one from before appeared on his lips; I think it almost had a teasing edge to it. “Did I look that good or something?” Amamiya wondered. Oh, that was definitely a teasing edge to his lips, no question about it after those words.

“I felt like it, it’s as simple as that,” I answered. A small teasing edge laced my voice as I said those words, Amamiya proceeded to chuckle which caused a deep sound to echo around us; he looked lighter and happier in that moment, as if the burden he was carrying around had been briefly lifted from his shoulders. He stopped laughing and instead looked at me with a serious gleam within his eyes.

“I really don’t believe you have lost your heart, but if you want, I can help you find your heart Chiba-san,” Amamiya offered. I was surprised by the words that had come out of his mouth as I hadn’t expected such a thing to be extended; true Amamiya had proven himself to be a kind and open hearted individual, but to decide that he would help me in something as almost crazy sounding as searching for a lost heart…

“Thank you, Amamiya-san. You are quite the blessing of a person for me to meet. I’m glad that our gravity brought us to meet each other,” I admitted. Naturally, Amamiya looked confused and I began to laugh lightly at the rather adorable cocked head expression he was shooting me.

*Persona 5 Royal*

After the discussion between myself and Amamiya which had ended with a rather odd but sweet promise, I had set off back to my home as Amamiya went about doing whatever he had initially been about to do… and probably tracking down his wayward cat. I was looking at the picture of Amamiya that I had taken on my sister’s camera and smiling at the memory of his teasing, before I slipped it away as I had finally reached my home.

Standing outside my home, I felt an odd urge and proceeded to pull my phone out of the pocket. I quickly opened it up and moved towards my contacts portion of the phone, finding Amamiya’s name I proceeded to press the call button and lifted it to my ear. As the connecting tone made its’ sound, I twirled my fingers within the black fabric of my blouse, feeling a nervous flutter bouncing around my stomach at a hundred miles of hour and my mouth was running a bit dry as my mind spun around a bit. The connection was made and that sound caused me to jump slightly.

“Um… hello Amamiya-san, I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” I greeted. My fingers started to twist even more rapidly within my blouse and I felt my stomach churned even stronger, what in the blazing Velvet Room had possessed me to suddenly call Amamiya despite having spent time with him earlier today? Especially as he had helped me so much, but maybe that was why? I wanted to ensure he was alright after he had been so kind towards me earlier.

“Hello Chiba-san, it’s no problem at all. Are you okay?” Amamiya’s soothing voice came back. His voice had such a nice quality to it, my nerves suddenly started to relax as my fingers finally stopped messing up my blouse and I relaxed even more as I slipped into the building, completely ignoring its’ typical quiet in exchange for the boy I was currently talking to.

“I’m okay. I actually just wanted to check on you,” I admitted. A sound escaped from Amamiya’s side of the phone which caused a small smile to curl upon my lips as I moved about to make a cup of tea. “You helped me out a lot today, I actually feel a lot lighter after having gone through that. I bottled up my feelings for a long time and I never imagined it would be so freeing to express my sorrow. I just want you to know that you can lean on me as much as I leaned on you today,” I explained.

“I…,” Amamiya spoke. He suddenly fell silent and I worried that I had said something to upset him, especially when he drew in a shaky breath. “Thank you, Chiba-san. As you know, I came here with nothing so it… it actually means a lot that you’re reaching out in such a manner. I might take you up on that offer. But I’m still going to help you find your heart you know,” Amamiya admitted. A slight fluttered feeling appeared within my heart as I smiled lightly, glad to know he might just be willing to open up to me as I had to him.

“Well, if you ever want to talk, I’m happy to meet up in Yoyogi Park again,” I insisted. Amamiya had suffered something awful, something no one should have endured and he’d been completely removed from anything familiar then abandoned within a place so jarringly different with a burden that haunted him; the both of us had lost something in a manner that was wrong, the magnitude might be different but we could at least connect and understand each other on through that loss and perhaps even more.

“Alright, let me know if you ever want to talk and that’s where we’ll meet,” Amamiya responded. With that, our call ended, I looked over at my bookcase and focused on Shadowed World, me and Amamiya had already found common ground, it was just building on that common ground and not allowing our differences to tear us apart. It be nice to have a friend again after so long, with that thought in mind I picked up my tea alongside some biscuits and curled into my couch and picked a different name to call this time.

“Hi Takamaki-san, I was wondering if… if your offer to open up was still available?” I asked. A cheerful response from the blonde girl caused my lips to curl into a gentle smile.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.             

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 24: - Helping Out

Sitting in Kawakami-sensei’s class the day after I’d opened up to Amamiya about my family, after I’d finally allowed myself to cry, I felt surprisingly refreshed. As if that unbearable burden had finally lessened even just slightly, apparently it must have appeared on my face because Amamiya had a very Joker-esque satisfied smirk stretching across his lips when we met up this morning and even Morgana seemed to notice something had changed about me.

However, my relaxed nature couldn’t last long as I immediately spotted something that caused concern to bubble within me. Kawakami-sensei had just entered the classroom and her expression seemed drawn, tiredness pervaded her entire aura, not just her face. Her eyes were surrounded by circles that were very prominently dark today, she was slumped forward in posture which caused her to look utterly defeated. As soon as everyone was sat down, she heaved a heavy sigh and got on with the lesson.

“I was reading the essays you turned in the other day, and everyone’s writing is so sloppy!” Kawakami-sensei accused. Her eyes stern as she looked at all of us. “‘I could care less’ indicates that you still have some cares left to give! It’s ‘I couldn’t care less’!” Kawakami-sensei lectured. And she was right, that was definitely the proper way of using that saying. “I’ve seen this a lot these days, where people are using a phrase differently from its real meaning. It reminds me of something I’ve been hearing politicians saying: ‘My country, right or wrong’. They wouldn’t be saying it so stubbornly it they knew how it was originally used… alright, Takamaki-san. Can you tell me how its’ meaning has changed?” Kawakami-sensei continued on. Takamaki sat upright in shock.

“Huh!? Oh, uh, yeah! I mean-,” Takamaki blabbered. She was clearly panicking and likely hadn’t been paying any attention; she immediately leaned backwards as Morgana insist a rather startled Amamiya to help her out. “Huh? Um… what is she even talking about? I don’t know politics! Crap! Hey, Ren, Natsumi, can you give me a hint here?” Takamaki panickily pleaded. Her voice was low at least to give us some cover as Kawakami-sensei gazed intently at the blonde. “What’s the phrase originally mean to convey? ‘My country, right or wrong?” Takamaki asked.

“You unquestioningly support it,” Amamiya suggested. The first part could definitely have that context woven into it from the wordage and I’d unfortunately heard it from my uncle a few times when he was practicing his foul speeches; but I’d actually looked up the saying myself and found out the true meaning. Takamaki got the gist of what that meant before focusing on the real question: the original meaning.

“My country, right or wrong; if right to be kept right; if wrong to be set right,” I whispered. Takamaki inclined her head slightly to show she was listening to me. “The original meaning is actually meant to show taking responsibility for your country’s actions,” I clarified. Takamaki smiled and focused upon Kawakami-sensei, giving the answer. Kawakami-sensei congratulated her before explaining the full meaning and how it had become twisted.

“Wow, I was so not ready for that… you guys saved me! Thanks a bunch!” Takamaki whispered. I smiled slightly, a glad feeling radiating in my chest at having helped her out as Morgana congratulated us. At least my knowledge had come in useful for helping my friends, I continued to listen until I realised something.

‘I identified Takamaki-san’s emotion!’ I thought. My eyes going wide, I could guess most people’s emotions or identify them if the situation was close enough to one that I had been stuck in, but I’d never panicked like that within a class. ‘Maybe Amamiya is right. My heart might not be as lost as I thought it was.’ I realised. A happy smile curled upon my lips at the possibility, especially since it was one that I dearly wanted to be true.

Class ended after the students had been thoroughly lectured on the proper turn of phrases by Kawakami-sensei. However, as everyone drifted out of the class towards their dinnertime break, I spotted Kawakami slumped down at her desk with her head in her hands and a drained atmosphere surrounding her. I waved Takamaki and Amamiya on before moving towards the tired teacher, I was seriously starting to think Kawakami-sensei wasn’t well, why else would she seem so exhausted every day? Especially after a Sunday which should have been her day of rest.

“Kawakami-sensei,” I gently called. My homeroom teacher bolted upright and stared up at me with wide eyes as if she didn’t expect someone to still be within her class since we would now have a break. “Are you feeling well?” I asked. She obviously wasn’t okay, but whether it was something physically ailing her or something mental was the issue I couldn’t identify that.

“I’m fine Chiba-san, there’s nothing to concern yourself over,” Kawakami-sensei reassured. However, it sounded so false, she couldn’t possibly be fine with how she was physically looking and acting; it was getting more and more apparent with each passing day and eventually she wouldn’t be able to keep going, honestly it was rather concerning that she would just dismiss her health the way that she had.

“I do think it’s something to be concerned over Kawakami-sensei,” I refuted. She blinked her brown eyes in surprise at my words as I stared into her tired eyes. “You’re clearly not well. I know I have no right to know what’s going on in your private life, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying when one of my favourite teachers is degrading right in front of me,” I admitted. Surprise – oh look, another emotion – descended upon my teacher’s face, although I don’t know why she would be shocked by the words I’d spoken. “Please, just try and take care of yourself Kawakami-sensei,” I pleaded.

With those words spoken, I pushed myself away from the desk and proceeded to walk out of the room, I could only hope that Kawakami-sensei would start taking care of herself.

*Persona 5 Royal*

School ended and I stepped out of my class, only to hear a small curse reach my ears. Quickly identifying the cadence, I looked over and saw Sakamoto sat on the stare with him gripping his right leg and glaring down at it like it had offended him in some manner. I proceeded to walk over to the boy and knelt down in front of him.

“Are you okay?” I asked. It was clear he wasn’t, but making assumptions could annoy the blonde, especially as we were all on pins and needles awaiting Kamoshida’s Change of Heart. “Is your leg causing you pain?” I asked. With the way he was holding it, it was apparent that he was suffering because of it, but the question was a way to coax him into admitting what was troubling him as he sat slumped on the stairwell up to the second floor.

“Yeah,” Sakamoto admitted. He adjusted it and allowed a slight hiss of pain to escape from his clenched teeth, so I gently rested my hands on either side in order to avoid it being jostled anymore but not applying any pain myself. “I’ve been runnin’ with Ren-Ren to get back into shape and I think that along with the trip I had the other day hav-,” Sakamoto started to explain. But he adjusted slightly, forcing him to be cut off as he leaned forward suddenly which caused me to pull backwards to avoid being headbutted, but I got the gist of the situation.

“Did you ever see anyone about your leg?” I asked. I know it had been a year since he had endured it been broken by Kamoshida, but surely it shouldn’t have been still causing him this level of pain after such a time; I wasn’t a medical expert by any means of the word, but it was apparent that something was still wrong with his leg for him to keep suffering this way.

“Nah, I couldn’t affor-! Oi! Natsumi!” Sakamoto admitted. However, the moment he had said the first word, I’d seized his arm and pulled him to his feet, waiting for him to regain his balance before dragging the boy out of the building.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Hmm,” Takemi-sensei sounded. Her eyes were quizzical as she examined Sakamoto’s leg; the blonde was very nervously sat on the bed while I leant against the door, he’d already tried to escape several times, but I caught him each time and had forced him into the room, so Takemi-sensei had allowed me to remain during her initial examination. “And you say it’s been about a year since your leg was broken?” Takemi-sensei asked.

“Yeah, it has, why?” Sakamoto responded. He seemed rather nervous as he looked between me and the punk rock dressed doctor examining his leg; Takemi-sensei looked over at me and nodded her head towards the door, taking her hint I turned to the door and opened it. “Oi! Natsumi! Don’t go abandonin’ me here!” Sakamoto ordered. I didn’t listen and retreated through the door and sat at the chair across from the door, pulling Fall of the Goddess from my bag to continue reading.

I was eagerly chewing through the story, desperate almost to know if the protagonist and his friends would be capable of rescuing the Goddess of Love. However, I was jolted out of my reverie when a particularly loud voice came howling through the exam room’s door, I closed my book and stood up just as the door was roughly kicked open and Sakamoto stormed out. The door swung close before I could see much more of Takemi-sensei beyond her perplexed expression.

“Damnit Natsumi! Why’d you drag me here!?” Sakamoto demanded. He seemed extremely unhappy about what had just happened, but I couldn’t understand why he was feeling that way; all I’d done was bring him to a decent – if slightly sketchy – doctor to get his leg treated so he wouldn’t be suffering anymore pain because of it, especially if he was starting to run again after all this time.

“Because your leg needs to be properly treated Sakmoto-san,” I reminded. However, it seemed Sakamoto didn’t take comfort in those words and instead proceed to storm out the building with as much force as he could even if it was completely unnecessary for him to slam the door hard enough for it to feel like the building had been struck by a minor earthquake. Takemi-sensei had emerged and moved to stand at my side with a heavy sigh escaping her as she shook her head.

“He’s stubborn that one. I told him he needs to gradually increase his usage of his leg, but he refused to listen to me,” Takemi-sensei admitted. I pinched the bridge of my nose and heaved out an annoyance laden sigh at this knowledge, I knew why Sakamoto had responded in such a manner, but while I knew little about her, I did think Takemi-sensei fell under the group of adults that could be trusted, same as Kawakami-sensei and Sōjirō.

“That sounds like Sakamoto-san. He’s got little reason to trust most adults,” I stated. A small hum came from the punk rock woman beside me, I turned to look at her and found the woman had turned her attention to her desk where she had set the clipboard before turning around to look at me with a twinkle of something within her eyes and a mysterious curl to her lips.

“I figured from what he grumpily told me. But someone he knows might have better luck than me,” Takemi-sensei suggested. Nodding my head in understanding I bid the woman goodbye and stepped out onto the street, but Sakamoto was nowhere to be seen which meant he had taken off somewhere and it would be impossible to follow him. Deciding I needed to relax, I proceeded to head for the best place to do that as I thought about Sakamoto’s situation, LeBlanc.

“Good evening, Boss,” I greeted. I got quite the surprise though when I saw Amamiya stood behind the counter with a green apron over his long sleeved shirt, the ravenette proceeded to raise his hand to wave at me. “Has Boss roped you into helping him out Amamiya-san?” I asked. It did seem to be the only possibility given how brusque Sōjirō had been about me getting to know Amamiya.

“No Chiba-san, I wanted to help,” Amamiya admitted. A small huff escaped from the older man and I smiled slightly at the man while passing over my order. “What brings you by?” Amamiya asked. Sōjirō moved to start getting everything sorted as I slid into a seat at the counter, I rarely sat here but it wasn’t uncomfortable which was quite a surprise; I could probably read quite comfortably, but that was for another time.

“Just forced Sakamoto-san to see the doctor about his leg, given that tumble he took the other day. I saw him holding it after school today so I figured he should do something about it,” I answered. Amamiya’s eyes showed his concern as his eyebrows furrowed together, likely recalling the tumble I’d mentioned the other day. “Unfortunately, her suggestion wasn’t appreciated and he got mad at me as well,” I admitted.

“You were only trying to help. I’m sure he understands that, but we know how he feels about adults, even adults he barely knows,” Amamiya reassured. I nodded my head, still spinning Takemi-sensei’s words around in my head as I tried to figure out how I was supposed to help Sakamoto without stirring up his anger once again. Sōjirō saved me from falling down that rabbit hole by bringing over my food and coffee and I decided to focus on that instead, savoury the aromas that came off both items and perfectly complimented each other.

“Welco- You!” Sōjirō spoke. However, his sudden change of tone from his normal welcoming one to one of shock that seemed to be slightly filled with horror caused me to freeze in lifting my cup, Amamiya looked over with furrowed eyebrows; at the doorway was a pretty non-descript man, he was probably as old as Sōjirō was, with dark hair and eyes and dressed in all dark clothing – someone was looking to get hit by a car – his dark grey jumper and black pants looked faded and worn slightly, he also wore a black hat.

“Hello there! It’s been quite a while, Sakura-san!” The man greeted. It seemed like they knew each other and while the man sounded rather cheerful, the look on Sōjirō’s face was one of badly constrained rage; I loosened my grip on the cup and set it back down as I shot Amamiya a worried look who had adjusted his stance ever so slightly. “I heard you opened up a shop so here I am! It wouldn’t have hurt to mention it to me though. Huh, you’ve got a real nice location here. Right by the station and everything,” The man commented.

“Your order?” Sōjirō asked. But his tone was icy, I’d never heard him speak in such a manner and it caused me to go completely rigid, Sōjirō could be gruff and abrupt at times but I’d never once associated the word cold with him; he’d always had a current of warmth and care lying underneath all his words… just who was this man?

“No small talk? That’s cold,” The man commented. He didn’t seem fazed at all by the cold words unlike me and Amamiya, who was giving Sōjirō a wide-eyed look. “Oh, but this smell… sure brings back memories! You’re still making that curry, huh? I guess you haven’t got over her yet,” The man commented. Whatever this man knew about Sōjirō’s past, he had no right to be bringing it up, especially when there were people who did not know that past present for that conversation.

“Excuse me sir? But if you’re not going to order anything, could you please leave? It’s quite obvious Sakura-san doesn’t feel comfortable with you here. And quite frankly, you’re ruining the atmosphere… and my curry, if I’m honest,” I calmly spoke. The man looked at me, I had a smile on my face and open hands, which belied the tension in my shoulders and arms, my feet were firmly planted on the floor just in case this went badly.

“I just stopped by to say hi today… but I’ll be back again soon! Bye,” The man spoke. He turned and walked out the building, I proceeded to relax my entire body and turned back to my food, thankfully the man’s appearance hadn’t caused it to go any colder than it being ready to eat; I took a bite of the curry and looked at Sōjirō who had relaxed but at the same time seemed to be shouldering some kind of weight that he refused to speak of.

“Ugh… I don’t know where he caught wind of this place. Thanks for speaking up when you did Natsumi-chan,” Sōjirō admitted. He gave me a smile, but it was tight and small, indicating that this situation was still bothering him; I gave him a nod of my head and felt worried, whoever that man was, it was clear that Sōjirō wanted nothing to do with him and that immediately landed him on my list of people to be highly wary of.

“That guy seemed suspicious,” Amamiya stated. I smiled at those words; Amamiya could have chosen any kind of words to speak up with – like inquiring about some of the questions the man’s appearance would have brought up – but instead he chose a simple statement. His grey eyes were locked on the door as if awaiting the return of the man, I don’t know what he intended to do from that look, but it was clear he hadn’t been happy about the intrusion from the set of his jaw and his straight posture.

“Heh, I guess you have an eye for some things after all,” Sōjirō complimented. I gave the barista an unimpressed look as Amamiya looked a little sheepish, but at least he had relaxed now. “Anyway, if you have time for questions, you have time to be learning about bean types. You’re not going to be any use to me if you can’t pick up on the ABCs sometime soon,” Sōjirō insisted. How swiftly Sōjirō moved to a different topic should have raised an eyebrow, but I was just glad the man was back to normal. “Besides, ladies love a guy who knows his coffee. This isn’t such a bad deal for you,” Sōjirō added on.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind the ladies loving me,” Amamiya commented. I think some coffee went down the wrong pipe at those words; I practically dropped the cup and started to cough into my arm as I turned away from the counter to protect the curry. “Chiba-san!” Amamiya exclaimed. I felt a hand soon appear on my back and start to rub in soothing circle until my fit finally subsided. “Are you okay?” Amamiya asked. His words filled with a deeply worried tone as his hand stopped moving but remained on my back.

“Yes, I’m fine Amamiya-san,” I answered. My voice sounding rather sore from the coughing, so I took a quick sip of my coffee to try and ease it. “And as a lady, I believe this is where I walk away from you two bachelors,” I dryly commented. I looked down and realised that there was still a sizeable chunk of curry still left on the plate. “Right after I finish my curry,” I amended. I do not like to waste food.

A chuckle came from the two men as I started to dig in, but at least the tension from when that stranger showed up had left.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 25: - Fall of the King of Lust

It was the night before the board meeting and I had just finished up a routine with my naginata to try and calm the ever present nerves that were rattling my body. A chirp came from my phone so I quickly exited the bathroom, having cleaned myself, and opened it up; I already knew what this would be about, there was nothing else that could be discussed through the chat, in fact nothing else had been discussed. We might have avoided talking about it in public, but the nerves were clearly still hounding us in private where we could mention it safely.

Ann: Tomorrow’s the board meeting, right?

Natsumi: Yes, and still no news about Kamoshida’s condition

Ryūji: We’re gonna get expelled if Kamoshida doesn’t have a Change of Heart by then.

Ren: We did all we could.

Natsumi: Amamiya-san is right. We did everything in our power to change things.

Natsumi: The rest, as much as I hate typing this, is up to fate.

Ann: Either way, I’m not going to lose hope.

Ryūji: You guys are right.

Ryūji: It’s too early to be giving up now.

Ryūji: Guess we’re gonna find out one way or the other tomorrow.

Ryūji: We just gotta brace ourselves for all the possibilities.

“I’m not really the kind of person who does this but… Philemon, if you can hear me, I really hope you can ensure the Change of Heart. Amamiya-san and Sakamoto-san don’t deserve to be expelled for doing the right thing, Takamaki-san doesn’t deserve to keep living in fear of being hounded by a demented beast, Mishima-san and the other volleyball team members don’t to keep suffering violence for another man’s self-gratification… and Suzui-san doesn’t deserve to have her tormentor get away with the heinous crime he committed,” I spoke into the night.

For just a moment, I could have sworn that my butterfly hairclip buzzed with a warmth that soothed my mind as I took it off and closed my eyes to sleep.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The day of judgment had come and I was walking towards school with Amamiya, I’d been too nervous to read or even talk like we normally did and from the way Amamiya had been fidgeting constantly he must have felt the same. Morgana couldn’t help with alleviating our issues either since only Kamoshida’s Change of Heart could do that for us, we needed that beast to show up and do something about this situation already.

“Mondays are such a drag,” A student complained. It was someone in front of us, so I focused on this likely pointless conversation just to pull my head out of the stormy thoughts that kept brewing in my head. “Why couldn’t they give us today off, too? We have the rest of the week off starting tomorrow,” The same student pointed out. I felt like rolling my eyes at such pointless complaining, there were far more serious incidents – the mental/psychotic breakdowns were still happening at random intervals – going on than getting a day off or not.

“Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Speaking of, what’s up with that calling card? The one sent to Kamoshida-sensei. Didn’t it say something about stealing his distorted desires or something weird like that?” The student beside him commented. Huh, perhaps this conversation wouldn’t be so pointless after all since it had turned to focusing on Kamoshida.

“Yeah, something like that…,” The sleepy student responded. He also tried to stifle a yawn but failed. “I’m sure it’s just a prank. No one’s taking it seriously,” The student added on. Whether or not others took it seriously, me and the rest of the Persona wielders most certainly were, I glanced at Amamiya to see that he had gone a little tense, but other than that nothing had become obvious about how he was feeling regarding all this.

However, when we got into class no one could even sit down, as the moment bags were set by chairs, Kawakami-sensei had us rushed out to the gymnasium due to some morning assembly that had been suddenly announced. I furrowed my eyebrows at this but went down with the rest of the class and when we all gathered, I stood next to Takamaki who seemed slightly nervous. I couldn’t spot Amamiya, but he had probably gone to find Sakamoto… I wonder how Morgana was taking suddenly being ditched by this whole turn of events.

“What’s with the sudden morning assembly?” A female voice wondered. Another female student believed it was about Suzui – calling her ‘that girl that jumped’ – but the scoff she emitted before speaking and the tone she used show some pretty heavy derision. “They don’t have to tell us not to commit suicide,” The student commented. Pathetic, these people didn’t understand the whole situation and I bet they were the ones filming that whole scenario on that day.

“There was that weird calling card too, so I guess the teachers are freaking out,” The same student to had insulted Suzui claimed. The principal probably was, especially what with Kamoshida suddenly suspending himself and not making sense; I could feel Takamaki’s tension from where I stood beside her, I knocked the back of my hand against her own which she returned, I spotted Amamiya and Sakamoto stood together and both of them look concerned even as Amamiya gave me a consoling smile and reassuring nod. We had to believe it worked.

“Let’s begin this school wide morning assembly,” Kobayakawa commented. I lifted my head to look at the man who was guilty by association of the crimes Kamoshida committed. “As you all know, a tragic event took place the other day. Thankfully, we have been informed that she has pulled through, but it will take time until she recovers. Everyone here has a bright future ahead. I implore that you re-think the importance of life and-,” Kobayakawa patronised. He didn’t give a damn about Suzui and I was disgusted listening to him; thankfully the opening of a door shut him up. “Kamoshida-san, what’s the-!” Kobayakawa exclaimed. At his words, I turned to face the door and saw the man standing there, head down and shoulders bowed.

“I… have been reborn,” Kamoshida claimed. A hand tightly gripped my jacket at those words and I reached my right hand over to clasp over Takamaki’s hand. “That is why, I will confess everything to you all,” Kamoshida added on. Silence hung over the students as the depraved man walked towards the stage and up the steps before facing us all as the students started to quietly chatter many confused questions. “I have repeatedly done thing that were… unbecoming of a teacher. Verbally abusing students… physically abusing my team and… sexually harassing female students. I am the reason why Suzui Shiho-san tried to kill herself!” Kamoshida confessed.

He hadn’t needed the microphone; the gymnasium had been quiet enough for his words to reach everyone. The man dropped to his knees as he finished his words and the chattering immediately began again, this time of shocked disbelief at the confession that was being made by the man so many had applauded, they were horrified and reviled by the depths of his sins. I glanced at Takamaki and saw her desperately fighting back a smile even as her eyes gleamed with joy. A quick look over showed that Amamiya was having to physically restrain Sakamoto from showing his happiness.

“I thought of this school as my own castle… there were even students that I sentenced to expulsion, simply because I didn’t like them… I will, of course, rescind those. I am truly sorry for putting innocent youths through such horrible acts… I am an arrogant, shallow… and shameful person. No, I’m worse than that. I will take responsibility and kill myself for it!” Kamoshida confessed. My eyes flew wide at his words, I hadn’t expected the change of heart to give him such suicidal thoughts… but did we have the right to stop this? The students started to get agitated as teachers and the principal tried to calm down the situation; at that moment the grip on my jacket vanished.

“Don’t run, you bastard!” Takamaki yelled. Her voice silenced everyone, teacher and student alike, as they all focused their gaze on the girl who Kamoshida had hounded more than any other. “Shiho’s still alive, even after all the things that made her want to die! You have no right to run from this!” Takamaki lectured. Kamoshida had dropped into a dogeza with his head pressed hard into the wood but at Takamaki’s words, he lifted his head.

“You’re right… you’re absolutely right… I should be punished under the law and atone for my crimes. I did horrible things to Takamaki-san as well. In return for giving Suzui-san a position on the team… I… I tried to force her into having relations,” Kamoshida confessed. By this point, all were disgusted by the actions that Kamoshida had taken and I even heard a few express sympathy for Suzui and Takamaki. “As of today, I will resign from my position as an instructor and turn myself in. someone, please call the police!” Kamoshida added on. I fought down the smirk that threatened to rise to my lips as the teachers wove through the students and told them to return to us classes. The conversation turned into talk about the calling card as everyone was ushered out, leaving only me and my comrades behind.

“His heart really did change,” Takamaki commented. Her body seemed lighter now, as if the unbearable weight of Suzui’s condition and near fate had been lifted from her shoulders even only marginally; she was staring at the stage where it had all happened whilst the rest of us were gathered behind her as if watching over the girl in this silent moment.

“Seems like it,” Sakamoto commented. Kamoshida had certainly changed, to have confessed all of his sins and pulled back the expulsion; his arrogant and snobbish attitude replaced by horror and regret… it had been quite satisfying to see our hard work pay off. “But was this really for the best?” Sakamoto asked. I glanced over at the blonde who had a complicated look upon his face, it was a surprise to hear him questioning our actions when he’d been one of the keenest to see the goal fulfilled.

“We had two choices Sakamoto-san: sit back and do nothing or take a chance and try to make things better. I’d much rather take action over allowing a crime to go unpunished,” Amamiya admitted. His past, the thing he had done to earn his criminal record, he had only done the right thing and been punished for it but now that was not the case. “We did the right thing,” Amamiya reaffirmed. His voice unwavering in its’ conviction.

“Yeah… it’s gotta be. But thing’re happenin’ way too fast,” Sakamoto commented. I couldn’t understand what he meant by that as we had to suffer through nearly two weeks of anxiety over whether or not Kamoshida would change his tune; footsteps sounded behind us and I turned around. “Huh? What the?” Sakamoto wondered. Behind us were Mishima and two girls from my class.

“Takamaki-san… I’m sorry,” Mishima apologised. He also proceeded to bow to the girl who hadn’t turned around until that moment, confusion present upon her face. “We all knew… but we pretended we didn’t,” Mishima confessed. With what Kamoshida did to him and the rest of the volleyball team, I found that I couldn’t bring myself to be even slightly annoyed at Mishima for what he had done; to have faced such unbearable threats and punishment, he didn’t deserve it.

“Takamaki-san, I had you all wrong… I’m sorry that I spread rumours about you!” The taller of the female students apologised. These people on the other hand, they absolutely needed to apologise, for they had made Takamaki’s situation worse in my mind and only continued to add more suffering to her already deep pain.

“I didn’t know at all,” The black haired student admitted. Of course they hadn’t known, yet they thought they had the right to spread such baseless rumours. “Kamoshida was forcefully pushing himself on you… it must’ve been so hard for you!” The student added on. The taller one claimed ‘a ton’ of people probably wanted to apologise to her, before adding on another apology; surprisingly Takamaki softly shook her head.

“No, it’s okay. The same goes for me too… besides, that’s all in the past now,” Takamaki affirmed. A teacher marched over and ordered us to return to our class at once, frowning slightly at his rude tone I watched as the two girls proceeded to walk away from us; Mishima stood up and turned to face Amamiya with his gaze still focused on the ground.

“I can’t apologise enough for what I did to you. I swear I’ll make it up to you someday,” Mishima insisted. He didn’t wait for Amamiya to give a response and instead turned around to walk away from him; hopefully now Mishima and the rest of the volleyball team would be able to move forward from their horrific suffering.

“Looks like Kamoshida isn’t the only one who had a Change of Heart,” Sakamoto acknowledged. He then turned his gaze to Takamaki who was looking down at the ground. “Man, I’m glad for you. Looks like those weird rumours are gonna go away,” Sakamoto acknowledged. Takamaki shrugged her shoulders as her head lifted up from its’ tilted down position.

“My thing doesn’t really matter. We made Kamoshida apologise about Shiho… that’s more than enough for me,” Takamaki admitted. She was really admirable, to take no self-gratification in seeing her own troubles overturned and be more concerned with how the pains her dearest friend endured were now no more was quite something.

“In which case, perhaps you should tell her about this when you next visit,” I suggested. Takamaki agreed to my words, a soft smile coming onto her lips at the thought of relaying such good news to Suzui.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“I totally freaked out… he really did have a Change of Heart,” Sakamoto commented. It was after school and we were now on the roof of the school having decided to meet up, the Olympic medal sat beside Sakamoto on a table while the rest of us were situated on chairs except for Morgana who stood on a table; Takamaki wasn’t present, but she had been delayed slightly. “And we were lucky his mind didn’t get messed up either! This was an A-plus job!” Sakamoto celebrated.

“Does this mean that they won’t have a mental shutdown even if their Palace disappears?” Morgana wondered. More of that wondrously accurate yet strangely holey knowledge of our cat-shaped thief. “It must be like you said Natsumi, damaging the Shadow triggers a mental shutdown, so we need to persuade it to go back to its’ real self. Our targets won’t undergo a cognitive collapse if we do that,” Morgana theorised.

“Fighting that mutated form doesn’t seem to do any lasting damage, so we can hurt them then but in its’ normal form… I’d suggest avoiding it at all costs,” I admitted. Sakamoto claimed we could get them to confess with ‘no bad stuff’ which I took to mean the mental shutdown that Morgana had been concerned about, and then claimed it worked for him. Sadly, Sakamoto was being rather vocal about this discussion which we should be keeping quiet.

“Do you have to be so loud?” Takamaki asked. The girl walked over with an annoyed look upon her face, Sakamoto brushed her concerns away and proceeded to ask the more important question, how Suzui was doing. “She’s regained consciousness!” Takamaki exclaimed. A big smile stretching across her face which made her already obviously pretty looks even more brilliant.

“For real!/Seriously!/That’s great!/Wonderful!” Sakamoto, Amamiya, Morgana, and my own words overlapping with each other. If possible, Takamaki’s smile seemed to get even wider but then a small hiccup escaped from her and she then crumpled down into a ball; instantly all of us were on our knees surrounding the blonde as Morgana wriggled his way forward to gently press his paws against the blonde who looked ready to cry.

“It was only for a little bit, but I got to talk to her! I was able to tell her that Kamoshida admitted to what he did!” Takamaki exclaimed. She pulled her head up and Morgana rubbed his head against her hands, causing a small, choked sob-laugh to escaped Takamaki as she stroked him briefly before lifting the cat into her arms and standing up; we all pulled back to give the girl space as she set Morgana on the table but continued to stroke him. “Shiho, she… she told me she was sorry… looks like she found out that I was flirting with Kamoshida for her sake… and here I was, wanting to apologise to her,” Takamaki admitted.

“Kamoshida’s at fault for all this,” Morgana reminded. Takamaki agreed with a simple ‘I know’ as she dried her watering eyes and lifted up her head, a sad expression coming to rest upon her face as Takamaki revealed Suzui’s mum was considering a transfer after she recovered and Suzui agreed with the decision to avoid the rumours and labels that would come if she returned to this school.

“I can’t fault either of them. The physical trauma will be easy to overcome with good and consistent physiotherapy… but the mental and emotional trauma. Suzui-san may never recover, but I’m sure distance would help her more than coming back to this place where memories would assault her constantly,” I stated. Takamaki nodded her head, her lips pressed into a thin line as her eyes stared ahead into nothingness.

“She’s alive. You can see her anytime,” Sakamoto pointed out. Takamaki nodded her head in agreement to this as well and went on to claim that she needed to change as well. “That aside, I was surprised you could hold yourself back against Kamoshida’s Shadow,” Sakamoto complimented. It was likely that the boy was thinking that he wouldn’t have been able to hold himself back from doing such a thing.

“Yeah… having seen it now, I realise I really wanted him to just apologise for what he did. But at the time, I don’t know… I don’t think I could have held myself back… especially after seeing what he really thought of Shiho,” Takamaki admitted. She then turned to face me and took a hold of both my hands within hers. “I’m glad you were there Natsumi, if you hadn’t told me of what would happen to the Shadow, I don’t know what I would have done without you talking me down first. And you were right, I don’t want Kamoshida’s blood on my hands. This revenge, tearing him down from his pedestal and having him grovel for the rest of his life… it’s much better than a simple death,” Takamaki admitted. A soft smile coming onto her face.

“Speaking of that incident,” Amamiya spoke up. We turned to look at the boy and I saw him levelling a pretty heavy gaze at me which seemed to be made worse by the way he had crossed his legs and was supporting his chin with one hand… there was something strangely intimidating about that posture. “Chiba-san, don’t ever do something like that again. I swear a few years got shaved off my life when I saw you charge in front of Carmen’s fireballs!” Amamiya lambasted. Sakamoto, Morgana and Takamaki added on their own agreements, looking wilted and drawn as they must have been recalling how they felt when I darted forward.

“I won’t apologise for my actions,” I stated. All four of them looked at me as I removed my hands from Takamaki’s grip and held them up in the air. “But I only realised then you guys didn’t know the depths of danger associated with the death of a person’s Shadow. I can promise though, it won’t happen again,” I responded. All of them seemed to soften as a smile of different varieties spread across their faces.

“Anyway, now that’s all settled… there was one more thing I was wonderin’ about that castle,” Sakamoto spoke up. We focused on the boy as he leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “Why was Kamoshida the only one who had that Metaverse thing?” Sakamoto wondered. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but he seemed to be forgetting my prior experience with Palaces.

“He isn’t,” I answered. Everyone’s heads – except Morgana’s – practically snapped over to me so fast they could have given a person whiplash. “Remember, I’ve already collapsed one Palace, so others have the potential for them. As for Palaces in general, any negative emotion can cause one to manifest but they have to be pretty strong emotions in the first place, something which quite literally warps how that person views the world and those around them. Anyone could have one,” I explained. Takamaki repeated the anyone part of my statement.

“Wanna check it out?” Morgana asked. I think that was asking a bit too much, these three were likely going to be suffering a bit of shock like I had been after collapsing the Opera House but perhaps like myself, they would come around to continuing with this; I certainly know I wasn’t going to stop, after witnessing Kamoshida’s distortion, a distortion that had endangered someone’s life, I was all too willing to pursue anyone with such a distortion in their hearts.

“N-Not right now. We better lay low for a while. People are still gonna be talkin’ about Kamoshida,” Sakamoto protested. He certainly sounded unsure before relaxing slightly back into his chair. “Then again, it’s totally impossible for someone to find out what we did at his Palace,” Sakamoto claimed. However, a concerned look immediately descended upon her face.

“Yeah, about that… weird rumours about you two guys are already going around. Stuff like, you got together and threatened Kamoshida with something close to physical violence,” Takamaki revealed. A groan and a thud came, and I saw Amamiya had his head resting on the table’s surface as Sakamoto immediately exclaimed about such rumours already spinning around. “Don’t ask me why Natsumi’s been ignored,” Takamaki added on. I shrugged my shoulders in confusion as well. “People aren’t going to easily believe that phantom thieves really exist. The calling card’s being treated like it was a prank by someone who knew what Kamoshida was doing,” Takamaki clarified. That was no surprise in my opinion.

“Makes sense. We’re the ones who did it and I still don’t completely believe it myself,” Sakamoto agreed. Takamaki insisted that we wait for things to settle down. “Anyways, let’s check how much this medal can be sold for. It’d be better if we pawned it off asap. I bet that’s what you did with the other Treasure, right Natsumi?” Sakamoto asked. He didn’t know, but my muscles tightened in response as my hands curled into fists, my expression no doubt darkening quite considerably.

“I destroyed it actually. I never wanted to see that thing again or allow it to fall into another person’s hands,” I stated. My words dripping with venom as I glared off to the side, thinking of that recording still caused me to tense up, a warmth pressed against my tightly curled right hand and I looked over to see Amamiya giving me a worried look, he might know of my uncle, but I hadn’t told him about Ouvrard… it was still a sensitive subject for me to think about.

“Oh... okay then,” Sakamoto commented. I looked at the boy and found he seemed slightly scared as Morgana gazed at me with worry, a hand appeared on the back of my neck and softly stroked across the base and I saw Takamaki giving me a comforting smile. “Ooh, got a hit!” Sakamoto exclaimed. All eyes focused on him as the boy proceeded to gape in surprise. “Wait, thirty thousand yen!? That’s all a gold medal’s worth!?” Sakamoto exclaimed. It wasn’t much, but then again gold medals weren’t exactly a rare commodity.

“Remember that time in middle school? I lent you some money,” Takamaki casually commented. This led to a brief segue way as the two of them debated the money being lent while me and Amamiya silently watched and I think Amamiya found the whole thing entertaining from the gleam in his eyes; Morgana let out a small laugh as he looked at all of us.

“I agree on laying low and keeping an eye on the situation. However, you dragged me into this. It would be nonsense not to celebrate a successful mission,” Morgana suggested. It did make sense actually, we needed to do something to relax after everything we went through with Kamoshida and the stress of waiting for his Change of Heart. Ouvrard had been personal and less tense, plus the addition of everything Igor telling me had weighed heavily on my mind so I couldn’t celebrate, but now…

“We had agreed to do something after all this blew over, why not use the money for that?” I suggested. Sakamoto agreed with my suggestion and even called it ‘dirty money’ which wasn’t an entirely wrong description of what the cash would basically be like. Morgana seemed pleased by this if the grin upon his face was anything to go by.

“Discussions among phantom thieves are to take place over luxurious food. How about it?” Morgana suggested. Takamaki briefly protested before agreeing and even revealed that she actually had a place in mind for us to go, a place that her and Suzui had been wanting to go for a while; Sakamoto claimed his owing money took away his right to complain so turned to the two of us.

“Fine by me. I don’t want that money lying around, we’ll either get into trouble or I’ll end up feeling horrible. Using it on a fantastic meal seems like a good idea,” Amamiya agreed. I nodded my head, finding nothing wrong with the whole thing, Morgana agreed to abide by Takamaki’s decision, so she agreed to check the prices.

“When should we go? Wanna do it soon, like tomorrow?” Sakamoto suggested. His tone had an infectious note of excitement laced within those words; Takamaki suggested the last day of the holidays to give us some energy for the school life afterwards, which was a fine point since our exams would be coming up as well. “Then… the fifth, on Children’s Day,” Sakamoto suggested. There were no arguments made.

“So, who’s going to sell this?” Takamaki wondered. Morgana nominated Amamiya to do it. “Okay, I’ll leave that to you guys,” Takamaki agreed. I wonder who could possibly be willing to buy a gold medal – a legitimate one at that – and not ask any questions.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Returning to my house, I felt slightly better than I had for the past few days, which was no doubt down to the fact that I’d finally managed to clear Kamoshida’s Palace and stop his cruelty from being inflicted on anyone ever again. I set about preparing my tea when the chirping of my phone distracted me, I picked it up and immediately went to the Chat. I really hope those four continued to stick around after all this.

Ann: Is that gold medal real? When did it get inside his Palace?

Ren: Morgana says it’s a fake produced by his cognition.

Ren: Kamoshida still has the real one.

Natsumi: In spite of that, to any ordinary person, it’s the real deal.

Ryūji: That’s a relief. For a second, I almost panicked.

Ryūji: But how does Kamoshida still have the real one?

Ann: Who cares? What matters is that we changed his heart.

Ann: And anyway, if we had taken the real thing, that’d be stealing.

Natsumi: Besides, with his heart changed, I’m sure that medal will bring nothing but shame to him from now on.

Ryūji: You let go of stuff pretty easy, huh Ann? Wanna forget about my debt?

Ann: That’s different. Five hundred yen is a lot of money for a middle schooler, you know.

Ann: Do you even still have that dolphin anyway?

Ren: Dolphin?

Natsumi: What are you two talking about?

Ryūji: Stop digging that up!

Ann: Back in middle school, we went on a field trip to the aquarium.

Ann: But Ryūji had to spend all his money on a souvenir, so I lent him some for the train fare.

Ryūji: I said I was sorry… that was for my mum.

Natsumi: That’s actually rather sweet. To the both of you

Ann: Hahaha!

Ann: Well, I guess I can call it even after all we’ve been through.

Ryūji: Thank you.

Ryūji: Anyway, we don’t gotta worry about selling that medal off if it’s just a convincing copy.

Ryūji: End of story!

Giggles erupted from me as I set down the phone and returned my attention to the food I was making. This little meal we were planning was probably going to be entertaining at the least.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 26: - The Phantoms

“Mmmm… so good…,” Sakamoto moaned. A look of joy upon his face as he dug into the food, it was the promised Children’s Day and the five of us were currently sat within what seemed to be an extremely fancy restaurant filled with people dressed in expensive clothing. We were cushioned within plush leather seats and sat in front of a table that was stuffed with food and peppered with drinks.

Sakamoto was dressed in a purple hoodie with red lining and the number '777' on the back, a black shirt with a yellow frowning face, dark pants and yellow sneakers. Takamaki was wearing a lavender blue button-up shirt under a red and white varsity jacket with an S symbol near the front bottom on one side. She has a white skirt, black leggings and red Converse shoes. She also wore big red round earrings. Amamiya was dressed as I had seen him on the day of my family’s death while I wore a baby blue long sleeved blouse, a knee length emerald skirt with a pair of green slip on canvas shoes.

“No wonder Ann-dono chose this place!” Morgana chimed. The cat was sat between me and Amamiya with the two of us occasionally slipping him pieces of the food; speaking of the food, it was rather exquisite and considering who my uncle was and what he had access to, it was quite a surprise that I’d found a place that sold such lovely food, true I didn’t have access to all those places but I’d been to a small amount so I knew the quality of the ingredients and skill of the chefs.

“Of course, it’s good. This is a famous hotel after all,” Takamaki commented. That was quite true, the Wilton Hotel was rather well known to those of us in Tokyo – it was why I had stressed the question of being sure to Takamaki when we got here – it was lavishly decorated but in a way that was tasteful and rather subdued. “This dinner buffet is famous even among part timers,” Takamaki revealed.

“Part timers?” Amamiya asked. He lifted his hand up from having fed Morgana a slice of fish and he was shooting Takamaki a curious look; it was no surprise that he wouldn’t be aware of Takamaki’s job given how new he was, plus the fact that all the time we spent together was focused primarily on beating Kamoshida and ensuring that he confessed.

“Huh? Didn’t I tell you?” Takamaki asked. She seemed genuinely confused, Amamiya simply shook his head to confirm he had been told nothing. “I do modelling work for magazines. Only once in a while, though,” Takamaki explained. The innocent perusal that Amamiya gave Takamaki was followed by a nod, likely a sign that he agreed with the image of her being a model. “Oh yeah, I heard that the police are coming to interview some people at school,” Takamaki revealed.

“Good. It’s about time something was done,” I stated. Over the two days of waiting, numerous news stations had run the Kamoshida arrest story with several interviews from Shūjin students, faces hidden but the uniform made it obvious, as a result my uncle had been pestering me about it; luckily, I kept my cool and simply told him I knew nothing about the incident.

“Yeah but… mine and Ren’s names are gonna come up for sure. People’re spreadin’ all sorts of rumours about us and Kamoshida. Maybe even Ann or you’ll come up,” Sakamoto pointed out. True, but it wasn’t like there was any evidence of the actions we’d taken so the police would have nothing more than speculation. “But we got ‘em pumped up! I keep hearin’ stuff like, ‘The Phantom Thieves really stole his heart!’. I think most people don’t believe it, but some of ‘em actually seem grateful. Look at this,” Sakamoto insisted. He stopped eating and pulled out his phone causing all of us to lean over.

“The Phantom Aficionado Website?” Amamiya asked. His tone was inquisitive and even I was curious about the thing Sakamoto was showing off, especially when there seemed to be several comments posted, all of which were expression relief, gratitude or congrats towards us for our actions in stopping Kamoshida; several of which Takamaki read aloud. “Who created this?” Amamiya asked.

“Don’t know. It’s pretty cool, huh?” Sakamoto asked. Takamaki seemed surprised, in a good manner, at seeing all these thanks which she expressed as feeling strange as she had just been desperate to remove her own issues; honestly, seeing these people so relieved by the removal of that beast caused my heart to ache in an odd manner. “Yeah,” Sakamoto agreed. Amamiya was smiling softly at the comments we could see. “Hey… what do we do now?” Sakamoto asked.

“What do you mean Ryūji?” Amamiya asked. Before we could get a response, Takamaki shot to her feet and revealed this place had a time limit which caused Sakamoto to jump up – question forgotten – as they both took off, leaving us to watch the rest of our stuff and promising to pick something up for us. When they returned, I couldn’t help but stare at Sakamoto’s dish which was filled exclusively with meat and Takamaki’s plate was no better since all it contained was desserts. Sakamoto taunted her about the calories that she was currently stuffing away in the form of cake only for Takamaki to snap about never eating this cake again… which was probably true since it costed all of us the thirty-thousand Yen that Amamiya had got for the medal.

“Um… I recall a promise to get us some food. Where is it?” I asked. Sakamoto proceeded to push a single plate piled with stuff as he admitted to just grabbing a hold of some beans. “Beans?” I questioned. There was fish, sweets, meat, rice, and all other sorts of food… and he simply picked up BEANS!?! What the heck kind of thinking was that?!

“There were some pretty bizarre things there too, so we got you a variety of those,” Takamaki added on. That didn’t make me feel any better in my silent opinion. “Fried bananas, preserved eggs and some kind of beans,” Takamaki listed. What…? Did me, Amamiya and Morgana really look like people who’d eat that kind of weirdness? Even Morgana seemed stumped by the fact that more beans were picked up. “We put so much on the plate that it got all mixed up, but it should probably still taste good,” Takamaki reassured. But it didn’t work.

“Right,” I stated. I grabbed a hold of my purse and swung it over my shoulder before rising to my feet. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to get some proper food,” I decided. No way was I eating a mountain of beans and some weird as heck foods that had been randomly picked up; I’d at least want to eat all the decent food this place had to offer, it was highly unlikely that I’d ever come back here again.

“Hang on, I’ll come with,” Amamiya insisted. I looked over and saw him slipping Morgana into his bag which got thrown over his shoulder; the other two were so absorbed in their meals that they probably didn’t hear Morgana ordering them to look after our stuff, of course we couldn’t miss the order for fish to be picked up first by the cat.

“Have you heard, my dear?” A snobbish voice asked. We were at the fish table when that voice came, I looked up and saw a woman dressed in fine clothing talking to another woman. “The news about that Kamoshida fellow was absolutely dreadful,” The woman commented. Yet, her tone of voice spoke as if she didn’t really care about it at all.

“Ah, right. That teacher at Shūjin Academy, caught doing such indecent acts. Shameful, really,” The woman beside her spoke. Like the woman who had first talked, she was dressed finely but her tone made it seem as if she was speaking about dirt instead of something quite serious. “And they still haven’t managed to solve those horrible psychotic breakdown episodes, have they?” The haughty woman added on. “I wish they wouldn’t let themselves be distracted by such a tawdry scandal,” The woman insisted.

‘TAWDRY!’ I mental screamed. My posture growing incredibly rigged at that word, peoples’ lives had been ruined by that man and here someone was with not even the decency to talk about it as it was, a horrific nightmare; the psychotic breakdowns might be a terrible thing that wrecked more peoples’ lives, but if it was some kind of illness there wasn’t much anyone could do, but Kamoshida could be stopped… to be dismissed as something cheap, well that practically spat on the suffering of the children who he had victimised.

“Perhaps it’s a sign of how peaceful this country is. I honestly pity those poor Shūjin students though,” The arrogant woman stated. Oh, how false that sounded, Morgana softly commented about how Kamoshida was the talk of the town but this whole thing had disgusted me; the haughty woman suddenly seemed to notice us, so Morgana insisted we quickly grab some food. “Tsk, how did children like that end up in here? I certainly hope they didn’t bring friends. I prefer my meals to remain hooligan-free, thank you very much,” The arrogant woman stated.

“And we prefer our meals to remain snob-free, so kindly stay away from me and my friend here. We’ll all be happy then,” I cheerfully commented. The cheer in my voice was fake as was the smile on my face, the women gaped at me in shock, but it was clear they couldn’t do anything in response; Amamiya on the other hand grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the women before they could come to their senses.

“Glorious as that was Chiba-san, maybe don’t do that again?” Amamiya pleaded. I looked at the boy and saw that two emotions were at conflict within his eyes; I could understand his reasoning, but I couldn’t hold my tongue back in time at hearing how dismissive they were to the suffering of people and the insult they had hurled at Amamiya and the other two.

“What’s so bad about kids coming to enjoy a buffet?” Morgana asked. The cat and wriggled around in the bag so that his lustrous blue eyes could stare out at us while he remained hidden so that it looked like it was just the two of us chatting so long as no one hovered around long enough to overhear his meows. “Hm, I wonder how the other people here are reacting to the news. Let’s get some more food and listen in,” Morgana insisted.

To comply with this, we simply slid over to the desserts table that was right next to it, sat at the centre were three giant fountains of what I presume were chocolate, it was rather tempting to just grab a glass and fill one for each flavour. However, Morgana started to wax about the sweets until Amamiya poked him as subtly as possible to get the cat to shut up or we’d be unable to listen in.

“News travels quick. It’s already all over the internet. You know, the story about how Kamoshida got his ass kicked by some world-reforming heroes,” A man’s voice commented. Peeking out to find who was talking, I dropped my head back down when I realised it was a computer company president who was under my uncle’s thumb; I did not want anyone here getting the news of my presence back to him – this man was one of the few who knew what I looked like despite his reclusive nature – and then my uncle would pester me.

“It doesn’t sound like a serious story to me. Some of the details are pretty far-fetched,” The woman he was speaking to responded. She sounded serious, level-headed and not someone who got swept up in fabs, kind of like someone I’d once been close to… that made my heart ache a little as I hadn’t thought of that friend I’d lost in a long time, but now those memories kept pecking at my mind along with others.

“Don’t worry about it. We just have to do what they tell us to do. It’s all rumours made up by school kids, anyway. If it’s gripping news, who cares if it’s not true?” The company president commented. He liked to spin lies as much as my uncle did, it was horrible to listen to him speaking in such a manner about something that should be treated seriously and honestly; we had been the only thing that saved those poor people suffering at Kamoshida’s hands.

“So, they don’t believe themselves, but they’re making up stories to make the Phantom Thieves seem real,” Morgana seethed. Not that he could be blamed since we put in a lot of hard work and now to hear someone was using us… well it gnawed at me. “And they’re doing this in front of the actual Phantom Thieves,” Morgana gloated. Okay, that was actually pretty funny, even Amamiya cracked a smile at this.

However, it seemed Morgana’s preening got the man’s attention, so I ducked my head further and proceeded to start filling up on desserts, I had nowhere near as huge a sweet tooth as Takamaki – seriously that was a lot of cake! – but I didn’t mind having more of it than other stuff. We filled up on sweets and the man proceeded to head away to a meeting after calling Amamiya weird, thankfully Amamiya had blocked me from his vision.

We headed over to the meat dishes next and Morgana started to get distracted once again, this time I proceeded to prod the bag to get him to shut up, especially since there seemed to be an incredibly observant man standing at this table. Compared to the reclusive company president, this man was rather muscular and dressed within a sharp suit, he gave off vibes of, do not mess with, and I was trusting my instincts on this.

“When you really look at it, he’s just an ex-athlete who overestimated himself. He should have just accepted his lot in life and quietly done his job as a teacher,” A man spoke. Woah… someone whose opinion I actually agreed with?! Was the world ending, especially considering I’d been rather annoyed by the other two conversations we’d eavesdropped on so far.

“It’s not even an incident we can take seriously. The whole story is pretty ridiculous,” Another man commented. Can’t take seriously?! Ridiculous?! People had their lives ruined by this man! And these people thought that wasn’t something serious!? What? Just because of the calling card we’d placed? We were the only ones doing anything! But that didn’t diminish what he had inflicted upon children! The trauma they suffered and were still suffering was very real!!!! “We should probably look into it, but we can also just let the low-ranking scrubs handle it,” The man added on.

‘Ah yes, don’t dirty your precious hands!’ I sneered. Thankfully my blank mask was firmly in place after hearing those snobby women chattering away as if it was nothing, so I was able to keep myself composed. However, at that moment Amamiya changed, he suddenly pushed himself back and I noticed a kernel of fear in his eyes; concern pulse through me and I slid my hand over to lightly press against his left hand as a method of reassurance.

“Look into… I guess they’re investigating Kamoshida. They don’t sound very enthusiastic about it though,” Morgana commented. At that moment, one of them proceeded to notice us, this jolted Amamiya out and he set about gathering some meat, but the slight tremor in his hand and arm gave away the panic he must have been feeling. They talked about someone arriving soon and how not to keep him waiting before departing which caused Amamiya’s trembling to subside.

There was only one last place for us to stock up on food and eavesdrop upon some conversation, so we made our way towards the rice dishes. Once more, Morgana got distracted by the food but a swift poke from me and Amamiya, one after the other caused the cat to finally shut up about his current obsession with fine food.

“So, the rating for the news were really that good?” A female voice asked. Casting a glance out the corner of my eye, I saw a fancily dressed young lady talking to an elderly man in a suit, from the question it was likely that the man she was speaking to was involved in a television studio… oh blasted it! I quickly ducked my head, pretending I couldn’t see them as the person she was speaking to was another one of my uncle’s lackies. “It was because it was about that teacher who sexually harassed his students, huh? Was it, Kamoshida?” The girl pestered. At least she sounded repulsed by the incident.

“It’s all about how you frame it. You’ve got to cater to the idiotic public,” The TV station president commented. I sucked in a deep breath through my nose as I clenched, then relaxed my right hand and then it clenched again. “Ratings go up when you show them crude, sensational news and make it easy for them to understand,” The man added on. It was no wonder he practically licked my uncle’s shoes, these two were of the same depraved mindset.

“How can he be so insensitive? A student almost killed herself because of that Kamoshida,” Morgana mourned. These people didn’t care about that, it might as well be a world away what happened at Shūjin, so long as it didn’t affect them directly then they were more than happy to twist around the events as if they weren’t awful reality.

“By the way, do you think these ‘sudden changes of heart’ might be real?” The fancy girl asked. The man was about to answer but seemed to be distracted by something, so we quickly set about grabbing food at Morgana’s insistence. “So, because he had a sudden change of heart, he just confessed to all his crimes?” The fancy girl pushed. She sounded doubtful, but really that was no surprise, the man laughed it off and then walked away to a meeting.

“A sudden change of heart, huh? I suppose I can’t blame her for seeing it that way,” Morgana commented. That was true, not many of the students believed in us so it would be a sudden change to everyone. “But it’s shocking… so many of the adults here don’t seem like nice people,” Morgana commented. How true, these were the kinds of people who stepped on those they looked down on, uncaring about their pain, just so long as they themselves were not inconvenienced then it didn’t matter who was suffering.

“Yeah, they were all kind of cold for the most part. That woman with the second man and the girl with the last seemed slightly decent, but not by much since they didn’t really speak back against it,” Amamiya admitted. He shook his head sadly, the terror that had struck him when listening to those police officers had faded now. “They just didn’t seem to care at all about the suffering and pain,” Amamiya lamented.

“Let’s head back now, we’ve got some decent food,” I encouraged. We returned to our table and sat down but it was certainly with some moroseness on my part; I wasn’t even really paying attention to Sakamoto as he spoke to Amamiya as I went through the motions of eating my food; honestly my mind was spinning, two of my uncle’s supporters were here and for a meeting… I didn’t like the sound of that and just wanted to keep my head down, I hoped he didn’t come in here if he did show up.

Shaking my head, I pulled myself out of my distressing thoughts and focused on my food which was almost gone. However, now with my mind back I spotted something that I had previously missed. That being that while Takamaki happily continued to practically breath in cake, all three of the boys – cat included – were looking as if they had just overcome some incredible trial but it was still causing them a great deal of pain. Before I could ask what was going on, the two humans stood up and took off with Amamiya grabbing his bag to take Morgana with them.

“Did I miss something?” I asked. I hadn’t realised how much I had zoned out while thinking about the possibility that my uncle would show up, I wanted him as separate from the other facets of my life as much as possible, so I was rather confused by the sudden need for all three boys to just suddenly shoot off like there was some kind of emergency… they had looked a little pale and in some degree of pain.

“Oh, I just suggested that Ryūji help Ren and Morgana eat all their food. I’m too full to have done it and you were kind of out of it Natsumi. They got so full that they were practically bursting their stomachs,” Takamaki explained. “I’m going to get a seasonal tart,” Takamaki declared. She stood up with a radiant smile as I proceeded to raise a solitary eyebrow at her words.

“I thought you said you were full,” I pointed out. All Takamaki did in response was give me a bright smile as if completely unconcerned with the look of disbelief that I was shooting her. “Do you have hollow legs or something?” I questioned. Or maybe being a model was much more exhausting than it looked, either way Takamaki was practically bouncing away; with a shrug I stood up and proceeded to follow after her to the desserts table.

There were still some sweets I hadn’t tried yet and the seasonal tart did look delicious so we each got one of them with Takamaki moving over to select some more desserts. It was kind of amazing how much of an appetite she still possessed, maybe she had hollow legs and an extremely high metabolic rate, either way she seemed quite happy to be picking out some more; in fact, she was a lot happier nowadays than in the past few months.

“Alright! Now I’ve got everything-,” Takamaki celebrated. She had just secured the tongs around a dessert when a woman beside her who was loudly complaining about something proceeded to move backwards; the sudden jarring caused Takamaki to lose her grip on the pudding looking confection and it caused the plate that the woman carried to tip from her hand and land on her dress.

“Hey! This was expensive!” The woman snapped. Well tough, it was her own fault since she had decided to jerk backwards so suddenly without looking at what was behind her. “You need to be more careful!” The woman exclaimed. What? Takamaki hadn’t even moved, as for the blonde girl, she seemed surprised and was silent as she blinked her blue eyes as if having difficulty comprehending what was happened while a worker came over to the shrilly screaming woman. “This girl just pushed me!” The woman accused. Oh hell no!

“Excuse me ma’am, but you bumped into her,” I spoke up. I moved around so that I was stood in front of Takamaki while keeping my voice steady and my expression blank, the woman looked to be seething in response. “She was standing there doing nothing. You lurched backwards without looking around. You’re the one who needs to be more careful,” I pointed out. This hag had no right to accuse Takamaki of something like that.

“Who raised those girls to be like that?” A voice questioned. I jerked my head in the direction but couldn’t find the source, all I could find was that the gathered crowd of people were looking at us as if we were the problem instead of this woman who had caused the mess by her own actions; it was this hag’s overreaction that was the problem.

“What are they doing here? Girls like that don’t belong,” Another voice commented. A small sound came from behind me, I reached back and gripped a hold of Takamaki’s hand which she quickly entwined with my own, the model already suffered because of ignorant classmates and she definitely didn’t deserve to suffer because of the worthless strangers that were currently surrounding us; why the hell did they think we didn’t belong here? Because we weren’t dressed in stupidly expensive clothing or decked out in an obscene amount of jewels.

“Don’t they have chaperones? Those children came alone?” A third voice questioned. I was sixteen and would be seventeen come July, Takamaki was likely in the same kind of boat or seventeen already but that didn’t mean we needed chaperones, neither of us were five and shrieking our heads off; that person clearly knew nothing about children if they thought someone of our age needed a chaperone to go out for food.

“I’m sure they’ve been spoiled rotten by their parents. Children today!” A fourth voice stated. My hackles rose instantly at those words and I went completely rigid, how dare they! These people knew nothing about us and dared to imply it was our parents’ faults! A tension appeared in the grip and I looked back to see a wide eyes Takamaki who was gazing at me in concern, she grabbed her plate and I seized mine as the two of us walked away from the crowd and back to our table.

“Are you okay?” I asked. My voice had taken on a soothing note as I abandoned my plate of sweets with Takamaki doing the same thing, her blue eyes were practically swimming with tears and she tilted her head back while covering her eyes with both hands; a soft shake of head was my answer. “They were wrong you know that, right. They had no right to insult you the way that they did,” I softly reassured.

“It’s not that,” Takamaki spoke. Her voice cracking slightly as her hands moved down slightly to reveal her eyes. “It’s just, I try so hard to ignore things like that because I hear it all the time but, I just… for once I couldn’t just ignore those hateful comments,” Takamaki admitted. Her voice sounding so sad and it matched the look upon her face. “Besides that, I also got you involved in it,” Takamaki added on. A new note had appeared within her voice as a pained expression came across her face.

“And you think I care?” I wondered. Takamaki nodded her head and I realised that she must have been scared, scared that I’d react negatively to the inclusion of insults that those people had decided to sling out. “I’ve long since stopped caring what people say. Only that parents comment got to me and you know the reason behind that. I’m more concerned with how you’re feeling,” I answered.

“That made me worry, actually. I thought you were going to find that guy and slug him for what he said, even though he probably hasn’t got a clue, but he still would have deserved it,” Takamaki commented. Footsteps were moving closer to us, but I didn’t bother turning around, not caring if it was a worker or another prissy guest. “What took you so long!?” Takamaki snapped. A quick glance back showed it was actually the boys and I saw Sakamoto quickly growing angry.

“Easy! Easy,” I soothed. I turned back around and gently grabbed Takamaki’s hands and began to sweep my thumbs over her knuckles. “They have done nothing wrong Takamaki-san, there’s no reason to take it out on them,” I reminded. Takamaki swallowed thickly and nodded her head as she looked down, seeming to be ashamed of having snapped the way that she did at them.

“What’s wrong Ann-dono? You were fine when we left,” Morgana pointed out. The boys had gathered around and I readjusted myself so that I could see them, all three had sat back down and all three of them were gazing at Takamaki with worry on their faces; I was glad Sakamoto had tossed away his rage so quickly upon realising how Takamaki wasn’t feeling well.

“Yeah, sorry you guys. I had a run-in with some woman a few seconds ago,” Takamaki admitted. She proceeded to wipe away her tears, but she also seemed to be slumping down in her chair, as if trying to avoid being spotted. “She bumped into me, but then said it was all my fault when she dropped her plate,” Takamaki explained. I noticed tension was present in Sakamoto by his hiked shoulders and Amamiya was also tense, but this was more difficult to spot.

“Sounds like a real bitch,” Sakamoto commented. An apt description for the woman, she had been truly horrific to deal with, the unnecessary explosion she had tossed towards Takamaki and complete twisting of actual events were horrible things, all because she couldn’t find it in herself to apologise for making her own mess.

“Natsu-chan tried to de-fuse the situation. But everyone, the restaurant workers and other customers, they were all looking at us with this disapproving expression,” Takamaki added on. I blinked in surprise at the nickname she had used for me, it had been a long time since someone called me that, but it was equally nice to hear it again; I turned my attention to the others.

“It’s no surprise they think we’re out of place here,” I admitted. This place was so ritzy, full of people who had more money than they probably knew what to do with; but that translated to an unfounded arrogance that they were superior to us, they naturally looked down on four ordinary children – and a cat – who had never been here before, I bet these people came whenever they could manage.

“It always feels like this,” Amamiya hissed. A dark look had appeared within his grey eyes, I wondered if his hometown had made him feel outcast as well, or if he was just referring to how the lot of us didn’t fit in with Shūjin as a whole; either way, he was right that it did feel like there wasn’t a place we could possibly fit in… well except for right here with these people I had unexpectedly found.

“Hey Morgana, Natsumi,” Sakamoto called. I quickly focused my green eyes on the blonde as Morgana proceeded to poke his head out of the bag. “Anyone could have a Palace, yeah?” Sakamoto asked. I didn’t know where this conversation was going but it was likely something important, Sakamoto’s expression was as serious as when we’d been planning to bust into Kamoshida’s Palace.

“My, look at that table,” A female voice commented. Amamiya immediately threw his arm over Morgana to hide the cat from view since we had technically smuggled him into the restaurant, I used my long hair to cover up the glance that I was shooting the woman, she happened to be stood with a man and both of them were staring at us. Sakamoto was glaring at their backs while Takamaki and Amamiya kept looking forward, away from the couple.

“Come now, pay them no attention. I’m sure they must not normally have the chance to eat such exquisite food,” The man insisted. Well, that was quite true as we would probably never be able to come here again, unless we happened to win a lot of money or get famous, but the tone that he spoke with was quite disparaging and after that hag, I really didn’t need to be hearing anymore insults.

“I can only imagine what their parents must be like,” The woman sneered. I felt a cold rage pressed itself upon my face as my eyes narrowed into a glare, Sakamoto proceeded to vocalise his rage at the insult as the clicking of shoes indicated they were moving away from us; where did these people get off insulting our parents? Just because someone acts a certain way doesn’t mean it’s their parents’ fault! Some people are just nasty. I hissed in a deep breath and tried to relax, which was actually quite difficult.

“Let’s find somewhere to talk that’s more private,” I insisted. From the looks on their faces, all of the humans present agreed with my words and Morgana let out a soft agreement; we all gathered up our stuff as me and Takamaki finished off our desserts and with that done, we would all be able to leave this place, such a nice outing had turned so awfully sour.

I led the group out of the restaurant and we proceeded to wander around for a bit, doing our best to avoid the other customers since none of us wanted to get involved in another debacle. Eventually we reached a quiet area with windows set on two of the walls that overlooked the sprawling expanse of Tokyo beneath our feet, I came to a stop and turned to face the others with Takamaki leaning against a pillar as the two boys stood to the side with Morgana back in Amamiya’s bag although his head was poking out.

“To answer your question Ryūji, yes. Anyone with a strong distorted desire can have a Palace,” Morgana confirmed. I’m glad that Morgana had remembered what conversation we’d been having before that horrid couple had proceeded to interrupt us with their crass comments; I wanted to know what Sakamoto could possibly be up to with bringing up this question.

“Same for them havin’ a Change of Heart if their Treasures gets stolen?” Sakamoto questioned. He was really taking this seriously, his expression and posture showed that, his brown eyes were flitting between me and Morgana as he knew we were the only ones who’d have the answers that he needed to hear; although in this case, I was the only one with the answer.

“Yes, that’s what happened in the only case I have as evidence,” I confirmed. It was a curiosity as to where Sakamoto could be going, but I trusted the boy would bring it up himself if we simply gave him the time to do so; Sakamoto looked like he was absorbing the information that we’d given him and Takamaki suddenly adjusted her position to face the blonde.

“Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?” Takamaki asked. Her blue eyes had lost their sad cast as she now had something more important to devote her concentration to, but I hoped she’d be okay after we finished this conversation given what we had discussed before the boys proceeded to show up. Sakamoto suddenly gained a dark expression as Amamiya reached up to massage his temple as if he had suddenly gained a painful headache.

“We had trouble earlier too. These selfish shitheads who just looked down on everyone else. Slammed me out of the way of the elevator because they were ‘in a hurry’. Pushed me even further back so I couldn’t get in. I was just wonderin’ if we’d be able to change those kindsa people too,” Sakamoto admitted.

“You mean… you wanna continue as the Phantom Thieves?” Takamaki asked. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Sakamoto while I felt my heart skip a beat slightly, I had never thought that they’d willing decide to keep going with this without knowing for certain that there was nothing Palace around; I had held the small fear in my heart that they would walk away from this or be too scared to try again.

“I’ve been thinkin’… we put a lot of work into changin’ Kamoshida’s heart, but nobody believes in the Phantom Thieves. Plus… those guys who had no other choice but to just deal with it are thankin’ us. Us, of all people,” Sakamoto explained. True, nobody did believe in us not that they could be blamed for the lack of belief and yet the people who knew the truth of Kamoshida were now free to live their lives however they felt and they were expressing that gratitude towards the – to them – faceless people who had saved them.

“But… that means we’ll have to fight Shadows again,” Takamaki pointed out. This was the thing that I was sure would have driven them away, fighting for your life wasn’t something that endeared an activity towards others; I could do it for… actually I didn’t know why I had taken so easily to the fighting bit, but none of these were the kinds of people who could, even hair-trigger temperament Sakamoto. I turned around to look out the windows we stood surrounded by.

“There are more people,” I admitted. I could feel everyone’s eyes on my back as I stared out the window, from this high place – through my Second Sight – I could see the Palaces; they were fainter at a distance so I couldn’t determine more details beyond the colour, but I could see several of them. “People who possess Palaces and will continue hurting people,” I added on. Turning around, I faced the four people I found. “It took me a long time to find out Kamoshida’s keywords to enter with my eyes. But the Meta-Nav changes that, I can get in easier and probably quicker. I am going to continue to stop these people. I can’t just leave others suffering. You guys don’t need to keep doing this with me. I won’t hate, resent, despise or even be angry. This is a dangerous thing, but I can’t look away… not anymore,” I admitted.

“Natsumi,” Amamiya spoke. I was surprised to hear my first name from the boy as he moved slightly closer to me with Takamaki and Sakamoto doing the same thing. “You told us that you had previous experience with Palaces. I think it’s right that you tell us about it. I know it must be painful but… I think that we deserve to know what happened to you. It was clearly something bad, I don’t think you’d be so driven otherwise,” Amamiya pointed out. And he was right, so steeling my nerves, I drew in a deep breath ready to tell them.

“Her name is Anais Ouvrard. She was… my singing teacher,” I confessed. I never thought I would bring up the ability I possessed to other people, but I doubt they would abuse it the way that Ouvrard or my uncle had intended to. “I used to love singing, but she made me hate it. It felt like… my voice didn’t belong to me anymore. She was obsessed with turning me into a singer, but a singer whose voice belonged to her. Her sin was Attachment. She trapped me and I… couldn’t be in that cage anymore,” I revealed. Surprisingly, a few hiccups choked out of my throat and once finished, I covered my mouth to suppress the sobs that threatened to escape me. Although the tears slipped down my face and hand.

I don’t think I realised that I had such emotions choked up inside of me regarding Ouvrard and her treatment of me. I’d always focused upon my uncle and what he did to me, perhaps that was a silly mistake to make; I’d ended up burying my emotions towards that woman. Warm hands appeared on several places: shoulders, cheeks and my free hand as a warmth started to circle around my legs.

“I know what that’s like. To feel as if something that should rightfully be mine is coveted by someone else. You don’t have to hide that away Natsu-chan,” Takamaki soothed. Her fingers swiped over my knuckles in reassuring, constant patterns as Sakamoto happened to be almost massaging my shoulders which seemed to be relieving the tension there. “I’m not stopping. You’ve done this alone for too long, it’s time that stopped. Besides, if we ignore people who are in trouble, I’d go back to being the same as I was before,” Takamaki decided.

“Hell yeah! We’re not stoppin’ now!” Sakamoto declared. He was being loud, but the words were vague enough that if anyone was listening in, they’d have no clue what we were talking about. “I’m not gonna let you hog all the fun Natsumi!” Sakamoto added on. A small snort of amusement escaped me and Amamiya’s hands delicately trailed to grip my hand and pulled it away from my mouth.

“Just like you Natsumi, I can’t simply ignore wrongs being committed. Kamoshida would never have been stopped and something tells me it was the same with Ouvrard. They’re the kind of people who have more power than the people they brutally victimise, they’re the people who will get away with anything and everything because the police can’t or won’t touch them. But we can stop them, especially if we work together,” Amamiya encouraged.

“Don’t think I’m walking away from you guys now that I’ve found you. I’ve got something for all of us to look forward to,” Morgana practically purred. He had mentioned Mementos, whatever he wanted to do down there it, it could end up helping us in the end; Amamiya released one hand while still gripping my hand with the other, he wrapped an arm around Morgana and lifted him up to set the cat upon his shoulders, making Morgana feel more included. “You’re under my tutelage. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish as phantom thieves!” Morgana declared.

I was relieved that they were sticking around. True, my fights through Ouvrard and Kamoshida’s Palaces had been difficult when alone, but they weren’t something I couldn’t overcome, but to know that they were sticking around – sticking with me – even though they had no need to… well it made my heart swell with a buoyant feeling that almost brought more tears to my eyes.

“Taka-,” I began to speak. However, a sudden tightening on my hand caused a small squeak to cut me off, I looked down and found Amamiya’s hand placid, while Takamaki’s grip was white knuckled tight, it didn’t hurt but the shock had been enough to cut me off. “Yes Taka-,” I began to speak. But the hand tightened once more, which cut me off once again.

“Oh no. If we’re doing this, no more surnames! You’ve got to use our first names, got it Natsu-chan. You’ve already done it to me a couple of times, so just do it consistently from now on,” Takamaki insisted. I blinked my eyes in surprise… I couldn’t recall ever having used Takamaki’s first name beforehand, but she seemed rather adamant that I had. I took in a deep breath and focused on the four individuals around me.

“Ann, Ren, Ryūji, Morgana. Thank you,” I admitted. All three of them proceeded to smile at me as Ryūji rested an arm over my shoulders, surprisingly content to do so. “If we’re a team now, we should decide upon a name for our… social activities,” I insisted. The group looked at each other, so I raised my fingers to massage at the bridge of my nose. “If we’re doing this, we’re being smart about it. No openly talking about this. Chat, yes. Homes, yes. Anywhere else, no unless we’re sure it’s safe,” I insisted. The trio looked at each other and proceeded to nod their heads in understanding, but I wondered if they truly understood it.

“Heh… even if you guys are still fledglings, this means we’re an actual organisation now,” Morgana stated. Ann agreed to this description of them, only me and Morgana – at least I hope so – had plenty of experience with the Metaverse, so we’d essentially be handholding these three through the next Palace, but if we got to practice in Mementos then they’d be able to get stronger much faster which would save us all some time.

“Alright! It’s settled! We’re gonna catch all these shitty adults by surprise and make ourselves known to the world!” Ryūji declared. He definitely hadn’t understood my earlier words about being discreet, but at least the vagueness was still there so no one would be able to understand what we were talking about; but if this kept up, then it was going to become a serious problem at some point.

“Are you okay with continuing on as our leader?” Ann asked. Her blue eyes were focused on Ren who proceeded to look at her with surprise gleaming in his eyes, he likely hadn’t expected this to end up happening; but it was no surprise to me, Ren had proved his capabilities quite well during our foray into Kamoshida’s Palace.

“If that’s what all of you are okay with?” Ren responded. Why wouldn’t we be okay with it? Ren had more than once proven how capable he was at being a leader, how he took all the information, all the different compatibilities of our little group and his own unique flexibility to create battle plans that would work while allowing us individual autonomy and trust in our capabilities; I could think of no one more perfect to guide us.

“No objections here! I can’t handle all that responsibility stuff,” Ryūji stated. That was quite true, I would be very worried if we had Ryūji as a leader, while I could trust him to support and stay loyal to us and his emotional insight would be helpful alongside his motivational energy, his temper and straightforward approach to things might end up getting us in trouble if he had been the one leading us.

“Where’s my say in this?” Morgana complained. That was a bit hypocritical of him given that he had been the one to initially nominate Ren for the position of leader when Ren had been terrified of accepting it. “But Ann-dono made the recommendation, so I’ll allow it,” Morgana agreed. Well, at least he wasn’t going to be complaining about it, I’d have to thank his devotion to Ann for that.

“I see no reason to change it. You’ve done a fine job already. Besides, should you need aid then me and Morgana will be there to support you,” I reassured. Ren looked at each of us and proceeded to nod his head in agreement to the decision that he would be the one to lead us in the up coming battles, all Morgana and I could do was stand at his side and support him as best we could.

“As for a name… I went with Phantom Thieves of Hearts last time, but don’t you think a real name would be cooler?” Ryūji insisted. I actually liked that name, it perfectly described who we were and it had a certain type of mystique to it, after all if I didn’t know about the Metaverse and Treasures then I’d be very curious as to how stealing hearts was even possible, even with the evidence of Kamoshida’s turn around being presented to me.

“Ooh, I’ve got it! I want it to be something both cute and luxurious sounding,” Takamaki claimed. I looked at the girl, wondering what she was going to say. “Let me see, how about The Diamonds,” Ann suggested. This was shot down as it being too like a little league baseball team name, which I had to agree with, even if diamonds were a rare thing that thieves stole by an enormous frequency, the way it sounded was a little off to how the name Ryūji had chosen sounded.

“Well then, here’s my suggestion,” Morgana spoke up. Oh, this should be good, seeing as Morgana seemed to be our phantom thief expert. “How about Tilefish Poêle?” Morgana suggested. I blinked in confusion as Ryūji only asked for clarification as to what that could possibly be. “That’s what I ate earlier. It’s commemorative, no?” Morgana explained. This was also shot down, a bit more aggressively than Ann’s, but I had to agree. I took a breath in order to let my opinion be heard since we seemed to be hitting dead ends.

“You know, even though that… letter, was awful, I really liked the name we were given. And, even though it sounds arrogant given my Persona’s name, if we want to shorten it then we can just use Phantoms,” I suggested. They proceeded to look at each other as I lightly scratched at the back of my head, awaiting their response with no small amount of trepidation.

“The Phantoms. I actually quite like that name,” Ren agreed. All of the others proceeded to let their agreement be known and it caused a smile to appear on my face. “It isn’t arrogant either Natsumi, you just took Ryūji suggestion and put a new spin on it. I actually think it perfectly fits with our intentions,” Ren reassured. A warmth started to blossom under my skin at that.

“Well, now that the name’s set, who’s our next target?” Ann asked. A good question, even though I could see the Palaces that occupied Tokyo, I couldn’t see who they belonged to, I would need to find their physical location first of all but that could take some time; there was also the risk of the Palace Ruler being made suspicious by a group of teenagers randomly wandering about near their house.

“There are tons of rotten adults and all. Why not just stick to targeting big names?” Ryūji suggested. Yes picking a rotten adult was obvious, but even if they have a certain degree of fame, there wasn’t likely to be any evidence of the crimes they committed since it would be like with Kamoshida, getting buried by other people; we’d have to rely on rumours and small bits of news, if only there was a way for us to gather that information in one place without people’s lives being endangered.

“Like a celebrity? Or a CEO?” Ren asked. Those were the kinds of people Ryūji meant, but my thoughts had immediately leapt to politicians before violently quashing that thought, I didn’t want to go into those people’s heads unless it was absolutely necessary so sticking to someone like the people Ren had suggested was likely better for everyone’s mental health. Besides I never saw a Shadow over my uncle and he was the worst, if he didn’t have one then whoever did was likely more monstrous than I had any imagining of… scary thought really.

“Yeah, something along those lines. If we go after some bigwig, it’s gotta get on the news, right? Don’t you think more people would believe in us if we did that?” Ryūji wondered. Getting people to believe in us, to see that someone was willing to stand up against those in power who abused it, it might just cause their own Will of Rebellions to flare, not enough to get Personas but maybe enough for them to stand up for themselves against those who would hurt them.

“That’s not a bad idea… for you, Ryūji,” Morgana teased. It was an excellent idea, Ryūji took offense to this comment but he didn’t seem overly agitated if I was honest, these two poking fun at each other given their wildly opposing personalities would likely become a staple of our group; but I’m sure nothing bad would come of it, these two weren’t acting out of cruelty after all.

“True. If we become better known… we might be able to give courage to a lot more people,” Ann agreed. A smile was on her face, likely thinking that maybe she could save more people from ending up like Suzui or herself, I’m sure there were people stuck in bad enough situations out there, ones that might even mirror mine. “I don’t really like the idea of just picking someone out of the blue though,” Ann admitted.

“Let’s narrow it down to someone we can agree on then,” Ryūji suggested. Definitely a necessity, if we couldn’t all agree on someone to go after then we’d just end up dissolving into bickering and time wasting over who to agree upon, if we were given a selection of individuals whose crimes were known to us and could narrow it down to one individual then that would certainly save us some energy.

“Hm, so we need a bigwig we decide on unanimously,” Morgana commented. That was essentially what we needed, but the main problem still remained of getting knowledge about their crimes, some people could be really sneaky so that even the victims weren’t aware of the crimes being committed against them. We had to find a source of reliable information, or even multiple sources to properly corroborate information, in order to decide upon our targets.

“I like that unanimous decision part! It’s like we’re making some kind of pact!” Ann exclaimed. However, I immediately spotted a very big problem with this decision-making process, I don’t mind choosing our target in a unanimous fashion as it would solidly ground us and our alliance, but if it bled over into other things… well at that point it became a lot more dangerous than these guys might realise.

“But also dangerous,” I spoke up. Everyone proceeded to look at me as I threaded my fingers together. “If we make all our decision as a team, then things could go downhill in dangerous situations where we might have different ideas on how to react. I’m fine with the decision being unanimous when it come to our targets, but in battle or other dangerous situations, I suggest Ren has overriding powers to ensure our safety. In other words, if he orders it then we do it, no matter what,” I suggested.

“That’s a good point, but I’ll at least try to limit it to extremely dangerous situations. I’ll also make you guys aware when I give such an order,” Ren agreed. The other three nodded their heads in agreement, I’m just glad our lives would be in trustworthy hands when we ended up in a dangerous situation, even if Ren was limiting himself at least we had something that would protect us.

“Now then, this is the official formation of the Phantom Thieves organisation!” Morgana declared.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Returning home, I pretty much collapsed onto my bed due to the sheer exhaustion I felt over the events of today. Good food, sour surroundings and an extremely big decision was made; it had been a mentally and emotionally trying series of events, but something good had come out of it. A chirp from my phone had me opening up the Chat.

Ryūji: The Phantoms, huh… I’m liking the sound of that!

Ann: I hope we can really help people.

Natsumi: All we can do is try Ann-chan.

Natsumi: How people react is all up to them.

Ann: I’m curious about that Phantom Aficionado Website too.

Ann: I wonder who made it.

Ryūji: No clue.

Ren: A victim of Kamoshida’s maybe?

Ren: That seems the most likely.

Natsumi: I’m betting it’s Mishima-san.

Natsumi: I went to middle school with him and he was skilled in computer sciences

Ryūji: Seriously?!

Ann: Oh wow, that’s unexpected.

Ren: I wonder if it is him.

Ren: I suppose this would be him making up for leaking my criminal record.

Ren: Not that I blame him. Kamoshida gets that pleasure.

Ryūji: More importantly, you see the survey on there?

Ryūji: I dunno how I feel about it.

Ann: Yeah, there was this approval rating thing, but it was only at six percent.

Ren: We don’t even class as an urban legend.

Natsumi: I’m sure that will change.

Ryūji: Yeah, I bet it’ll go up tons if we keep taking down big targets.

Ryūji: It’s pretty damn exciting if you try and think about it like that.

Ann: You know, you’re actually right.

Natsumi: But until we find a target, let’s keep training.

Natsumi: It won’t do to slack off.

Ann: Um… how do we do that?

Natsumi: We’ll look for a target tomorrow.

Natsumi: If we can’t find one, then me and Morgana will show you.

Natsumi: Until then, take some time to relax and fully recover.

Ann: Well then, let’s keep working hard from this point on!

Ren: Definitely!

Natsumi: Oh!

Natsumi: I took a picture!

Natsumi: Here you guys go!

Natsumi uploaded a picture.

Ryūji: Where are you Natsumi?

Natsumi: Behind the camera.

Natsumi: Obviously.

Ann: Next time, include yourself.

Ann: It doesn’t look right without you.

Ren: Yeah, you should include yourself in the next shot.

I grinned slightly at the words before closing the Chat, even though we would be facing more danger in our pursuit of this cause, we would have each other to rely upon. And who knows, maybe we’ll stumble across more Persona wielders.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 27: - Searching for a Target

It was such a relief to now have a path forward now that Kamoshida had been defeated, true we only had a vague idea about what to do but that was better than having no direction at all. I was also rather happy about being able to keep working alongside the others of the Phantoms, now the only thing we had to do was locate someone who had a Palace and remove their distortion. But for the time being, it was best to focus upon school lessons in order to avoid anyone becoming suspicious of me.

“Like you heard last week, gym class is cancelled today, Instead, I’m supposed to give you some guidance,” Kawakami-sensei stated. Her voice was drained of all energy and it really caused me to worry about her. “The gist is, don’t go around talking about the incident. That’s all. The police are still investigating Kamoshida-san, so I can’t say anything myself,” Kawakami-sensei advised. That likely wasn’t going to happen, people would still go yammering on about it; suddenly Kawakami-sensei wrapped her arms around herself and looked at the ground, a somewhat haunted look appearing in her eyes. “As a teacher though, I’m ashamed for not having noticed that a student was suffering like that. I’m not defending him, but as a colleague, he just seemed like… well, a normal person. Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real. I guess people can have multiple sides to them,” Kawakami-sensei morosely admitted.

“The teachers have it rough, huh?” Morgana questioned. He was quite right as it seemed that the teachers who’d been completely blindsided by Kamoshida’s true disposition would be floundering about; also, it seemed that Kawakami-sensei was genuinely upset about Suzui’s suicide attempt, almost as if it was dragging up painful memories that she wanted to avoid thinking about.

“Oh yeah, I just remembered something I learned in psychology. They say that humans have several different personalities hidden in their subconscious,” Kawakami-sensei admitted. My eyes drifted over to Ren who was looking at our homeroom teacher with interest, Ren was the perfect example of such a fact given his capacity to wield multiple Personas. But the same could be said of all of us, though it might be less different personalities and more that there were different facets of the individual. “Oh, to be clear, I’m not talking about multiple personality disorder. These different personalities can be a different gender or a different age from you. I mean, if you think about how gods and monsters in myths were first based on the human image. If you actually saw one of those personalities with your own eyes, it might look like a monster,” Kawakami-sensei revealed. I allowed my lips to curl up slight at the fact that she’d just described a Persona. “Hm, you all seem more alert than usual? Did I finally talk about something that interests you?” Kawakami-sensei asked. A bright smile came onto her smile and it changed her whole face, making her look more lively. “Well, I’m just saying what I’ve heard. It feels like I just now understood what I learned long ago,” Kawakami-sensei admitted.

The lesson continued fairly unchanged after that, notetaking and small bits of meaningless chatter filled the air at occasional points as I tried to listen to Kawakami-sensei’s words. Soon enough the bell rang signalling break, I packed my stuff away as the others drifted out the room, I motioned for Ann and Ren to go on ahead while I pulled out a bento box. I stood up and walked over to the front desk and set the box on the table, causing Kawakami-sensei to look up at me with confused eyes.

“You still look tired Kawakami-sensei, this has food good for tackling that. Please eat it,” I requested. With my piece said, I shoulder my bag and turned around, finding that Ren and Ann had elected to wait instead of going on ahead; I walked over to them as a soft sound reached my ears, but I didn’t look back and instead followed the other two out the room.

Outside of the classroom, we found that Ryūji was stood there with a big grin on his face, we proceeded to gather around the blonde boy as Morgana wriggled around so that he could look out from the front of the bag instead of the back. Ryūji had his phone out and from the screen I could see that it was on the Phantom Aficionado Website, I wondered what he could possibly be thinking of by having that site open up.

“It ain’t much, but we’ve been gettin’ more postings on the Phantom Aficionado Website… ‘I wanna make my friend apologise for no returning the stuff I lent him’. Ugh, deal with that yourself!” Ryūji exclaimed. I wanted to lecture him for discussing this so openly when I warned him yesterday not to; suddenly Ann drew our attention to two girls that had emerged from our class.

“You know that Phantom Thieves rumour about stealing Kamoshida’s heart? I wonder if it’s true,” The long haired student questioned. The shorter haired one dismissed it as made up quite swiftly before questioning if the long haired girl was serious. “But look what happened to Kamoshida,” The long haired student argued. This was dismissed as a guilty conscience over Suzui, who was again labelled as ‘that girl’… some people were really rude. “Yeah, you might be right. I guess there’s no way they really exist,” The long haired girl agreed.

“More importantly, it seriously sucks that our school is gonna be known for stuff like this!” The short haired student whined. That was more important than someone paying for his crimes?! I seriously can’t understand the way some people think sometimes; the long haired girl moaned about entrance exams before they proceeded to walk away from us.

“That’s prolly a normal reaction for now, but… they’ll see soon enough!” Ryūji declared. He had slipped his phone away, apparently done with scrolling through the website. “If we can take care of two or three fam-,” Ryūji began to declare. However, realising what he was going to say, I quickly latched my hand out and clamped it over his mouth in order to silent his stream of words as my lips thinned into annoyance.

“What. Did. I. Say,” I growled out. A raised eyebrow arced slightly in annoyance at him. “We aren’t to talk about our social activities in a public place,” I reminded. Grabbing his arm instead of his mouth, and resisting the urge to grab his ear like he was a petulant child who needed to learn manners, I dragged him up to the roof with others following after me. “Right, now that we’re someone a lot more private than the school’s blooming corridor, we can talk,” I suggested.

“About those big shots… we don’t have any leads yet, right? Plus, there’s that rumour about you two threatening Kamoshida too,” Ann pointed out. It was certainly going to be difficult to do anything that might even look possibly suspicious given those infernal rumours; we had to be extra careful if we wanted to avoid getting into trouble with anyone who was looking into the incident whether nosy students, Nakamura who ran the newspaper club – consisting solely of herself – or the police officers.

“Looks like you’ll have to live a normal, honest school life for the time being,” Morgana suggested. We certainly needed to do that, especially with our mid-term exams coming up in a few days which we’d need to prioritise. “Still, make sure you stay prepared just in case anything come up, alright,” Morgana insisted. That was another thing that we needed to and that was exactly why we had to keep up with our training.

“In which case, me and Morgana will take you to a special training area tomorrow. It’s that place you want to investigate Morgana, so we’ll be able to help you out as well,” I decided. Even without a target we’d be able to enter Mementos pretty easily, Morgana perked up and his tail flicked happily through the air at my words. “However, since we’re doing this, we’re going to need funding. I know the Shadows drop money, but we’ll need a better stream of income than that,” I suggested.

“Well, how about part-time jobs,” Ann suggested. That was a pretty good suggestion to make. “We just put aside a portion of our money and the money we get from Shadows and give it to Ren to gather all together, that way when we need more medicine or better guns, then our fearless leader can just pop out and get it,” Ann explained.

“Good idea, but should we all get jobs, I can just do it,” Ren suggested. This boy did not need to go that far, we were all a part of this team so we should all get involved with providing the funds to it; Ryūji proceeded to hook his arm around Ren’s shoulders and pulled him in close with an unimpressed look upon his face as, meanwhile Ren looked at the boy with widened grey eyes full of surprise at this action.

“Not a chance man, we’re all in this together, so we all gotta pull our weight,” Ryūji insisted. I nodded my head in agreement as Ann let out a cheerful agreement, causing Ren to allow a small smile to come onto his face. “Right, we’ll all get jobs, ‘cept for Ann since she’s already a model, and I’ll keep an eye out for info on any big shots that might be comin’ around,” Ryūji decided.

“And I’ll try to dig up some dirt online!” Ann happily declared. I’m sure there were a bunch of rumours spinning around about just about everyone famous online, but Ann’s modelling connections might give her a better angle in that side of the famous business’ darker side; I wasn’t entirely sure where I could look especially since I no longer lived with my uncle and hanging around him more would send the absolute wrong message.

“We went and formed the Phantoms group, but we can’t even find a target,” Ryuji lamented. He slumped down as if completely dejected about this fact, but we’d simply have to deal with it. “I guess somethings just don’t go the way we want ‘em to,” Ryūji admitted.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sat in Ushimaru-sensei’s class, I felt a vibration come into my pocket. Mentally groaning about Ryūji’s horrible timing, I pulled it out and proceeded to open it while trying to split my attention between this and the lesson to avoid that infernal torpedo chalk. I’d have to insist that the blonde boy not to pester us during this class, any other class was fine, but I wanted to avoid that damn chalk.

Ryūji: The police are really here… I saw ‘em at the entrance.

Ann: I saw them too! They were talking to the teachers!

Natsumi: Yes, alright, they were here.

Natsumi: Please stop freaking out about it you two.

Natsumi: Also, Ryūji, we are in USHIMARU’S class! Please stop texting!

Ryūji: We’ll be fine Natsumi.

Ryūji: Anyway, that change of heart thing’s seriously amazing, huh!?

Ann: I hope they don’t find out we’re responsible…

Ryūji: I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine. There’s no proof it was us.

Ren: It would be best not to worry. Worrying will just make us stand out.

Ann: You sound so sure of yourself…

Ann: But I mean, haven’t rumours been going around about how you guys threatened Kamoshida?

Ryūji: This world’s Kamoshida shouldn’t know anything about what actually happened to him though.

Natsumi: Yes, he won’t know. We all need to stay calm.

Natsumi: Panicking really won’t help.

Ann: I guess that’s true.

Ryūji: Man, I really can’t wait to keep living this double life!

Ren: Then focus on your studies. And let us focus on ours’.

“Hey Amamiya!” Ushimaru-sensei yelled. Ah crumbs, here we go again, the teacher proceeded to throw some chalk at Ren, forcing the boy to practically throw himself into the wall beside him in order to dodge it; it smacked into the wall harmlessly and our disgruntled teacher proceeded to turn his attention back to the lesson. I let out a breath of relief and slipped the phone away as I refocused on the lesson to avoid being used as a target.

“Hey,” Mishima’s voice came. The lesson had now ended and I was packing away while Ren had stood to his feet and closed his phone down. “Have you seen the Phantom Aficionado Website?” Mishima asked. Well, this was going to be an interesting conversation and I wondered if my suspicion about him being responsible for the website would turn out to be true.

“I’ve heard of it,” Ren confirmed. He seemed to be concerned about why Mishima was asking about it as he proceeded to slip his phone away into a pocket; I kept quiet while continuing to pack my bag and remained vigilant over this conversation. A quick glance over to my right and saw Ann and Ryūji were hovering nearby and they looked ready to charge in if things not messy.

“I’m the one who started it,” Mishima admitted. Well, I hadn’t expected him to come out and say it and it seemed neither had Ren from the surprise upon his face, suddenly Mishima got in close to Ren. “Um… you guys are the Phantom Thieves, aren’t you?” Mishima suddenly asked. It took all of my self control not to react when he asked that, because it was so unexpected that he had somehow figured out the truth about Ren and so quickly as well; had we’d been too sloppy already or was Mishima more observant than any of us had realised.

“Please give me some space Mishima-san,” Ren requested. The boy pulled back, looking slightly uncertain at those words. “Also, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ren claimed. It was clear that he was trying to divert the boy but if the gleam in Mishima’s eyes was anything to go by then he wasn’t going to be distracted so easily.

“Hmm… if things really are as I think, I should keep it a secret,” Mishima stated. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about him potentially revealing things like that. “Kamoshida used me and I did some horrible things to you guys. This isn’t much of a way for me to apologise for it. But, if there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know!” Mishima explained. Nice as the website was, we shouldn’t be letting Mishima getting involved with our actions as his Will of Rebellion wasn’t all that strong so manifesting a Persona was out of the question for him.

“That’s great, but this is a misunderstanding,” Ren insisted. Mishima didn’t seem concerned by the dismissal that Ren had handed him; I suppose that was at least one good thing about taking away Kamoshida’s oppression, Mishima seemed to have become a little bit more confident within himself. I just wish he wouldn’t have got involved in this whole mess so unexpectedly.

“It’s not just Kamoshida… there are tons of evil adults out there. But I’m sure the Phantom Thieves will do something… they can’t let this end after just one target. That’s why I wanted to make a forum where people could post their problems. There are probably a lot of people who have high hopes for the Phantom Thieves’ next move. So, I’ve also implemented an anonymous poll on the site,” Mishima insisted. He then pulled out his phone and showed the website to Ren which I managed to catch home a glimpse. “Do you believe in the Phantom Thieves or not? I wanna work on this forum so eventually it’ll be packed with tons of supportive posts. I’d really like to help out in the Phantom Thieves’ acts of justice! Can I, please?” Mishima insisted.

“Um… well… I… do what you want… it’s up to you,” Ren answered. He seemed to be floundering, not that I really blame him since Mishima had sounded extremely enthusiastic about helping us, although I think there was a way for him to do more than just running a website where people vented their frustrations. Even if they were legitimate and could help us stop people who were untouchable or unreasonable, couldn’t there be another way? A way Mishima could help more.

“Yeah, I will,” Mishima agreed. At that moment, I sensed another strong yet still growing thing being formed, between Ren and Mishima, just what were these sensations that kept tickling at me? Strangely enough the resonance of this bond felt similar to the resonance that the Succubus had given off after becoming a Persona. “See you,” Mishima spoke. He then proceeded to run off from us, I stood up as Ryūji and Ann walked over to join us.

“We heard all that,” Ryūji admitted. Mishima had certainly been loud enough, thankfully most people ignored him and even if they had been looking, I could only hope that Ren’s startled expression would put them off asking too many questions or getting too suspicious. “Geez… it was a little awkward tryin’ to figure out when to walk over here,” Ryūji admitted. A dejected expression settling over his face.

“So that forum is Mishima-kun’s, just like you suspected Natsu-chan,” Ann commented. I shrugged my shoulders with a small smile on my face, Mishima was the most obvious candidate from his computer capabilities and his suffering at the hands of Kamoshida. Although the fact that he had figured out who we were was rather unnerving to say the least, well more accurately who Ren was since he hadn’t really been speaking to me even though he kept saying ‘we’ during that conversation.

“Has he figured out our identities?” Morgana worriedly asked. The cat stuck his head out from the area where he’d been hiding away, Ann reassured him by claiming Mishima was ‘playing it cool’ and it did seem as if the boy wasn’t intending to give us away. Although when Ryūji suggested having a chat with him, the expression on his face was one that looked a little too similar to his angry face and I didn’t like it.

“In which case, I’ll do the chatting Ryūji,” I insisted. The blonde boy looked at me in surprise, probably because my tone and expression were tense, more tense than he’d seen them outside of discussions regarding Kamoshida. “Mishima has been hurt enough and you aren’t exactly subtle either. I can handle this better than you,” I insisted. Mishima had always been quiet and shy, so bullies enjoyed picking on him, but I wasn’t about to let that continue how that he was free of Kamoshida.

“I will say though… a forum where people can post problems may prove unexpectedly useful,” Morgana spoke up. I saw the confused looked the others shot him, but I understood what Morgana was getting at; if people posted their problems on this site then we might be able to find our next target. Which Ryūji proceeded to remind us we had to look for.

“And we need to stay sharp until we manage to find one. Once we do, we’ll need to head into an- Ow!” Ann began to speak. However, I pinched the skin of her arm in order to silence her and she looked at me before blinking in shock. “Right, we’ll need to head out on one of our social activities so we should prep our equipment-,” Ann began to amend. Thankfully she understood, but she got cut off again when Ryūji loudly cursed. “What’s with you?” Ann asked. Then again, we were all giving him weird looks since he seemed so freaked out by something.

“Don’t we have an exam comin’ up!?” Ryūji exclaimed. Ah, so he had only just remembered about that and Ann immediately accused him of going to be struggling this time around with a dour expression upon her face. “It’s not like you’re any better! All you’re good at is… English!” Ryūji accused. Not… exactly inaccurate unfortunately.

“I’d rather that than be bad at every subject!” Ann retorted. I sighed heavily, slightly annoyed by the silly squabbling that they were getting into, which Morgana was not helping by claiming Ryūji’s Japanese was also questionable. But Ryūji immediately claimed it was questionable whether Morgana was a human or not and Morgana immediately challenged him to a fight.

“Enough you two!” Ren ordered. An annoyed look pressed upon his face as he looked between the blonde and the cat. “If an exam is coming up, then why don’t we all study together, we might be able to cover each other’s weaker subjects,” Ren suggested. That seemed like a good idea so we each agreed to it and we proceeded to leave the school.

*Persona 5 Royal*

After leaving the school, me along with Ren and Ryūji went to the underground walkway in Shibuya that had articles for part-time jobs. Ren couldn’t wander around at nights, so he took the convenience store job at 777, while I took the job at Rafflesia flower shop and Ryūji signed up to the beef bowl job. Ryūji still seemed to be hobbling about, so it seemed like a good idea for me to make a brief detour to a certain sketchy doctor.

I stepped into the waiting area of the office that Takemi-sensei ran and the punk rock doctor looked up at me with a raised eyebrow as I walked over to her. She folded shut a manila folder and set it off to the side as I came to a stop in front of her desk; if we were going to keep going through the Palaces then something had to be done about Ryūji’s leg to ensure it didn’t have a persistent effect upon him and therefore a ripple effect upon our work… especially if we had to run again.

“You said that it might be better for someone Ryūji knows to help him with his leg. I was wondering if you’d be willing to teach me how to do that?” I asked. Takemi-sensei leaned back in her chair and looked at me with an intrigued gleam within her brown eyes, but I couldn’t exactly tell what she was thinking at the moment.

“Why me? You could go to any other general practitioner and yet you choose me, the one with a sketchy reputation. So, why?” Takemi-sensei asked. She was right about that, an ordinary general practitioner would be better in terms of not having to deal with that politician sound doctor again, but there was a lot more pros I had in mind that outweighed the fact that I’d have to be dealing with that single con.

“Because, you already know the issue and it seems like you’d be willing not to press sensitive questions about Ryūji’s history. Besides, while you might have a sketchy reputation around you, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person… probably more misunderstood. That, I can relate to,” I admitted. Takemi-sensei blinked her eyes in surprise, but she stood up and grabbed a clipboard before pointing me towards the exam room. I went in and proceeded to sit down on the stool in there.

“Right, I know you and that curly haired friend of yours aren’t really sick and that the two of you were listening in on my conversation the other day, so what are you up to?” Takemi-sensei accused. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she figured out that we’d been eavesdropping on the conversation since we hadn’t exactly been subtle – maybe I should look into that – but her tension wasn’t something I’d anticipated.

“I already told you; I want to help my friend Ryūji. His leg is still causing him pain and the two of us along with our friends are going to be doing more faster movements in a short span of time, he’s also doing individual running exercises. That means his leg will be enduring more stress than it’s had to for a year and he hasn’t had any treatment for it in that time. I want to avoid him continually getting hurt,” I stated. Takemi-sensei stared right at me in silence, as if she was attempting to understand something on my face, I simply stared back until a small huffing laugh escaped from Takemi’s lips.

“Alright kid, I’ll start gathering some information. Come back in a few days and we’ll talk then,” Takemi-sensei insisted. We quickly exchange contact information since we’d need it in order to get talking to each other, I then departed from the clinic and proceeded to leave the rest of the area to head back towards my home.

‘I hope that Takemi-sensei can get enough information for me to start helping Ryūji.’ I thought. Of course, that was based on if she could access medical texts since that man seemed pretty determined to prevent her from getting any work done; if he was just being rude because he didn’t like her then I wouldn’t suggest targeting him, but if it turned out that he was a legitimately dangerous individual then it might be advisable to stop him.

“Oh, excuse me!” A female voice called. Jerked out of my musings, I looked up and saw a young woman running up to me; long copper coloured hair tied into two ponytails with pale skin, but the sunglasses prevented me from seeing her eyes. She was wearing pink pearl earrings with a white turtleneck over which was a short-sleeved blue shirt with a navy skirt and black leggings and black furred boots. “I was wondering if you know where Café LeBlanc is, my senpai told me it’s an amazing place for coffee but I’m completely turned around,” The woman explained.

“Sure. It’s down this road, in one of the side alleys, near the bathhouse and laundromat,” I explained. The woman must not have been from around here despite her accent sounding somewhat similar to other voices I heard along with my own voice; a bright smile came onto her face at my words which seemed a bit extreme for such a simple thing but maybe she was just one of those people who happened to be cheerful in almost any situation… Hikaru was like that.

“Thank you so much,” The woman cheered. She turned to take off but stopped and then pivoted back around, she planted her feet so that they were shoulder width apart and extended both of her arms so that her hands face me as she waved at me. “Bye-bye!” The woman chimed. She then turned and started to jog into the street while I stood blinking in surprise at her bizarre stance even though she seemed comfortable doing it.

‘There was something familiar about that stance though.’ I thought. Like something I had seen a while back was nipping at me mind.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 28: - Mementos

“We’ve got a problem,” Ren greeted. I raised my eyebrow in silent question at the boy’s greeting; we were on our way to the train station to get to Shibuya so I couldn’t imagine what had happened to cause a problem this early in the day. “Ryūji went to his first shift at Ore no Beko last night and… well he either quit or got fired. Apparently, he was forced to do everything by himself with no training,” Ren admitted. I let out a small groan and shook my head, but I couldn’t find it in me to blame Ryūji as that sounds like a really bad working environment.

“Knowing Ryūji, it could easily be either of them,” Morgana admitted. Even our healer didn’t look annoyed by the events, instead he was shaking his head sadly, as if exasperated by this turn of events; we were down a source of income, maybe not by much but still, although if the working conditions were truly terrible then I don’t blame him for abandoning the job.

“Luckily, Sakura-san said I could walk around at night after I got back yesterday, so I’ll be able to take the job in Ryūji’s stead,” Ren admitted. I wasn’t particularly pleased to hear that he was going to be doing such a thing, he might be our leader but there was no need to burden himself with such stuff, he could rely on us to help him out. Truthfully, it wasn’t much but this could dovetail rather quickly into an issue.

“Just don’t overwork yourself Ren, taxing your mind and body won’t do us or yourself any good in the long run,” I advised. Ren nodded his head and we proceeded to continue on our trek to school, the train was cramped today so we were forced to stand up as the news continued to play over our heads. Morgana insisted on being moved closer in order to see the information that was scrolling by.

The news reported that Kamoshida was allowed to teach the way he had by the school – eh, technically true since Kobayakawa was scum – but it denied knowledge of the beatings. There was also a warning about the increase in pollen next week, that might have an interesting effect on Mementos and the Shadows down there. There was also an art exhibit likely about someone called Madarame from its’ title started next week as well.

“People are really talking about the Kamoshida incident. No one in this car knows that we’re the ones who did it,” Morgana commented. Only he could be trusted to talk about our Phantom Thief activities in a public setting, so I let it slide when Ren gave me a look.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Oh yeah, you’ve got exams starting on Wednesday. Don’t tell me you forgot,” Kawakami-sensei stated. Ryūji certainly fell into that category given his freak out yesterday. “Anyway, today we’ll be talking about The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Most theorise it’s the oldest story in Japan; for some, it’s the oldest science-fiction story in the world. But if you ask me, it’s the oldest story in Japan about a terrible woman,” Kawakami-sensei informed. That caught my attention. “I mean, Princess Kaguya gives her suitors absurd tasks, demands fancy gifts, then runs off to the moon. Some men lose their fortunes, some are humiliated and some even get serious wounds or go blind. Women like Princess Kaguya actually show up in a lot of stories from around the world,” Kawakami-sensei explained. That didn’t exactly line up with how I interpreted the story. “Now then, Amamiya-kun, you’ve probably heard that a woman who uses her wiles to lead people to their doom is a femme fatale. So, what’s the literal translation of the phrase ‘femme fatale’?” Kawakami-sensei asked.

Ren’s eyes were darting about as he tried to figure out the answer, mouthing the words in order to understand their meaning before raising his head back up to look at Kawakami-sensei. He didn’t seem particularly confident in whatever answer he had divined, but he seemed determined to go through with it from the steadiness within his grey eyes.

“Fatal woman,” Ren suggested. Not quite the literal translation but it’s accurate enough, Kawakami-sensei congratulated him and revealed that the phrase was technically French, she then went on to give more examples such as Morgan le Fay from the Arthurian legends and Queen Salome from the Bible. I took the opportunity to raise my hand into the air and Kawakami-sensei acknowledged me with a call of my family name.

“Kawakami-sensei, I feel I have to disagree with you about calling Princess Kaguya a femme fatale,” I admitted. This surprised Kawakami-sensei as I lowered my hand to rest on the table. “Princess Kaguya had no interest in these marriages to begin with but given that the five suitors she tasked with trials were prominent nobles, Princess Kaguya couldn’t turn them away as she had easily done all the others without bringing suffering upon the bamboo cutter and his wife. She designed these tasks to be literally impossible as a way to frighten these men off and leave her and her adoptive family free of consequences. The suitors could have easily decided to have left her alone after she gave her tests to them, they are the ones who chose to follow through with them, there by ruining their own lives. This happens in the opera Carmen, Carmen the gypsy is very much a femme fatale seducing José the guard to free her, but it is José who ruins his own life with his own choices. Princess Kaguya simply makes the statement ‘overcome my trial and I shall marry you’ there was no seduction involved. More so, when the Emperor asks for marriage, Princess Kaguya gives no trial simply a refusal with an ambiguous reason and when she does leave to the moon, she gives him an elixir of immortality. Princess Kaguya’s return to the moon could either have been because she was a criminal who’d served her sentence, or a child hidden from a devastating war. Princess Kaguya simply returned to her home in the end,” I answered.

“I suppose that is one way to look at the material, it all comes down to the reader’s perspective,” Kawakami-sensei decided. And honestly, she actually seemed rather happy about having heard my words given the slight gleam within her eyes.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We were gathered on the rooftop, since we wanted to discuss the possibility of a target and if not, then it would be time to introduce these guys to Mementos and continue our training. Ryūji was leaning back in his chair and scrolling through the various posts that had been put up on Mishima’s site, but just looking at his face told me that the search wasn’t going well at all.

“None of these posts are any good. Everyone’s just bitchin’ about their parents or their boyfriends. There ain’t even a hint of a hint about a new Palace,” Ryūji complained. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy to locate another Palace wielder, I suppose I could use my eyes but that would mean a lot of aimless wandering around and potentially getting lost. I may have lived in Tokyo all my life but that didn’t mean I knew all the little hideaways and secret passages, I’d be more likely to get killed, kidnapped or some other unspeakable fate than find a Palace.

“We can’t get everything online… finding a post with a name and location is asking a lot,” Ann pointed out. Her expression was quite saddened by the dim prospects we had of finding the next person. It was going to be difficult; we could search newspapers and magazines or listen to rumours on the streets as well as online, but we needed the full name in order to even start looking into the person.

“We don’t really need the location; a name will be enough to at least probe if this person has a Palace since the Meta-Nav is capable of discerning who has Palaces. Heck if we could find the actual person, I’d be able to see if they have a Shadow,” I acknowledged. Ann nodded her head, but the fact that there was nothing really concrete at the moment meant even that would be hard work.

“Guess we just gotta find one ourselves then!” Ryūji declared. That was something we could do but given how difficult it would be to get that kind of information, we still might not get any necessary information. Although, I suppose a dive into Mementos might potentially supply us with the possibility that a Shadow could spit out the information about someone who could have a Palace.

“Are you seriously suggesting we look for a target that even the police have overlooked?” Morgana questioned. Considering the fact that Kamoshida had been ignored by the police simply by people covering up for him, it was entirely possible that the same thing was happening with other Palace users. Covered up or they had enough social power to quash the rumours into nothing more than hearsay.

“Oh, there are plenty of those Morgana, trust me,” Ren growled. We looked at the ravenette who was incredibly tense as his grey eyes stared off to the side with a far off look; thankfully he snapped back shortly after. “But I think we should hold off until we can get our exams out of the way, that way we’ll have more free time,” Ren suggested. At that, the door suddenly opened, all of us who were human shaped sat up straight and Morgana shot off towards the metal boxes attached to the roof and hid behind them. Since I had my back to the door, I turned in my seat and my eyes widened when I saw our upperclassman and the student council president, Niijima Makoto, stood there.

Niijima-senpai had brown hair that was styled in a bob cut with a blunt fringe and a French-braid styled headband that matched her hair colour. Her eyes were either red or reddish-brown depending upon the light they were viewed in. She was of average female height, being the same as me and even her physique was similar to mine.

Her winter school uniform was fairly standard but without the traditional blazer. Instead, she wore a black halter vest over a long-sleeve white shirt with a turtleneck that had a noticeable zipper making it different to the one I wore. She wore the regulation black and red pleated tartan skirt, black tights and black-brown ankle boots.

“This place is off-limits, you know,” Niijima-senpai commented. She walked over to us with careful steps before coming to a stop shortly behind me, I could practically smell the tension that was coming off the two blonde members of our group, Ren looked confused as he glanced between them and the young woman who had suddenly interrupted our conversation. I kept my face completely blank as I looked at the woman.

“We’ll get outta here once we’re done chattin’,” Ryūji protested. His tone was incredibly hostile towards our upperclassman, it would only serve to heighten any suspicions of us. “Anyways, what’s Miss Council President want with us?” Ryūji demanded. Niijima-senpai’s red eyes rove over each of us, with them resting on me for a moment longer than the others, before occupying the space that was roughly in the centre of all of us.

“The troublemaker, the centre of gossip, the Yamato Nadeshiko and the infamous transfer student. Hmm, interesting combination,” Niijima-senpai acknowledged. She was clearly suspicious of us, certainly our combination was unusual, but she didn’t have the right to make is seem like we shouldn’t be friends; her words carried that undercurrent, whether it was intentional or not, it was there.

“Great way to start a conversation,” Ann growled. Hostility pulsed through her tone as she leaned forward slightly, I focused on her more and saw the white knuckled grip she had on the area that she was sat on; if Niijima pushed in the wrong direction when one of these two blondes might just be set off, we couldn’t afford that kind of scrutiny, otherwise our activities would be put in danger.

“By the way… it seems as though you got to know Kamoshida-sensei pretty well,” Niijima-senpai commented. Her red eyes drifted over to rest on Ren so I darted my attention to him, his temper might not run as hot as Ann’s and was practically arctic compared to Ryūji’s, but he had displayed enough rage towards Kamoshida that I felt it necessary to at least keep an eye on him as well.

“Not really,” Ren coolly answered. We certainly got to know the real Kamoshida well, seeing all of his ugly secrets with our own eyes, but the man he pretended to be for everyone else, we hardly knew him; I saw Niijima-senpai adjust her position as she gave Ren a sceptical look. She clearly didn’t believe what the boy had told her, but it was the truth.

“I heard Kamoshida-sensei used a volleyball team member to spread details of your past record. Don’t you hate him? Kamoshida-sensei, I mean,” Niijima-senpai wondered. I saw Ren’s shoulders tense up and decided to step in; I rose to my feet and moved to stand toe-to-toe with our upperclassman, our eyes clashing against each other as I clasped my hands in front of me while keeping my face carefully blank.

“If you have something to say senpai, then please say it,” I requested. Niijima-senpai remained quiet for a few moments longer before taking a miniscule step backwards as she broke our stare off and returned them to the empty space they had previously occupied; I proceeded to take a step back in order to allow her retreat, but I didn’t move too far nor did I sit down.

“I don’t mean to offend. Many students have been shaken by what happened with Kamoshida-sensei. The rumours about that odd, calling card-esque posting aren’t going away either,” Niijima-senpai commented. She rested her chin on her right hand which was curled into a fist and the right elbow was resting on the back of her left hand which gripped the right side of her hip, appearing to be in contemplation.

“I didn’t expect someone like you would care about that tactless stuff, Niijima-senpai,” Ann commented. That was a good idea, if we showed an unimpressed or uninterested opinion of the calling card then we might be able to shake her suspicions of us from anything that would be too damning for us to deal with, to something that was a bit more reasonable.

“I dunno that it was tactless,” Ryūji commented. I restrained my reaction to his words, was he really unable to realise just how dangerous of a position we where in with Niijima-senpai being suspicious of us and most likely investigating on Kobayakawa’s orders. “Anyways, we done here? We can’t leave if you keep talkin’ to us,” Ryūji questioned. Our upperclassman’s eyes hardened as she stared passed me to almost glare at Ryūji.

“At least try to understand my position. Being forced to deal with this horseplay,” Niijima-senpai insisted. I didn’t like the way she had said those words, especially since she had insulted the hard work that we’d put into the whole Phantom Thieves existence; even if she didn’t know, calling the situation horseplay certainly seemed to make a mockery of the suffering that Suzui had gone through.

“Horseplay!?” Ann demanded. I immediately moved over and clamped a hand upon her shoulder while giving her a hard look, it was cruel the way that Niijima-senpai had described what we were doing, but we couldn’t afford to raise Niijima-senpai’s suspicions any more than they already were; I felt Ann’s coiled muscles proceed to relax slightly underneath my grip and her breath steadily rushed out her.

“Ah yes, by the way… it’s been decided that this place will be closed off due to the incident. I heard some people are coming up here without permission, after all. I’m sorry to have interrupted you,” Niijima-senpai insisted. She brushed back a lock of her hair as she spoke, she then pivoted around and walked away from us. We remained quiet until the door swung to a close behind her.

“What was that about?” Ann questioned. I removed my hand from her shoulder and the second I did, Ann shot to her feet and marched forward a few steps; her body was practically trembling with barely restrained emotions as she stared angrily after Niijima-senpai, Morgana took the opportunity to jump back down onto the table since the coast was now clear.

“She’s looking into what happened to Kamoshida, likely on the principal’s orders since Kobayakawa licked Kamoshida’s boots more than anyone else in this school,” I acknowledged. A scowl deepened the twist of Ann’s lips, she was likely repulsed by the fact that someone was actually looking into the whole scenario, as if Kamoshida was worth caring about instead of allowing the whole thing to pass by without comment.

“The fact that she interrogated us means she’s on to us. That girl seems rather sharp. We should be cautious of her,” Morgana stated. A shiver made its’ way up my spine at Morgana’s words or rather the scenario that his words made me think of; of all the people for Kobayakawa to have picked, it was the only one I was actually afraid of.

“You have no idea how right you are Morgana. Of all the people to be looking into us, she has to be the worst,” I admitted. Niijima-senpai was almost too smart, if we made the tiniest of errors then we were absolutely going to get caught which would put us into a world of trouble. At the moment, all Niijima-senpai had were suspicions, but that wouldn’t be enough for her.

“She really pisses me off!” Ryūji snapped. Unfortunately for us, Ryūji’s temper might just be the thing that undid all of us, we couldn’t afford for him to lose his cool and blurt out something – the same was true for Ann but she had more restraint – incriminating; Ren moved over and settled a hand on Ryūji’s shoulder to calm him down, but the blonde continued to tremble with his fury.

“We need to be careful, all of us,” Ren insisted. His voice was level but the tone unmistakably the same one he used when acting as Joker, at that, Ryūji proceeded to relax but it was only minutely especially as his face continued to bear a sour expression; Morgana turned around so that he was facing the two boys as opposed to me and Ann.

“That reminds me… study hard. Especially you, Ryūji. There are bound to be traps that will need to be solved with brains. Keep in mind that everything you do in your daily lives has an impact on your abilities,” Morgana insisted. That might be one of the few ways to properly motivate Ryūji to take his studies seriously… maybe.

“True, studying won’t be so bad if we just think of it as helping us prepare to be phantom thieves.” Ann agreed. At least she seemed up for the studying bit. “Speaking of our exams,” Ann spoke up. The model turned her blue eyes to gaze at me. “How did you know all that stuff about Princess Kaguya and Carmen?” Ann asked. Ah, so she was curious about that.

“Well, I like to read so I’ve studied the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. As for Carmen, well the songs in that were a part of my training with Ouvrard and she made me study the operas… Carmen… spoke to me in a way few of the others did, so I read the book the opera was based off of. I can loan it and the opera to you if you want to learn about her,” I offered. The sparkle in Ann’s eyes seemed to imply that she might be interested in such a thing. “You know, it’s really funny, but Carmen, Phantom and Arsène all come from French book characters,” I admitted. A small smile tugged at Ann’s lips as Ren chuckled briefly.

“Man, this is so lame… I was all fired up about helpin’ people, not about studyin’,” Ryūji complained. That really soured the light-hearted atmosphere that we’d managed to get back after Niijima-senpai’s unexpected appearance, but I could think of one thing that would definitely cheer our Electricity wielder up.

“We can still help people,” I admitted. Everyone proceeded to look at me with confusion in their eyes, except for Morgana who was smiling… at least I think it was a smile. “I think it’s about time I showed you guys the training zone I mentioned,” I explained. With that, I grabbed my bag and left the rooftop with the others following after me. It was quite simple to bring everyone to the Shibuya station courtyard where we all stopped.

“What’re you bringin’ us here for?” Ryūji asked. Morgana and I didn’t answer his question, instead Morgana just pushed the blonde to do as he had instructed. “Alright, I’ve got the Phantom Aficionado Website up. Now what?” Ryūji wondered. The other two also had their phones out with me able to spot the website open for them as well, I was the only one who didn’t have it up, but I had a different task to accomplish.

“We need to look for a post that has a full name in it,” I explained. Ryūji claimed there was no information on big shots like he’d already said. “And this is training, we don’t need a large goal, simply something that fulfils the requirements,” I insisted. Ryūji grumbled at this but go to looking through the website with Ann and Ren also proceeding to start looking.

“‘He won’t listen to what I say’… no wait, there’s no name on this one,” Ann admitted. And since we needed the full name, we wouldn’t be able to do anything about this even if it did turn out to be something that desperately needed to be resolved; however, the more we handled these smaller requests then we might get more known at a slower pace, or at least the website would become more trusted which would still help us.

“‘Someone’s bad-mouthin’ me in online chat rooms’… this one’s got a name,” Ryūji suggested. That was a surprise, since it was online, I figured there would be a username instead of the actual name, unless someone was trying to get another person in trouble. Either way, this sounded like something that could be resolve or at least ignored by the victim in question without any detriment to their lives.

“Ignore those. Aren’t there any posts about more serious trouble?” Morgana wondered. A fine point, we should try and focus on those who were struggling with unfair odds, much like what the four of us had been struggling with, given that they would be the most vulnerable to such abuses. They proceeded to look back at their phones and continued looking for someone who we could help.

“‘I don’t know what to do about my ex who’s stalking me. His name is Nakanohara Natsuhiko’. Apparently, he’s a teller at City Hall. How does that one sound?” Ren asked. That was actually quite a good find, stalkers could get pretty crazy depending upon their own mind set, it was probably worthwhile attempting to stop this individual in order to protect the man or woman who’d made this post.

“A government worker’s stalkin’ someone?” Ryūji asked. This target, however, got Morgana’s seal of approval, so I looked down at my phone which had the Meta-Nav already open in hopes of successfully finding a target. “So, we’re just gonna jump right into a Palace? Fine by me!” Ryūji declared. I allowed a stony expression to appear on my face and Ryūji paled slightly.

“We won’t be overcoming a challenge today. For something like this we only need a name,” I explained. My tone icy at I stared at the twitching Ryūji for a few moments longer before looking at my phone. “Are the two of you okay with this?” I asked. I, at least, remembered the unanimous vote decision; luckily the other two agreed to this. “Nakanohara Natsuhiko. Mementos,” I spoke. Immediately the pulse of entering the Metaverse washed over me.

“Everyone disappeared!” Ann exclaimed. The people who had been flowing in and out of the subway had vanished along with all of the people who had been languishing around at the surroundings shops or just waiting for someone one. “It… kind of feels like I’m… walking on air?” Ann wondered. Mementos always had such an unusual sensation to it, the other Palaces felt more grounded, perhaps it was because of the difference in the source of the Palace’s creation.

“Is this that Nakanohara guy’s Palace?” Ryūji asked. The boy had already climbed to his feet as I put the information into the Nav, but now him and Ann were in the ready stances they had developed; Ren on the other hand was looking around curiously, Morgana of course was relaxed. I rounded the group to head for the station’s stairs.

“Not exactly, think of it as everyone’s Palace… well everyone without a Persona that is,” I commented. With those words, I descended down the steps as Morgana encouraged everyone to follow me down while explaining how the Shadows were only lurking underground. Once I hit the platform, my Rebel’s Armour immediately cloaked me in its’ protective embrace.

“The hell is this place?” Skull asked. I turned to look at the boy, finding everyone had joined us. “Wait, our clothes changed!?” Skull exclaimed. Joker and Panther both looked down at themselves to take in their appearance and I saw Panther’s pale skin rush even paler at the implication of our clothing having changed pressed itself upon her.

“The Shadows know we’re here!?” Panther panicked. She looked around as if expecting an attack to come at any moment, I glanced towards the edge of the platform and saw, just like the last several times I’d been back here, the Velvet Room’s door was absent. I yanked my mind away from Igor and Lavenza and focused upon the people I had to train.

“Since the moment we stepped in,” Mona confirmed. Skull got mad at Mona for having not told them, Joker settled a placating hand on Skull’s shoulder and I saw the tension leave the blonde, but only minutely. “We’re still safe right here,” Mona revealed. That removed the rest of the tension from Skull as everyone focused on Mona. “I’ve come to investigate a number of times. Shadows never come up to this floor. But it’s a different story once you go down. This place is simply teeming with them,” Mona explained.

“More importantly, what is this Mementos!? It’s about time you start explaining. Both of you!” Panther demanded. Her colour had returned now and blue eyes darted between me and Mona with a stern look upon her face; Joker also looked at us while Skull impatiently tapped his foot as he waited for some answers to be forthcoming.

“As I said, Mementos is technically a Palace that belongs to everyone. Palaces like Kamoshida’s only form under a case of extreme distortion, in other words the Ruler’s perception of reality is so cut off from the truth of reality that their minds create a solitary Palace as a consequence,” I began. Igor had been very thorough in explaining these things to me, so that I would be prepared for entering the Palace and Mementos.

“Since their perception of reality is generally parallel to reality, the general public has one gigantic, shared Palace. That’s where we are now,” Mona finished up. Panther did comment on how the place felt different to Kamoshida’s Palace; it was still oppressive and creepy as always, but it also had a clustered feeling to the air, unlike the Palaces Kamoshida and Ouvrard had which felt a little clearer.

“When you say shared… you mean they’re all put together? Even though they’re just strangers?” Skull asked. It did sound odd that they’d be so connected to each other on a mental level despite the physical level being that we probably couldn’t even tell them out in a crowd; but the mind was a mysterious thing that couldn’t quite be understood by the simple examinations we currently had. Even coming into these places didn’t help me really understand it.

“It’s a collective unconsciousness,” I stated. Igor and Lavenza were probably the only people who might have a true understanding of the world of the mind, the little they had told me was all I could pass on to these people who had come to join me in this topsy-turvy existence. Skull looked at me with an expression that screamed befuddlement… not that I could really be surprised by this, I tried to think of a way to explain without breaking the brains of any of the people here.

“Don’t bother explaining that Amazon, Skull probably won’t get it,” Mona insisted. Since I hadn’t been able to come up with anything that would explain the situation, I shrugged my shoulders in agreement with those words, it would be better to focus on what could be explained instead of trying to perform mental gymnastics to explain something like a collective unconsciousness.

“So, what you’re saying is, using this place, we can even change the hearts of people who don’t have a Palace?” Panther asked. Even though I had encountered the Shadows of People down here before, it was little more than random chance and I’d never actually got into a fight with them; they were much more placid than Ruler Shadows were even if they were angry at someone. So, the idea we could perform a Change of Heart on one was a surprising one to me.

“Correct! The steps to do so are slightly different though,” Mona explained. Since I’d never actually performed a Change of Heart on someone down here, given I’d just come down here for training without a name, Mona would definitely be the expert this time around; at least I would be able to aid them with the fighting part.

“But this place looks pretty huge. Are we gonna be able to get around just by walkin’?” Skull asked. I had managed all this time with just walking, especially since I could only go two floors down and the second was comparatively tiny; Mona hopped off the barriers he’d been stood on and darted a small distance away from us before turning back around to us.

“It seems the time has finally come… Morganaa… transfoooooorm!” Morgana declared. He did poses like from Featherman or other shows of that type, he then jumped into the air and was surrounded by a cloud of smoke. What dropped down in Mona’s place was a van! A large black van, with three yellow stripes on the hood with the middle one being the thickest and though they are symmetrical with one another, they weren’t aligned with the vehicle itself, as the lines converge toward the left windshield. On the grille was a small golden emblem looking Mona's biped head. The headlights matched his eyes, with his ears attached on the front side of the roof and I just saw that his tail was attached on the back. “Come now, Panther, Amazon. Ladies first,” Mona encouraged.

“Did you just turn into a van?” I questioned. The others seemed equally as baffled by the occurrence, Mona claimed this was due to cognition combined with extra training and it was similar to how our Rebel’s Armour was formed. “What kind of nutty cognition allows a cat to transform into a motor vehicle?” I wondered.

“I’m with Amazon! You turnin’ into a van is totally different than our clothes changin’!” Skull exclaimed. Apparent the perception of ‘cats turnings into vans’ was extremely common among the rest of the people, it made absolutely no sense to me if I was honest; I know cats and foxes had shapeshifter qualities in mythology but this was just bizarre.

“Why a van though?” Panther wondered. For this, Mona had no answer although Skull openly wondered why he hadn’t done this in the Palace; it would certainly have been helpful to have used this to escape the castle instead of running for the exit. Admittedly it had been chocked full of stairs but some areas had been pretty risky to get through with only our legs.

“I would have if I could! But that castle was cramped, there were tons of stairs and no way this, fits on top of a chandelier!” Mona protested. Skull walked over and proceeded move alongside the side of van; Mona might be right but still I really wish we could have had the option to speed up our travelling during that escape, especially since I couldn’t open a doorway to the Velvet Room.

“Hey, Skull! Ladies first!” Panther yelled. Her pink clad hand latched around my wrist and dragged me over to the doorway, pulling me in while pushing at Skull to make room for us which he protested when the van suddenly bucked up like it was a horse instead of a mysteriously transformed cat; a loud yowling meow escaped Mona, but eventually he settled down which allowed Joker to slide in with all of us sat in the back row.

“All aboard! Let’s go!” Skull cheered. It was slightly squashed back here, but nothing so terribly uncomfortable, however the vehicle remained very still instead of taking off which caused the other three to look at each other in confusion as a sinking feel pressed itself into my stomach; after all I’m certain there was nothing in the collective unconsciousness that had conceived of a living automobile.

“Why are you all just sitting back there? I’m a van, remember? I’m not going anywhere unless someone drives me,” Mona pointed out. Joker found himself with the added job of also being our driver and relocated himself to the front, to reduce the squashed feeling and give us a back-up driver if things ever went south, I also relocated myself to the front to learn. “Now start the engine! You can’t drive if it’s not running!” Mona insisted.

I searched around and found a button near the steering wheel; it was wrong and Mona complained of being tickled so Joker tried lower down and we were rewarded with a purr that sounded somewhat engine-like. Skull claimed this was creepy, but it seemed appropriate, we set off down from the entrance to the first area.

“Man… this place totally does feel like a Palace,” Skull commented. Panther agreed, commenting on how strange it would be to driving on tracks in the real world, since the rails were present even down here, she proceeded to focus on our need to locate Nakanohara’s location, but where that place was, I couldn’t be sure.

“Most likely in a segment of his own creation. Don’t worry, it won’t be the size of a Palace. Our next step is to find an entrance to that segment,” Mona explained. The most pressing matter would be if we could find the entrance and Skull wondered what it could possibly look like. “I have no idea, but strong distortions should be a pretty obvious visual clue,” Mona advised. With that, Joker got us moving off.

We rolled down the twisting and turning pathways of Mementos and occasionally ran across Shadows which looked like black vaguely humanoid masses with multiple white masks. We also somewhat literally ran over them, as when we found a Shadow, the Mona-van proceeded to somehow pounce upon them to tear the mask off. The Shadows down here only seemed to be Pixies, Slimes, Jack-o-Lanterns, and Mandrakes which meant they would be easy to deal with.

Although, there was one slight problem, when we first hopped out of the van to deal with the Shadows, the Pixie and Mandrake that had manifested seemed ready to fight. Right up until they saw me and then they let out shrill screams and ran away too fast for us to retaliate. This earned me several confused looks as I felt a burning sensation stretch across my cheeks… I think I might have been down here a little too often. Given the sudden abandonment of a fight, we piled back into the Mona-van and it proceeded to take off further around the level in search of our target.

We eventually found the entrance, it was fairly obvious since it looked like the tunnel was being pulled into a sinkhole that was stuck on the wall, the rails rose off the floor and were pulled into the sinkhole. We all exchanged nervous glances as Mona confirmed he sensed Nakanohara on the other side, with a dosage of uncertainty, Joker sent us forward and through the sinkhole. Once we landed, all of us got out of the Mona-van and he turned back into his cat form.

“Hey, something’s there!” Skull called. Since it was likely Nakanohara’s Shadow, we cautiously approached him. “Some front desk guy at City Hall became a stalker,” Skull commented. We needed to be careful, this Shadow could develop into a Ruler if left alone which meant he was likely much more dangerous than the other Shadows of People that I’d encountered.

“I don’t know how much evil he’d done, but we have to do something if he’s bothering other people,” Panther insisted. Agreed, him being a stalker could potentially dovetail into much more dangerous personality traits if his obsession was left unchecked; essentially, we could be staring at someone who could end up as another Kamoshida.

“Who are you?!” Shadow Nakanohara demanded. He was pretty non-descript if I was honest; black hair with an almost bowl cut shape to it, black framed glasses and a suit likely for his work, his eyes were the typical gold colour for a Shadow. Even though he looked fairly ordinary, we couldn’t simply dismiss him, there was a presence coming from him that was akin to a Ruler’s Shadow, if somewhat weaker.

“Are you that stalker!? Haven’t you ever stopped to consider how your ex feels?” Panther demanded. Her expression had twisted into one of anger, no doubt remembering her own stalker and sympathising with the man or woman who was currently enduring Nakanohara’s action. An expression of rage pressed itself onto the Shadow’s face as he glared at Panther, likely not happy about her accusation.

“She’s my property! I can do whatever I want with her! It’s not like she didn’t treat me like a plaything! What’s wrong with me doing the same!?” Shadow Nakanohara responded. Oh, those were the wrong kind of words to be saying in front of Panther, her expression turned practically wrathful as she tightly gripped the handle of her whip.

“You can’t treat someone like shit just ‘cause they did it to you! What a load of crap,” Skull snapped. He then proceeded to stomp one of his feet forward, a determined yet angry look upon his face as he glared at the Shadow. “We’re gonna change the hearts of all the bastards like you!” Skull declared. The Shadow turned his burning gaze to Skull as tension boiled across his body.

“There are millions of people far worse than me! What about Madarame? He stole everything from me, but you’re letting him off the hook!?” Shadow Nakanohara questioned. Well now, that was an interesting piece of information, someone he knew was supposedly a life stealing thief; that certainly sounded like someone who could be worth looking into… actually the name Madarame sounded familiar.

“Madarame?” Joker quietly repeated. A questioning note to his tone, but we never got the chance to ask for answers as Nakanohara’s Shadow became wreathed in light and transformed into… an Obariyon? Talk about an unexpected surprise, even though that was supposed to be a Shadow, it had taken on the appearance of a Persona, could that be because it was still connected to the collective unconsciousness or was there some other reason?

“Get ready! Here he comes!” Mona warned. I quickly shook myself out of the shock that seeing that little dancing creature again had thrown me into, I hadn’t seen that Persona since Ouvrard’s Palace and now here it was again, performing that little dance as the others had. Hopefully this one would possess similar stats to the other Obariyons that I had faced.

“Now that I finally have what’s rightfully mine… I’m not going to let you take it away! Look, this is a winner-takes-all world. Come fight me and I’ll show you what I mean!” Shadow Nakanohara dared. I focused my Second Sight upon the creature, I needed to learn the information and learn it fast in order to ensure that my teammates were prepared for whatever this entity might throw out at us.

“It’s weak to Electricity and Resists Melee Physical attacks!” I warned. Joker and Skull would be the best ones to handle this battle, but to start I proceeded to use Makakaja on Skull since he had lower magical stats than Joker did. A grin split Skull’s face as he immediately blasted Electricity onto the little dancing imp. Obariyon was knocked down, but Joker suddenly held up his hand, stopping Skull and Panther from moving into a Hold Up position.

“Baton Pass! We can deal more damage that way and keep it on the ground!” Joker ordered. Skull nodded and darted over to our leader, slapping hands. Joker immediately brought out Koropokkguru and unleashed more lightning onto the Shadow. It stayed knocked down in that intense dizzy state, but when Joker tried to Baton Pass to Mona, there was no gathered power growing in his hand.

“I don’t think the Baton Pass works if the enemy’s already knocked down!” Mona realised. Joker frowned at this revelation, but there wasn’t much that could be done. Mona took over the battle and quickly fired off a Wind spell. But that simply cleared up the imp’s confusion, allowing it to climb back to its’ feet. The little creature spun around as a large hammer appeared out of nowhere – last I checked Obariyon didn’t use that kind of attack! – it swung down and smacked into Panther.

The girl stumbled back, a gasp of pain escaping her as she crumpled over, Mona darted over to her with worry in his eyes. Skull charged at Obariyon forcing me to dart over to seize a hold of him. Footsteps echoed behind me, but I kept my focus forward. I pushed Skull back and pulled off my mask to have Phantom unleash a pulse of Gravity onto the imp. The attack landed right as I heard Panther’s breathing even out.

“Remember what it’s weak to Skull, don’t lose your head!” I chastised. Stepping back, I allowed Skull to take the next blow. Or at least he would have had Panther not marched up and proceeded to have Carmen weave a sleeping spell over Obariyon. The Ailment stuck and Obariyon slumped down slightly as snoring sounds began to emanate from it.

“We might be able to take advantage of this! With it asleep, its’ defences will be lowered!” Mona exclaimed. I’d never known if Ailments could be useful in combat, since I had none in my repertoire, but Lavenza had implied that using the right Skill or Spell after an Ailment could make the attack much stronger than normal.

“Skull, you go after me! Use a Physical attack!” Joker commanded. He then pulled his mask off and had Koropokkguru manifest once more, but a weakening Spell twisted around Obariyon. Skull proceeded to bring out Captain Kidd and the little imp was slammed with his attack. As a result, the shadow went flying backwards and smacked into the ground with more force than I think any of us were expecting from the stillness that came over us as we looked on in silence for a few moments.

Thankfully, Obariyon proceeded to knock us back to our senses by jumping to his feet and using a Spell. This Spell proceeded to raise its’ Physical attack – I quickly warned the others about this – which made that attack it had more dangerous. Panther quickly used her Fire on Obariyon in an attempt to stop it from attacking us once again. It still stood so Mona used his Wind to try and defeat it, but this had the same results as before.

Without a group defence spell, we could only count on beating that Shadow before it could attack. Joker brought out his little leaf man again and brought lightning down onto the Obariyon. With the imp knocked down, Joker ordered all of us into an All-Out Attack, I could feel the Shadow weakening which meant we had to be getting close to ending this battle.

My theory was proven true as right after we darted back, Skull lunged forward and had more Electricity crackle into existence around Obariyon. This led to another All-Out Attack and the Shadow was finally defeated. Wispy flecks of darkness began to drift off its’ slumped down body and into the air, eventually growing slightly larger until soon enough Nakanohara’s Shadow had returned to the human form it was meant to hold.

“I-I’m sorry… please forgive me… I-I couldn’t stop obsessing… n-not after this person I trusted used me and then disposed of me,” Shadow Nakanohara apologised. That, that sounded pretty painful, but I suppose it does show that the world is a whole lot more grey than people prefer it to be, a bad person could simply end up being another victim of a worse person.

“We get it,” Joker softly admitted. He moved closer to Shadow Nakanohara, likely trusting that he wouldn’t try to attack; given his hunched over position, the Shadow probably wouldn’t “You were betrayed but taking it out on other people won’t help you. Now you mentioned a Madarame earlier. If he truly is worse than you, tell us. We’ll change his heart,” Joker pointed.

“I… was afraid of being thrown away again like some worthless thing,” Shadow Nakanohara admitted. Panther realised that someone was forcing this man to suffer just had she had been made to suffer, her face softening to empathy briefly before it hardened into an expression of unforgiving steel. Even if he had more valid reasons than other people, what he did was still wrong.

“Still, you shouldn’t have dragged an unrelated woman into your mess,” Panther insisted. She was right, that woman had no business being unceremoniously dragged into the mess that was her partner’s past, walking in of your own volition was completely different from being tossed into it without getting a word in edge wise about how you felt.

“Panther is right, forcing others to suffer as you have suffered will simply perpetuate a needless cycle of suffering. You must have the courage to stop the cycle with your own hands,” I added on. Revenge begets revenge begets more revenge, sometimes simply stopping the desire to hurt someone does more good than getting that revenge. Of course, not every sin is so easy to leave to rest, some are worse than others.

“Yes, I know that now. I’ll put an end to my love for her,” Shadow Nakanohara agreed. I hope he could, emotions – I have realised – are not so easily stopped once they take root in a person’s heart. “Hey, you can change people’s hearts, right?” Nakanohara asked. We nodded our heads to confirm this was possible. “In that case, won’t you change Madarame’s heart? Before more people fall victim to him,” Shadow Nakanohara pleaded. He started to glow just like the other two Shadows had upon defeat.

“Hold on! You gotta tell us more about him!” Skull demanded. But Shadow Nakanohara could say no more, instead he simply proceeded to vanish, leaving only a shining orb behind, but this was much more physical looking that the hazy glow that came from the other two Treasures “Damnit! We got a clue but nothin’ more than a name, not even a full one at that,” Skull grumbled. He kicked his foot against the ground with a small grumble escaping his lips. “Hey Mona, Amazon, what’s that shiny thing?” Skull asked.

“It’s the bud of a Treasure. Had we let it be, it very well may have blossomed into a Palace. Joker, this will make a perfect reward!” Mona suggested. Joker stepped forward and wrapped his hand around the orb, in response to the grip it proceeded to transmute into a string of pearls which I felt a power coming from just like the Breeze Ring.

“So, Nakanohara had a Change of Heart, right?” Skull wondered. Given the way he had spoken and the fact that he had vanished like the other two Shadows had done, it was incredibly likely that he had gone through the process; Mona even stated that it was ‘most likely’, but Panther looked a little unsure of whether it had happened.

“But how are we supposed to know if we succeeded?” Panther asked. A reasonable concern, given that we didn’t have the same level of access to Nakanohara as we did to Kamoshida or Ouvrard nor was he a particularly well-known man, so the news was unlikely to ever pick up on his change. But there was one way, a pretty available way for us to check on him to ensure his change stuck.

“I could ask Mishima if he’d keep an eye on posts that come up, see if anyone responds about something having changed,” I suggested. It was possible that someone would be able to make some mention of whether the change had occurred on the website; that was the only reasonable avenue for us to be keeping an eye on him.

“Yeah, the lady who posted the dude’s name online. If he really does change, she’ll prolly comment again,” Skull agreed. Mona agreed with this point. “Either way, trainin’ against Shadows down here’s the best! It’s great prep for our next target!” Skull declared. At least he saw the benefits of coming down here and doing these requests, if only he could do the same for the studying and exams.

“It’s also nice to be able to give courage to the people who post their problems online,” Panther admitted. That was another good thing to coming down here, we could at least reach out to other people who might not be suffering at the hands of famous people but were suffering all the same; so long as we could help people, that was all that mattered at the moment.

“On top of that, we can sell whatever treasure we get for some cold, hard cash!” Mona declared. Which would increase the funds we could have for medicine and weapon upgrades without relying on our jobs and the money we managed to nab off of Shadows; all the better for us to be prepared for the next heist.

“Sounds like things are goin’ pretty great for us!” Skull exclaimed. However, Joker had been unusually quiet throughout the discussion, I proceeded to look over at the ravenette leader and saw that he had a rather concerned expression upon his face and he was lightly gripping his chin with his fingers. Something clearly had to be concerning him for him to look so unsettled despite how well we had been doing.

“But a lot of them ran when they saw Amazon, it makes me think finding any we could corner long enough to beat will be difficult with you alongside us. But I don’t want to leave anyone out, otherwise we’ll never be able to work together,” Joker admitted. That had been a rather particular issue for me to deal with, I’d come down here so often that now the Shadows had proceeded to flee instead of fight unless they were of the aggressive variety.

“There’s more to Mementos, but I’ve never been able to get down there, maybe with more people we could try again,” I suggested. If we managed to get through the wall barring our passage, then we’d find a new area and that new area would contain new enemies who wouldn’t be as likely to flee from us as the ones here would be.

“I actually wanted to take you guys down there anyway, let’s go before we leave,” Mona insisted. With that, we proceeded to leave the area and return to Mementos’ main area with Mona quickly assuming his Mona-van form and we all piled in. “To get further down, we’ll need to find the platform from earlier. Let’s head there first,” Mona insisted.

“Wait, you two have been there before, right? Don’t either of you got like a map or something?” Skull questioned. I shook my head in response while slightly hanging my head, we couldn’t make a map of this place because of how Mementos was created; it was a literally impossible task to map out this place permanently.

“That would hold no meaning in this place. The layout changes every time you enter,” Mona revealed. Panther was naturally shocked by this fact since we’d have to search the floors every time we came down here. “This place is the fused cognition of a countless number of people. It’s constantly shifting. Even so, our destination should be pretty close. I’m counting on you Joker,” Mona stated.

“We’re looking for a train platform, that will take us down to the next level,” I revealed. Joker nodded his head; with a purring engine we shot off back into the winding tunnels, my eyes were searching through the murkiness to locate the doorway that would get us to the platform. Soon enough we found it and hopped out the Mona-van onto the raised section of stone that connected to the elevators heading down.

“Hold on a sec. You guys hearin’ something?” Skull asked. As he did, we all stopped and I heard the telltale sound of something that had become pretty routine to my ears whenever I came down here. I looked over to see a cognition of a train roll up in the barred area across from us. “The trains’re totally runnin’!” Skull exclaimed. He looked rather scared at seeing such a thing happening down here, then again I’d been pretty spooked the first time it had happened to me.

“We don’t need to worry about them, I’ve never seen them running on whatever section of the track we’re on,” I reassured. Skull visible slumped down, his relief was that palpable, but at least they all knew we weren’t going to be run over by a train at some point while exploring this unusual world. Joker wiped his forehead as Panther sighed loudly with relief.

“Still, I thought this was a Palace! Why are there working trains down here?” Panther wondered. A good question, honestly though I figured it was probably some cognitive derived factor; after all this was connected to the subway so that probably affected how the whole thing ended up forming into this complex, ever shifting warren of insanity.

“Maybe this is how the public views this place? I don’t know,” Mona answered. With the others reassured, we proceeded to descend down the escalator to the next area, finding the small stretch of platform with trains buzzing passed on either side. “Alright, there it is! The thing I want to make sure of is up ahead,” Mona insisted. We carefully made our way over to the dead end with its’ pulsating wall.

“What is this place? It’s kinda creepy,” Panther acknowledged. She was right, this place gave off an even creepier ominous feeling that the previous two areas of Mementos; I honestly wondered if this would be a recurring thing, the further down we went the more this oppressive feeling would start sinking into my bones. I really, really hope not, I don’t think I could take it for very long if that was the case.

“And a dead end at that. Why’s it even exist?” Skull wondered. I didn’t understand why there was some kind of mysterious barrier that didn’t let anything through had manifested two levels down into the collective unconsciousness of, at the least, all of Tokyo. I knew there was more beyond it, but the darn thing wouldn’t budge, I even used Phantom on it… nothing.

“Now hold on… just watch. This is most likely not an ordinary wall. If my hunch is correct…,” Mona commented. Instead of finishing, he hopped forward and pressed his paw against the wall; a sudden rumbling shook the platform and I immediately dropped into a fighting stance as I snapped my head about, fearful that a massive Shadow was approaching. Instead, the diamond shape at the centre of the wall slid up and the portions that surrounded it rotated away into the walls around it.

“It opened!” Panther exclaimed. Beyond were the escalators I’d seen before thanks to my eyes, but I was rather surprised to see that it had suddenly decided to open up. That was when the Meta-Nav proceeded to chime in with a message about a new area being confirmed and updating guidance information.

“See!? It’s just as I though!” Mona declared. He must have suspected that the wall wasn’t the true end just like I had, though Panther was confused by those words. “That wall wouldn’t budge when I came here by myself before. But it’d be weird for the deepest part of Mementos to be some normal place like this, wouldn’t it?” Mona explained. It would indeed have been weird, at least now we knew there was a way to remove the blockage.

“So you were thinkin’ there’s gotta be more?” Skull suggested. And the Meta-Nav had happily confirmed such a thing, the next area was likely to be more dangerous than this area; but with five of us – one a Wild Card – we were probably going to be able to handle it. Well, so long as we didn’t do anything too dangerous in whatever battles we encountered down there.

“Yeah! Now that Kamoshida’s Palace is gone and people are actually starting to talk about us… I knew something had to have changed down here!” Mona revealed. Why would the dissolution of Kamoshida’s Palace have affected the barrier here in Mementos? The two were rather disconnected to each other and dissolving Ouvrard’s Palace hadn’t done anything. Unless it had to do with the small number of people who believed in the Phantom Thieves, that would make sense.

“How deep is it? Should we try going further down?” Panther suggested. Not a good idea, we weren’t quite prepared yet for heading into what could likely be a dangerous area, we should give Joker some time to ensure we had everything ready before diving in; additionally, entering an unknown area after getting into a fight that had been draining would leave us vulnerable if the Shadows down there had any significant level of power.

“Let’s not. That’s not why we’re here today, remember? We’ve already accomplished our goal. We should head back and I’ll explain more once we’re home,” Mona responded. I’m glad that our cat shaped thief wasn’t willing to do something risky just to try and figure out what was further down in Mementos; clearly the phrase about curiosity and cats wouldn’t be striking Mona any time soon.

“Besides, the Shadows down there will likely be more powerful than the ones up here. We should take our time and be cautious,” I advised. This would stop Skull from recklessly diving in; he did seem wary about pushing in further and from the pursed lips on her face, Panther must have been thinking along the same wary lines.

“Agreed, we know about Mementos now and can come back any time we need to for training and the requests,” Joker agreed. With that, we proceeded to turn around with the intent to leave, I walked over to the nearby ‘wall’ – blocks made of black stone and red spiderweb like patterns – and I created a shortcut for us to pass through.

“Hey look!” Panther warned. We all looked over and my eyes widened in shock when I took in the sight. There was a young, small boy about a head taller than Morgana stood beyond the scanners. He had grey hair in the shape of a half eggshell, yellow eyes like Lavenza and Elizabeth, and ears that were very round and unusually undefined in shape. He wore an oversized white-greyish raincoat and boots with stars and moon motifs, black leggings and gloves; there were also goggles around his neck.

“Hmm,” The boy murmured. He was standing in front of glowering flowers held within a bubble and behind him was a blue object that looked like a toy car with a lot of stuff tied onto it. Just who was he?! I’d never seen this boy – or anyone else for that matter – here before! How did he get here?! “Maybe it’s this one…,” The boy commented.  Suddenly the flower transformed into a drink which the boy proceeded to take a sip of. “Ooh! Tasty!” The boy exclaimed. I think my brain officially broke at that.

“Hey, what’s he drinkin’?” Skull wondered. I had a deep urge to sarcastically answer ‘Flower Juice’ at that question, but I was too shell shocked to actually open my mouth, all I could do was follow after the other four as they proceeded to approach the boy; since his eyes were like the attendants, I wondered if he was their brother… but that would be pretty awkward to just bring up in front of strangers.

“Oh? Hmm, I thought I felt something strange for a second. So, who’re you guys?” The boy asked. He seemed as perplexed by our appearance as we were by his, I had wondered if he might be a prospective attendant for the Velvet Room but he would likely have known me – Elizabeth had after all, and she left – so that pushed that theory into the furnace. But who was he to have such similar golden eyes and to not be a Shadow?

“We should be asking you that!” Mona exclaimed. The cat shaped entity jumped into the air, waving his arms slightly to emphasise his point, his ears were twitching wildly in response to the emotions that he was feeling; However, the boy didn’t seem unsettled by the wild actions of Mona, his eyes remained calm and steady as he focused on the cat entity.

“Good point. Sorry about that. It’s customary for a human to introduce itself before asking another human for its’ name. Thanks for reminding me, Misterrrr… um, Tanuki? No, um… hmmm… Cat?” The boy commented. That was an unusual thing to say, as if he wasn’t a human, but the second part had me fighting down a smile at Mona being called a Tanuki only for it to be amended to what he actually resembled… although, now that I think about it, Mona did resemble a Tanuki somewhat.

“What took so long to come up with ‘Cat’!? And I’m not either of those!” Mona protested. The little cat creature was very put out by being referred to as another animal before being addressed as a cat once again; but what else were people supposed to think when they saw him. However, the boy didn’t seem bothered by Mona’s outburst.

“My name is Jose. I’m looking for flowers,” The boy admitted. At least we now have a name for him. “I’m pretty surprised to see normal humans running around. I didn’t know people could just come here,” Jose added on. We were just as surprised by the presence of someone without a Persona, heck there wasn’t even a blue fire around him, something I only saw around those of the Velvet Room. “Although, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human with wings before,” Jose commented. His golden eyes were focused on me when he said those words.

“Wings? Amazon doesn’t have wings!” Skull exclaimed. He even leaned back to look at my back as if he would see these mysterious wings that Jose was referring to; not that I blame him since I moved my left hand back to pat at my shoulder blades as if I would feel them. But there was nothing there, like I suspected, but Jose had sounded so certain and his eyes sparkled with confusion.

“But then what are those big shimmering blue things growing from her back?” Jose wondered. I could feel the eyes of the other three on me as Skull delicately poked at my back, causing me to fidget; okay, this was starting to get incredible uncomfortable. I focused on Jose and quickly decided to turn this whole thing away from me and onto the thing that was much more important mystery standing right in front of us.

“Flowers, you say Jose. Why are you looking for them?” I asked. This, thankfully, dragged the gaze of all my teammates away from me and back to the mysterious boy; he didn’t seem bothered by the sudden attention that I’d dunked him in. He stared at me for another minute and seemed to be looking slightly behind me before dragging his eyes back to the rest of the group, who waited for the answer to my question.

“I’m collecting as many of ‘em as I can ‘cause I’m studying humans,” Jose admitted. That was an unusual thing to say, I know the Metaverse – Mementos especially – was beyond the concept of what most people understood; but to claim to be studying humans via collecting flowers from the collective unconscious was beyond strange. I was trying to understand how flowers could help him understand us.

“Studying humans? That’s why you turned a flower into a drink?” Skull asked. Jose gave this a positive confirmation. “Drinkin’ flower juice counts as studying?” Skull questioned. I could just image the thoughts running through his mind about how drinking these flowers helped Jose with studying, probably wishing the flowers could do the same to him.

“Hey, could you guys help me with my research?” Jose asked. That earned Jose a collective confused look and Panther asked the simple question of ‘how?’. “By collecting flowers for me, pretty lady,” Jose answered. I saw a small smile make its’ way onto Panther’s face. “I wouldn’t ask you to do it for free, though. I find all kinds of stuff you can use while you’re exploring. I’ll trade you some for that stuff for more flowers,” Jose offered. That could actually be helpful, the stuff in Mementos was unusual but its’ constant shifting meant we might not find it unless we went in every day, which wasn’t exactly feasible.

“Whaddya think? Should we try an’ get him some flowers?” Skull asked. It didn’t seem like a particularly dangerous thing to do, especially if they were something we’d run into anyway whilst down here; plus, if Jose was offering to trade them for somethings he found, then it might be useful, especially if it was rare stuff like Soul Drops or other things that restore Soul Power.

“Seems like it could do us some good, but we don’t know this kid… we gotta be careful,” Mona warned. He might be unusual, especially given that he claimed I had wings that no one else could see, but I don’t think there was anything wrong with helping him out; though Mona’s caution wasn’t something that could be easily dismissed either as we didn’t even know what Jose was. I had my suspicions sure, but that wasn’t capable of being confirmed.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s fine. Let’s give him a hand. He seems like he could use it and it shouldn’t be too hard to pick flowers while we’re exploring, right?” Panther insisted. Skull proceeded to ask if Panther had any other reason behind her suggestion. “Hehe, he called me pretty lady,” Panther admitted. A smile on her face as she said those words, which caused Mona to slump down with his ears pressed flat against his skull and he bemoaned this revelation.

“I don’t sense any animosity from him, also the stuff he sells might be useful to us at some point. And as Panther said, it won’t be difficult to find them while we’re exploring,” I admitted. At least this would put two voices for helping Jose even if one of those was motivated by the fact that she had been called pretty by the young boy in front of us. Said young boy was looking between each of us with wide eyes but I couldn’t determine anything beyond that.

“Alright, we’ll help out Jose,” Joker decided. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to know that he had decided to help us out with the flower hunting; Skull shrugged his shoulders as he seemed completely unbothered by this decision, however one quick look at Mona showed that our cat-like healer wasn’t exactly pleased if the narrowed slits of his pupils were anything to go by. Mona leapt into the air, deftly securing the attention of everyone else.

“Wait! Wait! Hang on a second! We still don’t know who this kid is?!” Mona protested. He said those words right as Jose proceeded to thank Joker for the off of aid, once Mona landed on the ground, he turned to stare at Jose with a particularly heated look. “Don’t go thanking us just yet, bud!” Mona declared. I scratched the area of skin behind my ear, more than a little confused about why he was so against us helping Jose.

“Aw, are you tired, kitty? You seem grumpy,” Jose wondered. Mona took great offense to this, jumping up off his feet like a cat when frightened and his fur proceeded to stand on end as he protested being called a cat and being grumpy. “O-oh, okay. Then, are you hungry? I learned hunger can make a person turn grumpy. Here, you can have this,” Jose wondered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cookie.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Mona answered. Skull decided to take the cookie to reassure Jose after chastising Mona for worrying the mysterious boy; with the cookie pocketed, Jose proceeded to climb into the front seat of his toy like car and looked at us with a seemingly happy gleam within his eyes. He must really like those flowers.

“I’ll be looking for flowers around here, so stop by and say hi if you see me,” Jose insisted. It would be beneficial, I just hoped we’d be able to locate him easily enough. “Oh and I guess just gathering flowers would be kind of boring, huh? Since you humans seem to enjoy playing so much, I’ll come up with some fun games for you” Jose admitted. What kind of game was he thinking of making us play down here? “Ah, I also remembered something humans like to say to each other: Good job!” Jose stated. And with that, he took off into the depths of Mementos.

“Who in the hell was that?” Skull asked. A fine question, he was certainly an oddball and I really couldn’t completely rule out if he was a possible attendant, perhaps Lavenza and Elizabeth had gone through the same training process in other parts of the collective unconscious before they could take on that mantle properly. Though, that would be rather difficult to explain without them being able to visit the Velvet Room.

“If he’s studying humans, does that mean he isn’t one? And he said something about Amazon having blue wings, but…,” Panther commented. She proceeded to look at my back the same way that Skull had done earlier before pulling herself back around. “I’m really not seeing anything,” Panther admitted. At least she hadn’t pushed the wing thing too much, but it seemed I had another question to ask Igor whenever I managed to get back into the Velvet Room again.

“Well, he didn’t feel like a Shadow. I wouldn’t say he’s dangerous, at least, for now,” Mona stated. That was true, there was no sense of animosity from him and he didn’t even give off the usual sensation that the rest of the Shadows gave off, I really didn’t feel like Jose was any kind of threat to us and if he could give us some items to help then there was nothing wrong with helping him out with this little studying he was doing.

“Anyways, if we see any of those flowers he wants, I guess we can grab ‘em for him,” Skull suggested. We agreed to this and proceeded to turn our backs to the gates in order to head back to the physical world, we had done a fair bit today and would be tired when we left, plus with our exams in the next few days we would need to rest and be refreshed for when that event proceeded to roll over us.

“I totally forgot!” Jose’s voice sounded. We turned around with wide eyes – his return had been sudden and rather startling – to see Jose running up to us, looking rather out of breath. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to give to all of you. The thing is… I picked up something strange while I was exploring earlier. Here it is,” Jose explained. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, it was a blue star that seemed to glow with a strange light and it gave off an odd sensation.

“What’s this Jose?” Joker asked. The saying ‘if looks like and talks like’ can never be applied to the Metaverse, plus the odd sensation that it gave off was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I reached over and gently prodded the star which caused it to tilt slightly and I felt something run up my arm; it was soft, full of promise and seemingly infinite in whatever this star contained inside of it.

“It’s a star. At least, that what it looks like, so that’s what I call it,” Jose admitted. So, even he was clueless about what it could be. “Humans make wishes on stars, right? That’s so interesting. Stars granting wishes. So, this star is going to grant your wishes,” Jose stated. An interesting thing to claim when he didn’t even know what it was.

“Our wishes!?” Mona exclaimed. Even he seemed surprised by this, how could Jose seem so certain that something like this would work – how it could even work, I wasn’t going to question – when he didn’t even really know what it was. I looked at the boy with a confused expression upon my face as I tried to puzzle out what Jose could be getting at with hie words.

“Or, it would be nice to think that,” Jose finished. Ah, so he didn’t really except it to really grant our wishes, but it could clearly do something from what it gave off. “I’ll give this to you. It’s so sparkly and beautiful, you want it too, don’t you? It’s a ‘sign of our friendship’. I know what that is. Off I go now. Good job!” Jose cheered. He proceeded to hop back in his car and take off once again.

With the star left, everyone proceeded to focus upon it as Skull wondered if what Jose said was true while Mona completely doubted something like that would even be possible. Even so, he suggested we try and make a wish. This led to a series of ridiculous food related wishes from Skull and Panther that each called petty. Nothing came of this, so Joker pocketed the star and we proceeded to leave Mementos.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Mementos, huh? I still don’t really get that place. Oh and what was that wall thing we saw at the end?” Ryūji asked. We were stood outside the station by the tram like structure, I could feel the fatigue pressing upon my shoulders already. Ryūji was slumping down harder, Ann rubbed at her eyes as Ren barely stifled a yawn with his hand.

“I’m not entirely sure, but that wall must’ve been there for a reason. If Mementos’ is the public’s Palace though… it might be affected by the general public’s belief in us,” Morgana suggested. That had to be the only way to open it up, which would require increasing people’s recognition of us, bringing our existence from their subconscious to the forefront of their minds. The best way was to get a well-known target and stop them.

“Why do you know so much about it, Morgana?” Ann asked. A fine question, he had more knowledge than I did, but I’d never seen him wandering around in Mementos nor heard of him from any of the Shadows and they could be pretty talkative depending upon what they felt like. Before Kamoshida’s Palace, I had been all alone in my investigations, so how had I missed this human turned cat all this time?

“My memories are a little foggy in that regard… however, I need to know what lies in the depths of Mementos, no matter what,” Morgana admitted. The Depths? A shiver crawled up my spine when I heard that, as if some instinctual alarm was going off within my mind. “Mementos is not just everyone’s Palace, it’s the source of all Palaces. It used to be that Palaces like Kamoshida’s with one ruler simply didn’t exist. So, if we do something about the greatest cause of distortions, I’m certain my appearance will…,” Morgana trailed off. His gaze looked down at the stones beneath our feet.

“You wanted someone to save you too,” Ann realised. It was something that we all had to realise in that moment, Morgana might be a confident and methodical healer with great insight into the collective unconsciousness. But just like the rest of us, he was someone who wanted to be heard, seen and helped. Like us, he was someone in trouble with no way out that could be taken without help.

“I-I just needed pawns!” Morgana protested. He stood on his feet and seemed agitated by this claim Ann had made, but I don’t think any of us were buying what he had just said; not only did he care about Ann too much to ever seen her as a ‘pawn’, but he wasn’t the kind of person who would sacrifice others to achieve his own ends, the chivalrous sword wielder that was his Persona was evidence of the core of his heart.

“I see… so that’s why you came pokin’ your nose around with us,” Ryūji commented. Even the person who he mostly had verbal sparring matches with understood, Ryūji’s brown eyes softened as he looked at the cat. I moved over and began to gently run my fingers down Morgana’s sleek black coat, causing a soft purr to start emanating from the cat, despite the small grumbles emanating from his lips.

“I’ll help you. I hope you can regain what you’ve lost,” Ann decided. Her tone was sweet and considerate, no doubt thinking of her best friend currently lying in a hospital bed. Morgana’s vivid blue eyes were closed as he gave into the petting and started to push his head harder into my hand. Ren gently rested his own fingers on an area that I wasn’t stroking.

“You said our bond was give and take. So long as you continue to help us, we’ll continue to help you,” Ren pointed out. I wasn’t sure where he got that line from, but whatever it was seemed to relax the cat as he sat down once again while shifting himself so that he sat closer to me in order to allow me to continue with my easy stroking of him.

“I’ll… be relying on you guys,” Morgana admitted. At least he had said it, we would need to trust and be trusted in, especially if we wanted to give hope to the people in a hopeless situation. We’d only accomplish such a thing by working together, which meant we had to trust each person to do their jobs while endeavouring to successfully complete our own tasks.

“By the way, Morgana… are you a boy? Or might you be a girl?” Ann wondered. This led to a brief detour as Morgana insisted that he was male, he certainly viewed himself as such and his Persona supported that but given my own Persona and the fact that Morgana was typically a girl’s name, I couldn’t blame anyone for being confused. Of course, Ren lightened the atmosphere by bringing up his transformation into a van which drew laughter from each of us.

“Anyway, we now know that we can perform minor changes of heart in Mementos. If we come across any eye-catching leads, it may be worth dealing with them for a bit of combat practice,” Morgana insisted. His expression was serious as he said that which effectively refocused us on our mission, of course given what we found on the website, there was a problem that needed to be addressed.

“Otherwise, we can keep training at my home whenever we can, best not to let a low number of challenges cause us to get rusty,” I advised. With so few requests for help, we needed to keep on top of our skills if we wanted to stay in our best form. The Shadows certainly wouldn’t become weaker as time went on meaning we couldn’t afford to let that happen to us.

“There weren’t any other outstanding ones though,” Ann admitted. Her expression had gone glum as she folded her arms and looked at the ground, it was exactly why I had suggested the training at my home; Ryūji pushed himself up with a grin on his face as he looked at his fellow blonde. A sinking feel appeared within my stomach at his expression.

“I bet we’ll get tons of ‘em if we can change someone fa-,” Ryūji began to speak. Realising what he was doing, I was about to react, up until Ann violently jammed her foot into one of Ryūji’s, causing him to be silenced as he gripped his foot and jumped up and down in pain. I relaxed back into my previous position as a small grin tugged at my lips.

“How many times must you be told, Ryūji?” Morgana asked. Even Ren looked unimpressed by the Electricity wielder continually almost blowing of our cover. “First, you need to find a way to get through your exams,” Morgana reminded. We all agreed… but I swear it felt like someone was staring at us.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Returning to my home, I set my bag down and went about making some food for myself while plucking the book and recording of Carmen from their resting places and setting them into my bag so I wouldn’t forget them. As I went through the preparations, my phone buzzed so I quickly opened it to look at the Chat.

Ryūji: Man, that Nakanohara guy was a piece of cake!

Ryūji: If we can take down some kinda big target next, we’re totally gonna get famous.

Ann: Hey! We’re trying to help people, not get famous!

Natsumi: Although, given Morgana’s desire to push deeper into Mementos, we do need to make an effort to affect the public’s perception of us.

Ren: Meaning getting famous will help us, help Morgana.

Ann: Well, when you guys put it like that…

Ryūji: Besides, if people don’t know who we are, how’re we gonna give them any courage?

Ren: Our main focus should still be helping people in need.

Ren: All else is secondary.

Natsumi: Well said, leader.

Ann: I’m just wondering, should we really be doing this at all if we don’t have a reason like with Kamoshida?

Natsumi: I think we’ll have to play it by ear for something like that.

Ryūji: What?

Ren: Meaning we evaluate the scenario as it plays out before us.

Ren: Sticking our noses into other people’s business might not be appreciated.

Natsumi: Plus, there’s a person’s perspective to think about.

Natsumi: We might see something wrong when there isn’t anything there.

Ryūji: I dunno, man. If someone’s in trouble, it’s only natural to wanna help ‘em out!

Ann: I mean, I agree with that.

Ann: And I guess, I was glad we were able to solve the stalker case.

Ryūji: Plus, what good are our Personas if we don’t use ‘em for good?

Ryūji: Don’t you guys agree?

Ren: Yes. I want to help people.

Natsumi: I shall not blind myself anymore.

Ann: The same goes for me.

Ryūji: We don’t got much time to be arguing over this either. That Madarame (?) guy bothers me.

Ann: Yeah, but no getting carried away, you understand?

Ann: And don’t do anything to stand out, like fail all your exams.

Natsumi: Ann, I think that won’t raise any eyebrows.

Natsumi: Now passing all of them would.

Ryūji: Oh crap! Speaking of that, I haven’t studied at all…

Ryūji: What about that star? The one Jose gave us.

Ryūji: Wonder if that could help us ace the exams…

Ren: Nothing is that magical Ryūji.

Ann: Yeah, I somehow doubt that.

Ryūji: Hell, I’d settle for just not failing.

Natsumi: Studying will solve that easily.

Ann: Besides, bargaining isn’t gonna help you here. We wouldn’t use it for that in the first place.

Ann: Maybe you should do as Natsu-chan suggested and put some actual effort in? You’ve still got time.

Ryūji: Fiiine…

Setting my phone down, I returned my focus to the food as I ran through what I needed to focus on studying for the upcoming exams.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 29: - A Small Break

There was only a short time before the exams would start so I needed to get a few things done before those started. The bell for break rang shrilly and I quickly put my stuff away, I made my way over to the blue-black haired boy that I had decided to talk to. Hopefully this conversation wouldn’t be awkward, especially since we hadn’t ever really talked to each other before, well not beyond basic pleasantries and the somewhat awkward conversations during the whole Kamoshida madness.

“Mishima-san,” I softly called. Unfortunately, this caused the boy to jump and almost tumble out of his chair, thankfully I reached my left hand out to seize a hold of his wrist and pull him back onto his seat before he could gain another injury. “Sorry about that, I didn’t realise I’d end up scaring you,” I admitted. The sudden jump had rather worried me, this conversation might go even more awkward than I expected.

“I-It’s alright Chiba-san. I’m just surprised you came to talk to me after all,” Mishima responded. He seemed rather flustered by my approach, though I can’t tell why. “Um, is there something you need Chiba-san?” Mishima asked. It would be best if I could talk to him somewhere else other than a crowded area, like the classroom or the corridors.

“Yes, but it’s something that needs privacy, can we go somewhere to talk?” I requested. Mishima squirmed a little in his seat, but that was why I had phrased it as a request, Mishima could walk away from this; I refuse to force him into doing anything that he didn’t want to do, I wouldn’t hurt him the way that Kamoshida had and the way bullies at our last school had. “Never mind, it isn’t urgent,” I stated. With that I turned to walk away from him.

“Ah! Chiba-san, wait! I can talk!” Mishima exclaimed. I heard his foot falls and turned back to see he was a small distance behind me with his bag in hand, we proceeded to leave together and I wove a path around until we reached a decently secluded area; people could still see us from a distance but for the time being, no one was lingering nearby. “What did you want to talk about?” Mishima asked.

“I overheard you speaking to Ren the other day,” I revealed. I saw Mishima’s eyes widened in shock at my words and worry soon followed afterwards as he realised that he had spilled the secret to someone accidentally; I lifted a hand to forestall any potentially unnecessary reactions from Mishima that could endanger the rest of the Phantoms. “It’s alright, I won’t pass it along. I’m grateful to the Phantom Thieves for stopping Kamoshida’s cruelties,” I reassured. Mishima seemed to visibly deflate at my words which was a relief to me “The point of this conversation is actually about your website,” I admitted. Mishima perked up slightly as he looked at me once again.

“Oh, the Phan-site, what about it?” Mishima wondered. I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the phrase he had used to refer to the website, Mishima proceeded to chuckle slightly at my expression. “It’s what I’m calling it, for short,” Mishima explained. All I could do was shrug in response, it was his website and he could do what he wished with it, it wasn’t entirely different to what we were doing with our own name.

“I looked at it and well, I’m just wondering if there’s more you could possibly be doing,” I admitted. The Phan-site was fairly basic since all it contained was the ability to post messages – most of which dismissed us as a joke – or respond to the poll that had been set up; Mishima didn’t really seem to be interacting with the commenters from what I’d seen.

“More. What more could I be doing? My Phan-site is letting people post their problems so that the Phantom Thieves can see them and help,” Mishima claimed. He blinked his eyes at me as if he truly wasn’t understanding the issue, but sometimes people’s issues in reality didn’t reflect into the Metaverse; Ryūji was a fine example of this as despite his intense hate for Kamoshida, I’d never run into his Shadow unlike the other track team members.

“True, but the mistake would be thinking the Phantom Thieves are all powerful, there may be problems that exist which they might not be able to solve,” I warned. If someone didn’t project a Shadow into the Metaverse, then no matter the kind of issue someone was enduring, we couldn’t help them; plus, there might be another angle that could be looked at which would allow it to be solved. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say this and because of this, Mishima didn’t understand my reasoning which likely resulted in him doubling over with laughter.

“Oh! That’s funny Chiba-san. The Phantom Thieves can do anything, they’re unstoppable!” Mishima declared. He was still struggling to get his laughter under control and he even ended up leaning against the wall; where this any other situation, I’d be happy to see Mishima in such a fit of mirth since it was at least a sign that he was now free of Kamoshida. But it showed that he wasn’t understanding my concerns, not that I expected he would, due to him being outside the group.

“That faith is kind Mishima, something you’ve always been. But nothing and no one is unstoppable. There may come a time when you can no longer remain as merely an administrator. Just think about how you could help people,” I advised. With those final words, hopefully planting something in his head since I wasn’t giving up on this, I moved around the wheezing boy and walked away.

*Persona 5 Royal*

School was done with, so I stood up and moved over to Ann who had just finished her own packing and grinned brightly at me, we proceeded to leave the room in time to see Ren and Ryūji taking off down the stairs while chatting to each other. As we proceeded to head down the stairs at a leisurely pace, I reached into my bag to grasp two things that I had promised to bring with me.

“Here Ann-chan,” I spoke. As I did, I pulled out the book and recording of Carmen, I handed them over to the model who took a hold of both and looked at them, her eyes widened as she took in the book’s title before lifting her gaze to look directly at me; a smile proceeded to curl across her lips as she held the two objects closer to her.

“Oh, these are what you mentioned the other day,” Ann realised. She quickly opened up her bag and carefully slotted both objects inside, I felt a surprising rush of warmth within my heart at the care that Ann was showing towards the objects; she didn’t need to as they weren’t anything special just not easily replaced, yet she treated them as if they were some kind of magical treasure.

“Yes, my favourite of the songs in the opera is L'amour est un oiseau rebelle, more commonly known as Habanera,” I admitted. However, my words caused Ann to look at me with blinking eyes like an owl which caused me to chuckle slightly since it looked so odd upon her face; Ann opened her mouth, but no sound came out as she seemed to be trying to work something out before saying anything.

“L-La-Lae,” Ann-chan stumbled. I started to giggle stronger than before, Ann must have been trying to replicate the title of the song I’d just given her, but likely due to a combination of how it had rolled off my tongue from practice and her unfamiliarity with the way the words were pronounced resulted in this stumbling. I opened my mouth in the hopes of carefully pronouncing the words to aid in Ann getting it right.

“L'amour est un oiseau rebelle. It’s French for Love is a rebellious bird,” A female voice answered. I looked over and found the source standing only a couple of steps away from us; even though she had to be a student here at Shūjin, it felt wrong to call her a girl, the way she carried herself spoke more as if she was a woman. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you but when I heard someone speaking in French, I couldn’t help but be interested,” the young woman spoke.

She was older than me and Ann, but she was shorter than the two of us, with chin-length curly light auburn hair and brown eyes. Her winter school's uniform was modified to her taste with a very comfy looking pink turtleneck cardigan with short puffed sleeves that had a long-sleeved white shirt underneath. The cardigan was zipped open up to her navel and had two large pockets on the front, she wore the standard black and red tartan skirt, white tights with a black flower pattern and black Mary Jane shoes.

“It’s alright, I’m just surprised. I didn’t think anyone apart from Chouno-sensei knew French,” I explained. The languages’ teacher had always been a favourite of mine as I’d ended up showing off my grasp of French in the first year and that led to a bit of after class chatter on some times, now much more common after Ouvrard was stopped. But I’d never even heard of someone else, apart from Ann, speaking a foreign language.

“I have quite a fascination with France, it’s a beautiful country,” The mature girl stated. That was very true, as much as I may despise Ouvrard, that disgust didn’t extend to her home country and the few pictures I had seen of it proved it to be quite enrapturing. From the opulence of Paris to the wild beauty of countryside, it was no surprise such works of art came from that kind of place.

“Never been there myself, but I will admit I’m curious about it,” I commented. The young woman smiled and nodded her head, but I was only growing more curious about who this fluffy haired France lover could be. “What’s your name?” I asked. I wanted to find out a little bit more about her, how much she knew about France and what else she might know.

“Ah, Haru. I’m Haru,” The mature girl answered. No family name was forth coming, did that mean she was ashamed of it? The gods know that if my uncle had been my father then I would definitely be hiding any and all blood connection to him as much as possible. I saw Ann open her mouth, but I gently knocked my hand against hers’ and shook my head, hoping she’d understand the silent message.

“I’m Takamaki Ann,” Ann introduced. She extended her hand to Haru who grasped it and they shook; I’m glad Ann understood not to push for the family name, some people might not want their family’s name to affect how others saw them. It seemed best to respect Haru’s desire to remain anonymous. Haru’s eyes turned to look at me.

“Chiba Natsumi,” I echoed. I copied Ann’s actions and shook Haru’s hand, meanwhile I took note of the Will of Rebellion behind her, Haru’s was a little odd as I’d never seen anyone’s Will seem to oscillate before. At times it was big and bright like Ren’s was before he Awakened, but then it would suddenly dim and almost gutter, just barely holding onto life… such a strange little flame.

“It was nice meeting the two of you, have a nice day,” Haru-senpai stated. She then proceeded to walk away with a strained smile on her lips, I turned to watch the young woman walk away from us as Ann did the same thing; there was something… something familiar about Haru that itched underneath my skin, as if something was demanding my attention.

“Did she seem sad to you?” Ann asked. I nodded my head in agreement, Haru did seem to be very sad, yet she had seemed happy when talking about France; a suddenly ringing drew my attention and I saw Ann fish her phone out and look at something. “Oh shoot! My modelling agency has scheduled a shoot today! I was going to see Shiho today!” Ann exclaimed.

“If you want, I can go instead,” I offered. Ann’s head snapped up to look at me with wide eyes, we’d been to the hospital only together before and Ann knew how much I disliked it, but Suzui needed to be taken care of and that was more important than my own feelings towards visiting a hospital. “Even if it’s only to give her a message, I can go in your place,” I offered.

“Oh, would you Natsu-chan!?” Ann asked. I nodded my head to affirm that my offer was very serious. “Thank you!” Ann cheered. She then practically jumped forward and wrapped me in a bone bruising tight hug which brought a smile to my face despite the pain twisting it into a grimace slightly. We split from our hug and proceeded to leave the school building; it was at the station where we split from each other.

I made my way towards the hospital and headed deeper into the building in the direction of Suzui’s room, I hoped she’d be okay with me coming to visit in place of Ann. I’d never actually gone in to see Suzui, content to wait outside while Ann was visiting. Soon enough I reached the door and pushed it open to see the room beyond.

“Hello, Suzui-san,” I greeted. The girl lifted herself up slightly with her elbows, her dark hair was out of its’ ponytail and hung down to brush against her shoulders, her face was free of the oxygen mask that had been stuck to her face last time, but various wires still hooked her up to hospital machines which beeped and pinged with their mechanical noises. Suzui’s eyes widened when she saw me standing there.

“Oh, Chiba-san. I wasn’t expecting to see you,” Suzui admitted. I don’t even know if the girl was aware that I kept coming with Ann, it’s not like the room was open to the corridor but Ann might have told her. I moved over and settled myself down into the chair that was placed by the bed, I rested my bag on the ground as I faced the girl. Her wounds were clearing up quite well under the ministrations of the nurses and doctors.

“Ann-chan’s sorry, but her modelling job decided to drag her into a shoot suddenly. I offered to come in her place,” I explained. Suzui’s eyes widened when she heard the term I’d used to refer to Ann. I never asked what went on in this room, it was between Ann and Suzui as to what they discussed and not for my knowledge; however, Suzui proceeded to smile before I could think of what to say in response to her look.

“That’s so nice of you, Ann must have been really upset because today’s the day I start my physiotherapy,” Suzui admitted. That would explain why Ann had been so upset about the sudden spring of the modelling thing today; at that moment the door opened and a physiotherapist walked in. I stepped to the side to give the two plenty of room as the woman helped Suzui stand and shuffle across to the wheelchair. “How come you’re calling Ann, Ann-chan now, Chiba-san?” Suzui asked. As she did, the physiotherapist pulled her out the room, so I grabbed my bag and followed.

“We er… grew closer after… that day. I don’t know if you were told but I came with you and Ann-chan in the ambulance. Ann-chan insisted we’re friends so, I started calling her that in response to her calling my Natsu-chan,” I admitted. A brief giggle escaped from Suzui as she pressed her hand over her mouth, causing me to raise an eyebrow at her, silently questioning what she was finding so funny.

“That’s so like Ann. I’m glad she managed to find another friend. Thank you for being there for her Chiba-san,” Suzui admitted. I shrugged my shoulders in response as we reached the room that Suzui would be in. “Can Chiba-san come in? She’s here for my friend, I want her to know how I did,” Suzui requested. An affirmative was given and we all went into the room which was long and wide, with many different apparatus scattered about and a wide window looking out into a small garden. Dominating the centre of the room was a pair of waist high wooden bars that looked fairly thick, each supported by thick metal poles.

I settled onto a chair and put my bag at my feet as I watched the physiotherapist position Suzui’s wheelchair by one end of the poles. They talked quietly for a few moments before Suzui looked at the poles, she took a deep breath and reached her hands out to grip the bars. She had a determined look on her face that was reminiscent of Ann’s own resolute expression. Suzui proceeded to pull in a deep breath, and that was the end of the easy bit.

Suzui pulled herself up out of the wheelchair and I immediately saw the pain. Her face creased heavily; shadows darkened her expression as her eyelids drifted close while her teeth pressed so heavily against her bottom lips that I was surprised it didn’t tear open and start to bleed. Her legs trembled like a new-born deer’s; I was certain they were going to buckle the moment that she took a single step, my muscles coiled in response.

Whether by sheer will or some divine intervention, Suzui didn’t collapse into a boneless pain filled heap. Instead, she managed to walk forward, but only a total of three steps before she suddenly gasped sharply. I was on my feet right as Suzui dropped to her knees, I reached her quicker than the nurse and moved to stand in front of the trembling girl. I wasn’t sure what to say… until I saw the flash in her eyes that made me think of Ren whenever he was around police officers.

“One more, just one more,” I insisted. Suzui looked up at me with wide eyes, the fear was still there but surprise was currently eclipsing it; I knelt down and gently slid me hands underneath her armpits, Suzui gripped my shoulders in response and with a bit of wriggling, I had the girl back on her feet. “If you give up when it hurts, you’ll never push passed this block. That means he wins. You don’t want him to win, do you?” I challenged. I reached up to take her hands off my shoulders, I didn’t grip them tightly but neither did I release them; I would let her make this choice.

“No!” Suzui declared. She tightly gripped my hands and sucked in a pain filled breath as she struggled to lift her right leg, she wheezed with pain and tears dotted her eyes, but she didn’t stop and simply moved it forward to set her foot down. I tried to pull back since the single step was made, but Suzui didn’t let me leave. Her gripped tightened which prevented me releasing our hands as she repeated this same event with her left leg, then again with her right leg. I moved back every time, looking as if I was pulling Suzui along, we repeated this until she was a teary mess and struggling to breath properly, but she had reached the end with a smile on her face.

Once we stopped moving, Suzui started to wobble, I darted around and fitted her arm around my shoulders and enclosed her waist with my right arm, keeping her upright. Her physiotherapist brought the wheelchair around and I sat Suzui down in it; we were quickly ushered back to the room where the nurse settled the exhausted girl back into her bed. Suzui was sucking in deep breaths of air that I’m sure must have been bordering on painful.

“You pushed her too hard today,” The physiotherapist stated. Suzui had been re-hooked up to the machines that would look after her conditions, I meanwhile proceeded to sit down in the chair as I looked at Suzui who seemed to be oblivious to the conversation; but eventually I lifted my head to look at the physiotherapist.

“No, Suzui-san pushed herself hard. She could have stopped me at any time, besides,” I stated. This surprised the physio, who stared at me with wide eyes, but my voice was lacking its’ steel. “I’m still right. She can’t give up, getting her legs back is the best way to spit in his face. If she gets her legs back, then she can prove he was wrong. Something like that, might just give her the strength to win the fight up here,” I stated. As I did, I gently pressed my finger against Suzui’s forehead.

“Be that as it may, if you push her too hard, she’ll only back slide. Do that again and I’ll forbid you from seeing her,” The physio stated. With that, me and Suzui were left alone; I turned my attention to look at the girl and found that her eyes were open and she was looking at me with a tired sort of happiness in her smile.

“Thank you, Chiba-san,” Suzui spoke. I nodded my head in response, not entirely too sure how to respond, but then tears started to gather within her eyes and I felt my breath hitch in my chest. “I know I can’t let him keep haunting me, but it’s so h-hard s-some-ti-times. I-I st-still f-feel hi-his ha-hands and g-gaze o-on m-me,” Suzui wailed. I moved forward and pulled the girl upright so that she might breathe easier as tears tumbled down her face in thick rivers.

“It’s alright Suzui-san. He can’t hurt you anymore, he can’t hurt anyone anymore. He will never be able to harm another living soul,” I soothed. I moved one arm to rest the hand on her back and I worked it in circles, meanwhile my other rose up to wipe away each and every tear that the dark haired girl sobbed out; it took some minutes but Suzui eventually calmed down and lightly dropped back against the bed, seemingly quite spent after her much deserved cry.

“Any friend of Ann’s is a friend of mine, please call me Shiho,” Suzui asked. Her voice was slightly cracked, so I looked around and found some water, I offered it to the girl and aided her in drinking from it; it was only then that I truly processed her words and a bubbling sensation took root in my heart. A smile worked its’ way onto my face as Shiho released the glass from her grip.

“Very well, call me Natsumi if you want or Natsu-chan. I don’t mind either,” I responded. I turned and set the empty glass back by the pitcher that the water had come from; I turned back to look at Shiho who was smiling at me somewhat wearily, but after everything she’d been through in these few moments, it wasn’t a surprise at all.

“Thanks, Natsumi,” Shiho whispered. She then reached over and pulled out her phone. “Do you want to listen to some music?” Shiho offered. I nodded my head and pulled myself closer to the girl as Shiho started up the song she wanted me to listen to; a song about the search for truth.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Leaving the hospital behind – and a new friend whose phone number I now had – I proceeded to make my way back to my home. The sun’s light was fading fast from the sky now that the orb of burning gas was beyond the horizon, luckily my walk was coming to an end as my home was only a short distance away from me; hopefully I could get some studying done before the day was out.

“Oh! It’s you again!” A voice called. I stopped and turned out around to see the twin tailed girl who’d I had pointed in the direction of LeBlanc some days ago. “Thanks so much for telling me where the café is,” The woman stated. She jogged up to me so that we were only stood about a foot or so apart from one another.

“No problem, it’s a nice little hole in the wall,” I stated. LeBlanc was definitely the kind of place to become a hideaway – it already was for me – with its’ nice, calming atmosphere and good food; it didn’t feel right hiding such a nice place especially when this person had been intentionally directed to it by whoever her upperclassman must have been.

“By the way, your voice has a kind of… rise and fall to it I’m familiar with,” The woman stated. A weight dropped in my stomach, creating a sickening feeling; I hadn’t even realised that my voice possessed such a quality to it. It was probably, a result of the continual training that Ouvrard had me undergo, but no one else had mentioned such a thing. “Do you have any singing training?” She asked. The moment she said those words, my internal alarms went off like sirens.

“Stay away from me! From me and my voice!” I demanded. I proceeded to drop my right leg back and set my arms into a guard stance, unarmed combat might not be a speciality of mine, but I wasn’t bad at it, if necessary I could protect myself from this woman. Except, she suddenly held her hands up and even took a small step back, enough for her to try and give off the energy that she meant no threat.

“Woah, woah, it’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise,” The woman said. Her voice had pitched lower than the higher tone she’d previously carried, there was also a sincerity in her voice that made me believe she really wasn’t a threat. “You must have had a really bad experience, huh? I can understand that,” The woman admitted. The understanding she spoke with was enough to cause me to rise from my stance, but my muscles were still tense as I looked at her.

“What do you mean?” I asked. It was at that moment that I saw something I’d either missed or ignored before; towering over the woman was a blue skinned woman with six arms, clad in black thigh high shoes, red palmed gloves, a white dress with hip high slits, a massive telescope replaced her head and in the lowest of her hands was a red circle thing that rest over the woman’s head, a solar system like thing circled around the Persona. This woman had a Persona!

“My name’s Rise. Kujikawa Rise,” The woman introduced. She removed the glasses to reveal brown eyes, I now recognised the woman, she was an idol who I’d loved to watch back when my family was alive; I remembered singing along to all of her songs whenever they played… and getting very upset when she went on hiatus five years back.

“Oh wow, you’re Risette. This is… um… not something I… er… I expected,” I admitted. My eyes were darting to the telescope headed Persona a lot as I tried to articulate my thoughts, thrown by the idol from my childhood showing up with a Persona that was immensely powerful from what I could feel. Risette smiled and stepped closer to me, the smile wasn’t the one from her idol status, it was warmer and more natural looking than the bright one she typically had.

“Yeah, I am, nice to properly meet you… what do you keep looking at?” Risette asked. She then turned her head to look back which caused a flutter of panic to stir up my stomach, she’d realise nothing was there and either think I’m weird… or figure me out if she had met someone like me. “Nothing’s there except…,” Risette muttered. She snapped her head back down and suddenly clapped her hands on my cheeks and leaded her forehead against my own.

“Um… what are you doing?” I hesitantly asked. However, no answer was forthcoming from the woman, instead she remained eerily silent and still as her eyes continued to bore into my own; I attempted to move backwards, but the sheer strength of her grip – that was a surprise – prevented me from moving as my face was stopped before I got too far away; it seemed best just to stay still for now.

“You’re Betwixt,” Risette breathed. She pulled back and stared at me with wide eyes, her words however confirmed that she had met someone like me before; silence draped itself over the two of us as it seemed we were both searching for some words, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue this conversation or not. “What’s your name?” Risette asked. At least someone had finally spoken, I mentally debated over whether or not to truthfully answer her question before making a decision.

“Chiba Natsumi,” I answered. Igor said I would be drawn to Persona Users, so perhaps there was a reason that I’d run into Risette that first time some days ago and whatever that reason, it was best to see it through. Risette smiled, but then her phone went off, she pulled it out and looked at it before frowning heavily, the object was replaced by a piece of paper which she quickly scribbled something on. Risette pressed that piece of paper into my hand and I saw it was a string of numbers.

“I’ll be seeing you around Natsu-kun, bye-bye,” Risette cheered. She then took off leaving me very baffled by what had just happened and the phone number she had left me.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The next day, Ren decided to take us into Mementos in order to deal with a bully at our school, which involved a fight against a Jack Frost at the end of it. We also fully explored the second area, which had a dark blue tint to it and was known as the Harmony Robbing Path of Aiyatsbus, as opposed to the first two levels which were collectively known as the Thought Robbing Path of Qimranut.

Afterwards though, when returning to my bed, I had the most bizarre dream, a dream where I fought alongside the others against two little girls with blonde hair and Attendant gold eyes, though each of them had one covered up by an eyepatch embossed with the letter V. In that dream… we were thoroughly decimated by the duo, whose power reminded me of Lavenza and Elizabeth.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 30: - Exams and The Councillor

With our exams starting today, I now had something new to be nervous about. Primarily because the goal of stopping Kamoshida had been practically all consuming so I was a little nervous about how well I would do during these tests. Ren seemed completely calm as we walked into the building, although we were soon greeted by quite the commotion near the notice board right across from the school’s entrance. I looked at Ren with a perplexed look and saw one of equal bafflement there, so we approached the gaggle of students.

“I can’t believe this… a school assembly? During exam week? The hell are they thinking?” A student asked. He sounded rather listless, but his words did surprise me, calling an assembly so suddenly when our exams were expected to take priority was a surprise; it really was appropriate to wonder what the principal could possibly be thinking to schedule such a thing during the exam week of all times.

“It’s the day after tomorrow, right? I wonder if it’s gonna be about Kamoshida-sensei again…,” Another student commented. Her serious tone showed how she felt about this fact. Great, so not only was it during exam week, but they also couldn’t even wait until the exams were actually over and done with to hold it. That just meant there was going to be some shuffling of the schedule around… what was that bloated piece of filth thinking?!

“Ugh, I can’t believe the school is messing with our schedules like this,” The listless student complained. Agreed, it would have made much more sense to wait until the exams were done and then have the assembly hosted; I could already feel a headache forming and we weren’t even through the first segment of the day.

“I don’t care what it’s about, it’s gonna have nothing to do with us students. I wish they’d stop dragging us into their mess,” The serious student snapped. Not really, considering this assembly was only being called due to Kamoshida’s actions which were directed at students, so it probably had a lot to do with them, but I somehow suspect that Kobayakawa had no interest in caring for the victims of a man he had grovelled to so effectively.

“A mandatory assembly during exam week, huh? Sounds rough for all of you,” Morgana whispered. He was right, it was rough for us, but there was nothing to do about it, instead Ren proceeded to lead the way to our classroom.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Needless to say, exams and studying ate up an enormous chunk of our time, so much so that we could scarcely find the time to meet up for any talks about the Phantoms or even try to train. When we did, it pretty much descended into me and Ren trying to wrangle the other two into studying – especially Ryūji – to try and get around their weak points as Ann focused on helping us with English since that was her best subject.

In short, we were tired and stressed. To the point that – I at least – ended up face planting into bed more often than not by the end of the day and falling into a dreamless sleep.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Ever since that specific incident,” Kobayakawa began. It was time for the mandatory assembly and we were all gathered in the same hall where Kamoshida had revealed his disgusting acts to the entire school; frankly I kind of wish I could be studying for the last day instead of stood here doing nothing while listening to this filth and his lies. “Many of you have voiced concerns that I could not bear to ignore,” Kobayakawa continued. A scoff came from my right.

“He let Kamoshida do as he wished,” Ann growled. Her voice was quiet as a whisper, but her tone held all the necessary venom she felt; Ren gently nudged her shoulder and the blonde took in a deep breath to try and calm down. I spotted Ryūji giving us concerned looks since he was a short distance away from us and couldn’t force his way over to us due to how tightly pressed the student population was.

“We believe the mental health of our student body is absolutely vital, so we’ve acquired the services of a therapist. The floor is yours, Doctor,” Kobayakawa revealed. A man came over and I was rather surprised, he looked rather young probably in his late twenties, so I was surprised to hear he was a counsellor. The man was tall and wore glasses, he had short, brown hair that was unkempt and a small stubble underneath his chin, he wore a blue dress shirt tucked into his upturned dress pants that were similar in colour to khaki. He also wore a chequered dark blue tie with a white lab coat over the top. On his feet were open-toed sandals without socks; in his coat’s chest pocket, he had a yellow pen and a staff ID that was further tied around his neck via a red strap.

‘He looks… very strange.’ I thought. The way he was dressed would have been smart and professional, if not for the upturn of his pants and the sandals that he wore. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was trying to get people to feel relaxed around him by dressing in such a peculiar manner or if he had a bizarre sense of fashion. To me, it made me wonder if he was truly capable of ‘caring for our mental health’, if Kobayakawa actually cared about such a thing.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” The counsellor greeted. He had a gentle cadence to his tone, no surprise there, but it was enough for one girl to claim it was ‘sexy’. “My name is-,” The counsellor continued to speak. However, he suddenly stopped and started to fiddle with the microphone as it had stopped amplifying his voice; a few moments later, he pulled back. “My name is Maruki Takuto. Thank you for welcoming me to your school,” The man introduced. He then proceeded to bow.

Unfortunately, his bow caused his head to smack into the microphone. The painful feedback sound rang out and I clutched my ears as the sensitive cartilage and bones made the protest to such a sound very well known. I have to wonder if this man was actually an idiot, especially since he seemed surprised by the fact that he’d headbutted the microphone, before eventually recovering himself.

“No need to be formal with me, though. I’m just here to counsel anyone who’s interested,” Maruki-sensei insisted. He looked to be in pain from his unexpected collision. “You can even call me Doc, if that would help you feel more comfortable. Any assistance you need, I’ll be- Oh… I guess I’m not really any good for helping with money problems,” Maruki-sensei admitted. It sounded like he was trying to make a joke… I don’t think it really worked.

“Thank you, Maruki-sensei,” Kobayakawa stated. He even forcibly moved the bespectacled man from the microphone to take his place. There was a little more talking about the counselling sessions now being offered before we were dismissed from the assembly. A relieved breath escaped me as I proceeded to walk away with Ann and Ren also seeming glad to have escaped from this awkward situation.

“Yo!” Ryūji’s voice called. I pivoted around to face the blonde with the other two also turning to face him. “You ever expect this place to actually give a shit about our mental health?” Ryūji asked. Not really, Kobayakawa wasn’t the kind of man to care about such a thing, some of the teachers like Kawakamai-sensei and Chouno-sensei I did believe would care; but unless a lot of them made a unified statement, then our useless principal wouldn’t care about such a thing.

“Well, our school’s made national news. Maybe they figured they’d look even worse if they didn’t do anything for us,” Ann suggested. That was the most likely reason why this had happened, it was a stupid publicity stunt by Kobayakawa to show he was doing something about it so that more parents would send their children here. Honestly, that just increased my doubt as to the capability of Maruki-sensei as a psychologist.

“And Doctor, uh… Whatshisname?” Ryūji commented. All three of us intoned in a deadbeat voice the family name of the new counsellor. “Yeah. Wasn’t that guy just basically clowin’ it up onstage? You really think he’ll do us any good?” Ryūji wondered. At least I wasn’t the only one who felt a weak amount of faith in the supposed therapist we’d been introduced to.

“Not going to lie, I certainly didn’t feel any faith in him as a counsellor given his actions,” I admitted. Ryūji’s expression became pinched at my words as Ann frowned heavily and started to fiddle with her sleeve’s cuff. Ren shuffled his stance slightly and reached up to grip the back of his neck as he rubbed it slightly with a strained expression on his face.

“If Kobayakawa hired him, then he probably isn’t all that good if he even is a real therapist in the first place,” Ren commented. A hushed ‘guys’ escaped Ann and we all looked at her only to see her eyes gazing passed us; we quickly followed the look and found that Maruki-sensei was approaching us. He had a focused look in his eyes which seemed at odds with his appearance and previous behaviour.

“Hey there,” Maruki-sensei greeted. Why had he decided to come up to us four students? This seemed incredibly suspicious to me. “Sakamoto-kun, Takamaki-san and Chiba-san, right? And that must make you Amamiya-kun,” Maruki-sensei added on. My eyes widened at those words and surprised expressions came onto the others’ faces before a glare twisted up Ryūji face as his entire body went tense.

“How d’you know our names?” Ryūji demanded. He was right to demand such a thing, true all students’ information would have been provided to him, but to have picked out the four of us despite the short amount of time he’d been here – Ann and Ryūji might stand out, but still – and approach us was something to be wary of. I felt Ann drift closer to me, as if she was seeking shelter from whatever was coming.

“Well, I was informed of certain students before beginning my tenure here. Those that had, ah… previous interactions with Kamoshida-sensei, along with a close friend of theirs,” Maruki-sensei admitted. Ah, so we’d been pointed out by the higher-ups specifically, well that made sense given how the other two were known victims, plus the knowledge of Amamiya’s record leakage might have been passed around, but for me to be pointed out was unsettling. “Amamiya-kun, it must’ve been especially tough for you after having just transferred here,” Maruki-sensei acknowledged.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Ren quietly admitted. He seemed slightly uncomfortable at being the focus suddenly, he pulled at a lock of his perpetually curly hair as his grey eyes darted away and he angled his head so that the glasses became opaque which prevented us from being able to read much from his eyes, but as three of us knew him well enough by now, we guessed his body language showed he was uncomfortable.

“So… whaddya want with us?” Ryūji asked. His face had relaxed, but I saw the looks he was shooting Ren was filled with worry about the boy he probably considered his best friend; he was likely attempting to divert the topic away from the ravenette boy, Ann moved around to gently press her hand against Ren’s own as I positioned myself to stand between Maruki-sensei and our leader, as if acting as a bulwark for him.

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten. I know I already offered my services to the student body earlier, but would you four be interested in counselling?” Maruki-sensei wondered. If he’d been informed of even the smallest piece of information about us, then it wasn’t that surprising that he was offering his services to us; but I could already guess Ryūji’s reaction before the boy opened his mouth.

“Nope, not at all,” Ryūji answered. This apparently surprised the counsellor as he lurched back with a shocked exclamation escaping his lips and his eyes widened. “How’s that surprising?” Ryūji asked. He seemed genuinely puzzled by the shocked response that had escaped from the brunette man, even I was a little surprised by how shocked the psychiatrist had been at Ryūji’s refusal.

“You were just a touch more emphatic about it than I’d expected,” Maruki-sensei admitted. The blonde Electricity wielder had been quite… passionate in his refusal to engage in the therapy sessions being offered directly to us. “Ah! But it if you come to my office, you can have free snacks! All you can eat… would be nice, but there’s still plenty to be had. So, how about it?” Maruki-sensei offered. Snacks? Was he really trying to bribe us with snacks?

“We’re not little kids you know,” Ren stated. It was rather baffling that he thought he could lure us into attending these sessions through the usage of a treat or two. Maruki-sensei looked down slightly, appearing rather sheepish at his failed attempt at a bribe; despite how foolishly he acted, he was also becoming someone that felt really hard to distrust, he just seemed so earnest.

“To be frank, I’ve be explicitly ordered to provide counselling to the students directly involved with Kamoshida-sensei. It’s in the school’s interest… for the students,” Maruki-sensei revealed. Well, that was an interesting bit of information, it caused me to raise an eyebrow since despite everything, I wouldn’t have been considered to be involved with Kamoshida, so why was I given the same focus as the others.

“Then I don’t see why I’m included. I was hardly involved with that filth,” I commented. Maruki-sensei looked at me with wide eyes, likely due to the way I had referred to Kamoshida, but I wasn’t exactly going to mince my words regarding that depraved beast; he wasn’t even fit to be considered human despite his moral compass having been restored, I don’t think he’ll ever pay back the people who he’d harmed so drastically.

“True. But you’re extremely close to three others who were. So, even if someone didn’t see anything, something still could have happened to you,” Maruki-sensei admitted. That… hadn’t been anything I’d been expected to come from him. “I know that asking you to be open with a complete stranger like myself is a lot. Making this mandatory wouldn’t do you any good, either. Might as well turn it into a worthwhile experience,” Maruki-sensei sullenly admitted. However, his face suddenly brightened up as if he’d had a good idea. “Ooh, I know! If you attend my counselling sessions, I’ll teach you different ways to improve your mental acuity. Like ways to hone your concentration before exams, or not getting nervous on dates. How’s that sound?” Maruki-sensei offered.

That actually sounded rather interesting, not for the concentration or lack of nerves issue. But instead, because it might actually help us in regard to the Metaverse since Soul Power was mentally linked; if we improved our mental condition, then we might be able to increase the capacity of our Soul Power. Although, Maruki-sensei did slightly ruin it by mentioning the snacks again.

“Alright, alright! Enough with the snacks!” Ryūji snapped. He seemed annoyed by the snacks comment before diverting his attention to look at Ren. “So, which way are you leanin’?” Ryūji wondered. I cast my gaze over my shoulder to look at our leader and I noticed he had an intrigued look within his eyes at the offer Maruki-sensei had extended to us.

“I guess there’s no harm in having a small chat. I’ll do it,” Ren agreed. There really wouldn’t be any harm to come from it, we could at least experience it and if none of us felt comfortable continuing with it, then there wasn’t anything stopping us from walking out on these sessions and not coming back. I could see the benefits of those mental exercises and we needed every advantage we could use against the stronger Shadows.

“I guess it’d just be more trouble for us if we didn’t go,” Ryūji muttered. Probably, if Maruki-sensei had been specifically informed of the four of us, then I’m betting the principal would find some way to force us to attend, despite Maruki-sensei not wanting it to be mandatory. If we went willingly then it was all the better for us as we wouldn’t be watched like a hawk by more people, Niijima-senpai was probably still doing that.

“Really? Then, I guess it’s a deal,” Maruki-sensei celebrated. Just how earnest was this guy? He seemed unusually happy that we were agreeing to this proposal. “I’ll be in the nurse’s office, feel free to come by whenever it’s convenient for you,” Maruki-sensei stated. Well, at least he’d be easy to find and not be picky about when we came to see him.

“Welp, we should get goin’,” Ryūji insisted. With that, we proceeded to turn and walk away from the counsellor and back to our class, Ren had lingered briefly but he soon caught up although that strong yet still growing sensation tickled my mind and I could have sworn that the sensation was similar to Kushi Mitama’s aura. I really wish I had some more information about all of these odd sensations I’d been feeling. Returning to class, I quickly settled into my seat as Kawakami-sensei came in. There was a lot of chatter going on between students, especially regarding our new therapist.

“Alright, settle down,” Kawakami-sensei called. The chattering stopped and we all focused on our homeroom teacher. “I have an addendum to the earlier assembly, regarding the counselling you’ve all been offered. The counsellor will be available to you after school starting today, in the nurse’s office. Maruki-sensei will only be posted here through November, so be sure to speak with him soon if you feel the need. For the majority of you, it’s your choice whether or not you see him, but… there are a few students I’ll speak with later. The school’s decided: visits to Maruki-sensei will be mandatory for these individuals,” Kawakami-sensei revealed. Almost instantaneously after those words left her mouth, my phone buzzed.

Ryūji: Yo, you guys gonna go for it?

Ann: What, the counselling?

Natsumi: I think we’ve just been told we have to.

Ann: Yep. Sounds like we’re being forced to

Ryūji: I told Maruki I’d do it, but…

Ryūji: I dunno if I’m really that into the idea, you know?

Ren: It’s understandable, given everything you’ve gone through.

Ren: But not going will be suspicious.

Natsumi: Especially now that it’s mandatory.

Ann: Which is weird, I though he said it wouldn’t be.

Ren: Not him. The school made it mandatory.

Natsumi: Kawakami-sensei did say it was them who decided that.

Ann: Anyway, we definitely can’t afford to avoid them, since the school’s got their eye on us.

Ann: I think I’m gonna try going today.

Natsumi: Same. Might as well bite the bullet, so to speak.

With that, I closed my phone and slipped it away, although I honestly wondered what I could possibly talk to him about.

*Persona 5 Royal*

School had ended and I decided to do as I had suggested in the chat and headed to the nurse’s office. On my slow walk over, I tried to sort out what I could possibly even talk to him about, but nothing came to mind since I wasn’t really a victim of Kamoshida’s like the other people he had to talk to. All too soon, I was outside the nurse’s office with a small, confused frown on my face; taking a breath I raised my hand and knocked on the door, still at a complete loss.

“Ah, come in,” Maruki-sensei’s voice called. I pushed the door open and stepped inside, but I stayed hovering by the door even as I pulled it close, feeling a little uneasy. “Welcome. Are you here for a counselling session?” Maruki-sensei asked. What other reason would someone have for coming here? I really didn’t know what to make of this man and his weirdly flickering Will of Rebellion, not oscillating like Haru-senpai’s was but appearing brightly and then vanishing completely.

“Yes, although I haven’t a clue what to talk about,” I admitted. I moved over and slid into the brown seat that sat near the couch that the counsellor was currently occupying. “I wasn’t a direct victim of Kamoshida’s cruelties unlike the others were, so I can’t imagine why the teachers would assume I’d need to be here,” I admitted. I set my bag down beside the chair, but the strap rested on the arm in case I wanted to leave quickly.

“That may be so, but some wounds might not be seen, even by the person bearing them,” Maruki-sensei stated. He leaned forward slightly to rest his elbows on his knees as his hands clasped together. “But you shouldn’t force yourself to be here if you don’t want to. Just grab some snacks and be on your way if that makes you feel better,” Maruki-sensei offered. A warm and comforting smile on his face as he gestured at the snacks on the table. But in response to his offer, I shook my head.

“No, I want to do this, if only so that my friends might be encouraged to open up to you and the teachers don’t start chasing me about this,” I admitted. I reached my left hand up to rub at the bridge of my nose as I tried to organise my thoughts. “But I really don’t know where to start,” I repeated. I’m starting to feel like a broken record at this point.

“Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself,” Maruki-sensei suggested. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow, shouldn’t he know all that he needed already from my file? “Your file tells me the kind of student you are, not the kind of person you are. It might be a good way to find those hidden wounds. Just relax,” Maruki-sensei encouraged.

“Okay,” I muttered. I thought over what I could tell him that wouldn’t be in a student file. “All of my immediate family are dead,” I admitted. My gaze had been on the roof when I said those words, but I heard the choke sound and violent tearing of paper; I tilted my head down and found Maruki-sensei staring at me performing very convincing impersonation of a gaping fish with the paper on his clipboard bearing a large tear. “Is everything okay, Maruki-sensei?” I asked. He seemed to be reacting rather strongly to my words.

“Is everyth- No!” Maruki-sensei exclaimed. I blinked my eyes as I shifted slightly in my seat, he seemed rather put out by this revelation. “Everything is not okay! Chiba-san, that is a terrible event and yet you treat it like it’s an everyday occurrence,” Maruki-sensei explained. Okay, put out was putting it lightly, instead he seemed to be very upset by the fact that I had blandly spoken of a fact of my life.

“It’s been three years, I don’t see how else to speak of it,” I admitted. Even if I had recently cried over them, it didn’t change the fact that three years had passed since that day; no amount of tears would ever pull the dead back from their graves. I had accepted that they were gone a long time ago, I’d had to do it the moment Hikaru’s heart monitor cut out.

“Three years! That kind of trauma doesn’t just fade away! I’ve seen it plenty of times, how people continue to be stung by it when longer than three years have passed,” Maruki-sensei insisted. He… he was really upset by this, nervously I raised my hand and dragged a lock of my hair behind my ear as I tried to think about what to say in response to those words he’d said… maybe telling him the truth was for the best.

“Well… I haven’t exactly been grieving them,” I admitted. Maruki-sensei’s eyes took on a confused shine as I settled my hands onto my lap and curled them into fists as the memory of that day rose like an undying leviathan. “I was ordered not to cry about their passing. It was only last month that I was actually encouraged to cry by a friend of mine… it was the first time I’d cried since they died,” I revealed. My breathing was starting to tremble as I tore my gaze to focus upon my feet, trying to keep myself together.

“You should never have had to go through that, Chiba-san,” Maruki-sensei soothed. He reached over to wrap a hand around mine, the grip was gentle and warm, the faint callouses of his hand simply seemed to strengthen it rather than detract from the kindness it tried to impart. “It is natural for us to cry over the loss of loved ones, you should never have been forced to wait so long to express your grief,” Maruki-sensei stated.

His words weren’t the same as Ren’s, but the emotion behind them was very much identical to Ren when he had encouraged me to accept that I could cry. As a result, the floodgates opened once more as I hiccupped slightly and salty water tumbled down my cheeks. A tissue dabbed at my cheeks, soaking up the tears as much as possible while I tried to get myself under control. It probably should have been embarrassing to cry like this in front of a stranger, but I felt like it was okay for some reason, like Maruki-sensei wouldn’t care about the tears.

I felt something, a sensation that rippled over me suddenly. I pulled my hand back from Maruki-sensei’s gentle grip and shook my head as if trying to dislodge something, it felt like my mind was being smothered by something thick and heavy. Thankfully, I felt Phantom’s resonance in my soul flare as I mentally hummed the Velvet Room’s song, the strange feeling began to fade and I felt my mind clearing up.

“Sorry about that,” I muttered. That was incredibly weird, whatever that sensation was it had felt like my mind was being clouded by the strangest of thoughts, but now those thoughts felt like grains of sand drifting on the winds, I couldn’t quite grab a hold of them so instead all I was left with was confusion and a rapidly growing headache.

“No, no, it’s quite already. Clearly this is still very painful for you, but it’s good that you managed to get it out of you,” Maruki-sensei admitted. However, despite the laugh that escaped from him, there seemed to be something strained running underneath his words which caused me to look at him; I caught a worried look in his eyes, perhaps he was concerned for what I had been through? It was probably good he didn’t know about Ouvrard then.

“I think I’d best leave now,” I decided. Maruki-sensei seemed to fumble for words as I grabbed my bag and hoisted it onto my shoulder. “Thank you, Maruki-sensei,” I stated. Crying for the second time since my family’s dead had worn me out, I just wanted to retreat to my bed and not think about my exams tomorrow.

Standing up, I turned to the door and pulled it open, only to have to catch a fist that had been swinging to knock. I followed the jacket clad arm back to the source and saw the red haired first year whose eyes had gone so wide I thought the organs would fall out. She immediately began to babble out apologises as I released her fist.

“Sorry about that,” I spoke. I slipped passed the girl and proceeded to walk away, feeling the headache continuing to pulse within my mind; enough that I reached my hands up to massage the base of my cranium as best I could to alleviate this strange fogginess that was crowding my thoughts.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 31: - The Artist

The final day of exams were upon us and I was busy leafing through the notes I made for the only tests we hadn’t gone through yet, my lips moving soundlessly to try and impart as much information as possible before it all vanished. Ren and Ryūji were stood with me, but I was a little too busy to pay much attention until a loud yawn escaped the blonde, popping my little study bubble quite effectively. I lifted my head to give the boy a small scowl as I snapped my book closed.

“I’m so sleepy,” Ryūji admitted. His eyes were drooping considerably, I was a little worried that he’d end up falling asleep standing up before the train got here. “I ended up pullin’ an all-nighter once I realised today’s the last day of exams,” Ryūji admitted. I raised an eyebrow at those words with Morgana popping out of the bag to express his own disbelief that Ryūji had been studying. “Nah, I gave up on the exam. I was playin’ some games and then before I knew it, it was morning,” Ryūji revealed. That was believable, although Ren reached his hands up to massage his head.

“You’re failing for sure,” Ren stated. I nodded in agreement as Ryūji slumped down with a sad aura surrounding him that could have rivalled a Despair Ailment. Before we could say any more, a sleepy voice greeted us and we all turned around to look at Ann as she walked over to us, her mouth opened wide – despite the hand covering it – as a yawn escaped her. She seemed as likely to fall asleep as Ryūji was.

“Yo, look who else is yawnin’,” Ryūji greeted. He seemed to have brightened up at seeing that someone else was sleepy, Ren wasn’t exactly bright eyed and bushy tailed but even he seemed more well rested than either of the two blondes in front of us. I just hoped that Ann hadn’t decided to pull a similar kind of stunt as Ryūji, we really don’t need another person potentially failing.

“Exams are almost over, so I thought I’d make one last effort across the finish line,” Ann admitted. Well thank goodness she had at least tried, but with how exhausted she seemed then I wasn’t feeling great about how well she’d do, if only because of her liability to fall asleep during the actual exam. Hopefully we could find a couple of seats on the train so that Ann and Ryūji could get some actual sleep.

“Impressive, Ann-dono. You’re quite different from this stupid monkey I know,” Morgana admitted. That was a bit harsh, especially given the way that Kamoshida had referred to Ryūji in that terrible library, the blonde boy proceeded to turn to look at Morgana with an annoyed look upon his face which the human-turned-cat seemed oblivious to.

“Huh? Don’t gimme that crap. Your brain’s tiny compared to mine,” Ryūji claimed. While true, that didn’t seem to be too much of an issue for Morgana as he seemed quite knowledgeable about some things, especially when it came to phantom thievery. Morgana turned to look at Ryūji with an obvious curl upon his lips.

“Size is meaningless if there’s nothing inside, you know,” Morgana stated. Ouch, that seemed a bit of a low blow, but Ryūji predictably rose to the bait as he stopped his foot forward and seemed about ready to get into another verbal sparring match with Morgana; Ren looked like he’d given up all hope for the world while I shook my head in disbelief at their constant antagonism of each other.

“Ugh, will you please shut up!? You’re gonna make me forget everything I memo-,” Ann began to snap. However, she suddenly stopped talking right as I pivoted to glare behind Ann and the blonde dived behind me gripping my shoulders tightly. “Am I imagining things, Natsu-chan?” Ann asked. So, it seemed she wasn’t oblivious to the individual who had been present.

“No. You’re fine Ann-chan. But I missed them,” I admitted. The argument was immediately shoved to the back burner as I felt warm presences appear on either side of me; I didn’t look back though and kept sweeping my eyes over the congested crowd of waiting passengers, unfortunately I couldn’t spot the person who had suddenly disappeared, but I still sensed their gaze upon us.

“What’s wrong?” Ren asked. His tone was steady, but an undercurrent of protectiveness burned within him, I turned back to look at them and found that Morgana was draped over Ann’s shoulders like some kind of fur wrap. Ryūji was scowling angrily at the crowd around us as if hoping to spot the person while Ren rubbed a hand across Ann’s back in soothing rubs.

“Ann-chan’s being followed. I sensed someone watching us after training the other day. But it seems he or she is following Ann-chan specifically,” I admitted. Grim expressions appeared on the boys’ faces as Morgana’s fur started to stand on end and I swear that a deep growl was rumbling from Morgana even as he gently nudged his head over Ann’s ear.

“Ann, let us know if you see or sense this punk, we’ll handle it,” Ryūji insisted. Ann let out a meek sound as she then clung to me and Ren, like our mere presence would protect her from this stalker. Morgana reluctantly slipped back into Ren’s bag but with the train here it wasn’t like he could stay on Ann’s shoulders; we stepped inside and found a couple of seats for our blonde friends, but all of us were so tightly wound about Ann’s stalker that neither of them proceeded to drift off.

We got off the train and continued on our way with Ryūji behind Ann to watch our backs as me and Ren remained at Ann’s sides as we walked towards the escalators that would take us out of the station. Ren went on first, followed by Ann and then me and Ryūji went up. Ann fidgeted briefly before turning around to look passed the two of us behind her.

“Oh my god! That guy got off!” Ann exclaimed. She then turned around to look at Ren. “Isn’t this bad?” Ann asked. Ryūji yawned which was quite the contrast to his earlier concern for Ann’s situation, the blonde model turned to look at Ryūji with an annoyed expression upon her face. “Hey! At least act like you care!” Ann protested. Ryūji sighed as he leaned passed me to look directly at our fire wielder.

“We get above ground and then confront him, ain’t that better than down here where it’s cramped. We’d have more room then,” Ryūji pointed out. That was some solid tactical sense, we’d have the advantage of a proper ambush out on the streets instead of squished down here. I’m just surprised the suggestion came from Ryūji and not Ren or Morgana; either Ryūji was smarter than he acted or our battles against the Shadows had given him this insight, either way it was good for him.

“Ryūji’s right. Down here, others will get caught. Up there, not so much,” Ren agreed. We proceeded to move up the escalators and out into the open air; the boys then split off and fell back to linger by the stairwell while me and Ann remained stood beside each other as we waited for Ann’s stalker to show up. I can’t believe someone was following Ann after she’d only just got free from Kamoshida; she didn’t deserve to go through this so soon after.

“Did you take a look at Carmen?” I asked. Ann was way too tense and nervous for anyone with observational skills to not be suspicious, I needed to get her to relax enough to lure the stalker in for us to properly ambush him. Thankfully, my choice of topic worked as Ann brightened and began to talk happily about the opera. That didn’t stop me from hearing footsteps and jangling coming closer to us from behind. I pivoted around and set myself in front of Ann as the boys sprinted over to join me. But the person behind us caused my eyes to widen in surprise.

Behind us was a boy – an objectively very pretty boy – about the same age as the rest of us, with dark blue hair that had a parted fringe which slightly covered his left eye, these eyes were of a grey colour. He was noticeably taller and thinner than both Ren and Ryūji. He wore a white gakuran-style shirt embroidered with a fleur-de-lis, that caused me to raise an eyebrow, fitted black pants and black loafers. A silver ring that held multiple keys was attached to his belt loop.

This was not what I had been expecting in the least, even he appeared confused as he tilted his head to the right and the edge of his fringe fell into his left eye slightly. His Will of Rebellion reminded me of Ann’s, a guttering candle flame. I wasn’t entirely sure what to made of this guy and so turned my gaze back to look at Ann.

“Hey… err… are you sure it’s him? Or are you just that self-conscious?” Ryūji asked. I couldn’t exactly blame him, the word stalker didn’t seem appropriate to apply to this boy who was gazing at us with quizzical eyes, he didn’t exactly give off the kind of repulsive or threatening aura I’d expect that kind of creep to give off. Instead, there was a sort of subdued calmness, an almost analytical energy coming from him; yet his eyes were definitely the ones I had felt before, they possessed a unique intensity hidden beneath the calm surface.

“I’m not tha-!” Ann began to yell. However, the boy cut her off by asking if she wanted something; this caused Ann to push passed all of us and jab a finger towards the boy. “That’s my line! You were the one stalking me!” Ann accused. The boy pulled back and seemed surprised by the words Ann threw at him, but then he recovered and swept back a part of his fringe that had fallen further over his eye.

“Stalking you? That’s absurd,” The boy responded. Ann levelled the accusation that she’d been followed ever since the train. “That’s because-,” The boy began to speak. However, he was cut off by the rolling of tyres and the sharp beep of a car horn, all of us looked over to see a rather posh car ride up to the curb. I immediately went tense at seeing such an expensive thing approaching us. Fears of it being my uncle or one of his minions ran rabid through my mind until the window rolled down. Inside the car was an elderly man with long grey hair that was tied in a ponytail and he had short facial hair. He had dark eyes and from what I could see, appearing to be wearing traditional Japanese clothes.

“My goodness, I had wondered why you left the car. So, this is where your passion led. All is well that ends well,” The man commented. He then began to laugh at his own words while I blinked in confusion; nevertheless, it appeared that this old man and young boy were acquainted with each other. But what had possessed the boy to leave the car and follow Ann? What was this passion that was mentioned?

“I saw you from the car… and I couldn’t help myself from chasing after you,” The boy admitted. He was looking at Ann with a rather intense gaze, but I felt no danger from it, there was something oddly pure about that gaze. “I didn’t even notice the calls from Sensei… but thank goodness, I caught up to you,” The boy added on. So, the old man must have been his teacher in some manner.

“Okay…,” Ann spoke. She pulled at her hair as she said those words, Ryūji was confused as well, I proceeded to look at Ren who was scratching at his head as he stared at the boy, however his bag was writhing quite a bit which implied that Morgana was taking issue with the things that were being spoken by the boy given his own interest in Ann.

“You’re the woman I’ve been searching for all this time! Please, won’t you,” The boy declared. His voice had become very passionate suddenly, Ann assumed he was about to ask her out and given the words he’d spoken I couldn’t exactly fault her for thinking such a thing. “Be the model for my next art piece!?” The boy finished. I blinked my eyes in shock at his words.

‘An artist. That explains so much.’ I thought. His sudden desire to pursue Ann and the analytical aspect of his gaze made more sense with that facet to his character included, Ann seemed confused by this revelation if the drawn out ‘okay’ that escaped her lips was any indication. I didn’t feel any need to continue viewing him as a threat, so proceeded to relax slightly.

“All that I’ve drawn till now has been lacking, but I feel a passion from you unlike anyone else,” The boy admitted. I looked at the boy and then drifted my eyes over to Ann, wondering what the blonde would do with that compliment; I wonder if he was somehow able to perceive Carmen’s presence within Ann, despite not possessing the eyes of a Betwixt.

“This man’s highly suspicious,” Morgana accused. Of course he would assume that, given his own attraction to Ann he probably would be suspicious of anyone who expressed interest in Ann, even if it was purely of the aesthetic variety. Ryūji looked uncomfortable while Ren just seemed perplexed about what to do.

“Ain’t this a recruit for some shady business?” Ryūji warily asked. It would make an unfortunate amount of sense, Tokyo wasn’t exactly the safest city in Japan as there was a prevalence for dangerous things to happen to students, especially if the student was an individual of reasonable attractiveness like Ann was. But the boy wasn’t setting off my alarm bells, so I don’t think he was that much of a threat.

“Will you cooperate with me? What do you say?” The boy ploughed forward. It was as if he hadn’t heard a single thing that Ryūji said, in fact his grey eyes were solely focused upon Ann who looked to be squirming in place at having such an intense focus directed at her; I gently gripped her elbow, if she was having flashbacks to Kamoshida’s leering gaze then it might help to ground her in the present.

“Hold your horses! Who’re you anyways?!” Ryūji demanded. He stepped slightly in front of Ann, created a barrier between the two but still allowing them to see each other. That was a good idea as it would at least make it seem like Ryūji wasn’t being intentional in his aggression towards the boy, any sort of aggressive actions could have unknown consequences, potentially dangerous consequences.

“Ryūji’s right. You can’t simply approach Ann out of the blue like this and ask her to be your muse without introductions. It is only polite after all,” I spoke up. My cool tone drew the boy’s attention unlike anything Ryūji had said before; in fact his grey eyes stayed on me for a few moments more than necessary before my words seemed to sink into his mind and he jumped slightly, as if he’d been spooked by some unseen thing.

“Oh, yes! Where are my manners? I’m a second year at Kosei High’s fine arts division. My name is Kitagawa Yusuke,” The boy introduced. He then proceeded to move forward and pushed Ryūji aside in an almost mindless manner, his eyes once more focused upon Ann alone. “I’m Madarame-sensei’s pupil and I am being allowed residence at his place. I’m striving to become an artist,” Kitagawa admitted.

“Huh!? Do you mean that Madarame? The one who was on ‘Good Morning Japan’ the other day?” Ann asked. This was apparently correct, but Ryūji was clueless. “He was introduced as a super-famous Japanese-style artist who’s been recognised all over the world,” Ann explained. However, I was more focused upon the name that had just been spoken; a sudden rush of warm air appeared at my ear.

“Isn’t Madarame also the name Nakanohara’s Shadow mentioned?” Ren whispered. I nodded my head to show I remembered this fact as well, I wasn’t certain of how common the name was, but to hear the name after hearing it in Mementos… well it was something that snagged my attention and caused me to wonder.

“Interesting. I still say he’s suspicious though,” Morgana stated. Of course, Morgana still focused on the guy who was talking to Ann, but at least he had taken note of the connection between the name from Mementos and the man currently sat in the car just to our left; I wondered if we had come across our next target… our gravity seemed to be running at full steam now that the exams were almost over.

“But… didn’t we hear that name at training the other day?” Ann asked. Me and Ren slightly nodded our heads, which caused the frown on her lips to become even more apparent; Ryūji looked between us with a wary gleam in his eyes as he realised the potential danger that was likely staring at us down, even if the man didn’t realise it himself.

“Yusuke!” Madarame called. I looked at the old man, I couldn’t always see the Shadows of Palace Rulers, likely because of some unknown Metaverse thing, but if this man was a Palace Ruler, then we needed to be wary of what he could be hiding. He might not be the same Madarame as who Nakanohara mentioned, but we couldn’t be too careful.

“I’m sorry, Sensei. I’ll be right there!” Kitagawa answered. He focused his eyes upon Ann once more. “Madarame-sensei’s exhibition will begin at the department store near the station tomorrow. I’ll be there to help out on opening day. Please come by. It’d be great if you could give me your answer in regard to being a model then,” Kitagawa insisted. He pulled four tickets out of his pocket and held them out to Ann, then gave Ryūji a rather dirty look. “I bet you have no interest in the fine arts, but I’ll give you tickets too,” Kitagawa blandly stated. He almost spat the words, Ann took the tickets and slipped them into the bag. “Well then, I hope to see you there tomorrow!” Kitagawa cheerfully admitted. He then climbed into the car which drove away.

“That guy’s as easy to read as a book. You’re not plannin’ on goin’, are ya?” Ryūji asked. He looked at Ann who was gazing at the pavement under her feet, a complicated look upon her face, I wasn’t entirely sure what that expression was meant to mean but she was clearly deep in thought about this unexpected offer she’d been extended.

“I think I will,” Ann admitted. Ryūji and Morgana were shocked by this revelation as I raised my eyebrow in surprise at her decision; Ann pulled out her phone and looked at it. “Crap! Look at the time! I’ll see you later,” Ann exclaimed. She then immediately took off towards school and I quickly followed after her.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The school day was over and with it the exams as well, honestly it felt like a thousand-pound weigh had finally been lifted from my shoulders, I could finally breath just a little easier. Currently me and my new friends were gathered within Shibuya’s station having finally managed to get away from the school and the rest of the students fleeing the exams like they were infected with some kind of disease.

“Mmmmmm, it’s over!” Ann celebrated. She stretched her arms into the air as she said those words, she did seem to be rather delighted by having the exams finished; not that I could blame her. The exams had been a different sort of stress to infiltrating a Palace, but stressful none the less, at least we could relax slightly… until we ended up locating our next target and then the stress would simply come back.

“It’s over,” Ryūji groaned. He was slumped down and had he not been leaning against one of the pillars, I suspect he might be curled up on the floor in a dejected heap. “How ‘bout you two?” Ryūji asked. He lifted his head up to look at me and Ren, I glanced at the ravenette and saw he seemed completely relaxed from his slightly slouched shoulders and hands in his pockets.

“I’m not worrying about it,” Ren answered. If he felt like that, then there was no need for him to be concerned about the results of the exams; it was heartening to see him being so confident. It would just increase our ability to trust in him during stressful moment, plus it was nice to see him coming out of the shell he’d locked himself within after that terrible incident.

“Exams are over. Let’s refocus now that we don’t have the added stress,” I suggested. It was best to give Ryūji something to focus on now that he had nothing to worry about; at my words, Ryūji pushed himself out of his slumped down state – though still leant against the pillar – and seemed to have brightened slightly at my words, although there was still a frown upon his face.

“Anyways, can we stop talkin’ about the exams? Like it or not, they’re gonna come back graded next week,” Ryūji pointed out. A fair point, we’d know the results soon enough and worrying about them wasn’t much point. “Rather than focus on stuff that’s over with,” Ryūji commented. He was gazing at his phone as he said that.

“What are you looking at?” Ann asked. It should have been fairly obvious given how, of all of us, Ryūji was the most expressive about how much he enjoyed our activities and he had been the first to locate the website Mishima set up, but best not to make assumptions which would be something we’d need to put into practice when investigating someone in possession of a Palace.

“The usual site,” Ryūji answered. He even briefly showed us his phone before turning the screen back to look at him, a dejected expression proceeded to blossom on his face. “It’s no use. There ain’t any useful info. The number of posts are getting’ less and less too,” Ryūji admitted. I suppose that made a fair amount of sense.

“Well, it has been nearly a month since our initial posting went out. People are probably losing interest or belief,” Ren theorised. Even if it had only been a few days since Kamoshida confessed, things like the unusualness of the Phantom Thieves could fade easily from a person’s mind; besides, our actions against Nakanohara and the Shūjin bully wouldn’t be massive public knowledge like Kamoshida’s Change of Heart was.

“I am not letting this end as a one-hit wonder, okay?” Morgana protested. He popped out of the bag and leaned over Ren’s shoulder, his fur puffed up slightly in annoyance, not that any once could blame him; Ann moved over and delicately traced her fingers down Morgana’s spine, causing him to arch into her digits and puff down slightly with a faint rumble emanating from him.

“There’s no point in getting antsy though,” Ann pointed out. She was right, we wouldn’t be any good to the people in danger if we allowed ourselves to become high-strung over finding a target. “I know! Why don’t we go eat dinner somewhere? We should have enough money from our jobs and activities,” Ann suggested. That might actually help us to relax, good food was great for stuff like that, or something else that might be relaxing.

“I want sushi, then! Or domestic-raised eel!” Ryūji exclaimed. I looked over at the blonde with an unimpressed expression while Ann had a raised eyebrow as Ren massaged the bridge of his nose; those were some seriously expensive options the boy had decided to choose and it was something that baffled my brain as to why he thought we could afford that kind of stuff.

“We don’t have that much money Ryūji,” I deadpanned. A flower shop, a convenience store, a beef bowl shop and part-time modelling; none of those exactly raked in enough money for us to split off a large amount to go towards something like an expensive meal when we had to keep some aside for equipment and medicine.

“Oh! There are those tickets to Madarame’s exhibit! Wait, that’s tomorrow,” Ann remembered. That was a fair point, even if we were suspicious about Madarame possibly being a Palace Ruler, the exhibit was something we’d got free tickets for so it would be rude not to use them and it would at least be something to let us possibly relax after the stressful exams.

“Don’t tell me… was it love at first sight with that Yusuke guy?” Morgana worried. That was a ridiculous worry for him to have, Ann had been so angry at him for following her and then so baffled by Kitagawa’s proposal to become a model that I don’t think anyone could feel any kind of romantic feelings so suddenly… but then again, I’m no expert on relationships in general, let alone romantic relationships.

“It’s not like that,” Ann responded. She looked slightly uncomfortable as she pulled locks of her hair briefly. “When I was watching that special on TV, his artwork was pretty nice. Plus, we’ve got free tickets. Besides, this could be related to what we heard at training,” Ann explained. It was a fair point that we needed to be concerned about, especially given the implications we got from Nakanohara.

“Madarame, was it?” Ryūji asked. We nodded our heads as a small grimace made its’ way across his lips as he looked down, we needed to check out this possibility that he was a candidate for our next target, but what his distortion was, that we wouldn’t be able to determine until we managed to get inside; I actually wanted us to be wrong, more so that Kitagawa wasn’t suffering if he was living with that man.

“I’m curious too. But we need to remember that it could just as easily be a coincidence,” Ren reminded. We definitely couldn’t jump to conclusions now, the Meta-Nav wasn’t something we could absolutely rely on to determine Palace Rulers due to it picking up on all distortions, only my eyes could let me see if someone was a Palace Ruler or not due to the elaborate differences between the real person and the Shadow.

“That aside, what should I do about the other three tickets? Wanna go appreciate some fine arts for once?” Ann asked. She had a smile on her face as she pulled the tickets out of her purse; I immediately held out a hand towards the ponytailed blonde, causing her blue eyes to look over at me as I allowed a smile to curve onto my lips.

“Hand one over Ann-chan. Whether he’s twisted or not, that’s still some good artwork. If Ouvrard gave me anything, it’s an appreciation for such things,” I demanded. Ann smiled brightly at my words and pulled a ticket free to slip it into my hand, I quickly put it away in a safe place as I bounced a little on my toes. “I am going to take so many photographs,” I giggled. Mirai would like that, she’d have enjoyed this opportunity.

“Fine arts, huh?” Ryūji muttered. If he wasn’t willing to come to the art exhibit then I’m sure we could find someone else to give the ticket to, perhaps we could ask Haru-senpai, she seemed like the kind of person who might enjoy the artwork, though I was basing this off the fact that she seemed drawn to France and she had an elegant, refined air about her.

“I suggest we all go together!” Morgana declared. He seemed to have brightened up as the topic drifted away from Kitagawa. “Appreciating the fine arts builds character. A phantom thief who can’t identify an original is lame,” Morgana pointed out. Reasonable, you never know when we might be required to see through illusions in the Palaces, they were creations of the mind so anything could be possible for us to deal with.

“Well, if everyone’s going,” Ryūji commented. He seemed slightly reluctant but moved over and plucked a ticket out of Ann’s hand, the girl was beaming bright enough to put the sun to shame with her smile which caused me to laugh slightly; I was glad to see that she was smiling so much more now, freedom from Kamoshida and Shiho being safe would undoubtedly give her a buoyant sensation.

“It’s settled then!” Ann cheered. She turned and pressed the other free ticket into the Ren’s hand, the boy looked at it with a sheepish expression and proceeded to set it away somewhere safe, Morgana was practically rumbling like an engine as Ren rubbed at the back of his neck; I wasn’t sure if he was happy or nervous about going to the exhibit.

“It could be fun,” Ren admitted. Well, at least he seemed to be looking forward to the exhibit, it would be nice to have an outing with my friends that wouldn’t be contaminated by the snooty arrogance of a bunch of rich people; well off people might be present but so would people of all walks of life so it was absolutely bound to be better than the Wilton Hotel.

“Just the phrase ‘going to an art exhibit’ sound kinda mature,” Ann admitted. She was practically bouncing in place as her smile stretched from ear to ear. “Let’s meet at the exhibit entrance tomorrow,” Ann suggested. We all agreed to this and proceeded to split up from each other.

*Persona 5 Royal*

At home, I was currently scrolling through an article on Madarame, I wanted to see if I could put together an opinion of him. The brief meeting with him hadn’t shown anything to be off settling, but that didn’t mean anything, so I wanted to look for any hints. But all I was getting was praises for Madarame’s skill as an artist, from multiple sources, but not much on his character. Kitagawa respected him, but he might be like Kawakami-sensei, blind to the truth. My phone buzzed, so I picked it up.

Ann: So, I keep thinking about what Nakanohara said…

Ann: Could he have been talking about the famous artist Madarame?

Natsumi: It’s plausible, I can’t see Shadows all the time.

Natsumi: But that doesn’t mean it isn’t him.

Ren: Also doesn’t mean it is him.

Ryūji: Yeah, I think it is him though.

Ryūji: I mean how many Madarames can there be.

Natsumi: Not many, it sounds like an unusual name.

Natsumi: But jumping to conclusions is bad.

Ren: We also need to remember the perspective of the people closest to him.

Ann: But, if what we heard is true, Kitagawa-kun is studying under a corrupt teacher.

Ryūji: You mean a teacher who treats people like tools?

Ann: Kitagawa-kun’s life is probably pretty terrible.

Natsumi: JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS!

Ren: But we should still look into it.

Ren: Better safe than sorry.

I set the object down and rubbed my temples to try and ease the headache currently thumping at my brain. Hopefully we’d get some kind of clarity tomorrow about Madarame.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion. Also, Happy Easter everyone!

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 32: - Second Target: Located

When the day of the gallery exhibit opened, the heavens did as well, sending a deluge of rain hailing down onto Tokyo. So much so that I put on a thick leather jacket over my outfit and took my umbrella with me to prevent the thick water droplets from hammering down on me. I had been thinking of taking a picture upon meeting up with the others, but based on the heavy downpour, we all proceeded to run inside the building once we got there. Luckily there was a place to put coats and umbrella, so we left those there, leaving us to explore without trailing water.

“So crowded…,” Morgana complained. Not that he was wrong, the exhibit was filled with all kinds of people from those dressed in high-end designer clothes like the Wilton Hotel – urgh, I think someone walked over my family’s grave – to people dressed more like us, in regular but nice clothing. They were stood staring at the paintings; I took the opportunity to unzip my camera case and remove Mirai’s camera whose batteries were freshly charged.

“It’ll be a pain in the ass if someone sees you, so don’t stick your head out too much, alright?” Ryūji insisted. I wasn’t entirely how these people would react to the presence of Morgana, but better safe than sorry in this case, Morgana let out a small grumbling groan, but agreeing with what the boy said, as he promptly pulled himself back inside the back, which was just as well since Kitagawa chosen that moment to rush up to us with a smile on his face.

“You came!” Kitagawa happily greeted. He was dressed in a grey blazer striped with thin white vertical lines over a white, long sleeve shirt with red and pink detail, black pants and black ankle boots. Ann was surprised by the exuberance that the boy was displaying to her presence and stumbled slightly over a confirmation. “You really came,” Kitagawa blandly stated. His eyes were zeroed in on Ryūji, but I felt that comment was also directed towards me and Ren.

“What’d you expect when you left us those tickets!?” Ryūji responded. A fair point for him to make, after all to not use the tickets would have been a ridiculous waste; although the sparks that seemed to be flying between the two boys was a little bit extreme even taking into account their dissimilar personalities.

“Make sure that you don’t get in the way of the other visitors,” Kitagawa insisted. His eyes were firmly set into a glare as he said those words before spinning back to look at Ann and his expression lightened into one that was much more pleasant one. “Come now. I’ll show you around. I’d like to speak more about the picture I’d like to draw too,” Kitagawa insisted. His tone was perfectly pleasant, lacking all the vitriol it had contained before… I was starting to wonder if he suffered from mood swings.

“Kitagawa-san, would it be alright if I took some pictures?” I requested. The blue haired artist looked at me with a blank expression, conveying neither disgust nor joy, I lifted my camera as if to help clarify any confusion he might have had. “They wouldn’t be published or anything, more for capturing my own memories,” I explained. A look of contemplation came upon the painter’s expression as he remained silent for a few moments.

“I don’t see anything wrong with that, some press are here so pictures will naturally be taken,” Kitagawa agreed. I smiled brightly at his agreement, with that Ann bid us goodbye and walked off with Kitagawa, at that moment Morgana wriggled out of Ren’s bag with what looked to be a worried expression on his face; given what I knew about the cat-shaped thief, I think I know what he was worried about.

“Will Ann-dono be alright!? What if he drags her behind some painting and tries something funny?” Morgana panicked. It was rather sweet of him to care about Ann’s safety, but Kitagawa didn’t give off those kind of alarm bells. Okay, yes, he stalked her from the train station, but he had only asked for the girl to model for a painting. Besides, there was a little thing that the boys probably weren’t aware off.

“Then Ann-chan will promptly drive her fist into his throat and probably aim a blow between the legs then run back to us,” I answered. Both Ren and Ryūji violently flinched at the second attack I mentioned before giving me a baffled look from Ryūji and a raised eyebrow from Ren. “I talked her into getting self-defence lessons after the whole Kamoshida mess. I’m hoping to do the same to Shiho as well once she clears her physiotherapy,” I explained. Ren let out an ‘ah’ in understanding while Ryūji turned to glare at Morgana.

“Also, I told you not to come out!” Ryūji snapped. A strange sound escaped the cat before he proceeded to yank himself back inside of the bag; this allowed our Electricity wielder to look at Ren with a dejected look on his face. “Are we really gonna ‘appreciate’ the fine arts? Can’t we just go home?” Ryūji whined. I restrained an eyeroll at his complaining, I know this might not be his preferred activity, but he didn’t have to sound like we were attempting to torture him by boredom.

“It’d be a waste to just leave; we should at least look around. Besides, we might learn about Madarame,” Ren insisted. Ryūji slumped down but agreed to go along with us, activating my camera, I quickly snapped a picture of a painting that had been recently cleared of spectators which meant that I could get to see it without interference. “Enjoying your photography?” Ren asked. I turned to look at our leader who was softly smiling at me.

“Yes!” I happily answered. I then snapped a picture of him and Ryūji quickly before walking off into the gallery, photographing the pictures that were clear of people; I spotted Ann and Yusuke stood by a picture with Ann’s face turned slightly back so you could only see a slight portion of her left features while Yusuke was gazing with an almost dream-like admiration cast to his eyes. I quickly snapped a picture of them, the lights almost seemed to be setting off a small halo around Ann’s bright curls.

“Hm?” Ryūji let out. All of us came to a stop and looked at the blonde only to see that his eyes were focused upon the person a small distance away from us. “It’s that old man from the other day,” Ryūji stated. It was indeed Madarame and he seemed to be speaking to a TV crew, likely to make an interview given how much coverage the gallery was getting before it even opened. They were talking about how many different styles the man produced, there was a significant diversity in his styles of painting.

“Well… it is rather difficult to put into words,” Madarame admitted. Ryūji began to walk towards the man, but Ren stopped him by grabbing his arm and pulling it back slightly to stop his momentum. “They naturally well up from within my heart like bubbles rising one after another in the spring,” Madarame claimed. Suddenly, a haze of gold settled over the man with something like a topknot stretching from the back of his head. “Such magnificent pieces I’ve created,” Madarame’s voice claimed. But there was a very creepy fact that I couldn’t ignore. “What’s important is to distance oneself from worldly desires such as money and fame. My atelier is a modest shack, but it is more than enough to pursue true beauty,” Madarame admitted. Those words had been spoke at the same time as the other set of words.

“Shadow!” I hissed. Ren turned to look at me with wide eyes while Ryūji seemed surprised by something. “He has a Shadow,” I repeated. And it had been frighteningly clear as well, all kinds of alarms were shrieking around within my head at this revelation, Ryūji turned to look at us and saw the tension draped over the two of us like lead blankets. He opened his mouth, but Ren sharply shook his head in order to silence the false blonde as his expression set into a hard look that Joker normally bore.

“Outside! We can talk there!” Ren commanded. We proceeded to try and rush out the gallery to the small courtyard there, although we ran into a slight problem in that a large crowd of people surged towards Madarame as we tried to get away. The mere act of trying to push against the crowd caused an issue for us as we tried to get away with feet treading on my toes and arms or elbows landed jabs into my ribs which stole my breath from me. And the tight press of bodies meant I couldn’t even try to dodge let alone actually succeed.

Eventually we made our way back to the door and grabbed our stuff, we darted outside and immediately cracked open the umbrellas until we reached the large tree which shaded us from most of the rain and allowed us to slightly pull our umbrellas back. I reached over to one side of my torso and gingerly rubbed a spot that had been struck one too many times. Neither Ren nor Ryūji were any better as the blonde practically collapsed onto the stonework that surrounded the tree like a bowl while Ren leaned against the edge of a table that was also hiding from the storm.

“That old lady totally elbowed me,” Ryūji wheezed. I shot off a quick message to Ann so she wouldn’t get confused about where the four of us had disappeared to, Morgana wriggled his head free of the bag that Ren had set onto the table. “Anyway, I remember something I read on the website thanks to what Madarame said,” Ryūji admitted. That must have been what he was so surprised about.

“You better find it so we can show it to Ann when she gets here,” Ren insisted. He then turned to me, a tense look was clear upon his face and along the lines of his shoulders, he looked like he might be trembling slightly, though that could be from the cold wind blowing through despite it being May. “You’re sure it was a Shadow you saw?” Ren asked. I sharply nodded my head to confirm this fact, but figured I’d better explain what I had seen and what that may entail.

“Yeah, it doesn’t mean he has a challenge though. Plenty of Shūjin students had one but they never had challenges, but this one was very clear and dressed differently. Something I’ve only seen on Rulers, so it would be wise to investigate,” I answered. Rulers was at least something I could speak out loud about since people might just think we’re gamers discussing a game we happened to be playing.

“Why’d you leave without me?” Ann’s voice called. We turned to see the model walking over to us, her reddish-pink umbrella raised over her head until she stepped underneath the boughs to join us in relative dryness; with her closer now I noted the annoyance that shone within her bright eyes along with the thin pursing of her lips as she looked between three of us for an explanation as to our disappearing act.

“We needed to talk about something urgent, plus we were also getting crushed by the press of bodies,” I answered. My hand impulsively returned to the likely bruised area, causing Ann’s eyes to immediately dart there as her eyes softened with concern, she looked at Ren and Ryūji for any sign of obvious injury before lifting her eyes to Morgana who seemed overjoyed that she was back to us.

“What was so urgent?” Ann asked. Her tone was tense, but not with annoyance, she had likely guessed what the urgent matter was since there was only one thing that would be major for all of us to rush to somewhere semi-private without telling her beforehand. Ryūji shifted around for a bit and winced slightly before focusing on Ann with a slightly wary look on his face as he held his phone out to show the Phan-site’s familiar red background.

“Natsumi saw a Sh- OW!” Ryūji began to speak. Only for Morgana to pounce on the boy’s head with his claws slightly stuck out, Ryūji writhed a bit before Ren plucked Morgana off the blonde’s head. “Natsumi saw something and I remembered seeing a post. This post might be about Madarame. ‘A master of the Japanese arts is plagiarising his pupil’s work. Only his public face is shown on TV’,” Ryūji read. My eyes flew wide as did the others’.

“Plagiarising!” All of us exclaimed. That was pretty serious, to take the credit of someone else’s hard work, dreams, determination, and hopes was an abhorrent thing. It might not be the worst crime in the world, but it could be pretty soul crushing for someone to see their work being taken and praised as someone else’s while they are completely ignored.

“I didn’t think much of it when I first saw it, but hearing ‘shack’ and ‘Madarame’ triggered my memory of it. ‘His treatment of the pupils who live with him is awful. He teaches nothing and bosses them around. He treats them inhumanely, as if disciplining a dog,’” Ryūji kept reading. This wasn’t someone trying to slander another person, this was someone speaking about a genuine truth, someone who had experienced it; I felt sorry for the person behind the post… I wonder if this was Kitagawa, or was Kitagawa kept separate somehow, treated differently and not harmed… he didn’t seem hurt or in some kind of lasting physical pain, but abuse had many versions and many left no physical marks.

“Do you think Kitagawa-kun posted this?” Ann tentatively asked. So, someone else had suggested this possibility, her expression became filled with concern as she looked at the ground; as pushy as Kitagawa might seem, he certainly didn’t deserve to be a victim of plagiarism, no one did, but to be forced to ensure this from someone he seemed to whole-heartedly respect must have been awful. But it was that genuine admiration that made me question his situation. “I mean he is a pupil of his,” Ann reminded.

“Who knows? It’s anonymous and all…,” Ryūji admitted. Could Kitagawa really be unaware of how Madarame was treating the other pupils while living with them? Even Kamoshida’s victims had been aware of the horrors of their own treatment despite them attempting to play it off, nothing about Kitagawa’s actions implied that was an act; even based on my possibly skewed understanding of emotions, the two cases were so opposed that it was difficult to compare them.

“Given that Natsumi saw a clear Shadow and this post references a master of Japanese arts, it’s possible the Madarame we heard about in Mementos is referring to the same one,” Morgana suggested. It would line up with what Nakanohara implied, the name was the same and given that the Shadow had said things like being ‘used and disposed of’ and ‘tossed away like a worthless thing’ which would line up with a plagiarism accusation.

“A man like that, doing such a thing?” Ann muttered. She seemed confused and unsure, but I couldn’t blame her as the accusation of plagiarism and abuse was deeply opposed to the kind, gentle, slightly jovial old man we had met only yesterday, he had also seemed humble when talking to the interviewer; even Kamoshida had let his mask slip on random occasions, yet Madarame’s seemed iron clad and airtight. “I wonder if we can ask that… opponent from earlier about this,” Ann suggested. That was a good way to refer to our non-Palace connected enemies.

“Doubtful. The opponent won’t be around, he’d be in reality though. But getting a hold of him might be difficult,” I admitted. Sure, we knew he worked at City Hall, but even if we did find him it might take too long to see him; then, even if we did get to see him, that would lead to an entirely different and more troubling issue that we’d have to solve if we truly wanted information about Madarame.

“Besides, even if we did find him, how are we gonna go about explaining that? Tell him about Me- training?” Ryūji added on. At least he bit his tongue and changed the word when Ren glared at him – sans glasses too which heightened the effect – Morgana seemed contemplative as he looked at the ground before looking at us.

“Besides, if we make a move out in the open, there’s the possibility that Madarame will find out,” Morgana warned. Ann understood the risk but seemed a little upset about it from her down cast expression, we were certainly stuck in an awkward position. Our need for more information against our need to remain anonymous about our Metaverse related activities, we needed to find a way to balance these two things.

“Hey, what do you think about Madarame? Doesn’t he seem suspicious?” Ryūji asked Ren. He proceeded to pulled himself up as he faced Ren head on. “If this post is legit, ain’t this the kinda target we’ve been waiting for?” Ryūji questioned. He was getting excited, perhaps too excited, true it was exactly the kind of thing that would remove the blockage down in Mementos; we had yet to completely agree or even know if Madarame had a Palace to begin with, it could have been at the stage just before a separate Palace formed after all.

“It’s too early to say at the moment. The post could be fake, but Natsumi’s observation lends it some weight of truth. Madarame seems like a courtesy and pilot gentleman, but appearances can be deceiving. I think we need to speak to someone who really knows Madarame, not just the face he shows to everyone else. We need more information,” Ren decided. His argument was thoughtful and persuasive, easily balancing both sides while discounting no possibilities.

“Someone who knows him… our best bet is Kitagawa-san,” I suggested. Primarily it was because he was the only one we actually knew in the physical world, approaching Nakanohara for information was substantially more dangerous than approaching Kitagawa, although getting the information from Kitagawa might be more difficult, especially if he was unaware of the cruel things Madarame was doing.

“Well yeah… but… is that post really true? It’s not that I doubt you Natsumi, it just seems so weird,” Ann admitted. I understood her concern, I didn’t feel insulted either since my Second Sight was pretty unusual and it wasn’t like I could just loan out my eyes for them to use… actually the power might not even transfer if I did do such a thing since it was linked to my soul and only transmitted through my eyes.

“By the way, what did you do about the whole modelling thing?” Ryūji asked. He looked at Ann while I proceeded to raise an eyebrow at that question, Ren seemed perplexed as he also stared at Ryūji while Morgana’s hackles started to rise at the mention of the modelling. Ann for her part just looked confused as she slightly shrugged her shoulders before opening her mouth.

“Kitagawa-kun gave me his contact info and the address to his sensei’s atelier,” Ann admitted. That would mean we’d at least be able to find the place, although whether it was the same shack that Madarame’s other students used was up for debate, it was also possible that this place could be the site of a Palace or it could just be an ordinary place. Ryūji suddenly grinned rather widely at Ann’s words.

“He said he lives there, right? Perfect timing. Let’s try goin’ tomorrow. We’re off to Madarame’s house right after school!” Ryūji declared. My eyes widened at Ryūji’s declaration while Ren gaped at him, Ann proceeded to flinch backward in shock at those words; not that any of us could be blamed since it was so unexpected the suggestion even if it did help us in the long run… to just turn up there suddenly without any announcement beforehand.

“Huh?! You want me to model tomorrow!?” Ann questioned. She had every right to be concerned by what had just been suggested, there was probably no way we’d be able to even get in the building without Ann consenting to the modelling request which was something she didn’t seem too keen to be doing. “This is too sudden,” Ann complained.

“Ann-chan’s right. That seems really sudden, we have to wait for Kitagawa-kun to agree. And besides, Ann-chan’s comfort should come first,” I insisted. Ann gave me a smile in response to my support, I didn’t want Ann to be forced into an uncomfortable situation after having just escaped such a horrible thing that she’d been enduring for far too long.

“What? We’re just gonna go talk to Kitagawa,” Ryūji insisted. He sounded honestly confused as to why Ann was so against this, it seemed he didn’t understand the things we would likely have to do if we wanted Kitagawa to actually talk to us. Actually, talk to Ann, since while he seemed neutral at best to me, he definitely didn’t like Ren or Ryūji.

“But Kitagawa-san might not be willing to open up. He needs to get comfortable and painting Ann might make him comfortable. But if Ann isn’t comfortable then going is pointless. We’re not going to force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. Even if it is to pursue a challenge,” Ren insisted. Ann beamed at our leader who gave her a soft smile to show his reassurance that Ann would not be forced into something she hated.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 33: - Confirming Our Suspicions

The hours spent in school could not be closer to torture unless actual physical pain was involved. I wanted nothing more than to leave the grounds and hunt down Madarame’s estate, all out of a fervent desire to know if the artist was a Palace Ruler. But with no idea where the shack was located, that would be a fool’s move, besides my friends deserved to be involved in this incident since we were a team.

“Hey there. I’m Doctor Maruki, your school counsellor,” Maruki-sensei greeted. It was a little strange to see the counsellor standing at the front of the classroom. “Thanks to the school, I can even talk to you outside of counselling now. I want to talk a little about how mental health and perception can affect you. Don’t worry, I don’t want to stress you out or anything. Just relax and listen,” Maruki-sensei insisted. I perked up slightly, hearing those words since it seemed like this might benefit us. “How much do you guys know about the emotional mind?” Maruki-sensei asked. Hm, emotions didn’t have as much effect on the Metaverse unless it was the same emotion from a large number of people, like a person’s mood from the weather. “See, what’s going on in your mind can affect your body pretty significantly. There’s proof it can even heal you, depending on your outlook,” Maruki-sensei claimed. His gaze turned to look at a specific student. “So, Amamiya-kun. What do we call the phenomenon were believing in a treatment’s power is enough to improve your condition?” Maruki-sensei asked.

“The placebo effect,” Ren answered. This was right and Maruki-sensei went on to explain more about the false drug and how the perception could affect the body. It did seem that placebos could have a powerful effect of people. Especially if they could actually change a person’s condition enough for it to improve from before the placebo was taken, but such a thing wouldn’t work in the Metaverse unless all of us were completely blind to what the placebos actually were.

“The mind affects the body, huh? You think I’ll change back into a human if I just believe in it hard enough?” Morgana wondered. That was an interesting possibility, I really do hope that we’d be able to change Morgana back to his human form when we reached whatever lay down at the bottom of Mementos. A cold sensation raced its’ way up and down my spine when that thought crossed my mind, causing me to fight down a shiver.

“Maybe, all we can do is try,” Ren answered. For the moment, that was all we really could do.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Once school was over, the four of us humans and Morgana proceeded to head for the train station. We hopped on the train bound for Shibuya with Ann and Ren sitting down in two open chairs while me and Ryūji took a hold of a section of railing in order to keep our ground; suddenly the blonde beside me heaved a sizeable sigh which caused all of us to look over at our Electricity wielder, with curious looks upon their faces.

“Phantoms thieves goin’ by train… this ain’t any different from how I get home from school y’know,” Ryūji complained. I couldn’t do anything to tell him off for saying such a thing out loud – the train wasn’t packed, but it was filled enough – without potentially hurting Ryūji or myself. Neither could any of the others for the first reason given that the train was still moving.

“It’s not like any of us can drive Ryūji, so how else are we meant to get around. Walking would take forever compared to the train, plus the bus would be longer than train too,” I stated. If we walked then our feet would be so tired that our brains would have turned to mush simply to support the poor abused appendages, that meant we wouldn’t be in a fit state to deal with a Palace Ruler.

“Besides, we can bring pets on here,” Ann added on. That was something we couldn’t do on a bus; we at least were allowed to do that on the train, I wondered what would be waiting for us when we got to the shack Madarame was living at. Suddenly the bag proceeded to writhe and Morgana eventually wriggled his head free with an annoyed look upon his face.

“Hey, who’re you calling a pet!?” Morgana protested. However, the moment Morgana’s face appeared, I immediately spotted the widening of Ren’s eyes as his face slackened and his skin rushed just a little paler than before; he lifted his head slightly as if expecting some kind of trouble which dragged everyone’s attention to our typically steadfast leader.

“Oops… I forgot to pay for Morgana,” Ren realised. Well, that explained it, he did seem to remember most of the time, but now he had forgotten; then again there did seem to be more pressure upon us today since this was the first time we were hunting down a possible target, instead of trying to outwit a target and all the obstacles present in our path. This sort of tension was different to what we were used to.

“Then you’d better be quiet Morgana!” Ryūji hissed out. He leaned in closer to the cat in order to deliver this message, we would certainly need him to be quiet otherwise we could end up in trouble with the train operators if they managed to find out about the cat’s presence. However, Morgana turned his annoyed gaze upon Ryūji which caused me to take a couple of steps away from the duo in case things got a bit argumentative.

“I’m the one guiding you to your destination! You should be calling me Master!” Morgana claimed. Why on earth would we need to do that? Morgana was indeed the one responsible for handling the map in the previous Palace once we found it, but I didn’t think that was any reason to start addressing him by such a respectful title. I wasn’t demanding such a thing despite having taught them how to handle their weapons like an instructor. Also, Ann was currently the one guiding us.

“Ooh, kitty!” A young voice called. I practically jumped a foot in the air when I heard that voice, Ryūji started as well while the two on the seats flinched; I looked over and saw a little girl approaching with dark hair tied in pigtails and dark eyes, she was dressed in a zipped hoodie and a skirt with sensible shoes. Her eyes were shining brightly as they focused on Morgana who had gone completely still, or at least his head had gone still, what his body was doing in the bag I couldn’t tell.

“Er, shoot!” Ann exclaimed. We were certainly in deep trouble, the little girl wouldn’t be able to keep her voice down as children didn’t understand the concept – or at least Mirai certainly hadn’t at that age – which would draw the attention of others and then we’d be outed, even if Morgana tried to simulate a statuette as he was currently doing his utmost to.

“Is that your pet, Mister? I heard it meowing!” The little girl wondered. The girl’s brightly sparkling eyes were greatly opposed to the current tense feeling that was rolling across the four of us as we tried to think about what to do; the girl had heard the meowing so we couldn’t tell her no, but how to explain why she heard a cat’s meowing… even more so, given that she’d seen the head as well.

“It’s a stuffed animal, actually. It simulates a cat’s meowing,” Ren lied. Well, that might just do it, it wouldn’t be too impossible for that to be taken in by the young girl, especially so long as Morgana remains still; we just had to hope that Morgana’s phantom thief poise would keep him stationary for as long as was required to sell the story to the child.

“Yeah, when you press its’ head, it meows,” Ann added on. At least someone else was helping to support the story, especially given that the young girl had heard the cat meowing which meant we could probably at least prove how she heard the meowing from a stuffed toy, while also ensuring where to press in order to get Morgana to go along with the ploy. The girl was so excited that she immediately demanded to hear it.

“You heard her Ren-Ren, press on its’ head,” Ryūji encouraged. A grin on his face, he was probably going to enjoy seeing Morgana get treated this way since they did seem to be at each other’s throats at the drop of a hat, they got along well enough, but they could certainly fight between themselves better and more often than the rest of us certainly did.

“This is ridicu-,” Morgana began to protest. Only for Ren to lift his hand and press it down on Morgana’s head. “M-Mewww,” Morgana plaintively let out. He looked deeply upset to have been subjected to this treatment, but he certainly deserved it for having got us into this mess in the first place for not staying quiet like he should have when Ryūji said to be quiet.

“Wowweeeee! Again! Again!” The girl insisted. Ren looked between the girl and Morgana before lifting his hand and pressing it onto Morgana’s head, it started out gently enough which caused Morgana to start drooling which Ryūji commented on. Of course, Morgana didn’t care as his eyes seemed clouded by an almost dream-like state of mind thanks to the gentle pressure that Ren was exerting.

But then, Ren started to increase the pressure which Morgana did not appreciate by his exclamation. And then, Ren increased the pressure so much to the point he was basically button mashing Morgana’s poor head; this caused Morgana to let out high pitched, strung together, painful sounding meows. Eventually Ren stopped, but the sound Morgana had unleashed actually made me worried he was going to be sick.

“Ahaha, that’s so funny! I wanna hear it again!” The little girl cheered. Morgana claimed he had in fact thrown up which caused a pang of sympathy to shoot through me for the poor little animal; thankfully Morgana’s head was saved anymore pain by the announcement that we would be arriving at Shibuya soon, the little girl walked away after Ann told her this was our stop, a little disappointed but happy enough.

“Mona, you okay?” I asked. A small moan of pain escaped the cat and I took that as enough of an answer to reach out and gentle trail my fingertips along his spine in an attempt to relax him and ease his pain; when the train rolled to a stop, I also stopped stroking the cat and we proceeded to leave the metal contraption. “What now Ann-chan?” I asked. She was the only one to know our destination and how to get there.

“Yeah, which line do we gotta transfer to?” Ryūji asked. Ann pulled out her phone and proceeded to look at the shack’s location, however the longer she took to examine the route we needed to reach, the more a frown proceeded to pull heavily at her lips; eventually she lowered the phone and looked at us with an awkward expression upon her face.

“Doesn’t look like there are any stations close by to that address… if anything, this is the closest station,” Ann revealed. Ryūji was shocked by this, since it meant we now had to walk the rest of the distance and complained about us being phantom thieves yet walking which caused us all to glare at him since he had exclaimed that part unsettlingly loudly. I even quickly looked around just to check if Niijima-sensei was following us; thankfully, no sign of her.

“Stop your complaining,” Morgana chastised. Ann revealed that despite it being a shack, Madarame still lived in a neighbourhood that was considered well off, Ann quickly found the fastest route and we set off in that direction.

*Persona 5 Royal*

It really was a shack. I know I’d heard he was living in a shack and Madarame had even claimed it was such, but there’s a difference between seeing and believing. The structure was made of what looked to be corrugated metal, a few windows were in the structure with shoddy little balconies attached. The door looked to slide open, but I didn’t quite trust it not to get stuck at some point.

“We’re at the right address… the door plate does say Madarame,” Ann admitted. However, the tone in her voice showed just how confused she happened to be, not that I entirely blamed her as I was half convinced the thing was held together by tape and a high number of prayers. This structure looked like it shouldn’t even be lived in by rats, let alone people.

“Uhhh… you ring the doorbell,” Ryūji insisted. His eyes were focused upon Ann which caused me to frown at him, that was practically offering Ann up as a sacrificial lamb! Then again, I wasn’t entirely willing to move any closer to this structure so I wasn’t innocent either, but to send one of the others in because of his own reluctance seemed a bit extreme.

“Me!? The walls won’t collapse when I do, will they?” Ann panicked. A reasonable fear, I was fairly certain that one well-placed rock would send the whole thing crashing apart like a house of cards; Morgana chose that moment to pop out of Ren’s bag with a twinkling smile upon his lips… at least he seemed to have recovered from the earlier incident.

“No one sneeze or we’ll blow this house down, okay?” Morgana teased. An unnecessary comment in my opinion, we were already nervous and didn’t need to hear any more unsettling things, we tentatively approached the highly unstable-looking building and Ann pressed the intercom button that was at the front. She also proceeded to jump back as if expecting the whole thing to tumble down from that light press.

“Who is it? Sensei is currently-,” Kitagawa’s voice crackled through. Ann revealed who it was before he could continue. “I’ll be right out!” Kitagawa declared. The intercom shut off, meanwhile Ryūji seemed genuinely surprised by people living here, not that I blamed him, although before anyone could respond, the door was flung open which made me wince in worry. “Takamaki-sa-,” Kitagawa began to speak. However, his happy expression immediately descended into an annoyed one when he saw the rest of us gathered there. “You three are here, as well?” Kitagawa asked in a biting tone.

“Hey. Sorry, but uh… we ain’t here to talk about the modelling thing. There’s something we gotta ask you,” Ryūji spoke up. I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a good idea for the blonde punk to be doing the talking about what might be a sensitive subject; with Kitagawa living here, then… well I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about asking him about the accusations of Madarame’s plagiarism and abuse. “Is it true Madarame’s plagiarisin’ stuff? He’s abusin’ people too, yeah?” Ryūji questioned. Blurting it out the way Ryūji just did was probably the worst way to go about this conversation.

“Are you serious?” Kitagawa asked. There was an angry note in his voice and his eyes were narrowed into a sharp glare at Ryūji, the blonde brought up the post both by mentioning it and physically showing the post to him, Kitagawa stepped out to get a closer look at the object. “This?” Kitagawa asked. He then shook his head and proceeded to lift his hand to cover his face as he began to laugh. “Preposterous! Not only is the plagiarism impossible, but abuse? He welcomes pupils into his own home! This is no act of violence; it is charity! And I’m the one residing here and studying under him. I’m saying it’s not true, so it’s beyond doubt,” Kitagawa declared. He sounded so adamant that it was hard to believe him, but Ryūji stormed in close to him.

“You might be lyin’ about it!” Ryūji accused. Kitagawa actually shied away at this claim and seemed to pull in on himself even though he claimed that it was rubbish; that post had seemed so sure and yet Kitagawa’s previously unyielding declaration would have been enough to shake any suspicions I held. Yet now, he seemed extremely unsure and almost scared. Kitagawa suddenly pulled himself up and got in Ryūji’s face.

“I had no family when Sensei took me in and raised me into what you see now!” Kitagawa insisted. My eyes widened at this admission, I felt a pang of empathy for the boy, Ann looked down at the ground while Ren frowned a little, only Ryūji didn’t relent even if his eyes softened slightly. “If you continue to ridicule the man I owe my life to, you will rue this day!” Kitagawa threatened.

“Yusuke,” Madarame’s voice sounded. WASN’T HE MEANT TO BE OUT!? Okay, Kitagawa might not have said as much, but I still thought he probably wouldn’t be in the building, or at least that had been my hope, but the old man proceeded to walk into the doorway while remaining inside the building. “What’s the matter? I heard you yelling,” Madarame asked.

“These people are slandering you with baseless rumours!” Kitagawa accused. This wasn’t good, if Madarame did have a Palace, then hearing this accusation from Kitagawa might just cause Madarame’s mental defence to shoot up which would automatically raise the Security Level of his Palace, therefore making our infiltration more difficult right off the bat… but we couldn’t exactly contradict Kitagawa without making thing potentially worse for us.

“Forgive them Yusuke,” Madarame insisted. That was a surprise; I turned to look at the man and found that he seemed completely calm about the whole incident, instead of angered or unsettled like I had expected. “They must have heard some bad rumours and came in worry for their friend’s safety,” Madarame rationalised. Did he deal with this often enough that he could so easily explain it away or was this all an act he happened to be putting on to throw us off. “Well, I doubt that a cranky old man like myself could be liked by everyone,” Madarame commented.

“That’s not what we meant,” Ann stated. She seemed slightly uncomfortable about this welcoming acceptance of the accusations, then again I felt a little uncomfortable as well; Madarame proceeded to apologise for butting in and after asking for us to keep it down for his neighbours’ sake, he retreated into the building. This caused Kitagawa to turn around to face us.

“That was discourteous of me… I’m sorry,” Kitagawa apologised. His expression was slightly morose, perhaps at having caused such a scene instead of having defended his mentor so fervently; we really needed to salvage this situation before it turned any worse, yet it looked like neither Ann or Ren were prepared to make a move.

“We’re sorry too, Kitagawa-kun,” I spoke up. I stepped forward to face the boy who proceeded to look at me, I just hoped I’d be able to soothe his state of being. “Are you aware of the recent news about a teacher harming students at a school in Tokyo?” I asked. I sensed the curious looks that I was being shot with while Kitagawa gave me a puzzled expression in response to the question I’d spoken.

“Yes, I am. Quite awful,” Kitagawa acknowledged. His tone sounded sincere, yet I still detected the curiosity that moved beneath his eyes, it was clear he didn’t understand what I happened to mean, but that was no surprise as just hearing it didn’t necessarily mean that he had seen the report and he likely might not recognise our uniforms if that was the case.

“We’re from that school,” I admitted. Kitagawa’s eyes widened with horror as he proceeded to look between the four of us, likely processing what we would have gone through at the hands of Kamoshida. “When we heard that someone with such a striking similarity to Madarame was hurting people, after what happened at our own school, well we… we got worried. About you,” I admitted. That had been the main concern, that Kitagawa’s life had been at risk.

“Natsumi’s right, we wanted to make sure you were okay. That teacher was good at hiding his real self so we couldn’t just dismiss this post without being sure. We didn’t want to let someone suffer something like this without at least trying,” Ren soothed. His gentle voice drew Kitagawa’s attention and I saw the boy’s expression soften and he almost looked remorseful about what had happened.

“I… I see. That’s very kind of you,” Kitagawa admitted. However, he suddenly seemed to have a lightbulb moment as his entire demeanour perked up. “I know! I think you’ll be able to believe in Sensei if you saw that painting,” Kitagawa decided. With an unusual amount of giddiness, the boy reached into his pocket to pull out a blue cased phone and opened it up to show something to us. “It’s his maiden work as well as his most representative piece, it’s titled Sayuri. This was the painting that inspired me to become an artist,” Kitagawa explained. The image Kitagawa showed us took my breath away.

It was so simple, yet evocative as well. A dark-ish yellow background with a pale white-yellow disc in the centre of said background that could be either sun or moon, in front of this was a mostly bare branch that still had some cherry blossoms clinging to it. Yet the forefront, the eye-catching aspect of the painting, was the woman. She was pale skinned, as if made of moonlight, with dark flowing hair and equally dark eyes, a simple red shirt was covering what could be seen of her torso. But her dark gaze, so solemn and sad with a hint of warmth yet longing in a way that made no sense, was focused upon the fog that covered up her arms.

“It’s so beautiful,” Ann whispered. Even Ryūji could appreciate it, and given how he had acted at the art gallery that was saying something, there was something so… captivating was the best word and even it didn’t fit, about this painting; perhaps it was the mystery of the woman’s expression? Or what the fog was meant to represent? But something about this painting tugged at my heartstrings. Kitagawa put the phone away and focused his eyes upon Ann.

“When I first saw you, I felt the same powerful emotion as when I saw this painting,” Kitagawa admitted. Ann seemed flustered by this admission, but I think anyone would be after hearing something so powerful. “I wish to pursue beauty like this. And I believe drawing you will be part of that pursuit. I implore you: seriously consider my offer. I’m sorry that you took the time to come all this way, but I must assist Sensei today. I hope that we can discuss this further another time. If you’ll excuse me, then,” Kitagawa explained.

With that, he walked into the building and closed the door, with nothing more that could be said about this, we proceeded to walk away. Although our steps didn’t take us far, instead we simply moved towards a nearby fence that separated pavement from road, we settled around it with a range of expressions upon our faces.

“Those two… seem like nice guys, don’t they?” Ryūji commented. That certainly seemed to be the case, Kitagawa wholeheartedly believed in Madarame – his little shaken state could have been attributed to Ryūji aggressiveness which Kitagawa might not be used to – while Madarame himself seemed like the last person I’d suspect of being Palace Ruler, he did seem like an ordinary individual without any form of distortion, although he at least did have a Shadow.

“Maybe, the Madarame we heard about in Mementos is a different person. After all Madarame Ichiryūsai doesn’t seem like a Palace Ruler,” Ann commented. Ryūji was just about to start complaining about having lost a potential target, but something cut him off… something that alerted us to something quite important.

Candidate Found. A familiar electronic voice chirped, all of us proceeded to jump in surprise at the voice as Ren dug into his pocket and retrieved his phone, his skin seemed to rush even paler as he looked and when he showed it to us, it was confirmed. The Meta-Nav had been active and it had managed to pick up our conversation, with the full name of the target inserted it had confirmed the existence of a distortion.

Gritting my teeth, I snapped my head to look at the shack – the best place to start was here – and immediately set about emptying my mind. Mentally chanting the name and location, over and over, would allow me a clearer image while remaining on this side of reality; I waited patiently as I ignored all conversation around me. Suddenly the shack became slightly hazy, a golden sheen covering the building which grew in size as a faint darkness surrounded the rest of the area. I pulled myself away from the image with bared teeth, especially at having almost been tricked!

“Jail! Warehouse! And guidance counselin’ office! Might as well add farm!” Ryūji was yelling. I looked over to give the boy a confused look, the other three were gathered around Ren’s phone with the Meta-Nav still open, while Morgana sat on the metal fence. “Not a single hit?” Ryūji bemoaned. Ren shook his head, but this just confused me even more… what had happened while I’d been perceiving the Metaverse.

“What are you doing?” I asked. The three jumped and turned to look at me with confusion in their eyes, had they not realised what I was doing this entire time. “I engaged my Second Sight to take a look at the shack, it’s definitely a challenge. Now what are you three up to?” I explained. While speaking, my mention of shack got a ‘Candidate Found’ chirp from the phone which at least confirmed we were on the right track.

“Random guesses to see if we can figure out the ‘what’ that Madarame views this shack as,” Morgana explained. I almost wanted to sigh in exasperation at those words, we would be here all day and night, then probably the next day too, listing all the possible variations of buildings in order to get the right descriptor, it had taken me a long time with Kamoshida and I wouldn’t afford such a delay here.

“There’s an easier way to do it, you know,” I stated. The group gave me a confused look, yet it was tinged with intrigue at what I was about to tell them. “Get inside Madarame’s head. Think how he thinks. He’s an artist like how Kamoshida was an athlete and Ouvrard was a Prima Donna. Kamoshida was actually nicknamed a king at one point which likely influenced his Palace’s development, while Ouvrard was a renowned opera singer. Madarame is praised as a great artist, so we need to think about a place that is important to a great artist,” I explained.

“A building important to artists?” Ann muttered. At least she had got it, a building that would have enough physical world significance to artists that Madarame’s cognition would immediately use it as the basis for his Palace; Ryūji seemed stumped while a contemplative hum escaped from Ren’s lips as he seemed to be thinking intently.

“An art gallery… or a museum,” Ren spoke. He paused briefly after the first suggestion which got no results, until he said the next suggestion and the immediate sensation of slipping into the Metaverse washed over us as the phone chirped out that the navigation was starting.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Hey! When did you activate the Nav!? You surprised me!” Mona exclaimed. How had he been surprised? He was standing right there when it happened, Skull theorised they just happened to get it right and it had decided to activate immediately. “What if I hadn’t noticed, and then wandered off and got caught by an enemy!?” Mona snapped.

“Prolly woulda figured it out once you started walkin’ on two legs,” Skull stated. A fair point, the sensation of moving from a quadruped to a biped would be something that couldn’t be ignored, I’m sure that someone as highly observant as Mona would surely notice that he was moving differently before he got found by any Shadows wandering about.

“So, even you can slip into the Metaverse without realising it, Morgana?” Panther asked. I almost felt like shivering at those words, recalling the times when I’d accidentally stumbled into the Metaverse during the two Palaces I’d already dealt with, I’m just lucky that I never ran into enemies and that I was sensitive to the distorted feeling that accompanied crossing over; it didn’t mean the others were.

“Yes. In a place with minimal cognitive distortion, the difference can be subtle,” Mona admitted. I nodded my head quite firmly to show that this was indeed the case, the further you went from a Palace then the more it started to look like the normal surroundings given that the Palace was less like a tree and more like a monument in that regard, the distortion’s grip only spread so far before it waned.

“Forget that! Look!” Skull exclaimed. He pointed his finger towards the Palace and we looked over to see the Palace’s shape and my eyes widened at the towering golden building against a night sky backdrop, it was surrounded by things like spotlights which reflected off the golden plating of the building. “That shack is seriously some kind of museum!?” Skull questioned.

“And an ostentatious one at that. You’d think it be more aesthetically pleasing to look at,” I commented. It was really hard to look at this thing, I wouldn’t have thought that something that was meant to be beautiful could be so off putting after the Opera House, but this Palace made that one almost seem subdued in its’ flamboyant nature.

“This one is painful on the eyes,” Joker agreed. All of us nodded our heads, I think my eyes were starting to hurt and that was without having worked my eyes in any such manner, it was rather annoying to see such an ugly thing staring us right in the eye; hopefully once we got inside it would be better looking… or at least not as painful to look at, otherwise I’m not sure how well we’ll do in any fights.

“Let’s go check it out!” Panther insisted. We moved in closer and saw an extremely long line of cognitive people, but they weren’t made to resemble anyone. So, like the people in Ouvrard’s Opera House, they were devoid of some facial features, eyes and mouths being the most common. The facial expressions that were there happened to be fixed like mannequins, which frankly gave this place a horror story atmosphere. “It really is so extravagant as to be gaudy. Are we sure this is a museum?” Panther wondered.

“It’s a museum based on how Madarame perceives a museum… still doesn’t explain… that,” I admitted. On the last word, I gestured towards the building with my hands, simply because there wasn’t any way for be to articulate the growing discomfort I had. Even Ouvrard’s Palace had some manner of anchoring in what had been seen in the physical world… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a golden museum or art gallery before.

“Madarame’s artwork is on display in museums in reality, too, though. His exhibit was popular and people already respect him. Why would he fantasise about a museum?” Panther commented. A fair point about that, unless the post turned out to be true, but either way the paintings were addressed to him so maybe that had something to do with this Palace’s appearance… it was rather head-scratching.

“Panther’s got a point… this ain’t related to plagiarism or abuse, either,” Skull commented. The only real way to understand this Palace will be inside, there was much that could be understand about a Palace from the inside and only from the inside; the outside rarely gave away the secrets of the person’s mind who distorted it into existence.

“It might, if the post you found is true, Skull. Then it isn’t his work being displayed but his students,” Joker pointed out. At least someone else had recognised the possibility of what this might be about, then again there wasn’t much that could be learned from out here; especially with that creepy cognitive crowd hanging about, all that told me was that Madarame believed his artwork worth seeing… which had actual basis in the physical world.

“Let’s try looking around. Racking our brains here won’t do us any good,” Mona insisted. We agreed and proceeded to move further away from the main entrance and its’ creepy crowd, there was a van seated beside the wall which seemed in perfect jumping distance for us to get over the high wall and into the courtyard that surrounded it. “This is really how he thinks of that run-down shack? It’s overwhelmingly shiny,” Mona complained. He rubbed his eyes slightly as if they were hurting.

“It’s just not hitting me that this is that old guy’s Palace,” Panther admitted. Skull encouraged her to keep moving, we dropped down to the ground and walked through a series of leafed arches until we reached a small fountain area with some large and oddly shaped platforms. A jump onto the top of one led us to finding a pathway of more platforms, we walked and leapt across them until we reached a rectangular piece of building.

This section linked to the rest of the ugly structure and we climbed up to one of the lower roofs. Lucky for us, there happened to be a triangular prism made up of yellow and blue tiles, one of which happened to be propped open, I pulled out the rope and secured one end to something attached to the roof. I then chucked the rest through the opening, Joker slid down the rope first and the rest of us followed after him.

We ended up in a blue room with green couches, but hanging around the room were very odd paintings. These paintings were portraits of people but there was a strange sort of wavy effect to them which ended up distorting their features, not enough to be unrecognisable but only if I actually knew them. In this instant, I certainly did not.

“It’s quiet in here. Almost eerily so,” Mona commented. That was quite true, there were no Shadows about and an almost non-existent pressure from the Security Level – at least implying it was low – which I wasn’t entirely used to; there was a door covered by a grate like the kind to keep people from entering places, rather appropriate for a museum.

“H-Hey… this… it’s… moving,” Panther called. She was looking at one of the pictures with its’ distorted facial features, Skull insisted she not be freaked out by the paintings, but Mona believed it to be worth checking them out, so we moved in closer and I sported a plaque at the base of the frame, typically where the name of both painting and artist were kept.

“That’s weird, ‘Suzuki Hiroto, twenty-four’. That’s what this plaque here reads,” I spoke up. The others were confused by this, likely as confused as I was, with Panther wondering if the name belonged to the artist. Mona insisted we check out all the other paintings, but a check of those paintings simply revealed more names and ages so we proceeded to move into the next room, although we walked passed some odd black boxes with green lights blinking out from them.

Seeing those boxes dotted around the next room set me on edge slightly, we quickly checked the paintings in this room until we came upon another barred opening. Lucky for us, there happened to be an opening through a wall which led to another room full of paintings but Panther suddenly came to a stop which caused the rest of us to stop and look at her, spotting the uncertain expression upon her face.

“Hey, this doesn’t make any sense… Madarame’s famous for having a variety of art styles. But all the portraits on display here look the same… this is way different from what was at the-,” Panther began to comment. Yes, there had been a large variety of styles on display at the gallery; however Skull suddenly cut Panther off by pointing something out to all of us, we looked over and my eyes flew wide when I spotted the painting which Skull had pointed out.

“Ain’t this that guy we saw in Mementos? Y’know, the one who was shit-talkin’ Madarame,” Skull wondered. It was definitely a painting of Nakanohara, dressed in his suit with the same bowl cut hairstyle, yet the edge of his suit was marred by red which could almost be blood; Mona pointed out his name was on the plaque that was underneath the painting.

“Doesn’t art usually have, like, the title of the piece or the artist’s name?” Panther wondered. Very true, titles and the painter were typically what was written on any descriptors of artwork, I’d seen several such plaques at the exhibition yesterday; in that case, perhaps the explanation was really just that simple.

“It’s not the artists but the subjects, that’s what the names are for,” I realised. A pulse of worry shoot through me and I quickly looked at the other paintings, I couldn’t see some of them, so I jogged over and when I reached the end, my feet ground to a halt as a lead weight sunk into my stomach. “Kitagawa! Kitagawa-san’s picture is here!” I called. Immediately everyone flocked to my side and I pointed to the picture.

“The plaque says Kitagawa Yusuke, so there’s no mistaking it,” Mona agreed. That lead weight seemed to get even heavier, to the point that I put my hand over my mouth as if to stifle the swelling nausea that pulsed through me, I managed to quell it after a few careful breaths and lowered my hand back to my side; there was something deeply unsettling about what was going on here.

“What do you think these paintings are?” Panther wondered. There could only be one possibility given what we were currently staring at, Nakanohara could have implied any number of possibilities but with this grotesque painting of Kitagawa here; well, I could only think of one answer and that answer was sickening me, the lead weight sinking even heavier in my stomach, almost seeming to drag it to my feet.

“Based on Kitagawa-san’s presence, I’d say that these paintings… are probably Madarame’s pupils,” Joker theorised. That was the only thing that Kitagawa’s presence meant, all of these people we’d seen had to be the people that Madarame had called pupils; to view each and every one of them like this… this distortion merited further investigation, we had to be sure as to the extent of this horror.

“For real? All of them? But it was only Yusuke when we went to his place before,” Skull exclaimed. That was very worrying, true we knew Nakanohara was alive, but he had been severely harmed because of whatever Madarame had done; the question was what had happened to all of the other students to leave Kitagawa all alone in that shack, had they all run away? Or was it something worse?

“This must include former pupils as well. Only one remains now,” Mona ominously stated. All too true a statement, enough that a shiver made its’ way down my spine at those words. “Taking into account what that Nakanohara guy said earlier, things are getting clearer,” Mona admitted. We were getting closer to the answer, but still not close enough. “Alright, let’s keep investigating. We need something to further confirm our deductions,” Mona insisted.

We turned around and spotted a set of stairs that led down into a reception looking area, complete with more green, blue and yellow couches and a table up front with what looked to be pamphlets. A chest was at the opposite end near the stairs, false TV screens were behind the gold clad front desk, Joker walked up to the pamphlet stand and pulled one out; when he opened it up, a map was revealed. Not the whole thing, but a decent portion of it.

“I see… it says it’s one out of two,” Mona realised. We’d probably find the other one further in the Palace, Skull wondered how large the Palace was and it was probably at least a similar size to Kamoshida’s Palace since that also had two maps. “We can worry about that another time. Right now, our objective is confirming Madarame’s cognition. We may have to reconsider our plan depending on what we find,” Mona insisted.

“I mean, he’s got a Palace, seems pretty sketchy to me,” Skull stated. Joker pilfered the two chests that were present and we made our way through the slightly curved passage way that led into a circular room with odd banners hanging from the ceiling. At the back was a raised area leading to another door, but at the centre of the room was a statue.

It was either gold or gold plated, making it as incredibly gaudy as the outside of the building. But it was also very strange, it went up slightly from the base and began to curl through the air, spiralling up to the ceiling and I could just make out the appearance of people within the strange golden spiral. Mona hopped closer to the statue and insisted that we look at it, which caused Panther to approach closer.

“‘The Infinite Spring’?” Panther read. A questioning note in her voice. “A conglomerate work of art that the great director Madarame created with his own funds. These individuals must offer their ideas to the director for the rest of their lives. Those who cannot do so have no worth living!” Panther read. My blood ran cold and I felt the nausea from earlier start to return with a vengeance. “Hey! This is most likely about the plagiarism, right?” Panther questioned.

“Damnit! What a phony geezer!” Skull declared. I could feel trembles start to make their way across my body as my vision seemed to be constricting until all I could see was that infernal statue; an itch started to boil up within my throat and I reached up to start scratching away at it, all the while I heard Ouvrard’s sickening voice speaking things.

“In other words, his pupils are his property. He doesn’t even qualify as an artist if this is true. He’s stealing the ideas from talented students in exchange for securing their livelihood. This even says that they have no worth. Couldn’t this be about the abuse?” Mona stated. He was probably shaking his head, but I couldn’t see, all I heard was the sharp intake of breath, as if something had surprised someone. “Wait… as proper- Amazon!” Mona exclaimed.

My throat continued to itch and my scratching increased as my knees gave out. I crumpled to the ground as my breathing began to rasp and heave, but I didn’t stop scrapping my nails across my throat until a hand violently seized my wrist and dragged it away. The fingers continued to flex as if still believing I could continue with the scratching motion, I began to lift up my free hand, only for someone else to tangle my hand in their own preventing me from scratching with that one.

“Breath Amazon! You need to calm down!” Joker ordered. I couldn’t really see properly, only that the statue was now blocked by a bulky black jacket; a cool sensation pressed itself over my throat as little rubbing motions ghosted over the skin, soothing the itch that had built up. I coughed slightly, feeling my breath starting to come back under control but it was still a struggle to get my air back.

“Shit Amazon, why’d you freak like that?” Skull questioned. It must have been him in front of me since that was where his voice was coming from, a hand gently smooth over my hair and I leaned back into it, lifting my head up properly. My vision started to widen and I realised that Joker and Panther were the ones holding my hands, while Mona was crouched in my lap with him gently smoothing his paw-hands over my throat which meant the cool sensation was probably some of the medicine we had.

“It’s okay Amazon, we’re all here. Just take your time,” Panther gently soothed. I knew why I was reacting how I did… this situation had too many disturbing similarities to what I’d gone through with Ouvrard; it was pretty disturbing to see, I knew this was a possibility, but I still hadn’t expected to actually see something with so many similarities. Especially those gods damn paintings.

“The paintings… they have… to be the… cognition… of his pupils. Just like that mute… was of me,” I wheezed out. Joker’s expression tensed up as I saw Panther looked confused, I still hadn’t mentioned the cognition but I shook my head, not wanting to explain what I had witnessed within Ouvrard’s Palace, I’d stubbornly avoided looking for my name in that library in Kamoshida’s Palace because I had little interest in knowing how others perceived me after that muted songstress.

“So, Madarame will keep them around as long as they’re useful to him, but the moment they’re not…,” Joker stated. The pause implied so many things, Nakanohara had either been lucky enough to escape or he’d been tossed aside when his artist talent had been burnt out; but that might not have been the only possible fate for those poor students.

“He’s treating them like slaves or tools!” Panther exclaimed. She struck her fist against the floor, a look of pure anger on her face, no doubt realising that there was indeed something deeply wrong with the seemingly genial and kind old man; what a farce!? He was acting just the Kamoshida had, in fact he might even be better at it than Kamoshida since we were all nearly conned by him… if the Meta-Nav hadn’t chirped up, we would have been fooled.

“Why’s Yusuke keepin’ quiet about this? He’s got no reason to cover this up!” Skull declared. That’s where Skull was wrong, in Kitagawa’s eyes he did have a reason for keeping quiet about the plagiarism and even possibly the abuse – we still didn’t know if he suffered from that – one that echoed within my mind even now.

“‘I had no family when Sensei took me in and raised me’,” I commented. Skull looked at me with a raised eyebrow as I tightly gripped the hands of Joker and Panther, using them to pull me back up onto shaky legs. “That’s what Kitagawa-san said. Kitagawa-san believes he owes Madarame his life, that can be a powerful motivator,” I admitted. A life debt could be a great way to justify acting in some way or another, loyalty was a funny thing even by emotion standards.

“But still-,” Skull protested. However, the blonde fell quiet, perhaps realising there was nothing that could be said to argue against this, we didn’t know how old this distortion could be which meant that Madarame’s behaviour might not have been the same back in Kitagawa’s youth; Kitagawa might just be wilfully blinding himself because he didn’t want to think badly of the man he so admired.

“When we were at the exhibit, I praised one of the pieces on display. But… Kitagawa-kun acted strangely. Maybe that piece was plagiarised too,” Panther wondered. A possibility, heck even that magnificent Sayuri could have been plagiarised for all we knew; it was really impossible for us to say anything at this point.

“What’s the call? Ain’t this enough to target Madarame!?” Skull asked. He turned his gaze to Joker; as for our leader, he was looking at the statue while keeping a tight grip on my hand, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking since he was facing away from me but the tension present in his hand and shoulder implied something quite intense. Eventually, Joker pulled his eyes away and proceeded to look at the rest of us.

“I want to know what all of you think before I decide?” Joker admitted. Him taking our opinions into account was very kind of him, he clearly wasn’t happy about this, but he wasn’t allowing his emotions to rule his thoughts; however, seeing that statue caused me to flinch back as I gritted my teeth, I think I was the opposite of Joker at this moment.     

“We should confirm these facts with Yusuke first,” Mona stated. Panther was in agreement, but Skull wanted to know what we needed to confirm. “It means we should get solid evidence that such crimes actually took place,” Mona explained. Skull complained that this was a pain in the ass, but we had to be completely sure before we stuck our noses into this mess, even if the evidence was practically spitting on us.

“This is an abhorrent thing to see. But my judgment may be skewed, I’ll follow where all of you lead, but I abstain,” I decided. They gave me concerned looks, but it was my decision, these were choices that needed to be made with the head and not with the heart; given my shaken state, I don’t think I was capable of making such a choice without my heart affecting my thought process.

“I’ll try contacting Kitagawa-kun, I might be able to get the truth out of him if I accept his modelling offer,” Panther decided. That was our best way to get in, Kitagawa was completely focused upon painting Ann so he’d likely accept us in if we proceeded to go; the true question was how we could bring this kind of topic up? He’s already exploded and threatened us the last time that was attempted… we probably shouldn’t let Skull do any talking.

“Wait, you’re gonna do that!?” Mona questioned. Panther proceeded to demand we come along with her, that was obviously going to happen, we wouldn’t just leave our friend alone with some depraved plagiarist as who knows what he would do; Kitagawa I felt I could trust not to do anything weird, don’t know why but I just felt like he wasn’t that kind of person.

“Famous, renowned artist, huh? This might be tougher than Kamoshida,” Skull celebrated. The boy’s energy seemed to feed into me and I felt myself stand just a little stronger than before despite the tremors that moved across my muscles occasionally. “Well, we’ll just prep ourselves until we get confirmation from Yusuke. This is our first mission as real phantom thieves. We’re gonna succeed no matter what!” Skull decided.

With our choice made, we proceeded to leave the Palace.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Back at my home, I couldn’t bring myself to make any food still too disturbed by that Infinite Spring to actually consider putting food in my stomach. Instead, I simply made some tea just to try and help me get to sleep while I relaxed on my bed; I was leafing through another book, but I wasn’t truly paying attention to what was written. Thankfully, a Chat came in which saved me from the pointless task.

Ann: Would you really forgive someone unconditionally if you owe your life to them?

Ann: I’m not so sure anymore.

Ryūji: What’re you bringing this up for?

Ann: According to Kitagawa-kun, Madarame isn’t a problem.

Natsumi: Depends, I suppose. Personally, not a chance.

Natsumi: But Kitagawa-san has been with Madarame for years.

Natsumi: Who knows the kind of brainwashing he’s endured.

Ren: I guess so.

Ren: Is something wrong, Ann?

Ann: I mean, I know Madarame is a bad person, but still.

Ann: Maybe I’m so hesitant because I haven’t actually met any of his victims.

Ryūji: Yeah, I guess that part’s totally different from what happened with Kamoshida.

Ann: This might be an extreme line of thinking…

Ann: But if an evil person isn’t causing any trouble now…

Ann: Is there really a point in us stepping in?

Ren: I…

Ren: I don’t know, to be honest.

Natsumi: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

Natsumi: Just because they aren’t doing anything bad, doesn’t mean they couldn’t do it later on.

Natsumi: But like I said, my judgment is clouded. I’m probably projecting my own issues.

Natsumi: I’m going to trust you guys to make the calls.

Ryūji: Ann, Natsumi, you’ve both got a point.

Ryūji: That’s why, we’re gonna let Yusuke decide if Madarame’s worth going after or not?

Ryūji: Like Natsumi, I’d never forgive that bastard!

Ren: Kitagawa-san is the one to have suffered, he deserves to mete out judgment.

Ren: I know Nakanohara asked for our help, but he was distorted that the time, we have to take his mental state into account.

Ann: Yeah… I guess we could talk some more after that.

Ann: Okay, let’s meet in Shibuya after school tomorrow.

Needless to say, despite the tea, I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 34: - Obstinate Refusal

I was currently in my homeroom, waiting for whatever information might be forthcoming from Ann. Even thought she had a way in, it was still unnerving waiting for any kind of news about what our current actions should be; it wasn’t helped by the fact that every time I closed my eyes, that damned statue kept popping up like a weed, overlaid with Shadow Ouvrard’s cruel words. A buzzing came so I quickly opened my phone.

Ann: Alright, I contacted Kitagawa-kun about modelling for him.

Ann: Still waiting for his response.

Ryūji: Thanks!

Ann: I really have no idea what I’m supposed to do as an art model though.

Natsumi: I’m sure Kitagawa-san will tell you what to do.

Ren: Kitagawa-san claimed he was drawn to you, so just be yourself Ann.

Ryūji: Look, you don’t gotta go all out for this.

Ryūji: You’re only doing it so you can get dirt on Madarame, remember?

Ann: That is true.

Ann: It sounded like Kitagawa-kun wanted this to be a private picture of his though.

Ann: Well, I guess I’ll let you guys know when he contacts me again.

I closed my phone and slipped it away as I reached up to my temples and began to massage them slightly, I felt like a headache was drilling its’ way into my skull due to this entire event.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We were gathered in the courtyard after school, Ann looked like she had something important to tell us, which only served to twist my stomach into many uncomfortable knots. Ryūji was leaning against the nearby vending machines with Ann standing near the table, which left me and Ren to occupy the benches. I wasn’t sure about what I wanted Ann’s news to be as all possible thoughts just increased the uncomfortable sensation I was already putting up with.

“I got a response from Kitagawa-kun. He said he wants me to come over after school today,” Ann revealed. That at least confirmed what our plans would be this afternoon, nothing settled for me though; on the other hand, Ryūji pushed himself off the vending machine he’d been leaning against and proceeded to grin widely, I just hope he didn’t antagonise Kitagawa like he had ended up doing last time.

“Perfect! Probably dropped all his plans just to get you over there,” Ryūji exclaimed. Honestly, Ryūji’s words were probably true given how passionately Kitagawa had been about getting to paint Ann; running out of a car in order to follow her, giving away tickets which were likely hard to get especially since it had been the day before the exhibition opened, practically running through the door of the shack, and admitting to having feelings only previously stirred by a majestic art piece.

“We need to find out from Kitagawa-kun if what we saw in the challenge was true,” Ann admitted. Her lips were pulled down into a frown and I felt the headache returning, but this was something that we needed to do; although thinking about what that blasted statue had claimed about the pupils, we were already aware how depraved Madarame’s viewpoint was regarding his students, but Kitagawa was the only one present now.

“Hey, quiet down. It’s that student council president,” Morgana hissed. My nausea vanished as my head immediately snapped up in time to look at around for any sign of Niijima-senpai; it didn’t take too long as I spotted her short brown hair soon enough, finding that she was talking to Mishima at the moment, with the two of them only being a short distance away from our group.

“Yikes… she got a hold of Mishima today?” Ryūji commented. I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, but it didn’t look like either of them were angry, outraged, stressed or any other emotion that would be a cause for concern towards Mishima. “It’d suck if she noticed us. C’mon, let’s split up,” Ryūji insisted. A fine suggestion, none of us needed a repeat of the rooftop scene.

We gathered our bags as Morgana hid within Ren’s once more, we proceeded to depart the courtyard one at a time in order to avoid being spotted by the nosy student council president. I went last, keeping a careful eye on the talking duo so that they didn’t spot the other three, then quickly darting away before either of them could spot me.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I, along with Ren and Ryūji had managed to meet up, we were currently at the walkway in the Shibuya Station. It was the easiest place for the rest of us to meet up after escaping from the school, I hadn’t spotted the other three on the train; but it had been easy to find Ryūji after disembarking the train, while Ren had scared the Electricity wielder by showing up behind him without being seen, as if he was the one – originally – with a ghostly named Persona; however Ann wasn’t here yet.

“We finally landed a- eep!” Ryūji spoke. But right before he could get the words out, Ren had lowered his book, a new one this time, and proceeded to glare at Ryūji which had been the reason for his little squeak – which was all kinds of funny – as well as causing the boy to flinch backwards. “Do you have to glare at me Ren-Ren?!” Ryūji asked. Ren kept staring holes through Ryūji in silence for a few more moments before slowly lowering his eyes from the blonde and back to his book.

“If you keep almost blowing our secret then yes,” Ren growled out. I shuffled away slightly at the minute annoyance that had been laced within those words, it seemed that our leader was getting rather annoyed with Ryūji’s brain to mouth filter constantly malfunctioning when he spoke of our activities; it was perhaps a sign of how honest an individual Ryūji was, which was a good thing overall… but in this instant it really wasn’t helping us.

“Where’s Ann-chan? It’s been long enough for her to show up,” I wondered. The blonde model still hadn’t shown up and I was starting to get concerned, we couldn’t head to the shack without Ann since I’m fairly certain Kitagawa would slam the door in our faces if we didn’t have our friend with us; plus, there was the fact that it had actually been too long and I was getting worried about Ann’s safety.

“Sorry,” Ann’s voice came. I looked over at the girl and saw that she was unharmed which instantly relaxed me. “I was thinking about some things and didn’t notice how much time has passed,” Ann admitted. Ryūji wondered what Ann had been thinking about, a good question as even I was curious about where Ann’s train of thought had led her. “Don’t you think Kitagawa-kun has to be protecting Madarame? I mean they live together, so he’d have to be aware of Madarame’s true nature. The only reason I can think of him doing that is that Madarame has something on him,” Ann pointed out.

“Maybe Kitagawa-san does know, but his loyalty to Madarame is so strong that he actually can’t see it because his brain is making up some justifications for Madarame’s actions. Like how our cognition affects our perception of the world,” Ren theorised. A reasonable theory, I’d barely been around my uncle so I wasn’t blinded by our blood link, but if I had been… maybe I wouldn’t have seen his horrible acts or tried to twist it to fit my world view. Okay, that was actually a very terrifying thought I had just entertained.

“That’s why we’re goin’ to check it out, right? You ready to be an art model?” Ryūji asked. We needed to gather all the information possible before we made our move in the Palace, besides getting into the shack would allow us to investigate a bit more and perhaps be more clued into whatever obstacles might show up deeper in the Palace; there could be any number of dangers and I wanted to be sure of ourselves before we got caught in a trap.

“Yeah, I’m prepared,” Ann admitted. She did seem resolute about what she would have to do in order for us to get into the shack despite her initial reluctance to actually go through with such a plan, Ryūji suddenly furrowed his brow and gave the Fire wielder a confused look which caused me to shoot one at him in return.

“Whaddya mean prepared? Prepared for what,” Ryūji wondered. Considering she would need to model, I would have thought that was something obvious, he then turned his gaze to Ren. “Something seem different about her to either of you?” Ryūji asked. He also looked at me, so I turned my gaze back to Ann, trying to figure out what on earth the false blonde was getting at with his query.

“Not… physically, at least,” Ren admitted. He was scratching the back of his head in confusion as he stared at Ann before shrugging his shoulders apparently deciding to stop his staring since he couldn’t find anything that would explain whatever Ryūji seemed to be seeing; I shook my head slightly and turned back to look at the boys, Ann’s appearance was the same as always.

“Determination can be like that I guess,” I theorised. It was the best explanation I had for Ann’s supposed differences that Ryūji was talking about; a small giggle escaped from Ann and I felt my own lips quirk up in a smile at the light hearted sound that was escaping from her, soon enough Ren and Ryūji started to chuckle and laugh respectively.

“Let’s get going you guys,” Ann insisted. She walked over and linked arms with me while Ren lifted up his bag to ensure Morgana wasn’t left behind. “Kitagawa-kun seemed really happy when I agreed to be his model. Once he finishes drawing and gets a little friendlier, we should bring up Madarame,” Ann believed. Hopefully that would be the case, all we could do was keep our fingers crossed.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We arrived at the shack which was open, so we were able to just slip inside once Ann told Kitagawa she was here and got directions to whatever studio he was using. Stepping inside the shack, I couldn’t help up duck my head down slightly and hold my breath almost expecting the shack to come crashing towards our heads. My steps were light and careful until we reached the studio’s doorway and stepped inside.

We soon reached the door and Ann opened it up, allowing us to see a pretty barren room with only a set of small cabinets at the back, chairs pressed to the right side of the room, a stool sat in the middle of the room with an easel and canvas a little further back. A chair sat in front of the easel and canvas; paint splatters dotted the floor in a few droplets of colours. Needless to say, that the moment me and the boys came into view and sat ourselves down, Kitagawa’s shining smile dropped into one of annoyance.

“I thought it would just be you coming, Takamaki-san,” Kitagawa stated. He really wasn’t happy to see us, but if we wanted the information about Madarame then we needed to be here, multiple points of questioning would yield better results than Ann coming alone. Besides Ann wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of coming here without the rest of us accompanying her.

“Wouldn’t you get nervous too, if it was just the two of us?” Ann wondered. I highly doubted that would happen, Kitagawa didn’t seem like the kind of person who would get nervous unless he was put in an extremely awkward position; but this was much more for Ann’s peace of mind than it was for Kitagawa’s sake.

“We’re here to keep an eye on you, so don’t try anything perverted, ‘kay?” Ryūji stated. He was giving the young painter a dark look, but I couldn’t believe that he had gone and said such a thing to Kitagawa; both Ann and Ren proceeded to give him shocked looks at the lack of tact that he had just shown, I know it was Ryūji’s style, but to have been so blunt… this wasn’t going to help us get Kitagawa relaxed.

“Ryūji!” We all yelled. A current of annoyance flowing through that single word as we all gave the false blonde dark looks, he was going to end up alienating Kitagawa even more if he kept up with the insults or accusation and we needed Kitagawa to be willing to open up to us if we wanted to get information out of him. Suddenly, an annoyed scoff came from Kitagawa as he stepped passed the easel.

“Stop making such odd assumptions. I have absolutely no interest in her as someone of the opposite sex,” Kitagawa stated. This surprised Ann, probably since a lot of people thought about her only in regard to her looks, it also slightly raised my opinion of Kitagawa given how bluntly he had stated those words. “Is there a problem?” Kitagawa innocently wondered. He had turned his gaze to Ann, clearly not realising how stunned he had left her at those words.

“No, not really,” Ann admitted. Ann then proceeded to sit down with her left leg crossing over her right at the knee, her left arm draped over her lap while her right hand supported her face which was turned away from us. If they were going to get on with the painting then Kitagawa would hopefully start to relax, the sooner he relaxed, then the quicker we could try to coax him into talking to us about Madarame.

“Well then, let’s get started,” Kitagawa stated. He proceeded to sit down at his chair, I noticed that the lip of the easel had several small plastic cups, each of them containing a small amount of paint, behind Kitagawa was more paints in a variety of colours. The blue haired boy picked up a brush that had fine hairs attached to the end of it. He gently dipped the very edge of the brush into a paint cup and raised it to the canvas.

“Hey…,” Ann softly called. Yet, if she was heard, Kitagawa gave no sign of responding to her, instead focusing intently on the canvas as he glided a single line across the surface. “Kitagawa-kun?” Ann called. Her blue eyes cut over to the boy behind the easel, yet no response was forthcoming as the painter seemed entirely focused upon his canvas, yet his face held an expression I could only described as irritated frustration.

“You hear her?” Ryūji demanded. Once more there was no response and I realised that the frustration was starting to creep its’ way across the muscles of Kitagawa’s arm that held the brush, I fidgeted a little in my seat at the fact that Kitagawa seemed to have completely disconnected from the world around us and he definitely wasn’t relaxing like we had hoped he would. In fact, I think he was growing more tense with every passing second, yet not a single other move had been made towards the canvas.

“It’s no use,” Ann complained. Too right, if Kitagawa was so far gone in his own mind that he didn’t hear us calling out to him, then we wouldn’t be able to get him to talk to us and if we couldn’t get him to talk to us, then we couldn’t get any more information about Madarame. None of us had expected to run into this brick wall so early on, our distress was enough that Morgana wriggled his head out of the to join in the conversation.

“This isn’t what we planned! We were gonna catch him off guard and make him spill his beans, weren’t we?” Morgana questioned. That had been the plan, but that plan had now been torn up and tossed into the nearest bin, we needed to think of something else to help us get the information that we required; but what could we do with Kitagawa barely even on the same planet as the rest of us.

“How were we supposed to know this was gonna happened?” Ryūji asked. Really, I think me or Ren should have seen this as a possibility based on how passionate Kitagawa was about his artwork – based on how he’d acted towards Ann – but anticipating it still might not have helped us much. “Guess we just gotta wait ‘til he’s done… what an effin’ pain in the ass,” Ryuji complained. That didn’t seem like a good idea, with how rigid and still Kitagawa was this could take ages and by that point, Madarame most likely would be back from the exhibition.

“Perhaps I should try going outside this room,” Morgana suggested. That seemed reasonable, any one of us humans leaving would possibly attract attention causing Kitagawa to question us and maybe even kick us out, but Morgana was small enough and light enough on his feet and, so long as he stayed quiet like now, Morgana would be able to slip away and come back without being seen or heard.

“Good idea, snoop around and see if you can learn anything,” Ren encouraged. We certainly needed to learn something otherwise this whole trip would just be a waste of time. “Just don’t get caught,” Ren insisted. A light teasing coating his tone, I think Ren had a higher chance of getting caught than Morgana did and he was pretty sneaky – as evidence by the train station sneak up – even though Morgana was definitely better at it.

“Heh, who do you think you’re talking to?” Morgana boasted. He was our phantom thief expert for a reason, I just hope he didn’t get too loud otherwise Kitagawa might snap out of his tunnel vision. “This is too boring, so I’m going to scout around a bit,” Morgana declared. He then wriggled out of the bag and slinked off out the room without Kitagawa so much as batting an eyelash; well… now what to do?

I waited in the chair, deeply wishing I could pull out my book and start to read it. But if I did that, then I might miss something important as I tended to get lost within my stories sometimes; instead, all I could do was focus on looking around the bare room. Maybe there was something in these planks of wood or pale walls – it also helped that the Palace’s distortion was weak here – that could help me understand this relationship between Kitagawa and Madarame.

“Are you done?” Ryūji cheerfully asked. I perked up hearing those words and turned to look over at the painter, yet the moment he entered my vision I believed that Ryūji had to be wrong as it looked as if Kitagawa seemed to be in pain from the pinched expression on his face and how he slumped forward; I shot a look over at Ren who was giving the painter a confused look.

“It’s no good…,” Kitagawa admitted. That didn’t sound good and I quickly looked back over at the boy, finding he still had the brush in hand, but the paint on it looked to be drying and it was still the same shade as the first colour he had picked to use. I was starting to wonder if Kitagawa had put anything else on the canvas, apart from the one line I had seen him stroke onto the fabric surface.

“I’m sorry… am I the problem?” Ann wondered. She had lifted herself up from her position and turned to look over at the painter, it was hard to identify exactly what could possibly be causing Kitagawa the pain he was feeling; Kitagawa shook his head and instead proceeded to dunk the brush he’d been using into a cup behind him bristles first. He turned back around and reached up to grip his head.

“No, not at all. It’s just… I’m having trouble staying focused today. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to resume this another time,” Kitagawa apologised. He seemed very distressed by the fact that he hadn’t been able to paint at all and I felt a pang of sorrow for the boy; however, one member of our group was not happy about this fact as Ryūji lurched to his feet and stalked closer to the easel with annoyance rolling off of him in heavy waves.

“Oh hell no! How many hours do you think you made us wait!?” Ryūji exploded. This caught Kitagawa’s attention as he gave us confused looks, the cat was officially out of the bag now; Ann broke her pose and proceeded to rise to her feet and walked over to stand beside Ryūji, Ren soon joined then so with a deep breath I moved over to stand with them as well.

“I’m sorry… we had another reason for seeing you today… we needed to talk to you,” Ann admitted. Ann looked and sounded rather nervous as she started to play with the ends of her hair, this wasn’t how we wanted this encounter to go and I could already see Kitagawa’s shoulders hiking as if he was preparing to defend himself or his mentor against whatever was about to come out of our mouths.

“It’s about those rumours regarding your sensei,” Ryūji stated. Kitagawa was rightly annoyed by this as his expression went stern and he rose to his feet, he was clearly ready to fight us on whatever accusations any of us brought up regarding the man he so deeply admired and believed he owed his life to; this was going to be an uncomfortable, or worse ugly, confrontation.

“That painting I saw at the exhibit… you’re the one who actually painted it, right?” Ann accused. Striking the nail on the head would be an apt descriptor for the way that Kitagawa reacted to those words, he couldn’t even argue back. “I knew it,” Ann softly stated. Whatever painting they were referring to didn’t matter, all that did was the reaction Kitagawa had shown was enough for us to be certain that piece had been plagiarised and the true painter was right in front of us.

“Your sensei’s seriously messed up. He just thinks of his pupils as tools. That’s why he doesn’t give a damn whether he steals their work or physically beats them. I’ll make this clear, there’s no point in hidin’ stuff from us,” Ryūji snapped. He wasn’t going to get us any help if he kept spitting out such violent words, I proceeded to poke him in the ribs for those words, even though they were true.

“Ryūji, stop being so antagonistic,” I chastised. Ryūji flinched backwards at my act, I proceeded to turn my gaze forward to focus upon Kitagawa who proceeded to glare at the blonde beside me, he clearly didn’t like the words that were being spoken by Ryūji; if our Electricity wielder didn’t control his tongue then Kitagawa was only going to grow angrier which could end badly for us.

“Hahaha… I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kitagawa stated. Although neither his voice nor his facial expression matched the claim, he was clearly aware of how the claim of Madarame’s plagiarism was very true; but like Ren had theorised, Kitagawa might have been wilfully blinding himself to the truth of Madarame’s depravity.

“We met Nakanohara Natsuhiko,” Ren revealed. That caught Kitagawa’s attention, it also made it clear that he knew the man from the wide eyes, slightly opened mouth and shocked contortion of his facial muscles. “He’s actually the one who told us about the plagiarism and abuse. I understand why you don’t want to go against Madarame, but we want to help you Kitagawa-san,” Ren added on.

“Stop it,” Kitagawa hissed. I didn’t like the way he was acting, his expression was pained, but his eyes were unflinchingly hard as he glared at us. “It’s just as you all say. We’re… our sensei’s ‘artwork’,” Kitagawa claimed. It felt like my heart had seized at that moment, my breath seemed to silence itself and a stinging appeared in the back of my eyes. “Don’t misunderstand me though. I offered my ideas to him, myself. As such, it can’t be called plagiarism. Sensei… is simply suffering from artist’s block right now,” Kitagawa attempted to justify.

“Dude, still…,” Ryūji tried to protest. Kitagawa seemed to flinch back from us, as if the conversation was actually causing him physical pain, Ann called out to the boy. “Then why’re you stickin’ around?! All his other pupils ran away! Aren’t you the only one left!?” Ryūji demanded. There had been no other sounds since we came here and Kitagawa himself had told us that only he remained here, so Ryūji comment was probably accurate… or I hoped it was.

“What’s wrong with a pupil helping out his master!?” Kitagawa responded. If that was the case, then it’d be fine, I didn’t like the idea of plagiarism even a little; but I might be able to stomach it if Kitagawa was willingly sacrificing his artwork, but something tells me that wasn’t the case based on Kitagawa’s own reactions. “There are no victims here! Stop pushing your self-centred righteousness on me!” Kitagawa continued.

“You’re okay with this? His stealing of your ideas? And what happened to the other pupils?” Ren asked. Kitagawa stared at our leader, not responding much to the probing questions; Ren steadily gazed at the boy and seemed to be refusing to be the one to look away from the staring contest with Kitagawa maintaining the stare quite resolutely.

“I’m supporting Sensei as his pupil. Where’s the wrong in that?” Kitagawa claimed. He then proceeded to break the stare down in order to retake his seat on his stool before the canvas with crossed arms. “Don’t ever come here again… if you do, I’ll sue you for causing a disturbance,” Kitagawa threatened. That wasn’t good, if we couldn’t come close to this place then we’d have a greater deal of difficulty in getting into the Palace.

“Hold it! We’re not done talkin’ here!” Ryūji protested. He was going to make things worse! If we kept fighting with Kitagawa then he was only going to keep taking extreme action against us thus impeding our investigation and infiltration; Ren gripped Ryūji’s shoulder and quietly spoke to the boy but from Ryūji’s face, I don’t think it really registered with him.

“Then you leave me with no choice,” Kitagawa decided. He stood up and pulled out his mobile, causing a sinking feeling to pop into existence within my stomach. “I’m reporting you to the police,” Kitagawa stated. Oh, that was really not good, beyond interfering with our infiltration it would also bring my uncle’s scrutiny upon me and the others, which they didn’t deserve. “I asked Takamaki-san to be my model, but I don’t recall ever calling you three here!” Kitagawa revealed.

“What the eff man!?” Ryūji snapped. Ann ordered him to stop while I dragged the boy back so that he was out of Kitagawa’s face, the less aggressive this situation developed then the more likely we’d be able to actually get back into the Palace without the added complication of avoiding being spotted by either of the residents of this building. Additionally, if we actually were arrested then Ann was put in danger.

“And if you do that, you can’t paint Ann-chan,” I pointed out. Kitagawa’s gaze snapped towards me but given that I’d mostly been silent during the conversation, that was no surprise, but I wanted to keep Ann safe. “Ann only came because we promised to come with her, without at least one of us present then Ann will never come back here,” I stated. He’d never let Ryūji come back after that display, but this might persuade him to let me or Ren return.

“Natsu-chan’s right. Something… happened to me recently and I don’t exactly trust strangers. I’d only feel comfortable if one of my friends were here,” Ann added on. As if to support her words, Ann stepped over to me and quickly wrapped her arms around one of my own while putting her body so that it seemed like she was hiding behind me despite peeking over my shoulder to keep her eyes on Kitagawa.

“I won’t report you… but only under one condition,” Kitagawa decided. Ann asked to know what this was while my heart thundered like a drum within my ears. “I want you to continue being my model Takamaki-san. If you want a friend here, then bring… this young lady. She seems far more reasonable than either of those two,” Kitagawa revealed. He pointed at me as he said the bit about bringing me, as if he needed to clarify who, it was then I realised he didn’t know my name despite Ren mentioning it last time.

“Chiba Natsumi, that’s my name,” I introduced. Kitagawa inclined his head slightly as if acknowledging my words, however I was more concerned with what he had said. “Also, you said it wasn’t working today, why do you think Ann-chan can continue as your model?” I wondered. If he truly had difficulties painting, then what could Ann coming back another day possibly change about the next effort.

“That’s because I was unconsciously being modest for Takamaki-san’s sake… however, I have nothing to worry about anymore. If you’re willing to bare everything to me,” Kitagawa admitted. Why was this setting off some kind of unsettling feeling across all my nerve endings? “I will put my heart and soul into creating the best nude painting ever!” Kitagawa declared. I think my brain short-circuited at the word nude.

“WHAT?!/Nude!?” Ryūji and Ann declared simultaneously. Both of them flinching backwards at the revelation, meanwhile I spotted Ren pinching himself in various places to see if he was dreaming, not that I blame him since I almost felt like striking the side of my head multiple times to try and get the organ inside my skull to start working properly because I truly couldn’t believe he had just said that.

“Ah, to think I’d be able to create a nude painting with my most ideal model!” Kitagawa practically sighed with enthusiasm. His satisfied expression turned into hardened steel as he glared at the two boys. “As I’ve said, I will only let in Chiba-san and I ask that you forget about our discussion today, as well,” Kitagawa stated. His expression turned glum and his eyes looked down. “If I don’t submit a new piece to Sensei soon, there will be some… inconveniences,” Kitagawa muttered. I still heard it and an icy terror gripped my heart at what those ‘inconveniences’ might actually be.

“Nude, meaning it’ll be without any clothes, right?! Why are things suddenly escalating like that!?” Ann questioned. I can’t blame her panic since this was a seriously uncomfortable thing to ask of someone who was a sexual harassment victim – yes, I knew Kitagawa was likely clueless, but still – especially in front of a near total stranger even if Kitagawa didn’t actually feel attraction towards her, I was trying to find words to speak but none seemed to be forthcoming.

“Because those are my terms,” Kitagawa stated. He looked entirely too pleased with himself; Ann tried to protest while Ryūji attempted to think of some hole to poke in it. “Sensei is out during the afternoon while the art exhibit is on, so I can use this place freely,” Kitagawa admitted. He hadn’t been out yesterday afternoon as I recall, but any arguing might just get me banned from the shack and then we’d have no route in… if Ann decided to take the modelling proposition which I highly doubted. “I should buy more art supplies,” Kitagawa stated.

“Will you give me a second here!?” Ann demanded. Kitagawa stated that he was willing to wait, but I don’t think he was really grasping the situation or Ann’s emotions; especially when he asked for Ann to come before the exhibit had finished. “No! That’s not what I mean! Why are you not listening!?” Ann ranted.

“Sensei will be returning home soon. We’re done for today Takamaki-san, I’ll be waiting for you to contact me,” Kitagawa stated. He definitely wasn’t listening to Ann and I actually felt rather annoyed, he was acting as if her feelings weren’t something that should be taken into consideration when thinking about this painting.

“No, no, no! We are not done talking here!” Ann protested. Ryūji wondered what we should do, despite how much I agreed with Ann’s feelings being important, if we tried to argue with Kitagawa – apart from feeling like I’d have better luck with a brick wall – there was a high chance he might go ahead with his threat and contact the police to imprison the rest of us.

“We should leave… he’s not listening to us,” Ren insisted. Ryūji agreed while claiming Kitagawa ‘got us good’ meanwhile Ann protested that we shouldn’t give up so easily, I wrapped an arm around Ann’s shoulders, hoping to provide her with some comfort since it seemed she was trapped between a rock and a hard place thanks to that uncomfortable revelation.

“Huh? Is she done being a model?” Morgana asked. However, Kitagawa heard Morgana which caused the blonde punk to insult the cat as the three quickly scurried out the door with Ann grabbing our primary healer as she moved away from me; the two boys also darted out the door, however instead of following them, something stayed my feet and instead I used my hand to close the door… I felt… like there was something I had to do before walking away.

“Kitagawa-san, I was wondering if I could ask you something?” I admitted. I turned around to face the painter and found that he was looking at me with an intense look in his eyes, the tension across his body showed that he was prepared for something unpleasant. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Madarame, it’s something only you can answer for me,” I clarified. This caused the boy’s eyes to widen, likely because he wasn’t expecting it to be about him given the previous conversation.

“I…see,” Kitagawa spoke. He still seemed wary but he’d relaxed enough to sit down in front of his easel while his eyes remained focused upon me. “What is it you wanted to ask Chiba-san?” Kitagawa asked. I took a few steps closer so that I would have a better view of his expressions thus allowing me to guess at what he might be feeling without saying anything.

“Can you still paint with all your heart?” I asked. This was something that I needed to know, even if I might be projecting my own issues, there was a similarity between the distortion shown in Madarame’s Palace and the situation that I had endured at Ouvrard’s hands; given the impact that had upon me, I wanted to check how Kitagawa was feeling towards the art that he was pursuing.

“Why do you ask?” Kitagawa asked. He seemed perplexed by my question, but I needed to ask it, I needed to make sure that he didn’t start walking the same path that I was currently treading, the lack of love for the one thing that had brought me so much joy after losing my family. I wanted to make sure that Kitagawa was kept from that path, but that would require some divulging of the truth, I took in a deep breath to prepare myself for this.

“I have… personal experience with an artist mentor abusing their students in order to further their own career. That destroyed any desire to continue with the art,” I explained. Kitagawa’s eyes widened suddenly at the admission of what had happened to me, although his eyes seemed to dart down to my throat for a moment before darting back to my face as he recomposed himself to focus back on the question that I had asked of him.

“Well, you need not concern yourself with my heart Chiba-san. So long as I can think of the Sayuri, I will be able to lift my brush,” Kitagawa admitted. That didn’t really soothe the concern in my heart, having the Sayuri might not be enough for him to continue pursuing the art; but the look in his eyes made a part of me really believe in him, to believe that he would be fine.

“I hope so Kitagawa-san. I really do,” I stated. With that, I turned to the door and proceeded to depart from the room, despite having Kitagawa’s reassurance, my heart didn’t feel any lighter as I walked away from him; leaving the front door I quickly spotted the others who were gathered a small distance away from the shack, only Ren spotted my approach since he was facing my way. His grey eyes gleamed with a relaxed energy as his shoulders slumped down slightly; but then Ann let out an enraged shout as I stepped up beside her.

“He’s totally out of his mind! I’m gonna have to pose nude if his keeps up!” Ann ranted. Not exactly something that seemed impossible, I think you had to be a special kind of crazy to be any kind of artist but especially so for one as bizarre as Kitagawa, Morgana agreed with Ann’s outrage at having to go through with that deeply uncomfortable event if we wanted to get back into that dilapidated building.

“The way he said it, it’s not gonna be semi, but full-on nude,” Ryūji commented. That was not helping matters, especially when Morgana started stammering about this possibility, so Ann ordered him to drop it. “You know, you won’t have to worry about that if we make Madarame confess before the exhibit ends,” Ryūji pointed out. I doubt it was going to be that simple, if Kitagawa wasn’t soothed then we’d be unable to approach without being observed and potentially reported.

“But Kitagawa-kun thinks he owes his life to him. Is there a need to make Madarame confess?” Ann wondered. I looked at Ann with wide eyes, stunned that she was actually thinking in such a manner, Madarame was taking Kitagawa’s work and calling it his own instead of presenting it as the artwork of someone he’d taught – surely that would bolster both reputations? – plus it sounded like not providing the artwork had something horrible attached to it beyond disappointment.

“Then, Ann-dono… you’re fine with baring it all!?” Morgana questioned. Ann disagreed with this query and I’m fairly sure it should have been obvious that she wasn’t fine going through with this nude painting that Kitagawa had proposed given how much she’d exploded since it was brought up; I hope that we could do something about the scenario in order to remove that variable for Ann’s sake.

“Madarame’s no different from Kamoshida. That asshole’s usin’ Yusuke, who doesn’t have parents. You’re tellin’ me we should just ignore how he’s bein’ treated horribly like the other pupils?” Ryūji ranted. But Ryūji wasn’t seeing the important thing here and it was really starting to grate on my already frayed nerves and fracturing emotional state.

“And how do you help someone who doesn’t want it!?” I snapped. All of them proceeded to look at me with wide eyes as I felt my body begin to tremble. “Everything I’ve seen so far only shows that Kitagawa doesn’t want anyone to help him! So, tell me what we should do!?” I demanded. I swung my fist out and smacked it into the railing, frustration and uncertainty wailing within me, drowning out the pain that bolted up my arm like lightning.

“It is frustrating to leave this alone though, even if Kitagawa-kun is fine with it himself,” Ann stated. She hunched down and looked to the side as she twisted her fingers together, I felt ashamed of my outburst; I shouldn’t be exploding on my friends like this, no matter how I was feeling, I pulled my hand back in and gently cradled the abused appendage which didn’t deserve to be slammed against metal like it had been.

“You can’t leave it be because you’ve endured a lot yourself, with Kamoshida,” Morgana realised. Ann agreed to this, Ren moved over and removed some of Takemi-sensei’s medicine and immediately rubbed it over the area I’d struck with, thankfully it worked well to immediately soothe the ache in the muscle. I thanked him but Ren didn’t move away and instead stayed nearby, whatever reason that may be.

“Anyways, we gotta go after this guy. Madarame’s the kind of target we’ve been waitin’ for. Let’s help Yusuke come to his senses too… before he ends up like us,” Ryūji insisted. Another agreement came from Ann, but I still didn’t think it was right to try and force our aid upon Kitagawa when he seemed pretty adamant against receiving such a thing from us; I didn’t know if he was being wilfully blind, but he was certainly resentful towards our aid… although, I know I didn’t want him to end up like me which seemed incredibly likely.

“Before we make any decision, we need to look into Madarame. There could some stuff that we haven’t learned of yet, stuff that might become important in our social activities,” Ren calmly stated. I’m glad someone was remaining calm in this situation, we sorely needed Ren’s level-head to balance out Ryūji anger, Ann’s distress, my tumultuous state, and Morgana’s changing priorities.

“It’ll be easier for us to investigate his Palace if he’s preoccupied with his exhibit,” Morgana theorised. Quite true, so long as Madarame’s physical self was distracted by the exhibit then we’d be able to move about more freely since he wouldn’t be constantly at the shack; the only true threat to our movements would be Kitagawa himself.

“Also, there’s the thing about me modelling!” Ann exclaimed. Her expression shifted into one of sorrow and we focused on her once again. “Kitagawa-kun said there’d be ‘inconveniences’ unless he submits a new piece. Maybe that’s going to be announced soon as Madarame’s next work,” Ann wondered. A shiver made its’ way down my spine at that possibility.

“Does that mean the whole country’s gonna see you nude!?” Ryūji questioned. I should hope not, Ann really didn’t need to go through something so deeply invasive to her privacy, I didn’t want to have to rely on using Ann to get into the shack for the investigation; but with all other routes shot to the underworld, we needed to do something to remove that possibility.

“I said we’re not doing anything that makes someone uncomfortable. It’s up to Ann but if she says no, then we’ll have to find another route in,” Ren commented. Morgana claimed we had to deal with Madarame before the end of the exhibit, that was pretty much a given otherwise we’d have more trouble than we currently did.

“Let’s start after school tomorrow. It’ll be a pain if Miss President finds us on the rooftop again, so where to meet up… let’s see…,” Ryūji wondered. We definitely needed another location to meet up, somewhere nearby would be best since it would save on us having to meet up if only to commute to a different location; in that case I had an idea on where we could go without it being too public.

“There’s a small bookshop and café in Shibuya with a nice, quiet little alcove we can use. Since it’s close by, it’ll make the travel here easier,” I offered. Ryūji seemed surprised by the offer while Ann fidgeted slightly, probably from the uncomfortable situation or my own silly outburst, thankful Ren looked glad for my suggestion and Morgana let out a content purr at those words.

“Changing our hideout periodically, huh? That’s a plan I don’t mind backing,” Morgana stated. It was smart since it would make our movements harder to track for Niijima-senpai; I just hoped she didn’t know about that café since it might be a place she would like to visit, well that was a bridge to crossed when I had the evidence for it, worrying about that now wouldn’t do me or anyone else any good.

“Hey, can I talk to you kids for a sec?” A voice called out. I turned out around to look at the person and found a woman walking up to us, the woman had brown eyes, black hair in a bob cut like Nakanohara but long enough to reach her chin and red lips, she wore a pair of orange sunglasses on her head, a black shirt with a motto which read "low life fight the power," – Ryūji might actually like this adult – a white long-sleeved shirt was under the black shirt and blue jeans. She also carried a pink belt bag positioned to the back with a water bottle attached to it, a camera hung from her neck and, she wore a pair of black and white shoes. “From the looks of things, you don’t seem like the ordinary, stalking fans,” The woman stated.

“What are you talking about?” Ren asked. Even I was confused by her words and a quick look at the other two showed they were both baffled, I looked back at the woman and found that despite Morgana still being perched on Ren’s shoulders, she wasn’t even blinking her eyes in surprise, instead preferring to look between the four of us and our perplexed expressions.

“Oh, sorry. I should’ve been more clear. I’m actually looking for people that know Madarame’s pupils. There’s this painting, Sayuri, that was supposedly stolen in the past. But there’s this rumour that it was taken by one of his pupils in retaliation for being abused. Have you heard anything about that?” The woman questioned. Now that was a surprise, Kitagawa had certainly never made a mention of it having disappeared and given his love of that painting, you’d think it might have popped up.

“No, we hadn’t heard a thing like that,” Ren answered. The woman was saddened by our lack of knowledge, but if her camera was any indication then she might be snooping around for some kind of information; but whatever her purpose it was for I couldn’t tell; despite her casual attire, she could have been a private investigator like those Detective Princes that show up on the news occasionally.

“There’s no case unless there’s a victim and if there’s no proof of abuse, I can’t write either,” The woman claimed. Write? Was she an author of some kind “Looks like I’m back to square one. Sorry for taking your time,” The woman apologised. She then walked closer to Ren and held out a card to him. “I’m a journalist. If you ever get any leads, mind contacting me here?” The woman requested. Ren took the card “See you then,” The woman stated. With that, she walked away from us.

“I guess we should go home for today,” Ryūji requested. With a solemn nod, we proceeded to head back to the station, although it felt like my shoes were filled with lead coated bricks.

*Persona 5 Royal*

What a day. It might have only been a few hours, but it felt like day was a more appropriate description to give to the stress that we’d undergone, it was enough that instead of going home, I proceeded to head straight for Leblanc and practically crash into a booth; where Ren had gone, I don’t know only that he wasn’t here. I gave Sōjirō my order and then hung my head while gripping the back of it, only stopping when my phone chirped with a message.

Ryūji: I found out something insane about Madarame.

Ryūji: Sounds like a student of his offed himself when he couldn’t speak up about Madarame stealing his work.

My stomach rolled at that revelation, in fact I felt like I had to fight down the bile that was building in my throat at the possibility of someone having gone that far. Just to escape from having his hard work and creativity stolen, I took a deep breath to focus myself and looked back at my phone.

Ren: Is that true? It could just be a rumour with no real basis.

Ann: That journalist was looking into Madarame too.

Ann: It could be real.

Ryūji: Someone died though.

Ryūji: No one’s talking about it… I bet it was covered up.

Natsumi: Probably.

Ann: I wonder if Kitagawa-kun has heard anything?

Ren: Maybe, or Madarame might have had some way of keeping Kitagawa-san isolated from the other pupils when he was young.

Ann: It’d be great if he could help us out.

Ryūji: Ain’t that asking a bit much?

Ryūji: After today, he’s prolly gonna be on edge about us.

Ryūji: Well anyway, Madarame’s still a piece of crap!

Ryūji: Let’s meet up tomorrow. It’ll be our first time at the new hideout.

Ren: We need to stay in Shibuya Station for a little tomorrow.

Ren: Mishima just called me and told me Nakanohara wants to talk to the Phantoms.

Ann: REALLY?!

Ryūji: That’s gotta be about Madarame!

Natsumi: Perhaps what he tells us will help ground our decision.

Natsumi: I’ll guide you guys to the café after we meet.

With that, I slipped my phone away and resumed my stare off with the table’s grain; this whole incident was leaving a really nasty taste within my mouth as I tried to think about what to do regarding Kitagawa’s refusal towards our aid. A clinking sound came and I lifted my head to see the Leblanc meal there, but it also came with an extremely concerned looking Sōjirō, his warm eyes gleaming with intense concern.

“What’s up Natsumi-chan? You look terrible,” Sōjirō asked. He slipped into the seat across from me and focused his eyes upon me; I briefly flashbacked to the day that he had done the same thing all in order to warn me away from the kindest person I knew, any warm feelings however immediately fizzled to nothingness as the weight of our failure today pressed itself back upon my mind with all the weight of the moon.

“Something happened today and… it’s kind of shaken me,” I admitted. My voice sounded strangely hoarse as I said those words, I did a quick clear and reached for the coffee to try and help the issue; I turned my gaze back to Sōjirō and saw that the concern within his eyes had increased quite a bit as his face slackened with concern.

“Want to talk about it?” Sōjirō asked. My eyes widened in surprise at those words, as kind and warm as Sōjirō was, he wasn’t the most open individual and he normally left me to my own devices – the warning from earlier this year notwithstanding – so for him to ask me such a thing; I could only guess that I looked worse than what his words had implied.

“Alright,” I agreed. If he was offering then I might as well take advantage of it, maybe articulating my thoughts to someone not connected to this mess would help me to get my head on straight before we met up tomorrow. “There’s someone I’ve met recently, we’re not particularly close or anything but I’ve learned he… might not be in the best place at the moment,” I explained. I needed to be vague otherwise he might get suspicious of me.

“Is he happy there?” Sōjirō asked. I jerked at that question, it wasn’t something that I had been expecting to hear and I could only blink at him in a rather foolish manner. “If he’s happy then you should just leave him be, it’s better not to get involved,” Sōjirō commented. I opened and closed my mouth for a few moments as I tried to think about what to say to that suggestion that he had made.

“You’d really abandon someone to be in such a horrible situation, Boss. Even if the situation they’re in is abhorrent. That they’re suffering something cruel that it might just break their heart and soul. Steal any potential for a future and leave them nothing but a shell of who they were. Even if they’re a stranger… that doesn’t feel right to me,” I spoke. I saw a painful look flash across Sōjirō’s face at my words as he leaned his elbows on the table.

“No… I don’t suppose I could,” Sōjirō admitted. His eyes were looking at the wall beside the table, but it also happened to be the direction of his house which cause me to raise an eyebrow before dropping it as the barista brought his attention back to me. “But you also need to think about the person you’re trying to help; sometimes the best help you can give is to leave someone alone,” Sōjirō added on.

“Maybe Boss, I think my judgment’s clouded… but hopefully I have a clearer sight soon,” I admitted. That look in Sōjirō’s eyes, I felt a desire to ask about it and why he had looked towards his home, but my respect for him outweighed my curiosity; he’d never pried into my private life and I refused to do any prying when it was clearly a sore subject for him.

“Just don’t do anything to put yourself in danger Natsumi-chan,” Sōjirō insisted. He reached a hand out and gently patted one of my own, allowing me to feel the callouses that had built up from his life of hard work. “I don’t want to see such a nice girl get hurt,” Sōjirō stated. There was a kindness in his eyes that also seemed tinged with a great deal of pain; it made my heart ache for him quite sharply.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 35: - Hardened Resolve

We’d all gathered at Shibuya station, except for Ren and Morgana, we were just waiting for those two to arrive. The tension over the three of us was rather thick as I struggled to even focus on my book, constantly finding my eyes drifting away and losing my place. Ann was idling moving her phone about, but it was clear to see nothing held her interest; Ryūji on the other hand was pacing like a caged animal in front of the two of us, agitation clear on his face. Thankfully Ren appeared and moved towards the rest of us, making Ryūji stop his pacing.

“Yo,” Ryūji greeted. With all five of us now gathered, we just had to find Nakanohara and learn whatever he wanted to tell us. “So, what’re we gonna do about Nakanohara?” Ryūji asked. Ren looked around briefly before stopping and raising his hand to point to a location a little removed from our own; I looked over and spotted the very man we were here to speak to.

“He’s over there, so I’ll approach him but hide myself so he doesn’t see me, meanwhile you three keep an eye out for Niijima-senpai or anyone else who might be suspicious. I’ll keep my phone on speaker and call you guys, that way you can hear what he’s saying,” Ren explained. He pulled his bag off his shoulder and quickly rifled through it to retrieve a bland grey hoodie, then handed the bag to Ann.

Ren slipped the hoodie over his head and flicked the hood up so that it hung slightly in his eyes, he pulled his glasses off and tucked them away. With a nod to us, our leader moved off and seemed to disappear into the crowd when he did; shaking my head slightly I broke off from the other three to start a random circuit around the area where the two would be meeting. The moment my phone vibrated, I quickly answer it and rested it in my book to hide that I was using it instead reading.

“Nakanohara Natsuhiko?” Ren’s voice sounded. But it was different, deeper and perhaps a little distorted; a perfect decision to make since this would ensure that Nakanohara wouldn’t be able to identify the voice if someone ever figured out that he had talked to us, it was also the best way to ensure that someone who walked passed and overheard the conversation couldn’t identify Ren from his voice.

“Yes, that’s me. The Nakanohara Natsuhiko who was posted about on the Phantom Aficionado Website,” Nakanohara’s voice sounded. He seemed to have changed from the deranged Shadow we had meet down in Mementos, indicating the true success of the Change of Heart. “The administrator of that website contacted me… they told me I could meet someone here for help,” Nakanohara admitted. Mishima was being a little risky by doing this, but we needed the information.

“What is it that you want Nakanohara?” Ren asked. Even if we suspected that he was here to talk about Madarame, it was best for us to get all the information out of Nakanohara without jumping to conclusions; I continued my steady circuit of the area around my leader and our information source, mentally counting the seconds in order to decide when to change the page of my book in order to keep up my ruse.

“You may have already heard, but there’s someone I wish to trigger a change of heart in. An artist by the name of Madarame,” Nakanohara revealed. Madarame was already an unusual name, but to specify that it was an artist bearing that name was certainly stocking evidence onto the pile that he was here regarding his former mentor.

“As in Madarame Ichiryūsai? The one whose exhibition is currently on?” Ren questioned. Ren wasn’t going to let anything slip by him, he was crossing every t and dotting every i, ensuring that we didn’t make a mistake. Probably wise given how complicated this whole scenario had twisted into being thanks to Kitagawa’s perception of Madarame, we couldn’t afford to make any errors in judgment.

“Yes. I’m one of Madarame’s former pupils. He gave me lodging at his home, where I thought only about art. I genuinely wanted to be an artist… there was another pupil as well. A very talented man, multiple years my senior,” Nakanohara admitted. It couldn’t be Kitagawa then, but my mind immediately turned to what Ryūji had told us last night. “Obviously, Madarame kept tabs on him. Everything he made was claimed as a Madarame original. He wasn’t the only victim though… in response to Madarame’s actions… that senior pupil committed suicide,” Nakanohara added on.

I couldn’t help the harsh stomp my feet made as I ground to a halt at hearing those words. Hearing there was a suicide of a student and actually knowing there was one and Madarame was a fault were two different things. Slipping my phone out, I snapped my book closed and put it away as I quickly walked towards Ann who had gone wide eyed and pale faced. I put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a slightly shake to knock her out of whatever state her mind was in, Ann gave me a tense smile but the watery look in her eyes didn’t fade.

“He must have been unable to bear seeing his work praised under Madarame’s name. That was when I disobeyed Madarame’s orders and left. But he quickly pressured other parts of the art world and my life, as a painter, was destroyed. I tried to turn over a new lead working at a ward office… but it was no use. My attachment to art warped my emotions. Soon, I began getting attached to everything… in the end, I even turned into a stalker… I’d like to ask again, please make Madarame have a change of heart. Not only for me. It’s… to save the life of another student as well,” Nakanohara explained.

“Save their life? What do you mean?” Ren asked. His tone had taken on an urgent note as I shared a terrified look with Ann who looked like she was going to be sick; there was only one student left behind at that shack and if Nakanohara was aware of that fact then there was no doubt about who he was referring to with this request.

“Even now, there is still one young man remaining under Madarame’s tutelage. He’s a high schooler,” Nakanohara answered. That confirmed that it had to be Kitagawa, since he claimed to be the only one left at the shack and fit the age. “Not only is he a talented artist, he also owes Madarame for taking him in after his mother passed… he is the perfect target,” Nakanohara added on. This was stuff we already knew, but it didn’t change that Kitagawa didn’t want our help or anyone’s help for that matter. “I actually spoke to him a few times, back when I was still living at Madarame’s. I asked him if he found it painful to stay with Madarame… and do you know what he said? ‘If I could leave, I would’,” Nakanohara revealed. My body might as well have become a statue from how stiff I went.

That changed everything. Kitagawa had lied to our faces and claimed that he didn’t want to leave but now we had evidence from someone who knew Madarame’s cruelty that this wasn’t how Kitagawa truly felt. Ann took in a deep breath as her face became composed with the tears in her eyes having dwindled and Carmen’s fire blazed bright in her blue gaze, I could agree with her resolve.

“I have no right to say this given my prior cowardice, but I don’t want to see another suicide! I’d like to find a way to save this young man. He has a bright future ahead of him, please consider that, when thinking about changing Madarame’s heart,” Nakanohara requested. He had spun around the corner to speak to Ren directly, but by that time our stealthy leader had shot away from the scene.

Ren and Ryūji quickly made their way over to me and Ann with Ren quickly hiding the hoodie in the bag with Morgana. With our information secured, I turned and guided the others out of the station and through the streets until we reached a small store front with a blue paint job. I pushed open the door and saw it was mostly deserted which was fortunate for us. The store was split between a sizeable bookstore at the front and a small café area at the back and up the stairs on the second level. The upstairs café was more popular, so I guided the group to a small booth that I frequently used and we sat down. Since the food making area was upstairs, it was safe for Morgana to come out and sit on the table top.

“We’ve been asked to act directly on behalf of one of Madarame’s victims. It sounds like we don’t have the time to deliberate whether or not to change Madarame’s heart,” Morgana decided. Before it had been taking revenge on a man who hurt many of those around us and several of our members, this time we’d been the outsiders looking in; but at last, someone from the inside and requested our help in stopping the cruelty being unleashed by the distorted man in question.

“Morgana is right. Nakanohara confirmed the plagiarism was real, something we already suspected, but he also confirmed the truth about the suicide being a direct result of Madarame’s own actions. Add on that it’s apparent Yusuke wants to be saved from his current situation despite his own words to us, and we have Nakanohara’s earnest plea for our help. What do you think?” Ren spoke. He looked between each of us, but I got the sense he had already made up his mind.

“Hell yeah! Madarame’s just a piece of shit who preys on the weak! I’ve been for goin’ after Madarame from the get-go,” Ryūji reminded. Ryūji had never once faltered in his belief and right now his conviction was being rewarded, I couldn’t even get mad that he was being unnecessarily loud; I looked over at Ann and saw how stiff her face was but given what had been mentioned, I couldn’t blame her for feeling that way.

“Suicide… I’ll never let something like that happen! Plus, we finally got to hear how Kitagawa-kun really feel!” Ann declared. That was the biggest factor we never really had, Kitagawa had always insisted that he was fine with the situation but now we knew that to be false, we knew what truly lay within his heart thanks to Nakanohara; I was never more grateful than now for having gone after him in Mementos.

“Kitagawa-san wants to be saved. He said this to someone who knew him, maybe not well, but it was someone who knew his pain. He wants to escape the cage he’s in. I say we get started right away,” I decided. Kitagawa might still be able to paint, but he could lose that passion just like how I’d lost my will to sing. I might still hum on occasion, especially the Velvet Room’s song when I’m stressed, but I never let words escape my lips and it was more often in my mind; I never wanted someone else to go down that same terrible path.

“Then, let’s get started,” Ren decided. He smiled brightly, we’d all found our conviction once more and could finally tackle this target with vigour, there would be no half-hearted measures involved in the infiltration which could have endangered us. I think that’s what Ren must have been the most concerned about, how willing we were to go through with this Change of Heart.

“Our target this time is Madarame!” Morgana declared. He also seemed glad that we were finally galvanised to stop Madarame. “We all saw that Palace. We’ll pay dearly if we assume it’s just going to be like the last one. And furthermore… Ann-dono’s chastity is on the line!” Morgana announced. This surprised the girl in question. “We’ll need to do what we did with Kamoshida. First, we secure an infiltration route in the Palace. After that, we send our calling card. Once the Treasure has materialised, we steal it,” Morgana reminded.

“Oooh, I got a question! Madarame doesn’t know that we were doin’ stuff in the… challenge yet, why are we already getting’ treated like criminals in there?” Ryūji asked. A pretty astute question to make, there was something different about this Palace’s manner compared to Kamoshida’s, even though the Security Level had been low, we’d all immediately been cloaked in our Rebel’s Armour.

“Because of Madarame’s innate cognition. He’s probably a highly suspicious person, so naturally his challenge will reflect that by viewing anything unknown as a threat,” I explained. Which would make sense as a plagiarist who lived with his victims, he knew others who knew his secrets and while he was able to suppress Nakanohara’s voice thanks to his influence, the fact that Nakanohara had escaped him wouldn’t be lost on his psyche.

“Well done, you’re learning Ryūji,” Morgana praised. He was, to have asked such an observational question after one infiltration and the fact that he had actually used one of the codewords for our activities for once instead of just blurting it out; although it sounded like he had to think about which word to use when making his question, still it was progress.

“Then his Palace bein’ so crazy had nothing to do with us?” Ryūji asked. He almost seemed disappointed about that fact given that he’d slumped down slightly; also he had gone and used the real word instead of a codeword which caused me to hang my head in dismay slightly… I wonder if he was ever going to learn.

“Either way, we should stay on our best behaviour. It’ll be harder for us to steal the Treasure if we needlessly increase the Security Level,” Morgana explained. That was definitely a necessity, especially since we had the added issue of someone very close to the target already being against us which could alert Madarame subconsciously if he even noticed how stressed Kitagawa was, or Kitagawa outright told him what happened.

“Prioritise stealth over everything else in this infiltration then,” Ren insisted. That would mean we’d need to try and perform ambushes at every opportunity if we could, simply because it would be easier to lower the threat to us and continue deeper into the Palace and reduce the number of guards that would be loitering about.

“We also need to be careful of Kitagawa-kun this time too. I’m sure that whatever he sees will just get passed on to Madarame,” Ann pointed out. All of us made sounds of agreement since his presence and perception added another threat even if it was one that we knew wasn’t really dangerous. “Hey, what is Madarame’s goal going to look like anyway? Another crown?” Ann wondered.

“No, it’ll look like whatever Madarame believes represents his opinion that he is a great artist. For Ouvrard, it was a musical score for an opera she was making, so it could possibly be Sayuri for Madarame for maybe whatever Madarame’s first painting was,” I answered. It would be impossible to tell until we actually saw it with our own eyes.

“Our time limit for completing this is when the exhibit end, after that, it’ll be too difficult to get near that shack. We have to get this done by June fifth, meaning securing our route by the second,” Ren decided. That was the best way to do this, we didn’t have much time but hopefully we’d be able to complete this one as swiftly as possible.

“Now listen here. We can’t mess this up, NO MATTER WHAT! OKAY!?” Ann snapped. Her voice going higher than we needed it to be on the last lot, but she had a fair reason to be so empathetic about this.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We had another moment of Joker spacing out and me sensing the Velvet Room – still no sign of it and I gave as thorough a search as possible while the other three called out to Joker – before entering the Palace. Thankfully, Joker came back to us and we made our way inside to the picture gallery that was our entry point, we made to move to the next area only for Mona to dart in front of Joker suddenly.

“Hold on, Joker!” Mona exclaimed. He sounded worried and that concerned me, I stepped closer and my eyes widened when I saw that coming from two of the three pairs of black boxes I’d spotted the other day were red lines that were extremely faint, leaving only a small gap near the floor that was safe to pass through. “Tch… it’s an infrared laser device. If we touch it, the security will increase!” Mona explained.

“Hold on, there wasn’t anything like this last time though!” Skull protested. That was probably an indicator that Madarame’s cognition had been altered thus increasing the Palace’s overall danger; of course, I wasn’t expecting such a subtle trap, but it made sense given the setting that the Palace had taken this time around, but it was still a danger we didn’t need to deal with.

“It’s possible that Yusuke warned Madarame of our questions and that will have ramped up the Security Level enough to trigger these things,” Joker theorised. It could be any number of reasons, but the one thing I was certain of was that it probably wasn’t going to go away no matter how many Shadows were defeated since Madarame knew something was wrong and these things were tied to that knowledge meaning they’d stick around probably long after our deadline had passed.

“Can we still make our way through?” Panther warily asked. No surprise especially since we would be incapable of getting further into the Palace at the moment if there was no way since we didn’t have a way to climb over them and even a jump wouldn’t help clear it; thankfully there was a way through this one at least.

“There’s a gap at the bottom we can crawl through, let’s just hope there are other gaps in later defences,” I pointed out. Joker crouched down and tentatively reached his hand forward, lightly swiping his hand from side to side; heaving a sigh of relief he proceeded to crawl through the gap, Mona only had to duck his sizeable head slightly as he was able to walk through the gap, Panther and Skull followed after the cat shaped thief and then I slipped myself through.

In the next room we encountered a similar problem with multiple infrared lasers active, some were on the top and bottom which meant none of us could jump through that gap since the contorting necessary wasn’t possible unless one specialised in such acts, there was also a Shadow present as well. With a quick discussion, we proceeded to ambush it revealing two Mokoi’s wobbling in place.

“It’s weak to Wind and strong against Electricity!” Joker warned. Mona and Panther linked together by a Baton Pass and thanks to Panther’s Breeze Ring, then tied off with an All-Out Attack heavily weakened the little boomerang wielders. This allowed Skull and I to finish them off, with our enemy bested we kept moving in the direction of the picture frame opening and found more Shadows.

Another ambush on one granted us a battle against a trio of Hua Pos that turned out to be weak to Ranged weapons and Ice. This was another easy battle in that all it took was a single bullet from Joker to disable each of them and then an All-Out Attack; this one actually finished the opponents off this time. We eventually reached the picture frame and came across another Shadow; Joker swiftly ambushed this one and it formed into two Shadows.

One was a Hua Po while the other was one we’d never seen before. This one was also feminine, with light blue skin and darker blue hair that was gathered into two loops at the base of her neck, golden eyes peered out from her slightly closed eyelids which made me think immediately of Kawakami-sensei. She was clad in a white outfit that was reminiscent of what a gymnast would wear with a slightly longer back that seemed to ripple as she moved, aqua coloured gemstones shaped like tears were sent into a dark blue belt that circled her hips while a translucent blue sash wove around her arms and through the air.

“That blue one is called Apsaras. It’s weak to Fire and Electricity but Resists Ice!” I called out. Mona did the smart thing and started things off by firing his slingshot at Hua Po which dropped the fairy girl to the floor. A Baton Pass to Skull allowed the false blonde to blast Apsaras with Captain Kidd’s Zio spell. With both of them down, we moved in and Joker managed to convince Apsaras – who reminded me of Silky and felt the same upon being released – to join us before we eliminated Hua Po.

“Hey, Mona, Amazon. Do either of you know about Traits?” Joker asked. I looked at the boy in confusion as I tried to think about what he was referring to, I closed my eyes and started to rifle through my memories of Igor in order to recall anything about what had been mentioned; eventually I realised what Joker was referring to though it was something that I hadn’t thought about for a while.

“Huh? Oh… I actually completely forgot about that,” I admitted. It was pretty embarrassing to have done such a thing but with no need to think about something, things can slip the mind. “Yes, I know about Persona Traits, but each one’s is unique, Phantom can increase the duration of mine, and maybe others, Kaja type support skills,” I explained. With the others present, we were better off knowing what each of them could do innately since it could help us latter on.

“Zorro can increase the effect of all of our healing spells on occasion. You guys will have to focus your attention inwards to get that information,” Mona added on. We had entered the area where Nakanohara and Kitagawa’s paintings were located only to see a massive field of infrared lasers cutting across large sections of the hall in a horizontal fashion. “Sheesh, I’m glad I managed to make more grappling hooks for everyone,” Mona admitted. He then pulled them out and helped to strap each new one on to the rest of us.

Joker had proceeded to shoot over while Mona helped us and our leader gave the all-clear for us to cross. I flew over the lasers followed by Panther who squeaked a little as she curled in a few times to try and avoid the lasers, I had gathered my skirt in one hand in a bunched mass to avoid that, so I don’t blame her. Skull had Mona perched on his shoulder as he geared himself up, the blonde soon shot over and landed with a heavy thud – though he sank down a little – while Mona seemed to be grinning as his small paw attempted to ruffle Skull’s hair but that resulted in it being more like a pat.

Once the three of us had recovered ourselves from our first flight on grappling hooks, we quickly made our way into the reception area and dealt with the Shadows there before heading into the area where that vile statue was located. I swallowed thickly upon seeing it and flexed my hand opened then closed in order to calm myself of any negative emotions, getting emotional wouldn’t help here, better to channel those feelings without being overwhelmed by them.

“We’ll be in unknown territory once we go past here, right?” Panther questioned. Even with a map, we wouldn’t know what would be present beyond the basic layout, its’ contents and enemies would be completely unknown until we actually got there; I could only hope that we’d be able to find a Safe Room soon to ease our travel.

“The security will probably get a little more fierce as well,” Mona warned. It was deeper in, thus closer to Treasure which would automatically make it more secure meaning more Shadows; the stealth part of our mission was about to start. “Make sure you don’t touch anything or run into any of the displays, alright?” Mona added on. His eyes were focused on Skull when he said that bit.

“What’re you lookin’ at me for?” Skull asked. None of us answered that question and instead ran up the ramp at the back of the room and quickly moved through the door, there were two directions we could go but one was hidden behind a door that was locked from the other side, so Joker darted right and we followed him. A leap and a crawl around some lasers brought us safely to our first Safe Room.

“Thank goodness… at least we won’t have to jump over that laser field again,” Panther admitted. As we stepped in, I noticed the room shimmer to its’ physical world counterpart and while the steel looking tables with wheelie chairs took up most of the room, I still saw wooden stools in one corner and a sleeping roll in another… a sleeping roll? “What is this place?” Panther wondered. The Metaverse version reasserted itself and I saw TV screens talking about Madarame with golden panelling that had some black trees painted on them, golden trees were in the far corners of the room and blue fabric was underfoot.

“I think this might be where Kitagawa-san sleeps, there was a roll in the corner, which is my only evidence, but its’ quite likely given that it would be a place in the shack weak to Madarame’s influence,” I answered. We took a quick breath and proceeded to leave the room behind, we quickly moved through to the next room where more disturbing pictures were hanging from off-white walls. We quickly ducked into the corners and darted about the room until we came across a Shadow.

A swift ambush revealed three Shadows. All of them were the same quadruped beast, looking like some kind of cross between a dog and a lion; despite being petite in size it looked like there was a faint white-blue mane around its’ face. There was also a curly tail at the back of it, there were also curly tufts of hair on the legs. All in all, they reminded me of the Shiisaa statues I’d seen in Okinawa… which is actually what they are.

“Shiisaa are weak to Psy and Curse while resisting our Physical attacks and blocking Bless!” I warned. This meant we wouldn’t be getting a hold of one for Joker, through our own abilities at least, Joker made the first move by bringing out Mokoi and using a Spell that unleashed bright spots around one of the little dog Shadows, this caused it to go cross-eyed and stumble around a bit as if it had become dizzy or drunk.

“Attack the one Joker dazed!” Mona insisted. Skull moved forward and slammed an Electrical attack down on the ailed enemy, which caused it to drop to its’ knees. “Alright! We should be able to use a Baton Pass now!” Mona encouraged. Skull passed it over to Panther, with a quick summoning of Carmen, a sleepy aura surrounded a second Shiisaa and its’ eyes drifted close and the head dropped to its’ chest.

Acting quickly, I summoned Phantom and a pulse of Gravity twisted around the dreaming Shiisaa, knocking it down. I Baton Passed to Mona who summoned Zorro and unleashed some Wind on the only one that had remained undamaged. But that one remaining Shiisaa suddenly began to gather energy around itself that felt terrifyingly familiar. I sensed it coming for me and I quickly flipped backwards, but it wasn’t enough. The nuclear attack seared across my leg, tearing a scream from my lips as I went tumbling backwards.

Yells echoed across my head as I struggled to get myself back together. Clawing at the ground to try and force myself up despite the swimming in my head. The stinging scent of fire and electricity battered the air around me as the cold blast of ice drifted over my skin. A soft warmth pressed itself into my skin and I felt my head clear up faster.

Scrambling to my feet, I saw that the Shiisaa had been whittled down to only two. Pulling my mask of, I had my eerie Persona use its’ Gravity Spell on the only one that as currently standing up right. I must have got lucky because my attack knocked it down. Joker commanded an All-Out Attack and we dove in, successfully eliminating them. Once they puffed into smoke and dropped their loot, I moved backwards to lean against the wall and looked at the leg that got hit.

“That was unpleasant, I’ll have to be careful,” I muttered. Ice and Fire both stung like hell when they hit, but Nuke attacks were by far the worst for me to be struck with; if Nuke attacks were now showing up then I’d need to be on my toes even more than before to stop taking such serious wounds. Panther moved over to me but I gave her a shake of my head and pushed away from the wall.

We kept moving through the disturbing gallery, avoiding a savage Shadow when I saw it since it was stronger than us. We darted passed some lasers in a small, enclosed area which allowed us to slink out of the corners properly, Joker spotted a grappling hook attachment and we darted up – I was really glad Mona made more – to another level. It seemed to be some kind of backstage area with an almost vent like appearance, we followed it around and dropped down to find sturdy mesh coverings on the floor and a section of metal that jutted further off the end. We walked along it and looked down to find metal fences encircling boards of wood piled together and a Treasure Chest which contained three Fire Magatamas.

Jumping up and over the cages we spotted a Shadow and a chest at the other end. We darted along in the small hideaways provided by more caged wooden boards until we reached the Shadow and Joker pounced upon it like he was some kind of cat. Two Koropokkgurus popped out and Joker’s information had Panther dousing them quickly with two balls of fire. An All-Out Attack finished them off.

From the chest we received a ring which contained a Nuke based spell, I stepped away from it feeling slightly nervous about being near it as Joker gave it to Mona who hooked it over his tail quite comfortably. As there had been a door back near the first, we retraced our steps and emerged back into the gallery we’d left. We darted through the gallery and emerged on the other side to move through another door.

This led us to a pale blue-grey hallway like the rest with the striated blue carpet but it turned out to be the door we’d previously found locked. Turning around, we darted to the opposing end through more lasers and up a set of stairs that led through a block shaped arch of those infernal golden squares. Another blue tinged room with twisted paintings greeted us, although there was a door at the end with glass screens and a glass window a short distance away from the door.

Joker ducked down and we followed his moves, keeping low to the ground so that we could avoid being seen by any Shadows that might be sitting in there. We turned the corner and moved along before standing up, before us lay a long room with two other rooms beside it which were separated by panes of glass. There were gold coloured panels and paintings around the wall; a semi-circle of yellow couches and sitting right in the middle was a golden ornament that seemed to have some sort of pulsing effect coming from it.

“H-Hey, wait a second! You’re just gonna ignore that golden sheen?” Mona asked. I came to an abrupt stop and whipped around to stare at the healer who was gazing at the golden ornament with almost dreamy eyes; that was a surprising thing to hear from him, especially after what he had gone and said earlier about not touching the displays especially since Madarame’s cognition would likely cause us to be ensnared in a trap.

“You said not to touch the displays Mona,” I reminded. I had hoped that hearing his own words being shot at him would knock the sense back into Mona before he ended up doing something reckless like approaching the object and getting us caught; unfortunately, it seemed that my words went in one ear and out the other without even brushing against his brain since Mona remained staring at the object.

“Mmmm… look at that lustre…,” Mona purred. I looked at the others and found they were giving Mona versions of their own disbelieving looks, Panther’s was a far bit more deeply concerned than Skull’s who looked rather annoyed – though given that the one who’d told him not to touch anything was talking about doing that same thing, he can’t be blamed – at the swooning cat. Joker looked like he was contemplating picking the cat shaped thief up if he didn’t get a move on.

“I know that’s not catnip Mona! Calm down!” Joker demanded. He sounded rather annoyed and none of us spoke up against him for it, Mona should not have been distracted so easily by a shiny piece of cognitive creation; I have no clue what he could possibly be thinking getting so focused on something that wasn’t even real.

“I know it might be tough to take with us, but don’t you think it’d sell for tons?” Mona wondered. He then proceeded to leap onto the pedestal and hug the item in question, he didn’t even know if it would materialise outside of the Palace; even if it did, given Madarame’s perchance for plagiarism I was doubtful it would actually be worth anything if we did try to sell it.

“C’mon, we didn’t come here to-,” Skull began to complain. But he stopped himself and I think his pallor rushed white. “Hold on, you’re steppin’ on something!” Skull warned. That wasn’t good, there was probably a pressure plate underneath the display and who knows what that could trigger now that there was the wrong kind of weight on it.

“Isn’t this bad!?” Panther exclaimed. She was right about that and I doubt that we’d be able to stop it by yanking Mona off the pressure plate, in fact that could make things worse for us, who knows what we’d have to deal with but either way I wasn’t exactly keen to stand around and find out whatever it was that would be coming.

“Get back!” Joker yelled. I threw myself back into a handspring and flipped away as Joker did the same thing; this was fortunate for us as we managed to avoid getting caught in the security net that was thrown up around the object, sadly none of the others had managed to escape and were completely encased within the crisscrossing lasers that formed a cage completely surrounding them.

“Oh no, I tripped the security!” Mona realised. I wonder if this was one of those situations where people felt the urge to face palm, I certainly know that my hand was twitching slightly though whether to grab Mona’s scruff or strike my own forehead I couldn’t tell; Joker groaned slightly and dropped his face into his hands, we were definitely in a sticky situation now that most of our team was captured.

“Urgh! And you were the one makin’ us be careful too… so whaddya wanna do? Run outta here?” Skull wondered. Skull’s complaint was rightly made, but his suggestion was a horrifically bad idea for more than the strain that it would inflict upon his leg; even worse was that it looked like he was preparing to follow through with the action despite no one else having given him a response.

“Don’t be suicidal Skull! Running through those lasers will bring Shadows down on our heads, if the alarm hasn’t already done so,” I warned. Thankfully this jerked Skull’s movements to a stop as he lifted his brown eyes to look at me, Panther also turned her blue gaze over to my location and I spotted them widening when she took in mine and Joker’s location.

“Hold on! Joker and Amazon aren’t trapped!” Panther pointed out. Mona turned himself around in order to see that we were the only two currently safe from the imprisonment; honestly that was probably down to nimble reflexes, Joker’s warning, and a fair amount of good luck that we’d managed to escape before the cage was sprung.

“Sorry you two, but we’re going to need you to search for a way to turn off these infrared lasers. This is a museum, so there has to be some switch to let the workers avoid these lasers. Find it!” Mona pleaded. It was the only way, and we’d best accomplish it fast otherwise an inundation of Shadows would show up and as skilled as Joker and experienced as I was, I didn’t fancy the idea of going through with such a thing.

“I’ll search one side; you take the other!” Joker insisted. I sounded my agreement and turned to look at the wall of glass to my left, there wasn’t anything for me to jump on in order to climb up, but there was a walkway that linked the two glassed off areas right over my head. I aimed the grapple and fired, thankfully it tangled around a vertical pole and I was yanked up to it.

Carefully walked along the edge towards the painting filled room, I spotted a Shadow stalking around within that room as I called upon my Second Sight, there was no time to waste. I spotted that a painting seemed to call out to me; relaxing my sight I crept along until I could safely watch the patrolling Shadow stalk along its’ path. Jumping down, I darted over to the painting and pushed it aside, revealing a button behind it. I quickly pressed the object and the red light beneath it turned off.

The golden drapes that had hung in the area suddenly rose up, while the glass partition that sealed Skull in dropped down. The Electricity wielder darted out but that immediately alerted the Shadow as to what was going on and it charged towards Skull. Luckily, Skull swung his weapon into the Shadow which forced it to stumbled backwards, I darted over to stand beside him as the Shadow manifested. It looked incredibly disturbing, like an onion stuck to the defeathered body of a chicken.

“It’s Weak to Ice and Bless. Luckily, it’s neutral to any of our capabilities,” I explained. Skull was grinning at my words, but I’d need to keep his head on straight during the battle. “Boost your attack first!” I insisted. Skull seemed to recover his senses and he proceeded to used his Tarukaja to do as I insisted. I quickly copied him to raise my own attack though in the magical variety.

The creepy little thing called an Onmoraki proceeded to let out a cruel shriek as cursed energy surged up. It twisted around me, causing a small grunt to escape from me, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Skull immediately had Captain Kidd manifest and it flew forward to hit the Shadow. I followed up with a hail of rocks from Phantom. The Shadow retaliated with the same Spell as before, but with our boosted capabilities, we were easily able to deal with the Shadow. We left the area and met up with Panther and Joker.

“Now we just gotta get Mona out,” Skull commented. But there was a significant problem, while Skull and Panther had been able to escape via the removal of the glass that had also been locking them in alongside the lasers, Mona was completely surrounded by lasers and since he was in the rough centre of the room, we wouldn’t be able to lift him out from above since there was nothing for us to stand on up there.

“But… I don’t think we’ll be able to get him out unless we can turn the lasers off,” Panther admitted. That was exactly what we’d have to do if we wanted our healer back before this situation got even worse, the only question was how to turn the lasers off, there hadn’t been anything else which caught my attention while searching with my Second Sight.

“There has to be a control room for them! I don’t know if it’s nearby though!” Mona exclaimed. That seemed the most likely place for us to search, it should also be close by if it was to control this area but how close was the real question. So far nothing had come to investigate, but that could change at any moment.

“Let’s try that room we saw before coming in here!” Joker insisted. We darted back to the room but quickly found an issue, the door was locked, Joker raked his gloved hands through his hair and I could practically taste the stress rolling off of him at having been thrown into this situation head first; not that I blamed him since it was rather stress inducing and I could feel the tension building within my muscles. We needed to get in this room, but how? At that moment, I remembered something I spotted.

“I think I saw a vent back in the area where I found the button to get Skull out,” I admitted. We ran back to the area and quickly pulled ourselves up and in, this time I dragged my skirt up so that it rested to the side instead of over my ankles; this prevented me having another falling incident. Panther also threatened Skull again about looking up despite the boy’s protest that he wouldn’t do that.

Once inside the room that had been blocked off, we found a control terminal that Skull happily pointed out that it seemed to be connected to a security system. He encouraged us to turn it off, but there was a slight problem, that problem came in the form of us requiring a password in order to turn it off… couldn’t things just go easy for us.

“We should probably try to find the password… but I doubt it’s just lying around somewhere,” Joker admitted. That was highly unlikely as the cognition would ensure it was ensconced somewhere safe from our kind of hands, much like how those two creepy eye keys were in the hands of Knight Captain; well know, that might just be a helpful memory.

“Why not spy on the Shadows,” I suggested. Everyone proceeded to look at me with perplexed looks in their eyes. “There won’t be a password lying about because Madarame’s mind will assume all his security knows the password. Security here is Shadows, so the Shadows will know. And it’s either spying or interrogating but interrogating means confrontation and takes time, we need to be quick for Mona’s sake,” I explained. Joker nodded his head sharply, showing he agreed with my suggestion.

We opened up the door only to spot two Shadows right in front of us, they were far enough away that we hadn’t been seen yet. Each of us dived out of the doorway to avoid arousing suspicion as the door hissed close behind us, we took up different positions as the Shadows began to chat about us. They knew we were here despite the lowering Security Level and the password had been changed… this was to a sequence of numbers that when read upside spelt hello, whatever works I guess.

“That was almost too easy,” Panther commented. Easy it might be, but it was best to take every lucky break that we could find; once the two Shadows stomped off to… wherever, we returned to the terminal and Joker entered the code into it, thankfully the system showed the laser field being shut down. “It looks like it worked!” Panther cheered.

“Sweet! Let’s go grab that stupid cat and get movin’!” Skull insisted. This time, I’d let the stupid comment stand, since Mona had been very stupid to completely disregard his own warning and cause such an issue; we left the room and returned to Mona who had hopped off the display without taking the ornament with him which I was thankful for.

“I-I’m sorry… that was very much unlike me…,” Mona admitted. Considering he had reacted the same way towards Treasures, it wasn’t entirely unlike him, but it was a bit odd that he’d done that to a non-Treasure object. “Urgh, that is true… I can’t believe I made such a novice mistake, even for solid gold,” Mona chastised. He was really beating himself up for that mistake, so I decided to not lecture him about it. “But something was drawing me to this vase,” Mona admitted. He even turned around to look at the object that had caused this terrible mess.

“What do you mean? Isn’t it just an ordinary gold vase?” Panther wondered. It certainly looked like an ordinary object. “I wonder if there’s something special about it. Should we take a closer look just in case?” Panther suggested. The gold vase suddenly disintegrated and out popped an almost ghost like entity attached to a shining pink diamond. My eyes widened in shock upon seeing the entity.

“AH! No! Not ordinary! Grab it!” I yelled. Joker responded fastest and immediately jumped at the entity and brought his dagger down on to the diamond’s surface, allowing us to form a star around the object to limit its’ movements. “Its’ only weakness is Nuke attacks, whatever you do don’t use any kind of Physical attacks, it resists those,” I warned.

“Mona! You’ll need to attack them! Everyone else, support Mona!” Joker commanded. He then tore his mask off as Slime manifested and a positive aura surrounded Mona. Deciding to do the same, I removed my own mask to boost Mona’s offensive magic. Panther brought out Carmen to lull the ghostly entity to sleep. Joker tossed an item to Skull which lowered the entity’s magical defence.

“Take this!” Mona declared. He utilised the ring that Joker had given him to strike its’ weak point, the entity was knocked down instantly and woken up in the same move. We quickly closed the star shaped formation and Joker demanded that the entity lend him its’ power; this wasn’t a Persona twisted into a Shadow so I don’t know if it would even work.

“My name is Regent… my existence shall become a new part of you,” The entity spoke. That had to be the easiest negotiation we’ve had, since all others had to be talked into joining, the mask transformed and proceeded to fuse into Joker’s mask; well, if it worked then it worked, we all released our weapons and relaxed slightly.

“Good, good! The was pretty nice considering it was your first time running into one,” Mona congratulated. It was very impressive that we’d managed to stop it so quickly after it had appeared, I was just glad that we’d done that instead of letting it escape; it wasn’t something we’d come across often so capturing one was for the best if we wanted to learn what they could really do.

“What was that?” Panther asked. The question didn’t come as a surprise since this was the first one they had ever ran across, I glanced over at Joker and saw he had his eyes closed and was seemingly oblivious to the conversation going on around him; shrugging my shoulders at his tuned out state, I turned to look at Panther in order to properly answer the question.

“They’re Treasure Demons. Extremely rare Shadows that take the form of something we consider valuable. I don’t know all their uses, but they probably have some special ability that Joker will be able to make use of since they’re so rare,” I explained. Igor and Lavenza had vanished by the time I’d run into the first Treasure Demon, so I really was clueless about what they could be capable of.

“However, they run very fast and attacks don’t deal very much damage to them,” Mona warned. We had been lucky to have managed to be in possession of its’ weakness thus allowing us to deal some proper damage to it and prevent it from running off. A small hum came from behind me and I turned my head to see Joker had opened his eyes.

“It can’t be used in battle, but it possesses Spells that attacks a group and covers all Elements. I think if I can fuse it with something else,” Joker commented. I raised my eyebrow in confusion at that last part; but Joker seemed to refocus. “Let’s keep moving!” Joker ordered. All of us agreed and turned to face the other end of the display area that had been such a problem.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 36: - Sealed Cognition

We decided to keep moving since none of us were particularly drained, the enemies we faced happened to be going down easy thanks to our Baton Pass continually allowing us to strike enemies’ weaknesses. But that was probably only happening due to the enemies being on the weaker side, the further in we went then the more powerful Shadows would start cropping up. A slight shiver crawled its’ way done my spine and the thought of facing something like the Belphegor or Torn King of Desire again.

A second Safe Room was located and etched within our minds, but we came across a slight problem further down the chequered patterned hallway. An infrared laser grid was present much like the ones we’d come across previously instead of the mad trap we’d just escaped from. But this one had all three boxes activated, forcing us to step back and look around, Panther found us a hole in the wall which we all climbed up only to see something quite shocking.

“The hell!? How’re we supposed to get passed this huge hole in the-,” Skull began to exclaim. Not that I could blame him, there was a massive hole in the floor that stretched across the entire floor right in front of the opening we’d used and spanned a fair distance, stopping only a few steps away from the opposite wall. A single plank of wood stretched across the opening, but it was parallel to our current location.

“Calm down. Look at there the security guard is walking,” Mona insisted. I did as our healer instructed and noticed that, despite the obviously impossibility of the action, the Shadow was marching quite securely over the hole in the ground. And, if I looked closely enough, I spotted a shadow splaying out on the hole.

“It’s a trick,” I growled. The hole was either a painting or covered by glass, either way it was a ploy to make potential infiltrators think they were trapped, we jumped down and took out our annoyance on the security guard after ambushing it. Now that I was on the ground, it was easy to see that the hole was simply a painting… what a devious trick to have embedded within your own Palace.

“Do you think there’s anything worthwhile in there?” Joker asked. I looked over and saw that he was gesturing to the restrooms that were at the back, Mona didn’t know and neither did I, so we decided to take a peek inside them anyway with me and Panther taking the women’s room while the boys took the men’s. Within the women’s room was a treasure chest so I opened it up and pulled out an accessory that I realised could be useful, we stepped back out and I handed the choker to Joker who quickly pocketed it and motioned for us to follow him out the doorway.

We kept going through the hallway, coming across more single display cases which we used to hide behind. However, we came across something unexpected marching through the corridors, it was a Shadow with the same purple mask that the others possessed but the shape of the body was completely different. Instead of being a burly security guard, this was a fancy suit wearing feminine shape, I’d never seen a Shadow be a different shape to the others before the mask was torn off.

Exchanging looks, we decided to ambush it anyway when I confirmed it wasn’t dangerous for us to face. Joker darted out and proceeded to tear the mask off, which revealed four Hua Pos floating in the air. Acting quickly, I easily prepped my bow and fire off arrow after arrow, easily skewering three of the fairy girls. But the last one managed to dodge the attack. I passed to Joker who took down the last one by using a new Persona that looked like a little snowman dressed in dark blue called Jack Frost.

With them all down, we attacked, but there was an issue after we pulled back. The Hua Po that Joker had knocked down had been eliminate, but not the ones I’d successfully knocked down all of which were still present. The others successfully eliminate them, but that didn’t stop the unsettled feeling in my stomach as I looked at my bow. It had worked fine against the Pixies, so why weren’t the Hua Pos similarly affected? Was it because they were stronger? But my strength shouldn’t have waned so suddenly that the arrows were so much weaker now.

“Amazon!?” A voice yelled. I jumped slightly and dropped my bow to hang at my side as I turned seeing that everyone was giving me concerned yet confused looks. “You okay?” Skull asked. There was no reason to give them anything to be concerned about regarding my bow’s capability, not when there was something more important for us to be focusing our attention on.

“I’m fine, nothing to worry about,” I answered. I hooked my bow back over my back; however, while Panther and Skull seemed to accept my response – from their expressions – neither Joker nor Mona were willing to let this topic go, even if they weren’t going to push it now, which was fine by me. “Shall we keep moving?” I suggested.

We kept pushing onwards, eventually entering an area that still had that awful golden colour to its’ walls and more horrific paintings hanging about. Yet as we stepped inside, I couldn’t help but feel a worrying sensation roaring its’ way across my stomach. I turned around to try and get some answers, only to see two rods rise out of the ground and become electrically charged as blue crackling lights shot across so the two were connected.

“Guys! We’ve got a problem!” I called. This was a very worrying thing to happen to us, another blasted trap that we ended up stepping into without any idea that it would happen; with all of us trapped there wouldn’t be an easy solution to escape from this trap like last time. The others pivoted around to face me as one of the boys groaned in annoyance at seeing the electrical fence that had sprouted.

“Huh? Is this…,” Panther wondered. I nodded my head sharply, we were caught in here and there was probably going to be more trouble coming for us if they had managed to set up a trap to capture us; I quickly summoned my naginata to my hand and widened my stance slightly, we were going to be attacked but where it came from was the real question?

“Intruders in the Second Exhibition Room! Apprehend them at once!” A slightly crackly voice ordered. All of us quickly pivoted around to face the enemies that would no doubt be appearing in seconds thanks to that summons; moments later some Shadows popped into existence further within the room, all I could be thankful for was that their position meant they were blinded by the walls that the paintings hung from.

“Crap! Let’s get outta here, fast! Which way’s the exit!?” Skull panicked. Panther hissed a shush at him which was appropriate since his exclamation would only bring the Shadow’s attention to us faster; in fact, I could see their masked faces twisting about in order to locate the source of the sound, Joker forced us to shuffle backwards to avoid being spotted.

“Locked behind the electrical fences, and I don’t think we should try jumping them, especially Mona,” Joker answered. A wise decision, especially considering Mona’s weakness to Electricity. “Into the shadows! Now!” Joker ordered. We did as instructed and dived for cover before the Shadows managed to find us, we could risk trying to poke around to find a way out, or attempt to ambush the Shadows instead.

We neared the first one and Joker promptly ambushed it. Sadly, the commotion caused by the ambush drew the other      towards us. I darted out and proceeded to leap onto its’ shoulders and tear off its’ mask. Dropping back to the ground with a quick roll to get back on my feet, I faced the Shadows that had appeared. A woman had emerged, clad in a white kimono that flowed around her, various paper fans covered her body, face and were even held in her hands; those fans and her legs possessed purple circles that made me think of how the Psy element was represented.

“Ame-no-Uzume,” I muttered. Panther moved over to join us, but I grabbed a hold of her. “Bad idea, Panther, she’ll Drain your flames allowing her to heal,” I warned. I quickly cast a glance over my shoulder and saw that Joker was currently staring down a trio of Jack Frosts. “You’re better off helping Joker,” I insisted. Panther swallowed and nodded her head as she turned to help our leader while Mona hopped nervously at my side. “It’s only Weak to Psy,” I growled out.

“Skull! Help out Amazon and Mona! We’ll be done with this soon enough,” Joker ordered. Skull appeared at my other side and I faced the goddess, Mona started things off by quickly healing Skull from the drain on his Life Energy that he’d done earlier. Skull boosted his physical attack while I quickly raised the magical version for myself.

But that was when the problems started. I felt the crackling energy manifest as Ame-no-Uzume swung her fans out, sending the wave of Electricity to all of us. Skull stood still and took the hit without much issue, just a casual shrug of his shoulders. I stepped around the bolts to avoid them, Mona on the other hand dodged rapidly to avoid his weakness being hit. I hadn’t expected anything like that, since it was neutral to Electricity.

I quickly attacked with my Gravity which rattled the enemy but didn’t knock her down. Skull followed up with a fierce Physical attack from Captain Kidd. Mona was wary after the electrical attack, but he still summoned Zorro and blasted it with Wind. The goddess retaliated, but not with lightning bolts this time, instead it used Wind to attack. Skull was not as swift as Mona and got hit this time. Ame-no-Uzume reacted swiftly by calling more lightning out, probably hoping to hit Mona this time.

Lucky for us, Joker and Panther had finished their battle. Joker jumped in to protect Mona, covering the cat shaped thief with his body, meanwhile me and Panther proceeded to drag Skull out of the way of the Electricity, even if he would be mostly fine. Once the attack ended, Panther darted forward and quickly used her Sleep Spell upon the goddess. Joker followed up the attack with an Ice Spell from Jack Frost. A failed negotiation with Joker not being strong enough led into a swift All-Out Attack thankful dealt with Ame-no-Uzume.

We looked around and Joker called us over when he found something, we drifted over and located a tall, metal box that would allow us to reach the top of one of the paintings displays. We climbed up it and Joker suddenly swung across on his grapple, he moved over to the left-hand wall and reached a finger out to something that lay there. This caused a slight buzz to echo throughout the room.

“Oh look! The electric fence’s deactivated now!” Panther chimed. I glanced down and let out a relieved sigh when I saw that Panther was right, the crackling barriers had disappeared back to wherever they’d sprung from thus allowing us to start pushing further into the Palace; Joker jumped down to the ground and we all made to join him.

“This should let us move forward. Nice work, Joker!” Mona complimented. Joker shrugged his shoulders but then I saw Mona’s fur stand on end. “I’m sensing something. I think one of those doors must be nearby,” Mona admitted. He must have been referring to the Will Seeds, which seemed like a good idea. “Let’s try and find it!” Mona insisted.

“Over there seems like a good place to start,” I suggested. I pointed to the small alcove that had been in the centre of the room which I had spotted contained a set of stairs going up; we darted over and quickly ascended the steps, taking the left-hand path led us to the other side of the door where Joker had deactivated the electrical fence.

Further along was an opening that led out onto a balcony with a walkway overhead. Joker grappled up to it and we all followed after him, the walkway led us beyond the wall that contained the blue and yellow glass wind that had blocked the treasure chest. We dropped down and spotted the Will Seed door which had braided golden ropes criss-crossing the surface.

“Don't worry, this is a genuine masterpiece...” Madarame’s voice echoed. Thankfully since they were expecting the voices this time, no one jumped but there was tension spreading across all of us at that lie. “Nosy pupils have to have their prying eyes plucked before they become a real problem” Madarame’s voice carried on. The creaking of leather echoed through the room at those words. “You don't have what it takes to distinguish imagery from the real image!” Madarame’s voice continued. Seemingly done with the vile words, Joker slashed through the braided rope and then pushed the door open, allowing us to step inside and claim the first Will Seed which declared his distortion as being Vanity, our Soul Power got a boost and we also got a usable item from the treasure chest that was behind us

We returned to the painting room and headed through the one doorway we hadn’t explored yet. There was a gold plated room beyond and at the end was another chequered pattern wall but this time it was made of blue and yellow glass, there was something behind it but the coloured glass distorted it. We quickly strode down the hallway and followed the glass wall to its’ opening, beside the opening was a rectangle depression filled with water and the sides surrounded by plants; a Safe Room lay behind the trees.

However, Skull’s attention had been seized by what was beyond the glass wall so much so that it silenced him; frankly anything that managed to silence Skull was worth paying attention to. It was a massive courtyard with golden walls that had creamy yellow patterns on the surface, interspaced by glowing blue windows. Hedges curled across the ground, leading up to a bamboo painting that was split down the middle by lines of wood, beyond that was a towering building that was so shiny, I’m certain coloured splotches started to dance in front of my eyes.

“Whoa, it’s even gaudier than the rest of the museum,” Panther breathed. I reached up to rub at my eyes in the hopes of clearing my vision, but I still nodded my head to show that I agreed with Panther’s assessment of this section’s ostentation; it was clear this place was more important to Madarame’s cognition than the rest of this repulsive building had been.

“It definitely looks like something important would be hidden away in there,” Mona agreed. Another thing I agreed with, for it to be so much more elaborate and hidden deeper within the cognitive building then there was bound to be something – hopefully the Treasure – of great importance located within this section.

“Let’s go find out!” Skull encouraged. He sounded excited and while it was a good thing that we managed to find it in our first infiltration, there was also bound to be a bunch of issues attached to this area; I lowered my hands from my eyes and blinked them in a slow manner for a few moments, reassure that the splotches were now gone.

“If it’s worth hiding something back there, then the enemies will be stronger, we should be careful of such a potential increase of danger,” I warned. We needed to be careful when adventuring in this new area, we’d already been caught by two traps that had hampered our ability to move and the enemies were going to be an even greater threat due to how important this building seemed to be.

“We’ll go, but cautiously,” Joker decided. He turned and began to walk towards the painted door, however when he got close, the door – and all the doors beyond it – snapped open, causing our leader to still as he turned his head to give both sides a stare. “I really hope they don’t decide to close on us,” Joker stated. He then proceeded to make his way forward with a fair amount of tension attached to his muscles.

Following after Joker, we cautiously made our way down the golden pathway towards the gaudy building at the end. As we got closer, I saw another painted doorway that towered over them, it seemed to be designed in the manner of a peacock’s tail plumage. But in front of that was a wide band of red that was translucent and too tall for us to jump over. As we got closer, the red band stretched further and further across my vision until we entered another courtyard.

This revealed a prominent problem, the red band was actually several red bands interspaced by the same devices that had created the electrical fences. They stretched and covered the entire courtyard which meant approaching the peacock door wasn’t possible; I looked at Mona and saw that he had the map out and a frown on his face, which confirmed my worst suspicions, our only way deeper in was forward.

“Whoa! The hell?!” Skull asked. Nothing good, that was certain, another elaborate trap had been sprung in front of us and it handily prevented us from actually making any progress, plus from just a quick glance I was certain that there wasn’t as easily accessible way for us to get rid of this new nuisance… I was getting really tired of these damned lasers.

“Are these… infrared lasers? There’s no way we can get passed them…,” Panther admitted. We needed to get through them but with no way to turn them off, then that was basically impossible and given the laser’s height it was impossible to jump over any of them to reach the other side to check; plus, there was nothing for us to grapple to… well nothing in reach which might as well be the same thing.

“This level of security only proves there’s something worth protecting up ahead,” Mona stated. Even if it did lead to the Treasure, it didn’t matter if we couldn’t get passed this blockade, I kept my eyes darting about to search for anything while occasionally allowing my Second Sight to flare up just to try and avoid straining them too much.

“Wait, there’s something written on this sign…,” Panther called. I stopped my scanning and turned to look at the girl who had walked over to a sign that I’d ignored during my search. “All personnel: This door can only be opened via the security room that lies beyond it. Please be cautious, as it is impossible to open from the outside,” Panther read.

“So, it’s never gonna open!? How’re we supposed to get passed!?” Skull protested. It was like a stone had been dropped into my gut as Panther had read that passage, if we could only unlock this security system from the other side then it seemed like we’d never be able to get passed this obstacle; a small hum came from Mona and I glanced at him seeing a contemplative look in his eyes.

“Wait… that door… I think I’ve seen that pattern somewhere…,” Mona spoke up. That was an interesting thing to hear, but if he saw it then there might be a way around this irritation. “Oh right! There’s no mistaking it! That’s the same door I saw the other day!” Mona exclaimed. He had seen something, but it wasn’t in here since none of us had seen anything like that in this place. “Guys, let’s head back!” Mona insisted. Everyone was now focused upon the healer who seemed quite pleased with himself. “I think I know what real world door that’s based on, there may be another way to open it!” Mona explained. A real world door, if it was in the physical world then we might just be able to do something to open the door from that side. “In any case, I’ll explain later! Come on, let’s go!” Mona insisted.

The little cat hopped off back towards the other side of the glass wall, we followed after him and quickly went to the Safe Room on the other side to log it and we left the Palace.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“How’re we supposed to get passed that door?” Ann asked. The concern was etched heavily on her face, we were gathered a short distance from the shack so as to avoid being spotted by Kitagawa or Madarame; I glanced over at Morgana waiting for him to clear up this confusion with whatever he had managed to work out between the two doors that he had seen.

“I dunno… you think there’s some kinda off switch somewhere?” Ryūji answered. That was what Morgana had implied with the things he was saying, I just wanted to make sure that we got all the information possible before anyone proceeded to jump to any kind of crazy conclusions about what to do to get that door open.

“Looks like this is where I come in,” Morgana chimed. So, he was finally going to speak up, everyone else focused upon the human turned cat with a kind of anticipation for what he would tell us. “I have a suspicious place in mind. Remember, this shack is the basis for Madarame’s Palace. I scouted it out the last time we were here,” Morgana reminded. I raised my eyebrows at that as some puzzle pieces slotted into place for me.

“Morgana, are you saying that there’s a door similar to the one we encountered in there?” I asked. I nodded my head towards the shack’s location to ensure he knew what I was talking about, if that was true then the two doors would likely be connected to each other; there’s no way that Madarame’s cognition wouldn’t have those two doors connected given their identical designs.

“That’s correct Natsumi. It’s on the second floor. I noticed an unnaturally hefty lock on a door up here,” Morgana admitted. A secret door with a heavy lock, now that was enough to rouse my suspicions especially with how elaborate the door in the Palace was designed; if it was the same in design out here then that would certainly draw my attention.

“If it’s locked, that means there’s something in there he doesn’t want people to see,” Ann stated. Very true, you don’t lock something without wanting to keep people from seeing what was inside and ensure the contents were kept safe from those who were unwelcomed; for the door in the shack to be locked then that meant Kitagawa was included and that left me with an acidic taste in my mouth.

“But don’t we wanna be openin’ the door in the Palace?” Ryūji questioned. It made sense that he would be confused since they’d never seen it before; I’d never seen it but when you have two masters of the world of the mind coaching you for your first Palace, it kind of gives you a leg up over anyone else who might join you… I wonder if Morgana had something like that to explain his knowledge.

“The door Morgana found and the door in the challenge are essentially the same thing. If we force our target to realise the door on this side can be opened by outsiders, that will automatically cause the same thing to happen in his challenge,” I explained. I hoped that was clear enough for Ryūji to understand why we needed to open the door on this side.

“Exactly, by opening up the real one in front of Madarame’s eyes, it will affect his cognition, opening the door in the Palace,” Morgana admitted. However, from the expression upon his face, I think Ryūji seemed to be having a hard time understanding what me and Morgana was trying to explain to him; I knew Ryūji wasn’t stupid, but he might be the kind of person who learned better from doing instead of being told, that was evident from his weapons training.

“I’m not really gettin’ it… is that gonna work?” Ryūji asked. He seemed concerned, probably wondering if us doing this was even going to work not that I blame him since we didn’t have the evidence that this would even work or did we? If I think about it, then technically the calling card worked on what was essentially the same principal, a forceful change of cognition to alter an aspect of the Palace.

“We’ve done it already. The letter you posted worked on the same principal to solidify our goal,” I pointed out. Ryūji looked at me and blinked his eyes, perhaps not making the connection between what I had said; however, Ann brightened up which implied that she at least understood what I was getting at with my comparison.

“It can’t hurt to try, it’s the only chance we have,” Ren stated. Thank goodness our leader was on board with the decision to go through with that course of action, we knew it could work and it was the best way to actually get through that damnable laser field that Madarame’s brain had twisted around his precious secret door.

“Well… yeah…,” Ryūji muttered. He seemed unsure and I guess with no physical proof to show him that it had been done before beyond the calling card – but we’re in public! – there wasn’t much way we could reassure him like I had with my own information about Palaces; Morgana on the other hand seemed to be insulted by Ryūji’s words as his hackles proceeded to jump upright as he fixed a burning gaze on the false blonde.

“Why don’t you trust me!? It’s worth a try!” Morgana protested. I nodded my head in agreement, just doing nothing and giving up wasn’t an option with Kitagawa’s future and possibly his life on the line, we had to at least try all possible options instead of immediately deciding something was too much hassle.

“But even then, there’s still that hefty lock we have to deal with in reality, right?” Ann pointed out. A fine concern, if we wanted that door open then we needed to get through the lock first, getting it open in front of Madarame was secondary to getting it open in the first place; one would easily be able to lead into the other.

“Oh, that’ll be a breeze. Just give me a hairpin and I’ll handle it,” Morgana claimed. That wasn’t something that could be done in honesty; it wasn’t that I doubted Morgana’s capability for such a thing as I’m certain he had to be the one who taught Ren to make the lockpicks and how to use them, it’s just there was a problem that I think Morgana had to have overlooked.

“With what thumbs Morgana, last I checked you had none,” I reminded. Without those thumbs then manipulating the hair pin in such a manner was probably going to be impossible for him, I also don’t know if his claws would be capable of that kind of necessary manipulation. “It might be better for you to coach someone through it,” I pointed out.

“But who? I can already do it, but me and Ryūji are essentially banned from the building,” Ren pointed out. That was the difficult thing, getting Ren in would be our best bet but if we tried through the front door then Kitagawa was likely to call the cops, if we snuck Ren in and were caught then the cops would get called anyway; honestly it was too risky either way.

“It’ll have to be me then,” I stated. This caused everyone to look at me with confused expression but realistically I was the only choice for us to use. “After all, if Ann-chan tried to do it then Kitagawa-san will end up stumbling over what we’re trying to do since he’s hyper focused on her where as he barely pays me any attention,” I added on. Everyone made sounds of agreement with Morgana seeming to be concerned about something.

“True, but that’ll take some time. Doing everything in front of Yusuke would be impossible,” Morgana admitted. Agreed, if he spotted me trying to break into something that his ‘precious sensei’ considered private, then I’d be the one that the police were called on instead. “If only there was someone who could distract him for a while and keep a check on Madarame’s location,” Morgana commented. My stomach made an uncomfortable sensation at those words.

“Oh… ohhh!” Ryūji exclaimed. I didn’t like the tone of Ryūji’s voice either, it actually made my nerves light up just a little, and not in a good way. “Man, how are we even gonna get into his house? We’d get reported for sure if we force ourselves in,” Ryūji pointed out. His eyes were gazing at Ann and I immediately realised what he was referring to, my mouth dropped open in horror and shock.

“You can’t be serious?” Ren questioned. His tone made my jaw crack shut and I looked at him, seeing a rather terrifying expression on his face, especially since he had plucked Morgana out of his bag and set him on the ground; Ren was glaring between the two of them but more heavily on Ryūji. “You’re suggesting we force Ann to agree to Yusuke’s modelling request just to get inside. After what she went through!” Ren snapped.

“Thank you, Ren, words out of my mouth,” I snarled. At least someone else had spoken up about how horrible this was, I snapped my head over to glare heatedly at Ryūji who looked ready to run and hide from having the two of us glaring at him so much. “It has been barely anytime at all since Kamoshida’s revolting actions and you want Ann to put herself in that kind of situation again!” I added on.

“Ren and Natsumi are right! You’re seriously asking me to do something like that!?” Ann snapped. I’m glad the girl had actually decided to react, though Ryūji – I don’t envy his current situation – looked ready to wilt into a pile and disappear at having all three of us angry at him; even Morgana looked uncomfortable at being included in this glare triangle.

“We’re not saying you should really get naked,” Ryūji protested. His voice was weak as he worryingly looked between the three of us, Morgana moved over and began to wind his way around Ryūji’s ankles in an attempt to comfort him before focusing his blue gaze upon Ann with an almost pleading cast to them; this was up to Ann as to whether she agreed or not.

“It’s simply the best excuse for you and Natsumi to enter Madarame’s house without raising suspicions… so, we’d like for you to play the role of decoy, Ann-dono,” Morgana explained. I know it was the easiest way in, but I didn’t like the idea of dumping Ann into a situation she clearly hated to even think about, I wish I could think of another way to get us inside before this decision was made.

“This is way too sudden… I mean, I don’t even know where the locked door is,” Ann pointed out. None of us did apart from Morgana, it might be on the second floor but for being called a shack, the place was surprisingly spacious which meant that I’d spend more time searching or trying to wheedle that information out of Kitagawa, which could result in him being set off again if I pushed too hard one way or another.

“Don’t worry, I’ll accompany you and Natsumi,” Morgana reassured. That didn’t actually reassure me, it looked like it was being steered closer and closer to Ann being forced to take this pathway, Ann’s expression looked rather uncomfortable as she wondered what to do about the rapidly devolving situation.

“Worst comes to worst, what if we get found out?” Ann asked. An appropriate question since us getting caught would mean we’d have to escape from the shack very quickly to avoid getting caught by anyone calling the police on us; I didn’t want to suggest it, but it would probably be better for Ann to be aware of the best way to escape such a situation if she did decide to agree to this horrible suggestion.

“We could always run into the other world. Being inside would just drop us into the nearest corresponding section,” I suggested. It wasn’t anything I’d done simply because of the danger it could cause for me to end up being suddenly dropped into a fight without even knowing about it; Ren moved forward and planted his hands firmly but kindly upon Ann’s shoulders.

“Ann, as the leader, and more importantly your friend, I’m telling you now; you do not have to do this. We’ll find another way to reach the door. If you feel uncomfortable, scared, sickened or anything that unsettles you, you don’t have to go through with this,” Ren insisted. Ann looked down at the ground, lightly biting her bottom lip as she seemed to be running things through her head.

“But… this is the easiest and fastest way to get inside. And the longer we take then… the more Yusuke suffers… the more he might end up like that other student,” Ann stated. None of us said anything, Ren simply continued to stare at her with a steady, gentle gaze, Ann drew in a deep breath and looked back at our leader. “But if there’s no other way… I don’t… I don’t… I don’t have a choice… I’ll just find a way… to avoid the… naked part,” Ann muttered.

“If anything happens, scream. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I’ll come and get you out of there,” I reassured. Ann looked at me with relief sparking within her eyes, especially since she knew I meant it; just because she knew self defence didn’t mean she’d be able to force her body to move how she wanted in all situations. At least she knew that I’d be there to help her if things got bad. Ann stepped back and her eyes hardened.

“Seriously, you better pull this off!” Ann demanded. Her gemstone hard eyes darted between me and Morgana who proceeded to hop back onto Ren’s shoulders while moving to keep his gaze upon Ann; it seemed Ann had made her choice to go through with this deeply uncomfortable situation and while it left a sour taste in my mouth, we now knew what our path forward would be.

“If it’s for the sake of Ann-dono, I won’t stop scratching even if all my claws were to break!” Morgana declared. I proceeded to give the cat a bland look before walking over to him, I cupped my hand around one of his ears and started to lightly rub it; a deep purr began to emanate from his throat at my actions.

“What exactly would you be scratching? I’m doing the work here,” I reminded. Pulling my hand off, I lightly tapped him on the nose as a reminder, still I would definitely be in need of Morgana’s advice when it came to working my way through that damned lock; let’s just hope it was a case of easier done than said.

“We’ll be countin’ on you two! Don’t let Yusuke notice ya, alright?” Ryūji reminded. I don’t think that would be a problem now that Ann had agreed to go through with setting up the meeting in order to distract him, Kitagawa had become so hyper focused upon Ann that so long as no distractions were around then I doubt he’d get very concerned about anything beyond getting to make his painting.

“If he tries to force my clothes off… I’ll tear that house down!” Ann vowed. For some reason, I actually believed her, the fire of Carmen burned bright within her eyes as she made that promise. “I’m really gonna lose it if we do all this and the Palace’s door doesn’t open. Got it!?” Ann threatened. In response to that, I proceeded to salute as if I was a soldier though perhaps a tad more cheerfully than a real soldier would.

“Yes ma’am,” I responded. I would do everything I could to get that lock open, and if push comes to shove then I’d find a way to break the door down, lock or no lock; at my action, Ann relaxed a little as she smiled at me, Morgana allowed a happy meow to escape from him. Ren still looked uneasy but there wasn’t anything more we could do to keep Ann as safe as possible since she’d made her choice.

“We’re workin’ to get dirt on that guy’s crimes either way. It won’t go to waste,” Ryūji reminded. I still wasn’t happy that he’d gone and suggested Ann go through with the modelling session even if he hadn’t meant for Ann to actually remove her clothing. “Alright, let’s get down and dirty tomorrow,” Ryūji decided.

“Tomorrow!?” Ann exclaimed. She had a right to be startled by having it so suddenly thrown at her, Ryūji claimed that the earlier we did this was for the better “Um, b-but… will Kitagawa-kun agree?” Ann wondered. That wasn’t something any of us could actually give her the answer to given that we didn’t really know Kitagawa’s schedule.

“Only he can answer that, just tell him you’ve agreed to do the modelling and ask when would be the best time for you and Natsumi to come around,” Ren encouraged. Ann nodded her head and so with our decision made we proceeded to walk away from the shack.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Back at home, I was running through what other items I should try to bring along with things from Mementos to give to Ren. It wasn’t like I was going to find anything to help me prepare for lock picking online without knowing the kind of lock so this was the best preparation I could do. My phone went off so I picked up my phone to check what was being discussed.

Ryūji: You get in touch with Yusuke?

Ann: Mm-hm. He asked me to come by tomorrow.

Natsumi: He’s very keen to go through with this painting.

Ryūji: Awww yeah, he fell for it!

Ann: Um, do I… really have to do this?

Ren: No.

Ren: I already said you can back out if you want to.

Ren: We’ll find another way in.

Ryūji: But this is the fastest route.

Ryūji: I get you’re uncomfortable but it’s our best shot.

Natsumi: This is still your choice to make Ann, don’t feel pressured by us.

Ann: I know. I know.

Ann: Just the idea of… getting naked in front of someone I don’t know.

Ann: It’s really making me uncomfortable.

Ryūji: Still, this is such a pain.

Ryūji: We gotta open that door AND have Madarame see it, right?

Ann: Yeah, Morgana said that’ll change his cognition.

Ryūji: I don’t get it.

Natsumi: Remember how we used the calling card to manifest the Treasure. This is working on the same principal.

Natsumi: We’re essentially forcing Madarame to realise his impenetrable door, can be easily opened.

Ryūji: Right. Like a calling card.

Ryūji: Oh yeah, let us know if any weird shit goes down and we’ll be there to back you up ASAP.

Ren: No, we won’t.

Ren: Me and you will be inside the Palace, confirming the door opened and hopefully getting to the Safe Room on the other side, just in case it could close again after Natsumi and Morgana open it.

Ren: Remember what Natsumi said Ann, scream if anything goes wrong.

Ren: Natsumi, I’m trusting you and Morgana to protect Ann.

Ann: Thanks Ren.

Natsumi: Understood, leader.

‘I won’t let Ann-chan go through that kind of pain again, even from an innocent source like Kitagawa. That’s a promise.’ I vowed.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 37: - Through the Door

“So, it’s you two,” Kitagawa’s voice came. I lifted my head from my book and found the painter was standing in front of me and Ren. “You did use this line now that I think about it,” Kitagawa admitted. He should since this is how we met him in the first place, his relaxed expression suddenly became hostile. “Anyhow, what’s with this sudden change in attitude? I was contacted by Takamaki-san last night. She’s accepted the nude modelling proposition. That’s nice, of course… but I hope you aren’t conspiring anything,” Kitagawa stated. This caused Ren to snap his book close.

“I could say the same of you. Asking a pretty girl, you followed to undress and pose for a painting, especially since you seemed reluctant to let anyone else come with her to the painting,” Ren commented. He moved closer to Kitagawa and jabbed the book towards the artist. “If you hurt my friend, I won’t forgive you for that,” Ren stated. Kitagawa seemed to be angered by Ren’s comments as he glared heatedly at the curly haired ravenette.

“Do not make a mockery of art. Don’t judge us by your worldly standards. I’ll call the police if you try anything. Remember that,” Kitagawa snapped. Thankfully the train to our school pulled in at that moment, allowing me to hook Ren’s arm and pull him towards the vehicle; we didn’t need to make this situation any worse with such a confrontation.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We had to get through school first, which also unfortunately included Inui-sensei lavishing praise upon Madarame’s ‘artworks’, but once school was over Ren had me and Ann meet him and Morgana at the doorway to the roof since it was still pretty quiet. Ryūji was busy down the stairs running interference if Niijima-senpai or any of the teachers started getting suspicious.

“One set of lockpicks,” Ren stated. He handed me the tool which seemed to just be strips of metal that had been fashioned slightly for the purpose of catching and moving the tumblers. “And one lockpicking cat,” Ren added on. He lifted up Morgana and slipped the cat inside my bag. “Me and Ryūji will head off now and get into position in the museum. What will you two do?” Ren asked. I lifted the bag to hang from my shoulder, adjusting to the new and moving weight inside.

“There’s something I got to do at home first, but after that we’ll be heading over to the shack,” Ann answered. She’d told me about her plan in a private Chat and while it was something that sounded ludicrous, anything that extended the removal of clothing was something I approved of; Ren nodded his head and proceeded to move towards the stairs.

“Just remember, your safety is more important than anything else,” Ren reminded. He then descended down the steps, Ann took in a shaky breath as her hands trembled slightly, I moved over to grip her hand tightly which she returned briefly before we separated and quickly made our way down the stairs and out of the building.

We return to Ann’s home and the girl went inside, meanwhile Morgana started to give me some advice on how to go about doing the lockpicking, but apart from Ann’s front door which would result in her being locked in there wasn’t anything to practice on. Once Ann emerged with her plan in place, Morgana gaped in shock before I forced him to curl up in the bag and sealed it shut. Ann and I made our way to the shack getting many odd looks along the way that we just ignored; thankfully the door was open which allowed us to slip inside after Ann called our presence ahead.

“To think you’d really come… I assumed you were lying when you contacted me,” Kitagawa mused. His back was still to us, so he had yet to see Ann’s outfit, Ann apologised for it being so sudden. “Oh, it’s not a problem. But as I told you yesterday, Sensei will be returning in about twenty or thirty minutes. So, um… I’m sorry if that causes some anxiety on your part,” Kitagawa admitted. Frankly that was perfect for us.

“That’s why I’m here today, damn it,” Ann muttered. I nudged her foot to remind her to be quiet of our true purpose, especially as Kitagawa turned around and asked her to repeat what she’d said. “Oh no, it was nothing!” Ann exclaimed. She needed to keep herself calm if we wanted this plan to actually succeed.

“By the way… have you gained some weight?” Kitagawa asked. I could tell he was trying to be gentle about this question, though said question was no surprise as I think Ann had put on every piece of clothing she owned. The girl’s silhouette as a result had become rather rotund due to the numerous layers that were covering her form, Kitagawa was naturally shocked and I had to bite my lip in order to suppress the laughter I felt; Ann’s idea was somehow both genius and comical.

“You think so? I weigh the same as always… maybe I’m bloated today?” Ann innocently responded. Kitagawa actually took this in stride which was quite impressive since he simply asked Ann if she was willing to get ready. “I… need to take my clothes off, right?” Ann asked. She was still reluctant to do this, no blame or judgment from me since this was uncomfortable from my position so worse for her, but at least she had a way to delay it.

“Just remember Kitagawa-san,” I spoke up. As I did, I grabbed a chair and dragged it to the doorway. “I’ll be right outside. One unhappy peep from Ann-chan, and I’ll be in here fast as a ninja teleports. So… behave,” I warned. With that, I firmly set the chair down in front of the doorway and yanked the door closed as a way to scare Kitagawa just a little more before waiting a few seconds. “Okay, Morgana, let’s get to work,” I whispered. At my words, the cat wriggled his way out of the bag.

Morgana immediately took off up the stairs, so I tailed after him, easily following the white tip as he guided me through the darkened corridors and my eyesight adjusted to the dim lighting. Eventually we rounded a corner and I came face to face with a more toned down version of the same peacock painted door from the Palace. As Morgana had warned it had a rather hefty lock attached to it… breaking it down might be harder than expected since it looked strong.

“Alright, get ready Natsumi,” Morgana encouraged. I looked over and saw the cat had settled himself onto a gathering of random items that was near the door; I knelt down and found this allowed him to be at eye height with me and the padlock. I pulled the lock pick out and pointed them at the keyhole, feeling a bubble of nervousness rise up within me. “You’ll need to insert the lockpick into the keyhole and carefully move it so that the hook can catch each of the tumblers inside and pull it downwards to open it. Locks like these have four tumblers, all you need to do is be careful,” Morgana explained.

I reached forward with the lockpick and gently slid each of the metal strips into the keyhole, I quickly found that moving them about would be a bit more difficult than I thought. The insides of the lock were quite cramped and I could no longer move the metal pieces side by side, instead I had to trail one after the others as I moved about trying to find something. A faint scratching could be felt as I moved one of the pieces, causing me to pause as I slightly pulled the pick backwards to avoid damaging the lock’s insides which could stop me from getting a hold of it.

My teeth gritted against each other, the more I moved the lockpick about, the less I actually felt anything that could be moved about. I started to get agitated as I moved the strips of metal about in a manner that was increasingly more aggressive than the previous movements. I just couldn’t seem to find anything within this tiny space which didn’t make any sense! Surely, I should have found something by now! Ann, Ren and Ryūji were counting on me to get this done! I couldn’t let Ann’s actions be in vain!

“Natsumi! Calm down!” Morgana snapped. I stopped my violent movements with the lockpick at the sound of his angry voice and pulled back to look at the cat who was giving me a heavy look. “Getting all stressed out and acting rashly is only going to break the lockpick and make it impossible to open the door,” Morgana stated. A sigh that was laden with the frustration I felt escaped my lips as I looked down at my lap.

“I know Mona, but I have to get this lock open, for everyone’s sake,” I reminded. This lock stood in our way and I’d been the one to insist that I do this job as opposed to Morgana who had the experience; if I failed now then I risked everything the others had done falling in like a house of cards. Suddenly a pressure on my right hand caused me to look up and I saw Morgana resting a paw upon that hand.

“But emotion won’t help here, you need to remain serene like how you are when training the others. Focused, calm and confident. I’m here to guide you so you’ve got everything you need to get through the lock,” Morgana reassured. I could almost detect the faintest hint of a smile on his face and a soft, kind gleam was in his eyes; the pressure of his paw was a very human like gesture for him to make.

“Thanks Morgana,” I admitted. I was glad that he was here to help me, if he hadn’t been then I probably would have only become more agitated and ended up snapping the lockpick therefore definitely dooming us; I looked back at the lock and took in a deep breath to centre myself. “You know, if we have to do something like this again, I’d appreciate extra lessons,” I added on.

“It would be my pleasure,” Morgana stated. With that done, I raised the strips of metal and gently slid them back into the lock’s tight confines; I regulated my breathing into the same deep pattern that I used whenever practicing my kata as I gently began to move the lockpick again. Everything seemed to slightly fade away until only my breath and Morgana’s swishing tail could be heard, the pressure of my knees on hard wood faded as I focused on what I could feel through the picks.

I seemed to be able to actually feel stuff this time around, gaps and edges that I had either ignored or completely missed previously due to my silly frustration. I kept trailing them about until one of the edges caught on something that was a little bit more than a gap. Thinning my lips as I focused on that section, I proceeded to press down on it with the lockpick that had caught it and I felt it move. Stopping the movement of the other one, I proceeded to press down a little more firmly, causing the object to depress in response until suddenly it stopped moving and a loud click echoed through the quiet corridor, it felt like it was loud though it likely wasn’t that noisy at all.

“There, one done, only three more Natsumi,” Morgana cheered. I allowed a relieved laugh to escape from my lips once Morgana’s words set into my mind; maybe this wouldn’t be such an impossible thing to do after all. I took a deep breath to focus myself once more and I began to glide the lockpicks about once again, now that I knew the feeling of the tumblers that I was searching for, there was a good chance that it would make them easier for me to find again.

A few more moments of silent movement eventually brought the other lockpick to rest upon a tumbler. I started to depress it just like last time, but I must have done something different because I felt the lockpick lose its’ grip upon the tumbler. A frown curled on my lips as a sigh escaped me, the pressure of Morgana’s paw gently resting on my shoulder cooled my mind. With focus I moved the lock pick around again and found either the same tumbler or a different one, this time I managed to drag it down and the clicking sound echoed once more.

“You’re still not done yet?!” Ann’s voice came. I guess she must have stripped down to the absolute base layer that wasn’t undergarments if she had turned up, hopefully Kitagawa and Madarame would get here soon… but not too soon since the lock was still sealed. “After all the time I bought!” Ann complained. I snapped my head around, taking in the pink camouflage patterned tank top and short jeans with red high-tops that Ann was wearing.

“Here’s an idea, you pick the lock with no training while I seduce the genius painter. Then tell me which one’s easier!” I snapped. Right after, I yanked myself back to the lock and focused on moving the thin strips of metal against the tumblers again; Morgana tried to reassure her by claiming I almost had it, only for Kitagawa to call out to Ann which caused my arms to stiffen up for a few moments.

“You have to stay away from that room. Only Sensei can go in there,” Kitagawa stated. As if we weren’t already aware of this from the darn lock it had sealed around it and its’ deep connection to some secret part of his twisted mind; Ann distracted him by asking what was inside. “It’s a storage room for old paintings,” Kitagawa answered.

“Yeah right, no way anyone puts a lock on old paintings in storage,” Morgana whispered. I nodded my head in agreement, such a lie was flimsy as wet paper, I dragged one of the picks down and felt it catch on something, twisting my wrist slightly to adjust the angle, I pulled it down just a little more and heard a satisfying click that got a low purr to come from Morgana. But Kitagawa also heard it somehow, that or he heard Morgana but either way he wanted to identify the source.

“Never mind that,” Ann suggested. But her voice sounded… weird; nothing like her at all and it made me cast a wary glance over my shoulder in her direction. “Hey Kitagawa-kun… why don’t we… do it in here? I won’t be embarrassed if we go somewhere nobody can find us. Pleeease? I wanna be alone with you. Somewhere like, quiet. You know where we won’t get interrupted” Ann suggested. A pinched expression came on my face the more I listened to this conversation.

“This is almost painful to listen to,” I whispered. Morgana looked to be in pain as well from how awful Ann’s acting was, I hadn’t expected her to a natural at it since that seemed like a skill over a talent, but neither had I expected her to be this terrible at acting… I still say that picking the lock is harder but maybe not by much.

“Is he really going to buy that terrible act?” Morgana asked. Apparently, he was surprised by how badly his lady love was acting; I remained focused on the lockpicking as I adjusted myself angle once more to pull down on a tumbler I’d caught, only to lose my grip and slip slightly which took the lockpick away from it, thus forcing me to start searching for it once more.

“Stay focused!” Ann snapped at us. Obviously, Kitagawa noticed this oddity and questioned her. “Ohhh, it’s just so frustrating that my feelings aren’t getting through to you! Kitagawa-kun, do you not like girls like me?” Ann complained. I wonder how uncomfortable Ann must have been saying stuff like this, it almost made me start chastising myself for not getting through this lock any quicker.

“N-No, that’s not true…,” Kitagawa answered. Morgana rightly questioned how this was working as Ann continued with her… whatever that little act was by asking if they could continue inside; I remained focused on the lock. “S-Sure. I mean, no! We can’t go in there!” Kitagawa responded before jerking right back to a refusal. Either Ann’s acting was better than I thought, or Kitagawa was really sheltered. “It’s locked anyway, so…,” Kitagawa admitted.

“Fine! This is too embarrassing… I’m leaving!” Ann declared. WHAT WAS SHE DOING?! Ann couldn’t just up and leave, we needed to lure Madarame to this door when I managed to get it open and we were already this deep in so we might as well keep going, Kitagawa protested this. “Let’s just do it in here! Okay!?” Ann suggested. Oh, so it was another ploy to try and keep Kitagawa distracted, especially since the boy seemed contemplative.

“I’m home,” Madarame’s voice echoed. So, at last he’d returned, I just had to get this padlock removed and I think I was close since one of the strips was caught on something again, Kitagawa called out to the filthy con artist. “Yusuke?” Madarame asked. I pulled the strip of metal down and heard a metallic sound echo out as the lock finally came undone.

“Alright, it’s open!” Morgana cheered. I swiftly stood up and pulled the connecting bolt all the way back from the hook on the door and set the padlock onto the nearby clutter; before running in, I twisted back to ensure that my words would reach Ann who was staring towards us with a bright smile on her face at me having successfully opened it.

“Drag Kitagawa in here Ann!” I whispered. I then grabbed Morgana and bolted into the open room, it was completely dark, but I was still able to sense the objects in the room enough to dive behind a cabinet standing against the wall in order to hide myself and Morgana from sight; now just to wait for them to join us inside.

“What are you doing there!?” Madarame demanded. I gave a small fist pump of victory at his voice, he’d definitely see the open door which meant that the one inside his Palace was bound to spring open soon; Kitagawa tried to explain the situation to Madarame but from a shocked exclamation that escaped the boy, I guess Ann must have followed my advice and pulled the boy in with us. “Not in there!” Madarame protested. That door had to be open now, he’d specifically seen unauthorised people enter it so it could no longer be un-openable.

“Takamaki-san, this is bad!” Kitagawa panicked. But Ann wasn’t concerned as she proceeded to search around and located the lights, I was blinded for a few moments, but some quick-fire blinking cleared up my sight as shocked gasps reached my ears; from my position all I could see was an easel covered by a purple shroud. “What the…,” Kitagawa wondered. I adjusted my position and looked over only to see more canvas lined up and all containing the same painting.

“Isn’t this… Sayuri?” Ann wondered. It was indeed the maiden work of Madarame’s career. “Why are there so many of them?” Ann wondered. A fair question since it made so sense for there to be so many, that reporter had claimed that it had been stolen, but was that really true? And why was the easel at the back covered by a cloth; that was extremely suspicious to me.

“I have no idea,” Kitagawa admitted. The genuine shock in his voice and his earlier confusion proved that the young artist was baffled by all these replica paintings lying about; there could be any number of reasons for why they were here in this locked room, but only Madarame could answer that and by the creaking of floorboards he might just be pushed into that corner now.

“Get out!” Madarame ordered. He was definitely in this room with us, but I wondered if Kitagawa would attempt to get answers out of his teacher now, or if he’d continue to remain blind to the truth; Ann seemed to be fidgeting and slightly twitching her head slightly, likely looking for me and Morgana but I couldn’t risk reaching out without getting caught by Madarame, possessing the element of surprise was necessary.

“Sensei, what is the meaning of this?” Kitagawa questioned. It would be interesting to see the lies – because it was doubtful he’d tell the truth from a simple question – that Madarame would proceed to spin towards his student; Ann had stopped looking around and seemed laser focused upon Madarame now, no doubt also wanting to hear the things he decided to tell Kitagawa.

“I suppose I can’t keep quiet now that you’ve seen this… truth be told… I’m in severe debt,” Madarame claimed. I wonder if that was even true, though given the flamboyant nature of his Palace, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. “I handmade these Sayuri copies and have been selling them through a special connection of mine,” Madarame added on. How could he possibly be selling them if it was meant to have been stolen?

“But why?” Kitagawa wondered. Of course he’d be confused, since none of this would match up with the old man that he was more familiar with, yet despite my interest in this conversation, my attention kept drifting back to the cover easel and judging by how Morgana seemed to only focus upon that easel, he viewed it was important as well; I trusted Morgana’s instinct on this so kept me ready to act if necessary.

“The real Sayuri… was stolen by one of my pupils long ago. I assume they begrudged my strictness,” Madarame lied. More likely begrudged the plagiarism and decided to steal it as a form of retribution. “That moment was quite a shock for me… since then, I’ve been mired in a terrible artist’s block… because of this distress, some of my pupils handed their ideas over to me from time to time. I knew I couldn’t keep that up, so I attempted to recreate the Sayuri a number of times. However, it resulted in nothing more than replicas, that’s when someone came to buy the paintings, knowing well they weren’t originals. It’s all my fault. I couldn’t pay the price of being famous. As expectations for me rose, it reached a point where I had no choice but to keep making them. I… needed money to further your talents… I ask that you please forgive your cowardly teacher,” Madarame claimed.

“Please don’t,” Kitagawa pleaded. Damnit! He was falling for the con already, no surprise since he’d basically been groomed by this man to believe his words, but we needed Kitagawa not to be fooled by the deception; the real question was how to convince the boy to trust us over the man who he’d practically dedicated his life to.

“Hold on. Something doesn’t add up,” Ann commented. I’m glad that she had spoken up so suddenly, I was still spinning my mind as to how to convince Kitagawa to side with us over. “If the original painting got stolen, how did you make copies of it?” Ann questioned. An astute point to make, even for a skilled artist, to recreate a painting from memory alone meant there would be some kind of different that most art focused people would catch onto, even if the buyer knew this fact they could be lying and others might catch the lie if the defects were obvious or common enough.

“I… happened to find a finely detailed photography of it in an artbook,” Madarame lied. I could practically smell it, he was trying to keep something hidden and the more I thought about it, the more I was certain that it had to be the hidden painting sitting only a few steps away; a wicked smile curled onto my lips as an idea sparked into being.

“So, you managed to sell copies of a photo of the original? I’m not sure how this works, but… don’t people who buy paintings generally have a keen eye for the fine arts. This sounds like a lie to me,” Ann accused. The longer Ann kept him around and got him agitated then the better it would work for all of us; I only felt sorry for Kitagawa who seemed to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

“What would you know!?” Madarame demanded. He was definitely unhappy with Ann’s accusations and probing questions, all I had to do was find the right moment and jump in; I could practically feel Morgana purring from where he was wrapped around my ankles, he must have been enjoying this whole development as well.

“Something just doesn’t feel right!” Ann stated. We just knew something was wrong and Ann couldn’t let go of that fact, not after she let go the last time and what that had resulted in; this seemed as good a time as any to make my move, so I carefully shifted my feet to gently dislodge Morgana before I took my next course of action.

“It’s probably this covered up easel,” I spoke up. I stepped out from hiding, shocking Kitagawa and Madarame as I reached my hand up to the cloth cover. “I wonder what’s underneath it?” I questioned. Madarame loudly protested, but I didn’t listen and instead pulled the purple sheet of the easel which revealed what was underneath; another Sayuri painting.

“Sayuri?” Kitagawa asked. He was surprised, more affected by this one painting than all the others, he drifted towards the painting in an almost trance like state. “This… this is the real Sayuri!” Kitagawa declared. He turned to look at Madarame with a confused expression. “But you just said a moment ago that it was stolen!” Kitagawa questioned.

“That’s a replica!” Madarame declared. However, I don’t think it was, not with the way that Kitagawa seemed to have been almost entranced by the object upon seeing it; his artist sense was better than mine or Ann’s was, so I’d trust what he said about this painting unless someone unattached to Madarame in every way could provide scientific proof that it wasn’t the same painting.

“No, it’s nothing of the sort!” Kitagawa protested. He wholly believed those words and it only reaffirmed my belief that Kitagawa’s claim was right. “This painting kept me going… it’s the reason I made it this far… Sensei… don’t tell me…,” Kitagawa stumbled. He was clearly trying to wrap his head around what his mentor had done while correlating it to the man that he had come to know from childhood.

“It’s a fake… yes, a counterfeit! I heard there was a counterfeit spreading around, so I bought it!” Madarame declared. I let out a scoff, even rolling my eyes, that was such a pathetic claim to make, especially since it made no sense; Madarame proceeded to glare at me, but I refused to back down and instead sent a blank look back at the man who had caused more widespread pain than Kamoshida could ever hope to.

“So, you’re telling me, the actual artist behind the painting bought a counterfeit? That’s pushing it,” Ann commented. Her tone was slightly acidic when she said those words as she shot a baneful look at the man, all her previous respect for the man had instantly evaporated upon hearing the word suicide and now she could deliver some rather fiery looks towards our new enemy.

“Agreed. Besides I trust Kitagawa-san’s judgment. He adores this piece, something tells me that he wouldn’t be fooled by a fake even one created from the original,” I stated. Kitagawa darted his eyes over to me briefly, I wonder if he realised that I was the one to open the door, but now wasn’t the time to be pondering such things and instead he turned his gaze back to the lying ‘artist’.

“You’re lying Sensei… please just tell us the truth,” Kitagawa pleaded. I don’t think that was going to happen, Madarame lived for these lies to continue and now that his most loyal student had discovered them then he was probably going to leave; that would deprive Madarame of the necessary talent/skill to keep churning out the variety of paintings that he was so well known for.

“You too,” Madarame spat. He then proceeded to pull out a phone that looked rather fancy, he messed about with it for a bit before stopping and stalking towards us. “I’ve reported you to my private security company!” Madarame declared. Not good, we couldn’t afford to get arrested by people, for all kinds of reasons. “I had it set up to deal with some problematic paparazzi, but I never thought it’d come in so handy,” Madarame claimed. A smug expression on his face.

“Please, wait! Let’s talk about this!” Kitagawa pleaded. He was obviously trying to defuse the situation before it exploded in a way he hadn’t anticipated; but I don’t think there was any way to mitigate what was coming, not with the arrogant way that Madarame was looking at the rest of us and the way he’d so swiftly decided upon his course of action.

“You can talk all you want to the police… that includes you, Yusuke,” Madarame stated. Oh, that was low! Sending me and Ann to the security people had some logic to it, but to throw Kitagawa to the dogs was nothing more than a treacherous act to smear his student’s reputation and prevent anyone from listening to him regarding the lies and forgeries that we had managed to locate.

“Ann-dono, Natsumi, let’s run!” Morgana insisted. I grabbed Ann’s hand and immediately bolted out of the room, pulling my friend with me; Morgana ran around us, keeping close as I jammed my hand into my bag and dragged out my phone. I completely ignored any voices coming from behind us as I pulled up the Meta-Nav.

“Madarame Ichiryusai! Shack! Museum!” I yelled. At that moment, I felt the Metaverse sensation was over me… right as some weight seized a hold of us.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 38: - The Gallant Rogue

Perhaps activating the Meta-Nav inside the building was a bad idea, if only because the moment the sensation of moving into the Metaverse faded, the sensation of freefalling overcame me. I looked down and saw the ground of the previously barred courtyard – yes! It worked – was coming up fast; I quickly snapped my head around only to get an eye full of something completely unexpected.

“Kitagawa! Imagine you can land on your feet from this height, believe it no matter what!” I ordered. Somehow the artist had ended up falling in with us, no doubt being the source of the weight that had suddenly grasped us when we crossed over. “And don’t let go of Ann!” I added on. Panther was currently being cradled like a princess by the blue haired boy; I looked around and found Mona flailing about, flipping my naginata around I held it by the blade and extended it towards the cat shaped thief. Thankfully he grabbed a hold of it and dragged himself over to cling onto me, I’m certain I felt some claws poking into my shoulders.

We got closer and I quickly organised my thoughts, feeling my body respond to the belief I held and straighten out so that my feet were pointed at the ground. Before I landed, I sharply stabbed down with my naginata, the tip caught in the ground which kept it up right and that support easily allowed me to safely twirl around the shaft until my feet reached the ground, I felt a grateful Mona slump against my shoulders and gently patted the cat on his head. Kitagawa on the other hand landed in a squat kind of position, pain on his face and Panther safely in his grasp.

“Well at least we’re all alive,” I commented. I looked up and felt instant relief upon seeing Joker and Skull were stood there staring at us with wide eyes behind their masks. “There was… an incident in the shack, I’ll explain later. We need to get out of here, quickly,” I explained. Given that someone without a Persona had followed us in, that created a great deal of danger for us on Kitagawa.

“I thought I was gonna die,” Panther groaned. I looked at the girl who was still held in a motionless Kitagawa’s arms, though it seemed Panther had realised where she was. “Hey, will you let go already!?” Panther demanded. She even went as far as to push Kitagawa back so that he toppled back onto the floor while she rolled forward. “Oh no! I didn’t mean to push him so hard… are you okay? Wake up!” Panther exclaimed. She got to her feet and scuttled over to Kitagawa to stare down at him.

“Who are you all!?” Kitagawa asked. No surprised that he was confused since he was probably incredibly disorientated, had just fallen through the sky yet landed safely and we were all wearing masks and dressed completely differently to how he last saw us; but if we wanted to get out of here safely then we needed Kitagawa to trust us and there was one way to speed that up.

“Deep breaths, Kitagawa-san, it’s just us,” I calmly spoke. I even knelt down and lifted my mask so that he could see my face, spots of soft colour began to blossom on his cheeks as he looked over my Rebel’s Armour; I waited until he had finished and his eyes returned to mine and realisation shimmered within his eyes.

“Chiba-san?” Kitagawa asked. He seemed rather confused but not so much that he was losing his head, instead he was processing everything that was happening. “You said not to let go of Takamaki-san, which means… that’s…,” Kitagawa spoke. His eyes drifted over to Panther and then immediately snapped back and I saw those spots of colour darken enough for them to be called a blush. “That means you two are…,” Kitagawa spoke. He glanced at Joker and Skull as he tried to get the fierce blush under control.

“Amamiya Ren and Sakamoto Ryūji, since we were never probably introduced. Can you stand?” Joker spoke. He extended his hand to Kitagawa, but the boy seemed to ignore it and instead looked around a little more before his eyes came to land upon Mona who was stood at Kitagawa’s feet; the painter blinked his eyes a few times as he stared at our healer in silence.

“I don’t recall ever seeing this cat costume before though…,” Kitagawa stated. He was taking that particular revelation awfully well; I’m not sure what Mona was thinking but he didn’t seem annoyed by the comment. “What is this place?” Kitagawa asked. All of us exchanged nervous glances at this question, but we couldn’t avoid it since Kitagawa had fallen into the Palace.

“This is probably going to sound crazy, but we’re inside a place that represent Madarame’s heart,” Panther admitted. She looked incredibly fidgety as she said those words, not that I blame her since this would be a frustratingly uncomfortable conversation to have… I’d honestly prefer to be back in Kamoshida’s Palace hitting my head against a brick wall so long as no one was being hurt.

“Inside Sensei’s heart?” Kitagawa asked. He jerked up at those words and proceeded to climb to his feet, he looked around at this warped and gaudy museum, before focusing upon Panther once again with an incredulous look in his eyes. “I’m sorry Takamaki-san, but are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Kitagawa wondered. It seemed he still didn’t believe, even though the earlier scene should have proven something was wrong.

“She ain’t lyin’. This is what that bastard truly feels. He’s nothin’ but a greed-filled money-grubber,” Skull commented. Kitagawa’s gaze snapped to Skull and narrowed into a sharp glare; the blonde boy on the other hand was actually rather relaxed and lightly swinging one of his legs back and forth with seemingly no care, nice to see that Skull could talk to the artist without making things hostile.

“Enough of this rubbish!” Kitagawa snapped. He also swung his left arm out as if to batter the accusation away with sheer will, but nothing he could do would change this situation and we didn’t have the time for this; Shadows could arrive at any point and if we didn’t bring Kitagawa with us then he’d be in danger, but if he didn’t trust us then he wouldn’t leave with us.

“Kitagawa-kun! Didn’t it cross your mind that something wasn’t right about Madarame!?” Panther snapped. She seemed irritated by the fact that Kitagawa was still denying the events that had taken place in the storage room, we had to do something quickly and Panther was our best way to convince Kitagawa to listen to us.

“That’s…,” Kitagawa muttered. His eyes darted down to the gold pathway with a conflicted look within his eyes, hopefully he was remembering that had caused us to end up in this situation and it was altering his perception of his teacher; Joker stepped forward with a concerned expression upon his face, but it was filled with kindness as well.

“It must be painful for you, but this is the shack you live in, but viewed through Madarame’s eyes which are twisted by a distortion. This is the true nature of his heart,” Joker explained. His tone had been sad as he spoke and Joker gestured to the surroundings with both hands which caused Kitagawa to look at the world around us once more.

“This repulsive world?” Kitagawa asked. His lips were curled in disgust as he took in the horrid place, he then dropped his gaze back to look over the rest of us with questions shimmering in his eyes. “Just who are all of you?” Kitagawa questioned. No surprise he’d ask that and we would have to explain ourselves, but we couldn’t afford such a delay as this.

“Now isn’t the time. Given what happened outside, the Security Level will have increased too much for us to use a shortcut to get out. We need to get to our entry point and get out, Kitagawa-san’s life is in danger,” I insisted. Thankfully, my words reminded the other three of the danger we were all in given how they jumped and quickly looked at Kitagawa before gaining some version of an expression of concern or fear.

“Amazon’s right! We’ve got to get moving before Shadows completely surround us,” Mona added on. Thank goodness Mona had kept a hold of his senses as well, we proceeded to turn to the stained glass that would lead us out. “Since we have an amateur with us, we need to avoid fighting as much as possible!” Mona ordered. We quickly got moving with Joker at the front, Skull and Panther on either side with me and Mona at the back, Kitagawa was safely protected in the middle, we arrived in the area where we found the Will Seed

“So this… is the inside of Sensei’s heart? A vain museum such as this?” Kitagawa asked. He gazed in pain at the pictures of the students, I wonder if he recognised any of them. “If everything you say is true, then the sensei I know doesn’t exist,” Kitagawa mourned. Skull ordered him to snap out of it, Kitagawa gave the blonde a pained look before looking back at the painting he had been focused on. “Still… he has kept me safe these past ten years. My gratitude for that won’t just disappear,” Kitagawa stated.

“We’re not asking it to,” Joker stated. He moved closer to the painter, his tone remaining gentle and soothing as he tried to help Kitagawa who was struggling with such a weighty revelation. “Simply don’t close your eyes to the truth of what that man is,” Joker insisted. Kitagawa suddenly let out a groan of pain and dropped to his knees and folded his arms over his torso.

“Are you okay?” Panther asked. She moved over to the boy and gently rested a hand on his shoulder, Mona immediately started to rummage through our medicines to see if we had anything for internal consumption; I quickly started to keep an eye on our surroundings with Skull soon joining me as well, we didn’t want to be ambushed while distracted.

“I’m trying to be rational about this, but my emotions are overwhelming me,” Kitagawa admitted. If his emotions were making him feel ill then it was no surprise that he was acting as if he was ill, I heard a heavy breathing echoing from behind me but now wasn’t the time to coddle someone as much as Kitagawa needed the processing time; I turned my head to look at the boy on the floor.

“Maybe the sensei you know did exist at some point, but he’s gone now. Be grateful to the man who raised you, but not the thief trying to steal your accomplishments,” I insisted. Kitagawa lifted his head to look at me, but no words came from him; I could only hope that my words would be able to help him come to terms with what happened, after all it’s not like I knew how Madarame could have been years ago.

“Here, lean on my shoulder,” Joker offered. Our leader extended his hand to the boy again, hoping that he would accept the offer this time, either way this might at least motivate Kitagawa to get up soon, no one was here yet but that didn’t mean they couldn’t show up; Kitagawa drifted his eyes to Joker before slowly shaking his head.

“No, it’s alright,” Kitagawa insisted. He stood to his feet, still visibly in pain, but at least he was standing now if slightly hunched over, we kept moving and reached the corridor that would leader us back; but Kitagawa came to a sudden stop. “Ah, this painting?” Kitagawa questioned. He moved towards the painting of a girl in a sailor-style uniform.

“Do you recognise it? We were thinking these might be his past pupils or something…,” Panther asked. Her tone was cautious and delicate, it seemed like apart from when I’d only suspected Kitagawa might recognise someone, this time he definitely did, even though the facial features were so blurred that we couldn’t identify her in a crowd, there might have been something only Kitagawa could see.

“Yes, this is Mina, I haven’t seen her in years,” Kitagawa admitted. I briefly wondered what happened to her before shaking my head to dismiss the thought, anything could have happened and it was best no to entertain any routes for dark thoughts to rise up. “But… why are there paintings of them here?” Kitagawa wondered. This would be hard to explain, but we would need to do it.

“This place creates representations of the people in the life of the person who created it, based upon how the person perceives them. You yourself said it… ‘we are our sensei’s artwork’,” I explained. Kitagawa looked at me and seemed to be processing the information; I saw the moment my words sank in as his eyes widened in horror and he stared at the other paintings that lined the walls behind our heads.

“Technically, those aren’t actually paintings. They’re the pupils themselves,” Mona added on. I don’t think Kitagawa needed the clarification to be made, but if anything, those words only heightened the look of horror on the boy’s face and he took a small trembling step backwards as his left hand pressed more firmly against his stomach like he was trying to keep his insides within.

“Madarame saw ‘em as objects, so that’s what they are in here… oh, and uh… we found yours too,” Skull admitted. I sharply elbow Skull and gave him a stern look after he yelped and turned to look at me; Kitagawa already looked like he was going to be sick or faint, so he really didn’t need to keep hearing about the horrible things that we kept discovering about this place.

“We can talk more later. It’s more important for us to get out of here,” Joker insisted. Thankfully everyone agreed and we started to move once again and successfully reached the Infinite Spring statue; only for Shadows to spring up blocking our exit. “Not good,” Joker hissed. Suddenly a malicious laughter came from behind us, we all whipped around and got an eyeful of Madarame’s Shadow.

He was as gaudy as his Palace, dressed in a traditional yellow kimono that seemed to sparkle aggressively in the lighting; the Shadow had make-up on his face, white face paint with red lips and three black lines around the eyes, which reminded me of the kind worn by a shogun, his hair was styled in a Japanese topknot look that closely resembles a paint brush and even his eyebrows were different, since they were bushier than his normal ones.

“What the-!” Panther exclaimed. I was in the same boat as Panther, this was quite a shocking sight to behold after seeing how Madarame dressed within the physical world, it was like looking at two completely different people; plus, just like his damned Palace, this Shadow was extremely aggressive on my eyes… what was with this guy and extremely shiny things.

“Talk about bullshit clothes! First a king, now some kinda shogun!?” Skull exclaimed. At least someone else had noticed the shogun like make-up that this Shadow was sporting, why was Ouvrard’s maestro Shadow so normal compared to the freakish king and this wacky shogun that I was having to deal with? I hope the other Shadows I ran across were more normal looking.

“Welcome to the museum of the master artist Madarame,” Shadow Madarame greeted. That was such a pathetic claim, if it weren’t for the fact that he’d end up dying I’d probably give into the urge to put my naginata through his chest; he was such a horrible person and utterly impossible of creating anything worthy of being called art, yet he dared to call himself a master artist.

“Huh? Sensei? Is that you? That attire…,” Kitagawa questioned. He had moved to the front of us and seemed stunned by the person standing in front of us, not that his surprise was unexpected as he was probably suffering whiplash thanks to all the events that were going on in front of us; Panther spat out a single disgusting as Kitagawa tried to collect his thoughts. “This… this is all one big lie, isn’t it?” Kitagawa pleaded.

“My usual ragged attire is nothing but an act. Besides, a famous person living in that shack? I have another home… under a mistress’ name, of course,” Shadow Madarame admitted. So that was the truth, this was the way he actually considered himself to be, the way he spoke the word shack showed his utter contempt for that building; I felt my heart ache for Kitagawa at having to confront this truth so harshly and unexpectedly.

“That’s some set-up you’ve got,” Joker sneered. Those words were normally something that might sound complimentary, but the way Joker said it turned them into an insult; our leader walked forward and rested a hand on his hip. “I’d be almost impressed… if I didn’t feel like being violently ill,” Joker added on. An almost venomous bite to his words and his grey eyes were narrowed into a razor-sharp glare.

“Hahaha! How naïve!” Shadow Madarame declared. He was completely uncaring of the insults that were being fired at him by everyone else; I chose to keep my eyes on Kitagawa as I wanted to make sure that the boy didn’t do anything that could put himself in danger, luckily he wasn’t moving from his position and still holding his torso.

“If the Sayuri was stolen, why was it in the storage room? And if you had the real one, why make copies? If it’s really you, Sensei… please tell me!” Kitagawa asked. It was quite likely that we’d actually get an answer out of the man in this world since he would believe we’d be unable to escape from him unlike in the physical world despite the fact that he had called his security on us, plus the mental walls would be down with us in here.

“Foolish child, you still don’t see?” Shadow Madarame mocked. It was getting very difficult to hold myself back from – at the least – punching this man across the room. “The painting being stolen was just a false rumour I spread! It was all a perfectly calculated staging!” Shadow Madarame declared. Oh, that was disgustingly low.

“What do you mean!?” Kitagawa asked. I was still trying to work out the reason in my head, because I couldn’t see any benefit to making up such a silly rumour and then painting an absolute boat load of copies which were stuffed inside of a room. He seemed to view himself as someone who deserved an extravagant life – truly deserving of the distortion of vanity – but what did copies of Sayuri do for him?

“Let me see… how does this sound? ‘I found the painting, but it can’t go public… you can have it for a special price, though’. Haha! How’s that for preferential treatment!? Art snobs’ll eat it up and pay good cash at that!” Shadow Madarame declared. Ah, so he made all those copies under that lie so people with more money than sense would do anything to get a hold of it and keep it hidden, thus allowing Madarame to perpetuate the lie as long as he had gullible fools to con.

“No!” Kitagawa cried. He collapsed to the ground, his left arm trembling as he barely kept himself from face planting into it, I darted down to kneel at his side as I pressed a hand between his shoulder blades; Mona also came over and tried to search for some medicine that would help Kitagawa as I proceeded to keep an eye on the Shadows threatening us.

“The value of art is purely illusion. What’s the matter with providing that illusion to eager customers?” Shadow Madarame questioned. He had no respect for the craft that his students had given their all to cultivate. “Though I doubt a brat like you would ever come up with such a brilliant scheme!” Madarame lectured. Brilliant scheme!? It was something that anyone could come up it, it was also incredibly depraved.

“You keep goin’ on and on about money this, money that… no wonder you ended up with this disgusting museum!” Skull spat. With how he was talking, I’m almost surprised that he wasn’t in possession of a Greed based distortion, though perhaps his arrogant perception of his painting skills was above his obsession with money.

“You’re supposed to be an artist. Right!? Aren’t you ashamed of plagiarising other people’s work!?” Panther questioned. I agreed with her words, the fact that he was perfectly fine with stealing the hard work of everyone else around him showed how little he cared about the painting world. Even though Ouvrard had tried to make me into her little songbird, she did respect the singing art and its’ world.

“Art is nothing but a tool… a tool to gain money and fame!” Shadow Madarame declared. My hand on Kitagawa’s back proceeded to curl into a tight fist as it trembled with my barely restrained anger at the selfishness of this man. “You helped me greatly as well, Yusuke,” Shadow Madarame admitted. As if Kitagawa would be happy to know that he had helped to perpetuate this thing’s existence.

“God… pisses me off… that’s your teacher,” Skull spat. I’d never agreed more with the blonde than in that moment, this infernal Shadow was showcasing just how utterly depraved he had become and the way he viewed not only his pupils but also the very thing that had made him into such a famous man; I could only hope that we’d be able to get Kitagawa away from this horror show, soon.

“But what about the people who believe in you? Who think you’re a master artist!?” Kitagawa pleaded. He was probably desperate to find any residual piece of the kind man who had raised him; but this was the worst place to search for something good, without a mask everything was twisted into something vile inside this world.

“I’ll tell you this alone, Kitagawa. If you wish to succeed in this world, I’d advise you don’t rise against me,” Shadow Madarame warned. Not even giving an answer to the plea that had been issued to him, what a selfish and thoughtless man Madarame truly was; the fact that he had instead proceeded to threaten Kitagawa’s entire future showed exactly what his prioritise were… I took a deep breath to try and cool myself down and keep focused on Kitagawa, but it was a difficult battle.

“Or what?” Joker hissed. He drifted closer and his presence seemed to almost loom over us, but instead of being an oppressive, suffocating and terrible thing, it was instead safe and welcoming, in fact it almost felt protective, like some giant black wings were gently cradling us from any harm. “Are you going to bury his chances the way you did with Nakanohara Natsuhiko!?” Joker questioned.

“Of course! Do you believe anyone could find success with my objection holding them down? Hahahahaha!” Shadow Madarame announced. I couldn’t believe that he was willing to crush the hopes and futures of anyone who even tried to raise their voice against him and reveal the things he’d done, or those who just wanted to find a life away from him without him hanging over their heads like an axe blade.

“To think I was under the care of this wretched man!” Kitagawa mourned. He didn’t deserve to have been raised by this terrible man, Kitagawa should have been cared for by someone that could properly nurture his incredible artist skill so that he could properly shine; yet instead he got this black hole, that would just eat and eat away at Kitagawa until nothing remained except a broken shell.

“You thought I took you in out of the goodness in my heart?” Shadow Madarame asked. I did not like where this was going and I moved to cover Kitagawa’s ears, but he stopped me with his right hand yet stared unblinkingly at the Shadow. “Plucking talented, yet troubled artists allows me to find promising pupils and take their ideas… after all, it’s much easier to steal the futures of children who can’t fight back. Livestock are killed for their hide and meat! This is no different, you fool!” Shadow Madarame admitted. I had, had enough!

“Silence!” I ordered. I rose to my feet and stepped in front of Kitagawa. “You vile, twisted, depraved monster! How dare you take away the hopes and dreams of innocent children! Destroying their hearts all to pursue your own arrogant intentions!” I yelled. My naginata was trust out to point menacingly at the Shadow. “I won’t allow someone like you to keep doing as you please!” I vowed.

“You are unforgiveable,” Kitagawa hissed. I glanced back to look at the boy and found that his arm seemed to gain strength within it as he said those words, the trembling fading away as Shadow Madarame focused his attention upon the student he had so deeply betrayed. “It doesn’t matter who you are… I won’t forgive you!” Kitagawa declared. At least now, Kitagawa was finally seeing this man for who he truly was, the boy rose to his feet as I move back slightly so he could glare properly at Shadow Madarame.

“So, you repay my keeping you around for all these years with ingratitude? You damn brat! Men! Dispose of these thieves!” Shadow Madarame snapped. That wasn’t good, we now had a fight coming without the opportunity or place to hide away Kitagawa to ensure that he was protected from the Shadows’ attacks while we dealt with them.

“Get back!” Panther warned. Of all the time to need an Awakening, but we weren’t likely to be getting one, Kitagawa’s Will hadn’t been strong enough when we entered and it wasn’t like I could just magic up an Awakening, no matter how much I might wish to or the fact that I was the spiritual daughter of the one who bestowed Personas.

“How amusing…,” Kitagawa calmly mused. This pulled everyone’s attention to the boy who seemed to have recovered from his stomach pains as he let out a few laughs. “It seems the truth is stranger than fiction, hm? I wanted to believe it wasn’t true… I had clouded my vision for so long… my eyes were truly blind. Blind and unable to see, the true self behind this one horrible man!” Kitagawa realised. A few heartbeats passed before he suddenly gasped and dropped his head towards his hands before rising back up with the hands gripping his hair as he stumbled about.

“Amazon! Is he awakening to a Persona!?” Skull questioned. Kitagawa began to scream in pain before dropping to his knees and clawing at the floor, leaving bloody marks on the floor; Kitagawa raised his head and I saw the echo of Shadow gold in his eyes, right before a traditional kitsune-style half mask appeared on his face.

“The answer to that, Skull, is yes,” I stated. I quickly snapped my head towards Kitagawa to ensure that he knew what to do. “Kitagawa-san! You need to pull the mask off!” I called. I was surprised that we’d run into not only another Ruler but also a Persona wielder as well; I hadn’t anticipated our gravity to move in such a manner to bring both of them to us and on the same day at that.

“Very well,” Kitagawa agreed. He lifted his left arm and arced it over his head to grip the right edge of his mask. “Come, Goemon!” Kitagawa commanded. He pulled the mask off allowing the blue flames to surround him as he became clad in his Rebel’s Armour. A black high-collared puff-sleeved jumpsuit with a striped sash worn across his hips, white motorcycle boots and bright blue gloves, attached to the jumpsuit was a white foxtail and in his hands was a simple katana.

Goemon was a towering Persona with an almost pompadour hairstyle for the black locks, Goemon had white skin with an ice blue edging around his face, red and cream curved just underneath the hair and the back of the skull; a massive white with gold detailing old fashioned pipe was held in his right hand. Goemon wore an elaborate Japanese outfit which was comprised of multiple pieces with a dark blue upper garment with lighter blue edging, the sleeves were pulled back and secured by braided bands of white and purple-blue fabric, a red underlayer was sealed close by a white and red braid with golden bells attached to it, maroon pants with a white and black patterned strip of fabric covered the lower layer. The black and gold Geta that Goemon stood on had massive heels that raised him a fair distance off the ground, white socks covered his legs up to just underneath the knee where the pants ended.

“A breath-taking sight… imitations they may be, but together they make a fine spectacle. Though the flowers of evil blossom, be it known… abominations are fated to perish!” Kitagawa declared. He swung his arm out and a wave of cold air burst across the Shadows; I guess Goemon could wield Ice which was fine by us if we managed to get Kitagawa to stick around.

“Woah, this is impressive!” Mona exclaimed. Shadow Madarame wasn’t impressed by Goemon’s display and instead commanded more guards to arrive and kill us all; but with a Persona wielder having taken the place of one who I thought was completely defenceless that would make this fight a little bit easier for us.

“The children who adored you as ‘father’… the prospects of your pupils… how many did you trample upon? How many dreams did you exchange for riches!?” Kitagawa questioned. Madarame’s sole response to his student’s declaration was a horrifically mocking smile. “No matter what to takes… I will bring you to justice!” Kitagawa declared. To think his Will of Rebellion would flare this much since entering the Palace.

“This I wasn’t expecting, but I won’t complain. Let’s see what you can do Yusuke,” Joker commented. A smirk was on his lips as he walked forward while twirling his knife, a Shadow turned into the goo and re-emerged as a blue skinned creature with an outfit one could describe as blacksmith like, with a which black apron and matching gloves and single boot that was capped in bronze with a heavy hammer in one hand; however it had a bronze mask encircling its’ entire head with only one glowing blue eyes peering out and other bronze parts jutting out of its’ body. The other four became black feathered humanoids with black wings sprouting from their backs, yellow and red suits with blue scrolls around their necks and white masks that had red markings and elongated noses. “Amazon! What are those things?!” Joker asked.

“The centre is Ippon-Datara, it’s strong against Fire, Bless, Curse and Gravity, it also Repels Wind and Earth,” I answered. Which did put us in quite the pickle since that was basically all the known Magic that the majority of us carried rendered ineffective; of course, I hadn’t revealed the important part to them yet, which might ease any worry they’d be holding.

“Weakness?” Skull panicked. I had opened my mouth in order to give that information when Skull had cut across me, I let out a small breathy laugh at hearing his worry before turning to the blonde and giving him a large smile; hopefully seeing me grinning would allow the blonde to relax since he would know I wasn’t worried about the coming fight so much.

“Ice,” I cheerfully answered. Skull practically deflated at that information; I turned my head back to look at Joker so that I could pass on the rest of the information so our leader could properly plan. “The others are Koppa Tengu, it’s strong against Wind and Gravity but weak to Ice and Bless,” I warned. Joker sharply nodded his head and I could see the gleam within his eye as he started to mould a plan.

“Yusuke! Goemon can use Ice magic, I want you to focus on the centre enemy! Mona, Panther! You two are to heal wounds or try to use your Ailment and Support Spells! Skull! Focus on the Koppa Tengus! Amazon! Use your Support Spells to boost mine and Yusuke’s magic! Then attack the Koppa Tengus!” Joker ordered. I hoped that Kitagawa would be able to listen to what Joker said and not get too injured since this fight would be a little more chaotic than the ones that inducted Panther and Skull.

“You are in the presence of Madarame-dono! On your knees, intruders!” Ippon-Datara ordered. I don’t think that was likely to happen from any of us, any respect or admiration that might have been directed towards Madarame had promptly evaporated the moment that we realised just how depraved and twisted this man was; just like the last time, we would stand against this kind of corruption.

“I learned much from you, Madarame. In order to see authenticity… one must be dispassionately realistic. With Goemon by my side… I can now ascertain your true self without any reservations!” Kitagawa declared. Quickly pulling off my mask, I had Phantom boost Kitagawa’s magic attack since his was the lower of out Goemon and Jack Frost. With that Kitagawa proceeded to unleash a Bufu Spell upon Ippon-Datara.

“Quickly gather your Personas energy into your hand and pass it to Joker!” Mona instructed. Kitagawa looked at the cat, confused, before looking at his hand. His eyes closed as if focusing and I sensed the power gathering. He quickly darted over and Joker clapped their hands together. Quick as Panther’s whip strike, Joker’s mask was off. Jack Frost appeared and its’ group ice Spell surrounded all of our enemies.

The enemies went down and all of us pounced on them. Once our All-Out Attack reached its’ end, we moved backwards. Panther proceeded to use Dormina on Ippon-Datara, thankfully sending the entity to sleep. Mona quickly activated his Atom Ring, unleashing the Frei Spell directly at the blacksmith. Knocked down by the attack, it also woke the Shadow up, but Mona quickly passed to Joker.

Another Mabufu was cast, knocking the others down and we attacked. Once we pulled back, they got up. One of the Koppa Tengu spun around and an enhancing aura surrounded Ippon-Datara. A warning to be careful came from Joker as we all braced ourselves. A different Koppa Tengu suddenly unleashed an aura that felt strangely enraging, it wasn’t enough to concern me… up until it surrounded Skull and turned his eyes a furious red.

With an angry bellow escaping his lips, Skull charged forward and swung his weapon into Ippon-Datara. But the Shadow was able to dodge it. Skull was snarling in a manner extremely unlike him and he pulled back his weapon to attack again, despite Ippon-Datara preparing its’ own attack with a wicked aura coming off of it.

“Skull! Get back here!” Joker ordered. However, he wasn’t listening which really wasn’t like him. Panther let out a cry before her whip snapped forward around his arm. I darted over to the model and began to help her pull the boy back to us despite his struggles. Kitagawa soon moved over and joined us in pulling, allowing us to get Skull back.

Panther untangled her whip and immediately started to use it. She rapidly struck the ground in front of the Shadows, keeping them at bay and distracting them. I quickly joined her, using my own arrows to keep them away from us. Although the angry sounds behind us might have been making me miss more than I’d like to admit.

“He’s not listening to us! This is the Rage Ailment! It makes him aggressive, not willing to listen to others and drops his physical defence!” Mona warned. That wasn’t good, I knew most Ailments only by information and had never seen them in practice before. “I’ll see if we’ve got anything,” Mona stated. We needed to do something before Skull’s thrashing ended up getting someone hurt, namely the rest of us.

“Snap out of it, Skull!” Joker ordered. I quickly shot a glance over my shoulder in time to see that Joker even went as far as to slap the boy across the face, but for just a moment I swear the image of a white paper fan manifested just before the blonde’s cheek was struck, it vanished almost as quickly and Skull’s red coloured eyes quickly cleared up, as his angry expression managed to relax properly.

“Wh… what happened?! My head felt all cloudy and shit,” Skull admitted. I pulled out another arrow and quickly attacked the Koppa Tengu that had tried to come near us; the others quickly climbed back to their feet. “Alright you jerks! Payback time!” Skull declared. Captain Kidd quickly manifested and a blast of Electricity tore up the air as it hit one of the Koppa Tengu. Thankfully it was destroyed making things a little easier for us.

Unfortunately, the Ippon-Datara took the opportunity to attack. The same hammer attack that Nakanohara’s transformed state had used on us swung out. It slammed into Kitagawa, driving the air from his lungs and he dropped to his knees with a dazed expression upon his face. A hiss came from Joker and he quickly moved over to Kitagawa. From a pocket, he pulled a capsule and forced Yusuke to swallow it. Thankfully this perked the boy up again.

Taking advantage of the breathing space, I quickly used Phantom to boost Kitagawa’s magic again. Mona took the opportunity to patch up Kitagawa’s wounds with a little of Zorro’s magic. Skull took the opportunity to blast apart another Koppa Tengu thus reducing our enemies once more. Panther decided to use Tarunda on the Ippon-Datara to make things easier for us if it managed to retaliate.

“I’m fine now,” Kitagawa insisted. He still sounded a little breathless, but at least he was up as footsteps indicated. A blossom of ice soon twisted around Ippon-Datara. But the damn thing hopped away just in time to avoid being struck which caused an annoyed sound to escape from Kitagawa. It wasn’t held by one of the two remaining birdmen deciding to extend the Sukukaja boost on Ippon-Datara. Worse, was when the second one attempted to use the same Rage inducing ability upon Mona.

“You’ll have to try harder than that to get me!” Mona mocked. There was a collective sigh of relief upon seeing Mona be unaffected by the Ailment. Joker didn’t languish for long as he darted forward and used Jack Frost to eliminate the remaining Koppa Tengus in one hit. Sadly, the Ippon-Datara managed to dodge the attack once again.

“Joker, we either need to lower its’ speed or boost our own!” I advised. A ‘got it’ came from Joker. Instead of Baton Passing, I saw his mask glow and then Slime appeared. The same helpful aura on Ippon-Datara surrounded Kitagawa who seemed surprised by the act. The blacksmith proceeded to pounce, using its’ Sledgehammer attack upon up once more.

But with impeccable grace, Kitagawa backflipped away from the attack, easily avoiding the attack. He landed on his feet and pulled off his mask. Goemon manifested and with a puff of his pipe, chilling ice surrounded Ippon-Datara and knocking it down. On Joker’s order, we all dove in for an All-Out Attack. With one well placed sword stab from Kitagawa caused it to dissipate into smoke.

With our enemies gone, Kitagawa slowly began to approach Shadow Madarame who backed up, seemingly in fear of the boy he had previously viewed as being weak. However, Kitagawa’s Awakening had clearly exhausted him as he soon crumpled to his knees with a small groan of pain coming from him. Shadow Madarame proceeded to stamp his foot forward as he glared down at the boy.

“Yusuke, you’ve just thrown your bright future down the drain. I’ll destroy every chance you’ve ever had of becoming an artist! You’ll forever rue the day you dared defy me,” Shadow Madarame threatened. With that, the man proceeded to slink off with his tail between his legs, Kitagawa rose to his feet suddenly.

“Get… back here!” Kitagawa demanded. He tried to chase after the man but soon ended up back on the floor, breathing heavily as he tried to get himself back together, Panther called out to the boy. “Why can’t I move!?” Kitagawa questioned. We drifted in to gather around him as Kitagawa rose up onto his right knee and gripped the left knee which was currently up right beside him.

“Awakening Goemon and then fighting severely drained you of energy, you must rest and eat in order to recover,” I explained. A look of anger appeared on his face, yet I didn’t feel that it was towards me and instead it seemed to be directed at himself; though that was only speculation since I couldn’t feel any heat coming from his gaze.

“What a disgrace I am!” Kitagawa hissed. Ah, so he was angry at himself for falling down like a house of cards even though he was literally a newbie at fighting in the Metaverse; I shook my head lightly at his ridiculous expectation that he’d be on our level for the very first instance he’d be involved in such an event. Joker walked up and clapped a hand onto Kitagawa’s shoulder.

“Hardly, this happened to all of us when we awakened, now we need to get out of here,” Joker insisted. Skull and Joker aided Kitagawa of getting his feet back under him, we shuffled out into the reception area and set Kitagawa on one of the couches; it would be best to let him recover before we proceeded to finish up our little escape.

“You’ve known for quite some time, haven’t you?” Panther asked. It had become glaringly obvious that Kitagawa was not as blind as we had all expected him to be regarding the crimes that Madarame had been committing; then again, given his own victimisation at the man’s hands and his observational nature, it would have been unlikely for Kitagawa to be wholly ignorant of Madarame’s true nature.

“I’m no fool. Strange people have been coming by for years and the plagiarism was an everyday affair. But… who would want to admit that the man they owed their life to was doing such terrible things?” Kitagawa admitted. A fair point, even when something is so terribly obvious, it can probably be difficult to see through to the truth if you have significant emotional attachment clouding your vision.

“Why didn’t you leave, Kitagawa-kun?” Panther asked. Apart from the fact that his entire future would have been crushed into smithereens the moment he tried to break free, that seemed like something that might terrify most people into staying unless pushed to some kind of extreme measure, much like Nakanohara had been.

“Well, he is the one who painted the Sayuri. On top of that, I owe him a great debt,” Kitagawa admitted. That caused me to raise an eyebrow, with how much he adored painting I’d have thought he’d be concerned about never being able to truly show his artwork as his; yet it seemed he had put other reasons before that, though they were much weightier than the one that I had thought of.

“You mean ‘cause he raised you?” Skull asked. That would explain why Kitagawa chose to stay around, that kind of a debt must have been immense to carry around with him; Kitagawa gave a shallow nod, but his eyes remained firmly on the ground, as if he didn’t want to look any of us in the eye as he explained his situation.

“I… never knew my father. I was told my mother raised me by herself, but she died in an accident when I was three,” Kitagawa admitted. I felt my heart clench for him, losing his only family like that was terrible. “That’s when Sensei took me in. I heard he helped my mother while she was still alive,” Kitagawa added on. That caught my attention as Panther parroted the ‘heard’ portion. “To be honest, I don’t remember much about my mother either. I did everything I could for Sensei. I thought of him as a father… but he changed. To think he would treat the Sayuri, the very foundation of his art, like that!” Kitagawa snarled.

“A lot’s happened to you, huh?” Skull realised. It certainly seemed that way, we had all gone through a lot, but Kitagawa had been through more than any of us; hopefully now that he had realised how Madarame truly was, he’d be able to fight back and maybe find a way to be free once we properly took Madarame down.

“When you mentioned plagiarism… deep down, I knew you were right. That’s why I so vehemently denied you… I was simply running from the truth. I’m sorry,” Kitagawa apologised. I smiled at his words as he finally looked up at us, at least now he had made amends for his somewhat rude attitude towards us when we tried to talk to him about this and the threatening us with the police, though Skull did have some of that blame as well.

“You’ve suffered at his hands, but he cared for you at one point. I can understand why you denied us. But now you have this power, not only to fight in this world but to travel here as well,” Joker responded. He moved to stand in front of Kitagawa and extended a hand to him. “We have knowledge of that power and this place, we’d welcome any help you can give and it would allow you to get back at Madarame for everything he did to you, Nakanohara and the rest of his pupils,” Joker offered. Kitagawa blinked up at the boy who smiled back. “What do you say Yusuke, want to join the Phantom Thieves of Heart?” Joker asked.

“I’m grateful for the chance to face what I have been denying all this time,” Kitagawa accepted. He gripped Joker’s hand and they shook as Skull complained Kitagawa was too serious. “I take it from the name that you are the thieves who I’ve heard rumours about,” Kitagawa questioned. But, before any of us could answer, Madarame’s guards proceeded to appear behind us.

“Oh crap!” Skull yelped. Of course they show up now of all times, well at least Kitagawa seemed to have mostly recovered from his exhaustive first fight since he had sprung to his feet as well, but he seemed to not fully grasp our danger even though the rest of us had dropped into our fighting stances and called our weapons back.

“Talk later! Run now!” Mona insisted. We all proceeded to obey and shot out of the room, although Kitagawa seemed to choose that moment to notice his change of outfit and almost got distracted by it until Skull grabbed his collar and kept dragging him along until we escaped from the Palace.

*Persona 5 Royal*

After escaping from the Metaverse, with the rope I’d brought removed and rolled up to come with us, all of us wasted no time in running away from the shack and back to a restaurant that was still open at this time and that would be crowded enough that we could talk without being overheard easily unless someone lingered and that would be pretty obvious.

We all sat down and quickly ordered some food with was quickly devoured, as we ate, each of us proceeded to take turns telling Yusuke about what had happened regarding primarily Kamoshida while I briefly explained the whole Ouvrard incident. The look in Yusuke’s eye was quite intense and for a moment I wondered if he had been able to connect the dots regarding the things I had implied in the conversation we had and what I told of Ouvrard, eventually Ren finished up the story and the food was finished.

“I see. And because of that, the P.E. teacher had a change of heart just like the music instructor,” Yusuke mused. We all nodded to show our agreement with his words, Yusuke seemed contemplative for a moment before looking at each of us in turn. “The Phantom Thieves who steal hearts… to think they truly exist,” Yusuke admitted.

“I know it must be hard to believe, but you saw with your own eyes the truth,” Ren stated. Very true, seeing such a world would make it hard to dismiss us as not existing, Yusuke’s disbelief was understandable since that seemed to be how everyone else was treating us given the comments that kept popping up on the Phan-site.

“Indeed. I have to believe your words. Especially after seeing a world like that,” Yusuke agreed. A smile curled my lips slightly as Yusuke turned his head down and seemed to be thinking for a moment before he raised his head to look at all of us. “So, your plan with Madarame-sensei- with Madarame is to force a change of heart, correct?” Yusuke asked. My smile faded at his words but not from annoyance or anger.

“Take your time to change your way of speaking, you’re trying to overcome a behaviour that was learned over a decade. That’s probably difficult to do,” I reassured. Yusuke gave me a smile that was rather strained, even though he had accepted it, he stilled needed the proper time to process the events. “As for your question, yes, we intend to remove the Treasure which is the source of Madarame’s Palace and the literal representation of Madarame’s distortion of Vanity,” I explained.

“Had I faced reality sooner, this may have been avoided. I must put an end to this for the sake of the others, whose futures as artists were robbed as well. That is the most civil thing I can do for the man who was… in some manner, my father,” Yusuke admitted. I don’t really know if he could have stopped Madarame’s distortion, but thinking about what-ifs wouldn’t do us any good, all we could do was focus on the only thing we could do right now.

“Just be warned, he may have a mental shutdown if we screw up. We have ways to avoid that, but they aren’t fail-safe,” Morgana warned. He had popped out of the bag that this point to remind Yusuke of the danger that would come with pursuing such a decision; we at least knew what to do to avoid the process but even then, we could end up making a mistake simply by accident.

“Madarame is a man who has the art world under his thumb. He has connections to many organisations. If someone like me raises my voice, it’ll only be snubbed out… we have no option but this,” Yusuke determined. Just like with Kamoshida and Ouvrard, we were always seemingly pushed into a corner with no way to do anything in the physical world; but that worked for us since we had a way to confront them in private.

“It’s a deal then!” Morgana declared. Ann was happy about Yusuke joining us and hoped he got along with the rest of us, Ann wouldn’t be an issue and maybe me and Ren… but Ryūji on the other hand was an entirely different matter; speaking of our Electricity wielder, Ryūji insisted he not slow us down as Yusuke promised to do his best.

“We’re grateful you’re lending us your power Yusuke,” Ren admitted. He then proceeded to turn his grey gaze to me with a certain sparkle within them and I could just tell what he was going to say even before he opened his mouth. “By the way, I assume we’ll be meeting at yours’ tomorrow Natsumi?” Ren asked. Everyone proceeded to look at me with only Yusuke being confused as I allowed a grin to spread on my lips.

“Naturally, we’ve got a newbie in the ranks. We need to be prepared before heading back in and he’ll need a day to recover after what he went through. Training might be fine but absolutely no heading into the challenge,” I insisted. We’d certainly need to have him get used to wielding his katana, at least this was a weapon I actually had more familiarity with thanks to my father’s training.

“I wonder what’s going on with the real Madarame. Yusuke, me and Natsu-chan were in a pretty tight situation,” Ann spoke up. That was a fair point; we’d barely managed to escape from the shack and what with Madarame’s security company having been contacted about our presence, it was likely that things could get worse for us because of that.

“Actually, I contacted him before we came here. He believes that I continued pursuing Takamaki-san and Chiba-san. And it appears he knows nothing about what happened in his Palace,” Yusuke revealed. We all breathed a sigh of relief, mainly that Yusuke wasn’t going to be harmed by Madarame when he ended up going back. “He was complaining to the security company how they couldn’t even catch two high school girls. However, he’s still furious about it and said that he’s going to take legal action against everyone,” Yusuke revealed.

“When is he going to do this?” Ren asked. His voice was sharper than necessary, but I think the panic overrode his normal manner of speaking; my heart felt like it was encased in ice upon hearing those words, that was a terrifying thing to hear that we’d be prosecuted for this, even Kamoshida hadn’t been willing to go that far to stop us from confronting him.

“Only once the exhibition ends. Any scandal during the show would be his loss,” Yusuke answered. A collective sigh of relief escaped all of us as Ryūji slumped down in his seat while Ann flopped backwards into the backrest, I relaxed as well feeling my muscles stop being stone like while Ren reached up to rub the bridge of his nose.

“Good, that means we don’t have to speed up our timeline, we’ll need to be on guard when we go back in though,” Ren admitted. It was a relief that we didn’t have to rapidly accelerate things thus leaving us flopping about in a mad panic trying to get the whole situation sorted with someone who barely understood how to use his weapon or Persona.

“It is good, but we need to be careful when we approach our transfer site. If we’re spotted then we’ll just have a repeat of today,” I warned. Everyone understood what I was implying thankfully, Morgana allowed a concerned rumble to echo from him; this caused Yusuke proceeded to look over at him with more focus than he had previously expressed towards Morgana.

“By the way… what is this?” Yusuke asked. Well, I had been expecting this question to come up at some point, I’m just surprised that it ended up taking so long for him to actually speak up about Morgana’s presence; I looked at the others wondering who was going to explain Morgana until Ren cleared his throat which caused Yusuke to focus upon his leader.

“This is Morgana, he’s a human who was so severely distorted that he ended up trapped in the form of a cat. That’s why he can talk, but only to other Persona wielders, all others only hear a meowing cat,” Ren answered. An intrigued glimmer appeared within Yusuke’s eyes and he focused upon Morgana once more who almost seemed to be preening slightly at the attention that the artist was directing at him.

“Do you wish to draw me? You better bring out the best of me, in that case,” Morgana stated. In response Yusuke decided to order some black bean jelly… only to complain about having no money.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We decided to separate with Yusuke heading back towards the shack, I could only hope that he would be okay being near Madarame after what happened. I had barely even stepped into my phone before Ryūji decided to blow up the Chat – well I assume it was the blonde boy – I pulled out my phone and quickly opened it up.

Ryūji: Legal action? This ain’t funny.

Ren: Agreed, we need to get the Palace done before Madarame does anything.

Natsumi: Yes, but due to today’s actions, Madarame’s Security Level will be increased.

Ann: We have to be quick yet careful, avoiding drawing any attention to ourselves.

Ryūji: Yeah, if the police hear about this, they’ll totally get in touch with the school.

Ryūji: We’ll get expelled for sure this time.

Ann: School would be the least of our worries. We’d end up arrested.

Natsumi: Yeah, unlawful entry, defamation, assault with a deadly weapon if they ever find out our battles.

Ryūji: Guess that means we really can’t afford to eff it up this time.

Ann: Yeah, from here on out is what really matters. Let’s do it!

“Bloody hell, this has become quite the chaotic mess,” I muttered.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 39: - The Emperor and The Hanged Man

There was so much to do day, not only did we have to get through the lessons while dodging being accosted by Niijima-senpai, but afterwards was when the work began. We’d need to meet up and get Yusuke prepared for combat in the Metaverse with his weapon, plus it would be good to evaluate how the others were handling their weapons and if there needed to be any fine tuning done to their styles.

“Oh, our grades are out,” A female voice commented. I walked over to the crowd of students and started to scan for my name, Ryūji and Ann’s names were unfortunately easy to find simply by glancing at the bottom; Niijima-senpai was obviously at the top of her grade and I was fairly close to the top of the second years with Ren also being quite high up.

“Nice work,” I congratulated. Ren allowed a bashful smile to curl onto his lips as he pulled at a lock of his hair, with that we headed towards class. It would be nice to have a little bit of relaxation now that we were through the sealed door and had a new ally.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“Yusuke, we still need to explain the basics to you, don’t we?” Morgana commented. We were all gathered at my house, with everyone in their exercise clothing and ironically enough Yusuke was dressed in a similar fashion to myself – that had earned him some looks from Ryūji – but in differing shades of blue. All of us were sat in my living room so that we could talk before starting training at Morgana’s wise insistent.

“Oh, you mean about the Metaverse and the Nav. Yeah, I guess that stuff is pretty important,” Ann admitted. She was looking much better than yesterday, which honestly made me feel much better; I don’t know what was burning through her mind about yesterday but whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t dragging her down like the way that the weight of Kamoshida’s darkness had been.

“Please elaborate,” Yusuke requested. He was so serious about this with a ramrod posture and steely focused eyes, but that was the necessary mind set for him to have, we needed to understand the strange world we worked in as best as possible for us to take advantage of it and be victorious over our enemies especially since they were native to that world.

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” Morgana decided. It was the best place for us to explain everything we knew about the Metaverse. “First, the Metaverse spots where we act as the Phantom thieves are called Palaces. Palaces are worlds that take form from someone’s cognition… a materialisation of their perception of reality,” Morgana explained. A contemplative look appeared on Yusuke’s face although it was tinged with concern.

“So, do we each hold Palaces within ourselves as well?” Yusuke asked. A normal assumption to make given that I had done the same thing after my first Palace encounter, but at least we would be able to reassure Yusuke that this wasn’t the case thanks to our knowledge which was only growing the more we interacted with that world.

“No. Individual Palaces are quite rare. The general public has one single shared Palace called Mementos which is where we train and handle small requests for Changes of Heart,” Ren answered. Yusuke’s concern faded away and he seemed quite relieved to know that not everyone he meant would have such a monstrous thing hiding within their hearts.

“Palaces form from strong distorted desires. Ouvrard’s was Attachment, Kamoshida’s was Lust and Madarame’s is Vanity,” Morgana explained. This caught Yusuke’s attention and he focused upon the cat who was sat on the table like some kind of statue, except for the fact that his tail kept flicking about in an almost lazy manner.

“They basically gotta be criminals. Real bastards like Kamoshida or Madarame. Can’t speak for Ouvrard ‘cause I never met her, but she sounds like an absolute bitch,” Ryūji spoke up. The boy’s eyes darted over to me and I could see the concern within his brown eyes, I wasn’t going to say anything but I flashed him a grateful look for his kindness.

“As for Persona users like us, we’re uncapable of forming a Palace. A Persona is essentially a Shadow tamed, a Shadow is the darkest aspects of a person given form but to accept that Shadow instead of hiding it or burying it, pretending it doesn’t exist, causes it to transform into a Persona. A Palace is Ruled by the Shadow, therefore with no Shadow born from distorted desires, a Palace cannot form,” I explained.

“S-So that’s how it works…,” Ann muttered. Everyone’s eyes were wide as I said those words, even Morgana seemed surprised, but less that this was true and more that I had this knowledge, Ann was busy talking too quietly for the rest of us to hear while Ryūji was absolutely surprised by the revelation, Yusuke seemed intrigued by the words I had spoken if his raised eyebrow was anything to go by while Ren seemed to be thinking about something.

“O-Obviously I knew that!” Ryūji claimed. Everyone proceeded to stop what they were doing and gave the boy an unimpressed at his words, even Yusuke could tell that the boy had no clue about that fact. “Oh yeah, and we use the Metaverse Navigator app on our phones to get into that world!” Ryūji added on. This was such a clear change of topic, but it was also necessary, so we simply rolled with it.

“It’s actually pretty simple. Just say a person’s name, physical world location and what they perceive that location as, then you’re in,” Ann explained. She drummed her hands on her knees as she tried to think about how to explain this to Yusuke. “Uhhh, so like Madarame’s would be shack then his distortion is that he thinks it’s a museum,” Ann explained.

“How do you know what their Palace is going to look like if you have never set foot in it before?” Yusuke asked. At that, everyone proceeded to turn their gazes to me which I had completely expected to happen, but I still sighed at this none the less since it was going to have to be me who explained the situation about my eyes.

“That’s partially my job and partially logical guess work. I’ve been born with eyes that can perceive the Metaverse, these eyes let me get a clearer view which allows me to make sense of the Palace’s shape. We can also guess what it is by thinking how the person with the distortion would view the building based upon their personality,” I explained. Yusuke leaned forward when I spoke about my eyes with a certain gleam in his eyes that made me fidget slightly.

“Hm, I feel as though I have a good grasp on the basic concepts. If anything arises which I fail to understand, I’ll rely on those more experienced than myself,” Yusuke decided. That was probably the best thing for him to do, so long as he had a solid grasp of the core concepts then the main objective of our pre-training meeting had been fulfilled.

“Yeah! I gotcha covered, newbie!” Ryūji declared. He had a big grin on his face when he said those words and while his energetic enthusiasm was a boon to all of us, it did nothing to stop the unimpressed look that Morgana and Ann proceeded to shoot the punk. In fact, Ann went as far as to lightly jab Ryūji in the ribs which caused him to jump away slightly from the contact as Ann turned to face Yusuke who had been watching the scene slightly bemused.

“Uh… you should probably ask Morgana or Natsu-chan if you need anything,” Ann insisted. Yusuke nodded his head in agreement with those words, honestly Morgana was right to be the first choice since it was obvious he had more knowledge about the Metaverse as only he recognised the doorway had a physical world counterpart and what to do about getting that door opened.

“Thinking back to Madarame though… I can’t believe he’d consider pressing charges,” Morgana stated. It was quite the shock for us to have, Kamoshida certainly had been willing to do something horrible to Ren and Ryūji just for standing up to him, but getting prosecuted was miles above simply getting expelled from school.

“Yes, I’ve never seen him show such anger before. He is most likely quite serious about that,” Yusuke admitted. Which was very much not a good sign for us, if Yusuke had never seen him like this then we had to take the threats Madarame was making towards us as seriously as possible, which meant completing the Palace as soon as we could to enact the Change of Heart before he could fulfil that threat.

“We did stumble across something pretty incriminating and scandalous, even if we couldn’t out him completely, merely telling a journalist like that lady we met could ruin his reputation by way of salacious rumours. Madarame can’t have that so he’ll ruin the source before we can leak it since it’ll take time to get that news out what with his exhibit going on,” I explained. It was the kind of reaction that was worthy of coming from my uncle or one of his minions.

“What should we do? There’s no way we’ll be able to win if that happens,” Ann worried. She fidgeted slightly in her seat as she spoke those words, probably imagining that the police would be breaking down my door any moment, but if what Yusuke said yesterday was true then we were probably safe for now, but we still needed to act fast.

“Don’t worry Takamaki-san. I’m certain he won’t act until the final day of the exhibit which is June fifth. Simply put, I doubt he would be so foolish as to taint his name with a trial during his exhibition,” Yusuke reassured. The confidence that Yusuke spoke with went a long way to dropping Ann’s shoulders from where her worry had hiked them to.

“Alright, so we just gotta steal Madarame’s heart by then. There’s no way we’re gonna let him press charges… we’ll show people who he really is!” Ryūji declared. He was filled with quite a large amount of energy now that we had a plan and a deadline for us to act by; now we just had to find the Treasure and then execute our heist.

“Might I ask, exactly why are we at Chiba-san’s house?” Yusuke questioned. It was a fair question for him to raise since it had been something he wouldn’t anticipate, despite discussing it in front of him me and Ren had been a little obtuse in explaining why we had to meet up here suddenly; him not asking would have been far more surprising than him doing so.

“Just Natsumi is fine Yusuke, you’re one of us now so no need for formalities,” I insisted. The painter inclined his head as if accepting this, especially since I was using his first name now, this was going to take getting used to. “As for why you’re here, you don’t know how to use your Rebel’s Weapon, so I’m training you,” I explained. With that, I pushed myself up from the table and moved towards the dojo’s doors.

“A sword is different to a brush, of course I don’t know how to use it,” Yusuke protested. Shuffling sounded behind me which indicated that I was being followed by the other, I unlocked the dojo’s door before turning around to face the five other Thieves with Yusuke having a deeply confused look on his face as the other three humans were grinning slightly in their own ways. Morgana was on Ren’s shoulders, apparently not snooping this time, and he shook his head in disbelief.

“Are you so sure?” I asked. Opening the door, we all stepped inside and I made my way to the naginatas and pulled one off. “A sword is simply another tool; it is up to the wielder to make something of it. A brush can either make simple words or entrancing masterpieces. A blade can shred wheat or carve something magnificent. I wonder what you’ll turn your katana into,” I commented. Turning around, I found the others had drifted to their weapons except for Morgana – obviously – and Yusuke who gave me a rather intense look.

“A weapon can never bring about beauty the way a brush can,” Yusuke argued. Those words caused a flare of annoyance to surge up within me, it was probably ridiculous to feel that way as it was only his opinion. But these were my father’s teachings, one of the few things I had left of my family; so, to hear someone dismissing them so unkindly, almost insultingly from Yusuke’s tone… well, it was enough to have my eyes harden as I dropped into a fighting stance.

“Take up your sword!” I ordered. I saw the other three share looks of concern given my sudden and almost arctic-sounding demand; Yusuke himself was surprised, but he proceeded to pick up a wooden katana and faced with a firm expression on his face as he adjusted himself so that he could point the false weapon at me. I mentally catalogued all the weaknesses he exposed in that moment, from his feeble grip to his weak stance.

I didn’t let him make the first move. Instead, I darted in. Like a hawk after prey, I shot across the dojo’s floor until I was close enough to strike out. The false blade of my naginata lunged towards Yusuke face, he twisted to the side with widened eyes. But his deplorable stance hindered his retreat as he stumbled back over his feet, barely maintaining his balance. Even worse, his sword dropped to the side, leaving him completely unguarded.

Biting down all expressions of annoyance, I pulled my weapon back in and quickly re-orientated myself. Yusuke seemed to be floundering as he brought his weapon up to face me. I thrust my weapon forward to spear passed his blade. With that position, I sharply pushed left and down with the shaft, tearing the fake weapon from Yusuke’s loose hands.

The wooden weapon let out a dull thud as it hit the ground. I quickly kicked my foot against it, sending the weapon flying away from us. Yusuke foolishly gaped after the object which left him exposed. I pulled my weapon back and flipped it around, the weapon was thrust out so that the butt of it scored just passed Yusuke’s cheek, not damaging him at all, but making a very obvious point, nonetheless.

Yusuke’s eyes darted to the weapon that had just bypassed him, but I wasn’t done yet. Instead, I pulled the shaft back in a sweeping arc and spun the object around. Blade or shaft, tip or butt, it didn’t matter which I used; but as Yusuke stood there completely stunned, I struck the air around the knees, elbows, neck and several points of the torso before finally stepping back. The tip of my weapon resting against the ground.

“H-How did you move like that. It was like watching a dance of butterflies, o-or perhaps a whirlwind of cherry blossoms… I… how did you manage that?” Yusuke floundered. He seemed to be struggling to articulate his thoughts, but that was a good thing to me, he seemed to be comprehending that there was more to fighting that simply swinging a weapon around as they pleased; that was all I really wanted to impart.

“Training. My dad taught me since I was young. True masters make an art of their capabilities, I’m not there yet,” I admitted. Moving away, I collected the katana Yusuke had chosen and handed it back to the boy who took it with an almost reverent motion. “You should study the way katanas have been wielded. They can teach you all the different methods to fight, perhaps they’d even show you just how much beauty can exist in wielding a weapon,” I challenged.

“I would be willing to learn,” Yusuke admitted. He lifted the katana up and bowed to me, I blinked in surprise at his words, but if he was going to listen then I might as well do everything I could to ensure he was prepared; I ran through what Yusuke needed to do in order to make sure he could better himself already. Once done I turned to look at the other three and immediately caught sight of Ryūji’s grin.

“Don’t be smiling Ryūji!” I commanded. The false blonde blanched as Ann immediately began to giggle while Ren and Yusuke started talking to each other. “All of you are going through training today,” I warned. That stopped Ann’s giggles as Ryūji seemed to contemplate running for the door, Ren on the other hand gripped his dagger and stepped up to face me.

I proceeded to spar quite thoroughly with the other three which tested whether they had actually taken onboard what I’d taught them the last session. All of them had thankfully, although Ann still struggled to control the whip – only practice would fix that – while Ryūji still over swung on occasion – again, practice – which ended up with him flat on his back thanks to a quick leg sweep. Ren was the best improved, but his weapon was also slightly easier to wield than a whip or bludgeoning weapon.

Eventually we ended the training session, since it was basically the middle of the day, I set about making some dinner for everyone with some help from Ren and Ryūji. Yusuke practically wolfed the meal down like he was starving which made me wonder if the food was actually that good… or if he hadn’t eaten since we saw him yesterday; I hope he did eat regularly, or this might be a problem later on.

“Hey Natsumi,” Ren called. I looked over at the ravenette as he walked up to me, we’d all changed clothes and the others were prepared to leave, we were going down into Mementos so Yusuke could practice but we’d have a break first, so I was curious as to what our leader wanted. “I was wondering if you’d come with me and bring your bow,” Ren requested. That was interesting, I didn’t have anything else going on today, so there was no harm in going with him and learning what he had in mind.

“Sure, we need the rest day before diving back into the Palace, especially Yusuke,” I admitted. Ren seemed rather relieved by the words, a little too much if I was honest, but I didn’t see anything wrong so quickly collected my purse and bow, we all departed my house. All of us walked over to the station in order to return to Shibuya since we all needed to get there, before we could split up again for whatever the others wanted to do today.

We made small talk on the way to Shibuya, mainly focusing on how safe Yusuke would be continuing to stay with Madarame. But the young painter was adamant so that we could have someone around to keep an eye on him. The firm set of his jaw, the icy glint of his eyes and the belief in his voice; all of these were enough to sway all of us that he was going to stay, regardless of personal feelings.

The moment we stepped off the train, Ren immediately took the lead and guided me out of the station. We walked passed the tram statue where I saw Ren give a nod to a man in a suit. Normally this wouldn’t have bothered me but seeing the green sash – a political marker – strapped across his chest drew a deep scowl from my lips. I said nothing though, Ren wouldn’t possess the same disregard for politicians that I did so it wasn’t right to express my disgust for that position to him.

Instead, I focused on following Ren as he headed over the crossing and into the shopping centre of Shibuya. Ren walked a little further in before turning to the left and heading down an alleyway, I followed him in and around the right hand turn only to find him standing in front of a shop… at least I think it was a shop. The windows at the front were too dark to make the details out but it almost looked like there was a mesh covering. At the top was a neon green sign that read Untouchable in English.

Ren easily pushed open the door and stepped inside, I followed after him and my eyes widen at the interior. Guns. Very convincing gun models were sealed behind glass cases and there was other military paraphernalia such as helmets, gas masks and things I couldn’t recognise. Filling most of the store were little boxes no doubt containing guns. I think I know were Ryūji got that model gun from. Looking over to Ren, I saw that he was stood by the counter behind which someone was sat holding a magazine.

The individual behind the counter was a middle-aged man with incredibly short grey hair – I almost thought he was bald at first – and grey coloured eyes, faint yet noticeable stubble decorated his chin, with sideburns running down the sides of his face and he wore earrings. A tattoo of a grey coloured gecko could just be seen on the left side of his neck near the back. He wore a grey pin-striped hat with yellow ear defenders, a black turtleneck sweater, a long grey coat with a red peace symbol on the left hem of his coat, simple blue jeans and black leather boots which were resting on the counter.

“Who’s the chick, kid?” The surly man asked. He looked at me and I felt a small itch form along my back as I tried to figure out why I felt this way, I adjusted my stance ever so slightly, causing the bag containing my bow to shift and pull the man’s gaze towards it; a small spark of interest filled his eyes as he looked at it before turning back to face Ren with a somewhat stony expression.

“A friend, Iwai-san. I’m actually here because I need some advice,” Ren admitted. All the man responded with was to raise an eyebrow as if prompting the curly haired boy to continue with whatever request the boy had thought off. “She’s an archer, but her bow isn’t cutting it lately, can you do anything?” Ren asked. A small scoff that sounded almost like a laugh echoed from Iwai as he then proceeded to bring his feet off the counter and stand up.

“Bows, huh? Do I look like a bow guy?” Iwai asked. Ren remained silently, the two pairs of grey eyes silently clashing with each other, before the man let out a sigh. “Alright, let me have a look girl,” Iwai insisted. I moved over and set the bag on the counter, unzipping it to reveal the weapon it contained. “Hmm, traditional nisun-nobi,” Iwai commented. Surprising, he knew the exact make and that it had been crafted with the traditional methods, despite his prior question almost making it seem like he wouldn’t know this “Hey kid, step outside,” Iwai insisted. Ren didn’t argue, instead he turned and left, once the door closed, Iwai looked at me. “What’s your name girl? First name only is fine,” Iwai asked.

“Natsumi,” I answered. The response had been immediate, I didn’t know much about this man or why Ren had decided to bring me here to deal with my bow – admittedly it was underperforming and that would be dangerous as we faced stronger Shadows – but, perhaps there might be a way to ensure that my range weapon was made better; therefore, it was best to trust this man.

“I know nothin’ about bows. But the kid is helping me out. A big help actually. So, I’ll see what I can do about the bow,” Iwai stated. What could Ren be doing that was helping this man? This man who had an almost dangerous aura coming off of him and seemed quite interested in guns, practically encyclopaedic given his ability to recreate his models so much that thought made them real. Also, his claim to know nothing about bows might not be all true, he knew something, even if it was small.

“I’ll help,” I commented. The grey eyes shot to me and I found they had a piercing quality, not to the strength that Ren had and I found this one didn’t feel innate like Ren’s eyes; instead it almost felt like he had learned it. “I can provide you with my knowledge in exchange for your help,” I explained. This was the best way to aid him, he needed to know and I had the information – or could at least locate it – to help him.

“Huh, you don’t got any fear do you,” Iwai stated. A smirk that seemed to just tap dance the edge of a smile curled onto his face; he seemed almost pleased by this false assumption, his man was dangerous and I could practically taste it, whoever he had been it still bore into his daily life even if he wasn’t quite aware of this fact. That caused a slightly itchy sensation to make its’ way across my skin.

“I do fear though, but I trust Ren. If Ren trusts you, then I trust you,” I answered. The man stared at me with a heavy weight to his gaze while I simply adjusted my stance ever so slightly, we held each other’s stare for a long time before the man proceeded to let out the lightest of sounds that could have been a scoff or perhaps a laugh or even just a regular sigh; it was that ambiguous.

“Alright girl, here’s my contact information is you need it,” Iwai stated. He proceeded to hand over a business card which I tucked into the pocket of my skirt, I zipped up my bow and swung it back over my shoulder; I bid goodbye to the man and proceeded to step out of the building, giving Ren a look when I spotted him leaning on the building across from us in such a cavalier manner.

“You have some strange friends Ren,” I remarked. Coming here to update our other teammates guns might be a regular occurrence but for him to have actually struck up an odd sort of acquaintance with the shop owner wasn’t something I expected. Ren smiled and moved over to stand beside me with a mischievous twinkle within his eyes.

“And you are one to talk Natsumi,” Ren responded. I lightly shoved his shoulder which caused him to sway slightly but he kept his balance, we turned and began to walk towards Shibuya in order to join the others and put Yusuke through his paces.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion. This was initially much longer, but it got TOO long so I had to cut it into two chapters

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 40: - Deeper into the Museum

We dived into the Metaverse the next day, Yusuke was as prepared as he would ever be to fight in this world. Upon our arrival, Joker quickly pulled out an assault rifle and handed it to Yusuke; he was slightly reluctant to take it but understood that we needed to have a ranged weapon. After Yusuke finished attaching the rifle to his outfit, we all turned to look at the Palace.

“Oh yeah. We haven’t decided on the new recruit’s codename yet,” Mona realised. This drew our attention back to Mona as we realised that we hadn’t actually got around to assigning such a thing to Yusuke, too distracted by ensuring he could fight here to actually bring up his need for a codename. It was clear through the mask that Yusuke was confused about what we were talking about.

“It has to be Kitsune. You know, with that kitsune mask and everything,” Panther suggested. Given the appearance that he had, Kitsune would definitely make sense for a codename that he could use, but it would also stand out a fair bit since it would be the only Japanese name in our little group, thought that might not be such a big deal here in the Metaverse.

“Hell yeah. That really leaves an impression,” Skull agreed. Of course, they were completely ignoring the very befuddled look that Yusuke was shooting all of us from behind his mask; I was actually wondering if he would speak up and ask what we were discussing or if he was going to remain utterly silent as he had been so far.

“Are you talking about me?” Yusuke asked. Well at least he had decided to say something at last, this drew Panther and Skull’s attention to the boy and they finally realised that he was utterly confused by this entire conversation; I slightly shook my head about how oblivious the two of them can be at times since Mona and Joker had been aware of what was going on with Yusuke.

“In order to protect ourselves from the Palace Rulers recognising us in the real world, we use codenames to protect ourselves. I’m Amazon, that’s Panther, Skull, Joker, and Mona,” I explained. Yusuke looked at me and the expression he gave me showed that he understood without any need for more explanation to be added on.

“What do you want your name over here to be?” Panther asked. Yusuke took on a contemplative look in his eyes as his mind seemed to be whirling with possibilities of what to call himself, I was honestly convinced that he’d come up with something that might be a little… crazy to put it mildly, which was just the kind of thing that I’d expect from the artist who had been odd since the first day I met him.

“I’d say Da Vinci,” Yusuke suggested. That was much tamer than I anticipated, it wasn’t even that unusual since it was the artist who had painted the Mona Lisa which we already had someone embodying the name off, it was also short enough in letters and syllables that it wouldn’t be a hassle to call out in the middle of battle.

“Nope,” Skull responded. I looked at the boy, confused as to why he had shot down such a suggestion, but he was focused solely on Yusuke, I looked at Joker who just shrugged his shoulders in confusion as well. “Well, you’ve got that mask like Panther said and there that weird tail… alright! You’re Abura-age!” Skull declared. Mona proceeded to snicker at that suggestion while I found it ridiculously crazy, more nutty than Yusuke’s suggestion at least.

“Very well,” Yusuke commented. I gave the boy a baffled look, not understanding how he had just decided to agree to such a mad suggestion for a codename; Mona was looking at the boy with an agape mouth which clearly showed his shock, Joker reached up and started to rub at the bridge of his nose once his mask was pushed up.

“He’s agreed to it!?” Mona exclaimed. Skull had a big grin on his face, seemingly happy that his name had been agreed to while Panther’s mouth was slightly open as she began to shake her head softly as if she couldn’t understand why such a crazy suggestion was being agreed to by our new member.

“Nuh-uh! Not happening!” Panther declared. At least someone had spoken up against it, Panther proceeded to look at Joker with something close to desperation within her eyes. “Do you have any ideas, Joker?” Panther asked. I looked at our leader, hopefully he’d be able to come up with a good name, like he had with Tomoe even if I hadn’t taken it.

“Why don’t we just go with Fox, it fits the outfit and doesn’t stand out as being Japanese,” Joker decided. That was the most sensible suggestion out of the others that had been brought up, plus it really was the simplest that had been suggested; I think it was probably the best move to make given the other names that were suggested.

“A smart move. And speaking of moves, what do you think of it, Fox?” I asked. Maybe if someone prompted him to consider the name then we’d be able to get this over and done with, allowing us to finally continue with our infiltration; Yusuke agreed which caused Skull to declare that it was time for us to get started with an eager fist pump.

“Hang on!” Mona exclaimed. We stopped our advance towards the ugly building and turned to look at the cat shaped thief. “Our group has become much bigger than before, so I’d like to split us up into two groups to enable us to move about easier when it comes to stealth. Honestly, before as five it was tough to move about as a large group, but we couldn’t exactly safely split up, so now with six we can split into groups of three and not worry about either group being in danger. The second group just needs to maintain a reasonable distance from the main group. Really, I’d prefer four in each group for the most stability, but we should work with what we’ve got,” Mona explained.

“But Joker’s gotta be leadin’ the front group, so who’s in charge of the second group?” Skull asked. A good question, we’d need someone who could be relied upon to keep the first group safe, Mona would be the best choice to take that position but given that he was our navigator it would make more sense for him to be in the vanguard.

“That’s up to Joker, he chooses who’ll be in each group and who the leader of the rear group is,” Mona decided. This caused all of us proceeded to look at Joker who looked between all of us with a critical aspect to his eyes, most likely running through each of our known capabilities to ensure he could divide us properly.

“I’m in the first group, we need a healer in each group so Mona and Panther can’t be together in case I haven’t got a healing Persona. Skull and Fox both wield physical Personas, so splitting them is a good idea… based on that…,” Joker muttered. We could hear it, but he seemed to be thinking. “Right, Mona since you’ve got the most experience, I’d like you to act as the second-in-command in case something happens to me in a fight. You and Skull will fill out my team. Meanwhile, Amazon, Panther and Fox will make the back group… as for their leader…,” Joker commented. He nodded his head sharply as if agreeing with something none of us heard. “Amazon, I entrust you with that role,” Joker decided.

“Me?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised by the fact that he had suggested me, I mean it seemed obvious considering Mona was with him; it was instead the weight of his trust and faith that had surprised me, it seemed as if he had already come to the conclusion that I would be the leader but to know Joker – and the others from how they were nodding in agreement with Joker – believed in me this much, it was humbling and slightly emboldening.

“After Mona, you have the most experience, it makes sense for you to guide the other group what with Mona up front with me, plus your group has more support skills so the healing can be limited to individuals as opposed to Mona’s group heals,” Joker decided. I understood his reasoning and it was almost like I could feel the weight resting on my shoulders.

“Very well,” I agreed. We split up our medicinal reserves and I supplied Joker with a few items to cause other elemental damage; with that cleared up, Joker proceeded to create a shortcut and we slipped through into the Safe Room right before that doorway. Quickly darting out, I followed after Joker’s group since there was no need for us to split up yet, Shadows weren’t present in this area, so it was fine for us to stroll up to the courtyard.

“Sweet, the security’s still down!” Skull cheered. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief at the fact that the security hadn’t decided to spring back into existence after we left the Palace; getting it down again would have been more hassle and it might not have even been possible since Madarame might have someone posted to guard the door now after we had broken into it.

“Thanks to all my hard work,” Panther lamented. However, her words caused me to turn to her with a hand on my hip as I raised an eyebrow; Panther turned to look at me with a puzzled expression upon her face. “What is it Amazon?” Panther asked. I blew out a breath at her question, surprised that she would actually question that.

“Exactly who was picking the lock, again?” I asked. Panther proceeded to duck her head with a faint blush decorating her cheeks, I shook my head lightly at her action before looping an arm around her shoulders, causing her head to perk up. “Not denying you definitely did your job as decoy admirably, but it wasn’t only you, working hard Panther. This was a team effort,” I clarified. The blush of embarrassment faded away as a small smile took its’ place.

“Wait, you were picking a lock the entire time… I had wondered where you’d gone when Panther fled the room. But it never occurred to me that’s what you were doing,” Fox commented. I drew back from the side hug with an embarrassed blush of my own decorating my cheeks as I rubbed the skin underneath my ear; kind of surprised that he hadn’t realised what I was doing despite what he had witnessed.

“We had to forcible change Madarame’s cognition by proving the door could be opened by others. It was a necessary step, and it brought us a new teammate,” Joker explained. He even clapped a hand on Fox’s shoulder as he said those words, Fox allowed a smile to curl his lips as we looked at the doorway that would hopefully guide us to the Treasure.

“C’mon, let’s keep going!” Skull insisted. I hung back with my team as the other three went further in, once they reached the doorway that was beyond, I motioned for the other two to follow after me and got my first look at the area beyond the door. I was immediately focused on the massive statue of Madarame that dominated the area… up until a Savage Shadow walked across my view.

I quickly motioned for the two to duck down as I spotted Joker’s group beyond the statue. Mona suddenly scampered into view and lifted something over his head, I focused on the object which looked to be a brochure… the other half of the map! Thank goodness they’d been able to find it. Once the Shadow moved passed, I motioned for the two to follow me and we darted up behind its’ back with Joker’s group having advanced further on.

There was a large open room beyond, but any path to it that was right in front of us was barred by shutters sealing in two chests, I looked right and left, finding Joker’s group down the second path. I was about to follow after them when I saw them coming back towards us, I turned to the right hand path and moved in that direction to scout it out before they reached us. The gold patterned walls were quite irritating on the eyes, but I ignored it as best I could and turned two left corners until I came to a stop.

“We wait here!” I softly ordered. The opened area from before was right in front of us and I managed to get a better look at it, there were more infrared lasers cutting off our access of having a straight path through while Shadows patrolled about; footsteps came and I looked back to see the other three move towards us. “Lasers and Shadows. No direct route through from what I can see,” I informed.

“It feels like I might touch them accidentally… let’s be careful as we go through here, okay!” Panther suggested. It was definitely a good suggestion since we had a maze of lasers and two Shadows in order to deal with, if we accidentally triggered the security then we’d just end up butting heads with even more Shadows which we could do to avoid as much as possible.

“Agreed, we have to be careful. With only two Shadows, we’ll split up and deal with them,” Joker decided. I nodded my head as we both moved out into the maze of lasers; I guided my team straight until we came to a series of lasers with a gap at the bottom with a corridor right across from us and a Shadow patrolling the area between the opening and the lasers.

“Panther, think you can tangle his legs through the gap at the bottom?” I quietly asked. Despite the paling of her face and widening of her eyes, Panther nodded her head, I reached out to grab her shoulder tightly. “You can say no, just remember that,” I reminded. Panther gave me a strained smile, but she gently patted my hand and then moved closer while taking in a deep breath.

Carefully removed her whip, Panther steadied her stance, while crouching a little lower than normal. She waited – like a cat waiting to pounce – her blue eyes following the movements of the Shadow a few times. As the Shadow drifted passed, Panther snapped her whip out as if it was a striking viper. The leather slipped through the gap, just barely missing the laser above the gap, and tangling around the Shadow’s legs.

The effect was instantaneous. With its’ movements hampered, the Shadow tumbled over. I darted forward and managed to slide under the gap that was present. Scrambling to my feet, I stabbed my weapon down and pried the mask off. The other two quickly joined me on the other side of the lasers as Panther pulled her whip back just as the Shadow reformed into two Jack Frosts.

“Fox, don’t bother using your ice!” I ordered. I quickly used Makakaja on Panther and she didn’t hesitate to whip her mask off. Panther unleashed her multi target Fire Spell which instantly knocked all of the little snowmen off their feet. We swiftly dove in to perform our All-Out Attack and while it lacked the power of all of us working together, it was more than enough. The Shadows dissipated and I scooped up what had been left behind.

With the Shadows dealt with, I turned to the hallway that the Shadow had been walking in front of. I found a shutter that would prevent us from going in that direction, but ahead of it was an open area with different coloured couches dotted about and a treasure chest at the back. I quickly looted it finding an ofuda and continued looking around. At the other side was another corridor that led somewhere else, but I only moved a couple of steps close before freezing up.

“His stance conveys the notion that he is no ordinary foe,” Fox commented. An astute observation for a boy with limited combat knowledge, but he was right. There was a Shadow blocking our way and it was terribly obvious that this enemy wasn’t someone that we could take lightly or with the current numbers that we had present.

“Yeah, we’ve seen that variety before and that means we’ll be in for a serious fight,” Panther acknowledged. It was good to know that both of them understood how risky it would be to face down this enemy which meant that my next order would be easy for them for them to follow; first of all, I had us shuffle backwards away from the Shadow.

“Agreed. Wait here, I’ll get back up,” I ordered. Without another word, I turned and darted back to the laser maze hall, I spotted Joker’s group at the other side near the exit by the large painting; I quickly let out a sharp whistle to get their attention. Joker’s head snapped towards me as Mona twisted around while Skull jumped, luckily Joker quickly guided them over to my location. “There was a strong Shadow back there, I figured we could use the help getting rid of it,” I explained. Joker nodded his head in understanding and we quickly made our way back to the Shadow, ducking behind an edge so that they could look at it before fighting.

“That looks to be a control room behind him. He’s probably guarding it to make sure nobody gets too close. However, we’ll need to disarm the security if we want to ensure we have a safe infiltration route. Forcing our way through seems to be our only option,” Mona explained. That wasn’t a good thing, but we all knew this was how it would be; Joker quickly had us checked for wounds and once done, we stepped out into the open.

“Hm!? Who are you!? How did you get in here!?” The Shadow demanded. It was no surprise that the Shadow had immediately demanded such information from us; but I was more concerned by how his posture changed ever so slightly to show that he was completely prepared to fight us once he heard our answer. I suppose that was expected but it would likely be a difficult fight for us, caution would be our best ally in the fight.

“We walked,” Joker responded with a snarky edge to his voice. He took a single step forward to bring himself closer to the Shadow who adjusted the gun that it held as if preparing to use it against Joker. “Now step aside,” Joker demanded. The grip on both gun and flashlight tightened enough that I heard something creaking which caused all of us to summon our weapons in preparation.

“You expect me to move just because you tell me to!? I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken!” The Shadow yelled. It proceeded to reform into three enemies, with two of them being the familiar Koppa Tengu, but they flanked an individual that towered over them. A deep blue face with red eyes, dressed in a white outfit with black sandals, black edges on the pants and a black sash around the torso. Blue wings stretched behind the new Shadow with blue skinned hands clutching a conch shell.

“Kurama Tengu. Reflects Wind, Nulls Ice and is Strong against Bless, Curse and Gravity! No weaknesses!” I warned. We would need to fight smart here instead of reckless; unfortunately for us the enemy got the first move when I felt a weakening aura attempt to surround me. I quickly jumped out of the way, followed by Joker and Mona. Fox tried but was too slow which meant him along with Panther and Skull got caught in it.

“We’ve been slowed!” Fox realised. He quickly pulled his mask off and used Goemon’s Sukukaja to return Panther to normal. Joker used Jack Frost’s single target spell to knock one Koppa Tengu down. He then passed to Fox who mimicked his move to subdue the other Koppa Tengu. Fox wisely passed to Panther who used Dormina on Kurama Tengu.

Thanks to Fox restoring her, Panther was fast enough to catch the Shadow in the Sleep Spell. It slumped forward with the conch hanging limply in one hand. Mona quickly used Frei on the sleeping enemy. Knocking it down with the other two. We dove in and quickly set about cutting them apart. The two Koppa Tengu turned into smoke, but Kurama Tengu fluttered its’ wings and rose back up. I decided to do the smart thing and used Makanda on it to drop any offensive Spells it might use. Skull attempted to have Captain Kidd ram the flying Shadow, but it managed to dodge the attack by a hair’s breadth.

Kurama Tengu quickly proceeded to attack, unleashing two bursts of kinetic energy on Joker. Fox used his support Spell to restore Skull to his normal speed as Joker pulled off his mask to reveal a new Persona, it had a dark brown dog’s head with gleaming red eyes, an extremely stretched out body that was wrapped up in white fabric. The weirdest thing was that as I looked at it, I sensed a faint connection to Iwai-san of all people.

Joker had it cast the same Sleep Spell that Carmen used. Skull took advantage of the sleeping state and proceeded to hammer it with Electricity. We executed another All-Out Attack on Kurama Tengu. We quickly pulled back once it began to move and I used Phantom to slam it with a deluge of rocks. Panther and Mona used Fire and Nuke upon it to try and knock it down again but to no avail.

Suddenly a cold sensation began to grow and I immediately leapt backwards several times. Panther not far behind as she also fled the coming Ice attack that had to be multi-target. Fox wasn’t as concerned but made some graceful sidesteps to dodge. Mona had already found a high point to hide at. Unfortunately, both Skull and Joker got caught by the icy attack, Skull was completely frozen as a result of the attack while Joker just seemed slightly stiff.

Mona quickly used Zorro to heal them. While Joker brought out Jack Frost and a healing aura surrounded Skull. The ice covering our blonde punk started to crack apart before turning from a solid to a liquid. It easily slipped from his form, thankfully freeing Skull. With an angry shout he summoned out Captain Kidd and had the pirate captain ram into Kurama Tengu, sending it stumbling back but it stayed upright. Panther snapped out the boy’s name before weaving another Sleep Spell over Kurama Tengu.

“Will my Skill work?” Fox asked. I nodded my head and that was all our new comrade needed. He summoned out Goemon and the towering thief pulled out his pipe to swing it down at Kurama Tengu. The blue skinned Shadow was knocked down and we promptly pounced upon it, striking out as much as we could. Unfortunately, it still managed to get back up and glared at us with intense red eyes.

“Will you go down already!” I demanded. I pulled of my mask and used Tera once more, but this time it managed to knock the Shadow back down. This caused everyone to look at me in silent surprise. “That happens sometimes, just go with it,” I explained. That was all Joker needed to get us focused and attacking. This time it worked and Kurama Tengu vanished into smoke, leaving us breathing heavily.

“Phew! That guy was tough… I guess that’s just par for the course in a Palace,” Skull commented. Joker suddenly bent down and lifted something up, it looked to be a card of some sort, he turned it over a few times but it seemed to be blank on both sides which seemed to increase the confusion that Joker’s face showed he was currently feeling.

“It really was on a totally different level from the other enemies thought,” Panther admitted. Joker proceeded to turn and he held the card out to me, I gently took it and focused my Second Sight upon it, trying to see if I could see anything about it but without my Second Sight as I adjusted the card, I spotted a word written on it in pretty writing, Media.

“What’s this for, I’ve never seen anything like it?” Mona wondered. I shook my head, since I had never seen it either, but I carefully adjusted the card so that everyone could see the word that was written on its’ surface which was a little tricky due to how faint it was. “Media, that’s the multi-target heal Spell,” Mona admitted. I handed the object back to Joker who looked at it with an extremely confused expression upon his face.

“Ain’t it just some kinda loot? C’mon, let’s get back to explorin’,” Skull insisted. Joker shrugged his shoulders and slipped it away, we entered into the room but found that we needed a password just like last time which caused Skull to complain about it; but there was nothing to be done, with a wave of his hand Joker guided us out of the room and we made our way back through the rooms until we came upon two Shadows behind a shutter.

“I hear the intruders already got passed the central garden security,” One Shadow muttered. We quickly ducked down to avoid being spotted by them while looking at each other to ensure we were all listening to the conversation, we could only hope that they mentioned something about the password that we needed for that room.

“Yeah. I just got a call earlier to change the password here too,” The other Shadow admitted. The first Shadow wanted to know and requested it not be simple. “Well, I was having some trouble coming up with a good one… for now, I set it to the numbers for Madarame-dono’s feet,” The Shadow answered. At that admission, all of us proceeded to share looks of ‘what the hell?’ since I couldn’t understand how such a thing could be considered not simple and it looked like the rest of them felt the same way.

“Madarame-dono’s feet? What are you talking about?” The first Shadow asked. Unfortunately, we got no answer as the second Shadow insisted they get moving, because we might be nearby, once the Shadows moved off we proceeded to stand up and after a quick check of our surroundings to confirm we were alone, we all gathered in a circle.

“Madarame’s feet? The hell is that supposed to mean!?” Skull exclaimed. That was probably the exact summation of how all of us felt after hearing that clue to the passcode; it was completely baffling as to what the Shadow could have been meaning with the decision to choose that as the basis for the code, everyone appeared to be racking their brains for some kind of answer to what it could be.

“Maybe… his shoe size?” Panther suggested. Well feet would naturally lead to shoes so I can’t blame her for thinking that could possibly be the answer but at the same time it seemed to be too simple of an answer for the Shadow to have used; Skull immediately proceeded to ask if Fox happened to know what Madarame’s shoe size could possible be.

“Unfortunately, I have never heard him mention it,” Fox admitted. That wasn’t good, even if that wasn’t answer, we could have at least had something to try and get it open. “Are we sure that is the proper password?” Fox asked. A valid question since I wasn’t sure that I believed that to be the answer any way, but what could it possibly be.

“I don’t think it is,” Joker spoke up. All of us focused on our leader, he was leaning against the wall with a tense look within his eyes as his fingers drummed away at the wall. “Think about it, the Shadow said numbers and a shoe size tends to be the same for both feet,” Joker insisted. The moment he said the words ‘both feet’ I immediately had an image pop into my mind which made me perk up slightly.

“Perhaps we’ll find the answer at the statue we passed earlier,” I suggested. This drew everyone to look at me instead of Joker with our leader seemingly intrigued by what I had suggested. “Well, it did have a plaque in front of it, there might be a clue there,” I added on. None of the others seemed bother by this and so we made our way back to the statue, but there was one problem, the savage Shadow.

“We can’t look at the plaque there, I know it’s probably stronger than us, but we haven’t got a choice but to ambush it,” Joker decided. The rest of us bore grim expressions but we nodded our heads in agreement to his words and Joker darted forward to spring up and tear the mask off the Shadow. It quickly reformed into what essentially looked like a humanoid made out of paper with what looked to be a reddish underside. “Amazon give me a read on this thing!” Joker ordered. Lucky for him, I was already using my Second Sight to speed this thing up.

“Shiki-Ouji. It Nullifies all physical damage, Bless and Curse. Thankfully it’s weak to Nuke,” I revealed. It was a mostly relaxing bit of information since we could at least face down the enemy with some way to deal major damage. Acting quickly, I proceeded to boost Mona’s magical attack, feeling my Trait activate. On the other hand, Panther proceeded to weaken the shikigami with Tarunda. Joker stepped up and pulled his mask of to reveal a little humanoid made of paper with red designs on it. A weakening aura surrounded the opposing paper creature.

Mona quickly used his Atom Ring to send Shiki-Ouji to the ground. We dived in for an All-Out Attack and drew back once it started to get back up. Since they couldn’t use their Skills, both Fox and Skull used their elemental attacks to try and deal more damage to it. Shiki-Ouji got over its’ surprise and quickly used a support spell, likely one to counteract what either of my teammates had done to it.

Joker quickly pulled off his mask and Ame-no-Uzume manifested behind him. A wave of her fans sent out a blast of Nuke magic, but it seemed to be a multi-target from the space it covered. We didn’t question him and instead dove in to attack once again before pulling back. The paper body had still felt as weak as previously which meant it had countered Panther’s weakening instead of Joker’s de-buff.

The shikigami spun around, revealing a red underside like I thought, and a ranged kinetic energy slammed into me. I braced my feet and managed to keep myself up right. Pulling off my mask I quickly used Makakaja on Joker to better support us. We pretty much kept up with allowing Mona and Joker to bombard it with Nuke abilities to allow an All-Out Attack. If it ever tried to boost its’ attack, Panther quickly countered, while me and the boys kept using our elemental attacks. It once attempted to enrage Fox but like with Mona it didn’t work. Eventually, we managed to defeat it and Joker walked up to the plaque.

“‘Here we praise our most holy lord Madarame Ichiryūsai, the one ray of hope in this depraved world. He stands alone as his two adept hands paint into the future. None shall ever match his excellence’. That what it says,” Joker read. I felt really annoyed upon hearing how Madarame was portraying himself as some great and almost sacred individual when he was nothing of the sort, it certainly made me want to use my naginata on him more than was a good idea.

“Pffft! He’s really puffin’ his chest out here, ain’t he?” Skull spat. Panther was scowling heavily as she sharply nodded her head in agreement, I felt rather irritated as well, but I controlled myself and looked at Fox; surprisingly the boy seemed to be calm as he took in a deep breath and exhaled in a controlled manner before moving forward to stand beside Joker.

“I think Amazon was right, this plaque does hold a clue to our password,” Fox spoke up. Panther brought up how the password was meant to be a number, Fox glanced over at Panther before turning back to look at the plaque. “Hm, I do believe there are numbers here though. One ray of hope stands alone with two adept hands. None shall match him… that means…,” Fox surmised. Ah, so that’s the answer.

“The password is one-one-two-zero,” Mona answered. That was actually a clever way to think of a password, we quickly made our way back to the control centre. “Alright, let’s try that password we found,” Mona insisted. Joker punched it in and the computer quickly disengaged the security, we watched as shutters opened up in various places.

“Whoa… that opened all sorts of stuff,” Skull acknowledged. Mona claimed we’d be able to move to more places now, also we’d be able to get a hold of the two chests that I’d seen earlier barricaded by lasers and shutters; we proceeded to return to where the lasers where through a nearby opening that was right beside the giant paintings I had seen.

“The corridor over there dead ended. You guys look around and try to find anything, I’ll go loot the chests,” Joker insisted. Without another word, Joker darted away from us with his coat flaring out behind him as he darted away from us; I looked around but could see no openings nearby which meant we’d likely need my Second Sight; but before using my eyes immediately, I drifted over to the large bamboo painting that lay beside us.

“What a giant painting,” Panther marvelled. It was quite sizeable, not something that could be normally put in a frame and it was instead more like something that was put on walls; it was also good which made me think that this couldn’t possibly have been painted by Madarame given his habit of stealing from his students instead of creating his own works.

“Indeed. It bears such a bizarre texture as well. It’s as though I could simply slip inside,” Fox acknowledged. He approached the painting and reached a hand out towards the rippling surface; terrifyingly enough, what he had just mentioned did actually happen. “Wh-What the!?” Fox exclaimed. His loud voice carried and seemed to practically summon Joker to our side.

“Are you okay?” Joker asked. His tone was stern but filled with concern and worry for our teammate, Fox pulled his arm back out of the painting and proceeded to stare at it with something akin to surprise and disbelief that it had actually happened. His fingers twitched as he rotated the hand and arm just to make sure that it was all still there.

“M-My hand… it actually entered the painting…,” Fox stammered. Joker moved closer and gripped the hand that had slipped inside, moving the appendage towards him and looking it over with an intensity that seemed almost piercing; Joker pushed up the sleeve and managed to pull off the glove, but nothing marred the skin or nails of the arm and hand. Joker sighed and proceeded to return the glove to Fox who fixed himself up and we all turned to stare at the looming painting.

“So, we can go inside of it? Well, I don’t see any other path for us to take. Let’s give it a try,” Mona encouraged. We all exchanged rather wary looks at the possible dangers of entering the painting, but Joker edged forward and stretched one of his hands out to swipe the red fabric through the painting as if it was water; soon enough he stepped into the painting taking on the same texture as the painting, the rest of us follow after him and I instinctively sucked in a breath when I stepped through.

“How dare you trample on my tranquil bamboo garden with those grimy feet!” Shadow Madarame’s voice bellowed. All of us jumped and a small scream escaped into the air, I looked around for the deranged painter but found nothing to indicate his presence. “You shall not leave alive!” Shadow Madarame threatened. Still there was no sign of him nearby, it was almost like a Will Seed chamber.

“What the heck was that!?” Skull questioned. A good question, but if that really was akin to the voices that were generated by the Will Seeds then it was probably from the same source as them, although more specific to the surroundings rather than just basic sentences connected to whatever the generating distortion happened to be.

“We’re probably just hearing Madarame’s thoughts. There’s no need to panic,” Mona reassured. Fox hissed out the painter’s surname as his hands curled into fists, I gently knocked my hand against his fist, causing him to look at me as I gave him a reassuring smile; pulling away from the agitated ice warrior, I called up my Second Sight to look around our surroundings, I spotted something that looked a little strange compared to the rest of the area.

“I think there’s some kind of exit over there, it a weird kind of… area,” I revealed. Joker had me lead the way as we all linked hands to ensure we weren’t separated; I moved over to the area and felt a strange sensation wash over me. A sort of buzzing, tickling kind of feeling and when it faded, we were in a completely different painting than before, one that was slightly higher up than the previous one.

“Hm… so this space is not merely one, but a multitude of paintings,” Fox theorised. That made sense given that we had seen multiple bamboo paintings on the wall, so them connecting to each other as a possible road us to reach whatever the next area was and where it might lead, wasn’t that crazy of a possibility, especially if it managed to work. Skull was concerned about how we would keep moving forward. “That, we will have to continue walking to find out,” Fox stated.

“Amazon, do you see a way out of here?” Mona asked. I looked about with my Second Sight and soon located the next unusual area, heading over I stretched my hand out and found that it led outside; with a small jump I exited the painting and landed on a railing surrounded area above the previous area, metallic echoes sounded behind me which indicated the others had joined me.

“So, he dares call us thieves who dirty his heart… the one who sullied the very nature of art itself has no right to accuse us of such a thing!” Fox declared. We looked at the boy and I understood that his anger was intense at having been so manipulated by the man, but he couldn’t allow his emotions to get the better of him otherwise it would hamper his ability to fight.

“Save your emotions for later. We have to keep moving!” Mona insisted. Fox took a deep breath and seemed to have calmed down, we proceeded to walk a short distance down the walkway until we reached a vent; Joker quickly knelt down and started to crawl through it followed by Mona who dragged Skull after him. Fox proceeded to move into the crawl area before either me or Panther could, even stopping us from doing so.

“Hey, don’t go starin’ at my butt,” Skull snapped. I covered my mouth to stifle as laugh with Panther trying to cover up her own laugh by coughing which didn’t really do much to help; I eventually got myself under control and approached the vent as Panther tried to control herself, I slipped myself into the small passageway.

“What are you talking about?” Fox asked. Biting my lip in order to keep my laughter to myself, I quickly called after the others and soon enough Panther followed after me; we emerged into a golden room – this was starting to become an eyesore – with a large peacock pattern on the wall containing the vent and across from it, which turned out to be beyond the lasers that had barred our way out.

We passed through a doorway into a large room with more gold and peacock patterns walls, but also partitions made of the same pattern were dotted about the room thus restricting our view and hiding any enemies. We split up into our teams and started to make our way between the hiding spots when we spotted a Shadow patrolling about, a short distance from us. Joker’s group were directly across from us and further from the Shadow. A sharp nod came from Joker, so I darted forward to ambush the Shadow.

Upon dropping down, I saw it reform into three Shadows, two of them were the same dog creature that Joker had summoned which was known as Inugami. As for the other one, it was a strange creature; a black face with red eyes that were surrounded by a white mane like a lion, though its’ legs and arms were like a tiger and its’ torso was akin to a bear’s while a snake was attached to its’ back end.

“Inugami Nulls Gun, Fire and Curse but is Weak to Wind. As for the other one, I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s Weak to Fire, Nulls Curse and is neutral to Electricity,” Joker explained. His group had come over to us, however I couldn’t understand how he knew about the stats of the centre Shadow despite not having it in his repertoire. “We had to fight one while you were outside with Panther and Fox two days ago,” Joker revealed.

“Fair enough. The only addition I can make is that the centre one, Nue, resists Ice as well,” I added on. Mona quickly took advantage of the information to unleash a Garu Spell on one of the Inugami. He quickly passed to Panther who blasted Nue with a fireball. One pass to Joker later had the other dog creature brought down to the ground. We proceeded to dive in for an All-Out Attack to tear them apart.

None were dissipated when we pulled back, but I could tell the Inugami were weakened from how they looked. Joker quickly pulled off his mask used the same group Wind Spell as last time. This eliminated the floating dog creatures. Joker passed to Panther who doused Nue with Fire once more and we dove in to attack once again. Myself, Skull and Fox did what damage we could with our elements before Panther used her Fire once more.

A third All-Out Attack commenced but the Nue was still standing. It proceeded to use a multi-target Curse Spell on us and we all got hit. Joker quickly lowered its’ defence thanks to Kodama. Panther used her flames once more and this fourth All-Out Attack actually managed to work, turning it into smoke. But one look at each of us showed that we were all breathing quite heavily due to the amount of exertion.

Luckily, we found a Safe Room, so after a small break to rest up with some LeBlanc coffee to restore our Soul Power – though Skull was grimacing as he drank it – we returned to the outside area. After passing through a door beyond the room with the partitions, we entered into a hallway and at the end there was a large peacock patterned wall with several frames stuck to its’ surface, some contained different paintings while others were completely blank.

“Huh. More big paintings just like the ones we saw before.” Skull commented. There were five frames hanging on the wall, one contained a desert landscape with a few camels on it, another was of a mist clad mountain with a shrine gate while the last one was of a forested area with a rocky cylinder rising up; as for the other two frames, well they were blank.

“There is something off about these though…,” Fox commented. He was most likely referring to the blank frames which seemed just a little unusual and my head ended up tilting to the side slightly. “Look. There are even two frames with no paintings at all,” Fox pointed out. He proceeded to point directly to the two empty frames so that the others would be aware of them.

“Why don’t we go take a closer look?” Panther suggested. Joker checked out a door to our right, but it was unmoving, so we all went left and through a door that led us towards the first of the paintings after jumping over the glass railing that separated the walkway and the planks of wood in front of the desert painting.

“Ain’t this just like last time? Y’know with the secret passage inside and everything,” Skull commented. He was right that there would probably be a passageway inside of the paintings, but with the fact that all of them were different might make traversing them just a bit more difficult than the previous set of paintings.

“Hm… it looks like these ones are all completely different,” Panther mentioned. We’d have to be careful the moment we stepped into the paintings, since we don’t know the dangers that might come with traversing through different paintings; there could be any manner of traps that lay in wait for us and the pathway might not be as easy to find.

“There are even frames with no paintings at all,” Fox added on. Those might be the thing that poses the biggest problem to us trying to get to our next destination through the paintings as them being empty might very well shut down the pathway, so we’d likely need to fill them if we wanted to get across to the next area… Madarame sure had some annoying obstacles for us to deal with.

“That is strange… but we don’t have a choice. Let’s go,” Mona insisted. We proceeded to hop up and into the painting of a desert, thankfully even though it was such an arid land, the weather was basically the same as what the rest of the Palace had been which meant none of us were instantly sweating bullets, which would be especially true of Joker, Skull and Mona due to their dark colourings.

“Alas, this world is a desert filled with laymen who cannot understand true beauty! The slow drain of my skill is inevitable when I am surrounded by such mediocrity,” Shadow Madarame claimed. I felt like sighing at his words, at least Ouvrard had accepted her fading capability with some manner of grace; yet Madarame couldn’t stand that he wasn’t actually capable of painting so chose to steal from his students instead.

“So he’s gonna blame the world for his declinin’ skills? Heh, that bastard never had any real talent to begin with!” Skull mocked. The others seemed to be in agreement with Skull’s commented; meanwhile I focused upon finding the opening we could use, once that was located, I guided the others to the transfer point which brought us into the mountain painting.

“The gods, even in their dormancy, are worshipped constantly. People gather under shrine gates, offer their money and return home, fully satisfied. Art is practically the same. In the end, it is all just a matter of imagination!” Shadow Madarame claimed. The gods at least were worth the worship that was offered to them, unlike Madarame who was nothing more than a con artist!

“Huh?! Even if that’s true, that doesn’t give you the right to be deceiving people!” Panther exclaimed. I looked around yet there was something odd, there happened to be two transfer points, but it almost felt like one of them was blocked in some manner; moving away from the strange area I took them under the shrine gate and we re-emerged in the forested painting.

“Hard work is not what makes a sapling grow thick with green leaves. Too many young people do not see the true value in youth these days. What fools… is it truly wrong for an expert, such as myself, to capitalise on that youth before it wastes away?” Shadow Madarame claimed. I couldn’t help the growl that escaped my throat at his words, to claim that hard work was meaningless practically spat on all those who worked hard to achieve their goals and actually made something of themselves.

“What the heck? He’s basically saying he’s jealous of young talent… look at me! I was turned into a cat, but I’m still fighting. Age isn’t a valid excuse,” Mona argued. Mona was quite right, some people even at an older age were able to achieve something of themselves so long as they put in an effort, age should never be a restrictor when you want to achieve your dreams. I looked around and found something off about this painting as well.

“Strange… just like the last one there’s two points, but one of them feels… blocked somehow. I think that point might link to a new painting, let’s get out of this painting and see what happens,” I suggested. We did so and Joker proceeded to push the button that was near the painting, this caused a ship with a boat capsizing in a storm to appear in one of the empty frames.

“So, passing through one hidden route leads to the formation of another… what an elaborate ruse. It’s highly likely there is a new path through the paintings. We should investigate, Joker,” Fox suggested. Fox was right about that, even if I couldn’t see anything while out here, the fact that a new painting had been added likely meant one of the blocked points was open now.

“Agreed, one of the other paths I sensed could be open,” I chimed in. We returned to the rocky painting but nothing was different. “We might have to go the long way around, come on,” I insisted. I guided the others to the opening and felt us pass through only to emerge into the camel painting; we moved to the mountain afterwards but instead of going through the shrine gate, I took them passed it and to the newly opened passage that brought us to the ship painting, but I now saw that at the end of the capsizing ship was a writhing mass of tentacles.

“Could a ship skirt across the ocean if its’ crew had to constantly worry about what sea life may lie below? Art, life, water… they are all identical. The one who ascends to the summit is the victor!” Shadow Madarame declared. I could practically hear the wood of my naginata’s shaft creaking from the stress that it was enduring from my tightening grip; I swung my naginata out to one of the tentacles, frightening it away.

“They are not the same! Art, life and water are different to each other. Even if they were similar, it doesn’t give anyone the right to use others as stepping stones or sacrificial lambs for their own benefit! People aren’t in this world to be used by others! We’re here to support each other in the good times and the bad!” I lectured. I immediately snapped my gaze out to find the exit and led the others to it.

We jumped out of the painting and Joker pressed the nearby button, activating the last picture. With no more empty frames we could probably make it to the area we needed to move to, so we proceeded to climb back into the water painting, but I sensed no new paths, which meant we were forced to retrace our steps through the desert which had no new openings. I brought everyone to the rocky painting where I had sensed a closed pathway and found it now open, we step through and into a Japanese style building with cherry blossoms fluttering outside.

“Beauty is merely a mirage… transforming that into money is what brings true happiness. My fine museum, my lifestyle among the chosen few… those things are the true ‘art’!” Shadow Madarame declared. I couldn’t believe how warped one man’s mind had become, so twisted that his viewed something that was meant to be kind as something to simply create more money; it’s truly amazing he didn’t end up with a distortion born from Greed.

“So, you lie and lie. Believing yourself worthy of the things you gained through deception and theft. True art touches a person right in their soul! You’re the one who is a mirage,” Joker hissed. I’m certain all of us were done with hearing this man’s mad ramblings, we made the simple walk to the end and happily hopped out of the painting at a higher level.

“See, this has gotta be the end!” Skull cheered. We all proceeded to take a deep breath, glad to have escaped the paintings we’d been stuck inside of; hopefully that would be the last of those kinds of infernal mazes that we’d have to deal with, especially since it was starting to tire my eyes out, I could keep going for now but any more of this would likely mean we’d have to stop exploring.

“How despicable,” Fox snarled. We all looked at our new comrade and saw the trembles that writhed across his arms and shoulders. “We have encountered so many of his paintings, yet not once did he mention a love for art. These are no ‘paintings’. They are just meaningless self-assertions placed into pictures frames!” Fox declared.

“I’m excited to see how the Change of heart alters him. Now let’s hurry!” Mona insisted.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 41: - Vast Distortion

We quickly made for the doorway that would take us onwards; we emerged into the hallway and Joker’s team darted on ahead of us with them needing to jump and then crawl which indicated infrared lasers were up ahead, once they cleared the second laser set, I had my group start moving forward. We ended up in some kind of storage area and ended up in another fight which we managed to get through easily.

After looking around and getting a Hiranya from a treasure chest, we proceeded to distance ourselves once more and head down another hallway carefully sneaking around the corners and getting passed a nearby Shadow that was patrolling. We reached another storage area and came across another of the female shaped Shadows, a quick ambush revealed a single female Shadow. It was a tall and grizzled woman with tanned skin, dark brown hair and green eyes. Her physique was incredibly muscular and bore some scars. An outfit that looked to be made of fur and hide covered her body and she carried a simple looking spear.

“Atalanta,” I identified. But before I got much farther, I felt something I hadn’t felt since Ouvrard’s Palace; it was a sense of familiarity and similarity much like I had felt towards Pygmalion. I was so surprised and distracted by this sudden return that I almost got hit by a Skill that was coming for me; thankfully someone pulled me out of the way before the attack could successfully strike me.

“Amazon! Are you okay?!” Joker demanded. I shook myself out of whatever had clouded my thoughts so suddenly and focused on Joker, I nodded my head. However, it seemed that Joker wasn’t satisfied with my answer and quickly checked me over before pulling back once he was satisfied with my condition. “What can you tell me about it?” Joker softly asked. I quickly saw the others were hiding behind metal frames to avoid any attacks.

“She’s Resists Physical Skills, Earth and Ice. But she’s Weak to Fire and Gravity,” I answered. Joker nodded his head and darted out to face the enemy. Inugami surrounded her with flames and Atalanta tumbled to the ground, barely supporting her weight with her spear. At Joker’s order we immediately executed a hold up. Atalanta glared at Joker, although her eyes flittered to me on occasion.

“Ah, it’s a shame. If I had taken this seriously from the start, I wouldn’t be in this sorry state,” Atalanta commented. Somehow, I believed her, she was a woman raised in the wilds of ancient Greece with the skills of a hunter even though she was born a princess; this woman could have been a dangerous enemy if she had been a savage Shadow.

“Are you making excuses?” Joker asked. Surprisingly Atalanta barked a laugh at this question, throwing her head back as she let out the sound, everyone exchanged looks in surprise at her response to Joker’s question since we’d never known any Shadow to laugh during a hold up before. Atalanta proceeded to lower her head and gaze at Joker with an interested gleam within her eyes as she looked at him.

“I like you boy, you’re the second man to actually make me consider leaving my true home,” Atalanta admitted. She had lost a race to be with someone she genuinely cared for, though that had apparently involved divine meddling, but she seemed to really love the man from her words just now. “But I have to wonder, what if I ripped your body apart? What blood would come pouring out?” Atalanta wondered. A feral grin on her lips, though that was probably appropriate for a woman raised by bears.

“Red. What else?” Joker answered. Atalanta’s grin seemed to get even bigger at hearing those words and she used her spear to push herself up from the knelt down position she had ended up in. Everyone tensed up as we watched the wild woman for any signs that she might attempt to attack Joker or the rest of us.

“It is so strange, but speaking to you made me feel as if we are more alike than I thought. I shall gladly give you my power,” Atalanta agreed. In that moment I felt the chains of the Palace completely shatter and the sense of similarity I possessed towards her flare stronger. “I am Atalanta, let us hunt our enemies together,” Atalanta declared. And with that she turned into a mask and joined Joker’s other Personas. I breathed a sigh of relief and started to look around the store room, allowing me to notice something rather interesting.

“Look,” I pointed out. I moved over to what I had seen and knelt down, I pulled out the two canvases to reveal two versions of Sayuri, one was missing its’ branch and the other had blue shirt instead of a red one. “More fakes of the Sayuri,” I commented. I felt a presence appear at my side and a quick turn of my head reveal it was Fox who was gazing intently at the pictures.

“Indeed, they are fakes. But apart from the obvious, how did you know they were fakes Amazon?” Fox wondered. It was certainly a surprise for me to realise that I could see through the illusion of what these paintings were when they had been in the metal framework; I’d seen the figure of the woman in Sayuri but in that instant I knew they weren’t real either.

“My Second Sight, it’s more versatile than I realised,” I admitted. Perhaps because they were created from the mind, but I couldn’t entirely be sure if that was the case, either way it was a bit of a fascinating revelation; a hand gently gripped my shoulder and I lifted my head to find Joker giving me a concerned look.

“Just don’t strain yourself. If we come across any of those paintings again, we’ll need your eyes to get us through them,” Joker pleaded. I nodded my head in agreement with his words and quickly put the paintings back, with that done we kept moving and hopped up into a large metal area that took us behind a barricaded area of the storeroom and down to a lower level.

“I’m sensing something, one of those doors must be nearby,” Mona revealed. It would be good for us to get a hold of the second Will Seed and hopefully get another ring, the Ring of Attachment would be incredibly useful once I could use Maestro’s Mastery, the Soul Power cost would be worth the effect if we came upon a powerful enemy or had to face down a transformed Ruler again.

“Yeah, it’s right there,” Skull pointed out. We all looked over to see the door was right in front of us but sealed behind a shutter, we proceeded to split up and start looking around, a grinding sound came and I looked over to see the shutter was opening as footsteps slapped the ground ahead of me. Joker came around the corner tossing a Bead into the air before pocketing it, with a soft shake of my head I followed after our resourceful leader and into the Will Seed’s perimeter.

Fox, naturally, got a little spooked when he heard the ominous thoughts of his teacher. But he relaxed fairly quickly upon realising that none of the rest of us were bothered by those words as Joker cut through the cording and pushed opened the door, we drifted over to the Will Seed, Fox getting much closer than the rest of us as he stared at it with wide eyed amazement. Joker pocketed it and we turned to leave.

“What is this… this sinister-looking object? It’s so abhorrent… and yet, also so compelling!” Fox exclaimed. We quickly filled him in on what the Will Seeds were as we walked towards the doorway opposite the Will Seed chamber; the door was opened and we stepped through, but the moment that happened I felt something different in the air, like the space was somehow different than the rest of the Palace which immediately set me on edge as we moved further along.

I soon got a reason for my concerns, as the moment we stepped beyond the short corridor that had linked us to the door I saw how disturbed this new area was. It was as golden as the rest of this infernal Palace – and I’m starting to think I’ll hate that colour forever at this rate – with paintings dotted about, but the twisted stairs, almost blinding white light at the edges of my vision, glowing blue doorways, empty doorways, and the objects hanging in mid-air baffled me.

“Shit… what the hell is up with this place?” Skull asked. An appropriate question to make since this place was so much more twisted than any other location I had seen, in this Palace and the others along with Mementos; even that constantly shifting room in Kamoshida’s Palace hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as this place.

“There’s so much gold! It’s hurting my eyes,” Panther moaned. I couldn’t blame her there, with so much gold it was hard to make out some of the details of this place and I swear the light that was present was constantly reflecting off of the gold portions which would definitely not help our eyes in any way as we tried to get through this place.

“Something is wrong with this place, I can sense it… like it’s one breath away from falling apart,” I admitted. The very air itself felt off and I was convinced that just like the shack it would likely collapse at the first wrong step any of us took; it was such a terrible feeling to have pressing down on one’s shoulders and I really wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible.

“She’s right. The distortion is especially bad here… it’s barely holding up. Plus, it’s not even on our map,” Mona admitted. Well, that shot down the escape as quickly as possible unless we went backwards, which would just be a pointless endeavour since it wouldn’t get any further into the Palace where the Treasure should be located. To learn there was a place that the map completely missed was highly disconcerting.

“So, we must ascertain the truth through our eyes alone,” Fox commented. We’d have to be observing every possible thing we came across then, the paintings and fake Sayuris showed that we wouldn’t be able to trust our eyes alone, well unless they were mine but that could just wear me out faster, we’d need all our senses to keep ourselves moving through this massively distortion space.

“Which means we move ahead with caution; we all stick together this time! Amazon, we’ll need your eyes so up front with me! Skull and Mona, I want you two at the back to cover us! Fox and Panther, cover the sides!” Joker ordered. We assumed our position as two lines of three walking alongside each other, up one set of stairs only to jump down and climb a different set.

It was at the top of these that we saw Shadows were present here, although this one was on a different raised area than the rest of us. We jumped down and investigated the lower area but with no way forward we were forced up to the same area as the Shadow. Once that was dealt with, we descended down the stairs only to find a ‘wall’ in front of us. Shadow Madarame might have thought it was a clever trick, but we didn’t even need my eyes, Skull let out a huff when we got close as Joker gripped the left edge of the fabric, which had been slightly away from the rest of the wall and pulled it down. This revealed a blue doorway.

“I thought I’d seen everything there was to see of this distorted world. But to think it would conjure up such a bizarre place,” Fox muttered. All of us agreed with his words, it didn’t seem like the doorway led away since I could see nothing beyond the blue glow that filled it, instead it seemed more like it was some kind of portal.

“There might be more walls like this up ahead, let’s keep an eye out,” Mona warned. A fair warning and we’d have to be on our toes if we wanted to avoid getting tricked by the attempted deception; thankfully it seemed this highly distorted section Madarame’s Palace wasn’t as solid in its’ deceptions given the little flick up that the ‘wall’ had possessed to reveal its’ glowing portal. We quickly stepped into the blue section which caused a chill to rush over my body.

“Woah! Did we just warp!?” Skull exclaimed. Fox pointed out that the paths were as distorted as this place probably was, we descended the steps and then some more stairs to reach another portal; this one took us to another area and we moved down the stairs, only to stride passed two Sayuri paintings. I paused and turned to look at them, furrowing an eyebrow when I realised that one was a replica of the blue shirt Sayuri I’d seen in the storeroom while the other was more convincingly real.

“Why is this painting here?” Panther wondered. It was an oddity to come across the paintings so suddenly, especially after having seen two fakes shortly before entering the room, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the paintings’ presence, but it almost seemed like Madarame was unhealthy obsessed with this singular painting despite all the others he’d gained since presenting it to the world.

“It’s probably some kind of illusion. We’re in a Palace, after all,” Mona pointed out. That was the most likely answer, but even so that just raised the question as to why the painting was such an intense fixture within Madarame’s mind. “But I guess the painting itself might be correct though,” Mona admitted. That caused Panther to look down at our healer with a frown marring her lips.

“You say ‘correct’ but aren’t they all counterfeit? Although maybe the real one’s here too,” Panther acknowledged. Given the distinctions between the two, if any it was likely to be the painting to our right since that Sayuri was the one that looked most like the Sayuri that Fox had showed to us; but I’d leave that distinction up to Fox, since he was the closest thing we had to an expert on Sayuri.

“This one,” Fox stated. He clapped a hand on the red shirt Sayuri which at least proved that my suspicion had been correct. “This is the real one,” Fox explained. None of us could argue with him, especially when he seemed incredibly sure that he was correct in making the choice he had; all we could do was nod our heads in understanding.

“Either way, the fact that this is here might mean it’s connected to this space in some way,” Mona revealed. Based on that thought, I started to gaze about with my Second Sight even though the strain was starting to press against my eyes; with a small groan and pulled back and rubbed at my eyes to try an alleviate the pressure that was forming on them.

“It’s like a key, the real Sayuri might open the correct path for us,” I explained. That was what my eyes had shown me, there was some kind of link between the doorways and the Sayuri that Fox had claimed was the real Sayuri; hands gently pulled my own away from my eyes and I felt something cool and slightly damp quickly spread across my eyelids before I opened them right into the concerned face of our leader.

“Which means we look for them, you’ve used your eyes too much lately, let them rest for now,” Joker insisted. I nodded my head, albeit a little reluctantly, at least Fox was here to cover for my aching eyes; Joker pulled away and looked at the paintings. “If we need the real one, then of the two it has to be this one as Fox said,” Joker stated. He tapped the Sayuri with the red shirt.

“Indeed, it was rather obvious which of the two was real, but I suspect further in the forgeries will get better,” Fox warned. That was worrisome, if the forgeries got good enough that Fox ended up having difficulty telling them apart then there might not be much chance of my eyes doing that same and that could lead to us being trapped in this mess of maze.

“In which case we’ll be relying upon your skills to identify them Fox,” Mona insisted. The painting proceeded to turn into a ball of golden light and it flew towards the blue doorway that had been directly opposite the one we’d entered instead of the one down below. I gaped after it, trying to process the craziness that I had just seem.

“What the!? It flew away!” Skull exclaimed. We quickly recovered and chased after it which meant heading through the doorway which brought us to a cube of darker gold in an area that Panther acknowledged as being somewhere new. I looked around slightly and spotted that a short distance away from us was another set of paintings, this time made up of four of them.

“Seeing passed the false image has opened a path to the truth… hm, this golden place filled with counterfeit work is a prime example of the alchemy of Madarame’s brain. And here, just as in reality, he entraps those who cannot see through his lying façade,” Fox theorised. Since Madarame had based almost his entire career on a lie, then it makes sense that illusions would be a kind of security measure.

“You might be right… no wonder the distortion is so strong here,” Mona admitted. That was just a little terrifying to know that someone so focused on something could cause a section of the Palace to be so massively warped when compared to the rest of it; I just hope that the Treasure wasn’t located within this disturbed section of the Palace, otherwise it would be exceptionally tricky to locate.

“Hey, so… what does that mean?” Skull wondered. I looked over at Panther and saw that even she looked a little perplexed by what had just been discussed so at least Skull wasn’t alone in the confusion department; but it seemed that me and Joker had understood what Mona and Fox were getting at with their words, this place was insane and chock full of illusions and lies.

“If we want to get out of here, we need to find the real Sayuri,” Joker explained. Skull and Panther both seemed to relax at hearing that we had a solution to escape this mad place. “Which means we need to find the real one from these four,” Joker stated. Fox immediately got to work examining them as Joker leapt across to tear down another fake wall and open a chest.

“It’s neither of these two,” Fox informed. We quickly jumped over to the remaining two and Fox immediately stopped to face the third portrait from the door we came through. “This one,” Fox decided. It had been a little obvious again, but only because the branch in the background wasn’t missing like in the other three; our pathway opened and we rushed through.

We emerged into another new area and found four paintings set up down some stairs, a brief look around showed that there was another one down the side of where we stood. Fox jumped down to investigate that one while the rest of us descended the stairs to the group of four, we quickly eliminated all but one of the paintings due to the blue top or missing branch. But all of us remained gathered in front of the painting we had left.

“It looks like it… but so did many of the others so I can’t say,” Skull admitted. Since he hadn’t seemed all that fond of artwork in general, he’d mostly helped by tossing the fakes into an area they wouldn’t get in the way when the rest of us had pointed out that they were fakes; actually, he seemed quite happy to go about tossing them far into the seemingly bottomless pit that constituted the area around the stairs.

“Skull’s right, it does look like Sayuri,” Panther agreed. That was the difficult question that we had to answer; the painting was exceptionally convincing of being the real one; it had all the right markers as well, but we didn’t know the consequences of potentially choosing a false painting, Mona jumped up slightly and looked at the painting with a deeply concerned look upon his face as he stared at the canvas.

“But how certain are we?” Mona questioned. That was the thing we needed to answer, with Fox preoccupied I knew there was one swift way for us to get the answer that we needed to I proceeded to open my mouth in order to suggest that we simply use my eyes to answer that question… only for a red gloved hand to shoot across it and completely block my words before I could even voice them.

“No using your eyes Amazon!” Joker ordered. I clacked my mouth shut and gave the ravenette an unimpressed look, but he didn’t turn to look at me, instead focusing on the painting that had us all puzzled. “We’ll just have to wait for Fox to come back,” Joker insisted. Footsteps echoed towards us and we dropped into stances as we faced it, only to relax upon realising that it was Fox and not a Shadow.

“That one down the side is a fake,” Fox admitted. Not the best news but that least that narrowed it down to the painting we had found, Fox’s gaze then zeroed in on the painting we gathered around. “As is that one,” Fox informed. I felt like screaming when he said those words as Mona slumped down in shock while Joker’s gloves let out a creaking sound as if they were made of leather instead of fabric.

“For real! But there aren’t any others around!” Skull exclaimed. A small sort of sound escaped Panther as she started to look around, as if some answer would jump out at us; I started to do the same, hoping to find some sort of sign that the painting we needed would be located somewhere. A delighted sound echoed and I looked over at Panther to see she was pointing down some steps that were nearby.

“Actually, there are four more down there,” Panther chimed. Fox, Joker and Mona shot off to check them while I kept looking around just in case, Madarame had hidden the real Sayuri behind a locked door, who’s to say that he didn’t do the same thing here. Frowning slightly, I moved over to the wall behind the four paintings and saw the same gaps that the other fake walls had at the edges, reaching my hand out to grip one end, I pulled sharply which brought the whole thing down.

“All of those are fakes as well, it feels like we’re at a dead end,” Fox stated. Behind the curtain I had found another painting alongside a chest; I called out our newest member’s codename and stepped aside to reveal the painting that I had found, Joker shot for the chest while Fox approached the newly discovered artwork. “You did it Amazon, you found the real Sayuri,” Fox congratulated.

“All the versions on display were fakes while the real one was hidden the whole time,” Panther muttered. Just like in the physical world, it was amazing the way the contents of the Palace ended up reflecting the actual events that happened in the physical world; the painting turned into light and shot over the edge before dropping straight down, we all moved to the edge and leaned over it as safely as we could.

“Huh? Where the shit did it fly off to!?” Skull questioned. We jumped over the side to reach the paintings Panther had spotted and through the blue doorway, which warped us back to where we found the first set of paintings. “Arghhh, goddamnit! What the hell’s goin’ on here!?” Skull exclaimed. A fair question to pose since we seemed to have just gone in circles instead of escaping from this place.

“We have seen all of the fake images. Something must have changed somewhere,” Fox admitted. The only question was what, we hadn’t seen anything on our way here that could have possibly been altered and the orb had disappeared before we actually managed to see what it was meant to have affected.

“Like the other doorway,” Panther suggested. At that, Joker’s expression lit up and he quickly darted down the stairs, we headed after him and followed him around the corner, finding the door was glowing gold just as Panther had suggested, we moved through it and emerged somewhere else in this md place. “Oh, isn’t this somewhere new!?” Panther cheered. Hopefully, we would be getting closer to the end.

“Just be careful, okay? The distortion is growing much stronger the deeper we go,” Mona warned. We moved down the stairs and Joker opened a chest, while we looked through a doorway, but there was no blue glow shrouding what was beyond, instead there was a doorway at the other end, hopefully that was the way out of this insane labyrinth. It was and I breathed a sigh of relief along with everyone else that we had finally escaped that place, though the colour gold was still horrifically present at least it was more muted and there were other colours present.

“A-Ah, that is!” Fox exclaimed. We all jumped at the sound of Fox’s voice and turned to look at the boy who was staring off into a distant area; we quickly followed his gaze only to find that Shadow Madarame was standing in the room a short distance away from us, in front of an infrared cage which contained a hazy object but the Palace Ruler covered most of it preventing me from properly identifying what it could be. “Just as I expected… Madarame!” Fox hissed.

“Then is the Treasure behind him?” Panther asked. Unfortunately, given Shadow Madarame’s position and our location, we couldn’t actually see if the hazy thing was the Treasure; it was highly likely that it was the Treasure given the appearance, Shadow Madarame’s presence and the very large cage of lasers surrounding it.

“It’s kinda hard to tell from here. Let’s get a closer look!” Skull insisted. We moved closer and pressed ourselves against the edge of the wide doorway that led to the area beyond; Mona confirmed the hazy object was indeed the Treasure, which was a relief that we’d found it but that just presented us with a brand-new problem to overcome.

“I wonder what form it will take,” Fox mused. A good question to pose, but it wouldn’t do us any good to speculate about such a thing – although Skull suggested it could be a self-portrait – especially since we needed to reach it. “The source of what distorted Madarame’s reality this much,” Fox commented. He seemed intensely focused upon what form would be taken by the Treasure once materialised.

“So, what now? Think it’s safe to say we got our route set?” Skull asked. Absolutely not, not with that cage surrounding it, we didn’t even have a Safe Room nearby to warp to and I didn’t want to have to go through that massively distorted world again even if we knew the way out; we couldn’t afford to leave yet.

“I don’t think so. We know where the Treasure is, but we can’t exactly reach it with that cage and the Shadows around it,” Joker answered. I was glad that Joker had realised that we couldn’t leave yet, we needed to locate a nearby Safe Room – at least I hope there’s one – and find a way around the current blockade we had come across.

“Joker’s right, our route isn’t secure yet, let’s keep looking around and see if we can find a way to reach the Treasure,” Mona insisted. We pulled back from the doorway in order to have a proper discussion about the situation; Panther commented that us needing to find a way to steal it the Treasure ended up making this Palace tougher than Kamoshida’s.

“We just need to find the last puzzle piece,” I stated. There were two pathways and we moved down the left hand side, finding a Safe Room and logging it in our minds; we left the room and moved towards the end of the hallway finding a sealed door with a panel beside it that contained a red light, Joker pressed it to open the door and we found a control room on the other side.

“Think we can turn them lasers off here!?” Skull suggested. We proceeded to move over to the laptop that would control it and I had never heard such a loud sound of relief come from each of us. “Hey, we don’t need a password for this one! Whaddya wanna do?” Skull asked. The options were shutting down power, turning off the lasers and opening shutters so we did have a variety to choose from.

Joker wisely decided to shut down the lasers, but as we all looked out the window that looked into the Treasure Room, we saw that the lasers didn’t turn off. Even worse was that an error message came up on the screen saying that only Madarame could access that particular choice due to a maximum security protocol that was engaged.

“The heck? There was no point in even comin’ here then!” Skull complained. Joker proceeded to try the other two options, but we couldn’t see the shutters that were supposed to have been opened and when Joker tried the turning off of power, it only lasted for a few moments due to a back up generator and the lasers never went off.

“We need to move! Madarame likely sent someone here after shutting down the power,” Joker ordered. We turned to the door, but a guard ran through it before we could escape, I quickly sprung at him and slammed a kick into the Shadow’s mask. The guard stumbled backwards, allowing the rest of us to pour out into a much more open room for the battle.

“Hm!? So, you’re the ones who tampered with the electricity!” The Shadow snapped. He quickly twisted in on himself and emerged as another paper figure – there’s a lot of those this day – but this one was shaped like a wolf with grey colouring and its’ head hanging over its’ neck area. We could have done without this fight but oh well.

“Makami, it Nulls Gun, Earth and Bless, Strong against Wind and Nuke but weak to Electricity and Gravity,” I warned. Skull cracked his knuckles and proceeded to unleash a quick blast of Electricity upon the creature. But it was fast, easily curling away from the attack. It then started to exert energy that I was familiar with and very scared of. Fox seemed to realise what was coming and quickly used Goemon to boost my speed. This allowed me to easily dodge the multi-target Nuke spell that had been coming.

A few of the others dodged it as well, but others got hit including Fox. My lips thinned at how Fox had risked himself to save me from my weakness. I used Gry on Makami, easily knocking it to the ground and we dove in to strike it down. Once it moved, we pulled back and Mona quickly acted. He proceeded to heal all of us of any wounds. Joker quickly pulled off his mask, using Ame-no-Uzume’s Zio spell to send it to the ground and letting us unleash an All-Out attack on it.

After pulling back Panther proceeded to use Dormina on Makami, but once more it dodged the attack. Fox lashed out with his Skill which managed to hit. Makami howled before diving down to bite onto Joker. Our leader dodged one attack but got blindsided by the other one. That didn’t stop him from slamming the Shadow with a Zio Spell. Or at least trying to since the Shadow dodged again.

Fox used Goemon’s Spell to boost Panther’s speed. This allowed her to successfully hit Makami with her Sleep Spell this time. Skull took advantage of its’ exposed nature to use his magic to knock it to the ground. This All-Out Attack successfully weakened it and it was finally defeated once I used my Gravity Magic on it again to send it down for the final All-Out Attack.

“Phew… that was a surprise,” Panther admitted. Skull complained about the only thing we had actually managed to achieve, we proceeded to leave the control room and head back to the entryway to the Treasure Room and down the only unexplored pathway; this at least caused Mona to sense the location of the final Will Seed.

We found a vent that led to a chest, the armour inside immediately attached itself to Joker’s outfit, and the armour he had previously been wearing appeared in his hands. Turning to Fox, Joker held out the armour which caused that to fuse with Fox’s outfit, we stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the laser cage but there was no way for us to reach the Treasure from here. Luckily, we did find a grapple hook that let us shoot into the rafters, we were fairly high up and I crouched down slightly.

“Amazon, what are you thinking?” Joker asked. It wasn’t exactly the best place for me to suddenly stop moving but what I had noticed was something that I couldn’t just ignore despite the awkwardness of us standing so precariously; I proceeded to stretch my hand out to point towards the cage that surrounded our goal.

“We’re high up here… maybe not from this area, but if we can find a similar place, we could use the height to reach the Treasure, there’s no lasers over the top of it after all,” I pointed out. Everyone proceeded to look at the area I was indicating and saw the rather glaring obvious hole in their security, it was pretty bad to have such an opening even if it couldn’t be so easily reached.

“A fine plan, but we definitely do need another area to implement it,” Fox agreed. We hopped along the ramshackle pathway that existed in the rafters until we reached another vent, crawl through it led us to an area we could drop down through. That brought us to a sealed door but one quick push of the button beside it opened the shutter that had closed it off, allowing us to pass through it and find another Safe Room. We returned to the hallway we had dropped down into as there had been a stretch of hallway behind us, this led to the final Will Seed door, and another enemy.

“What the- they got Shadows here too!?” Skull panicked. We pulled back and Joker quickly handed out some more coffee for us to down while I passed out the Soul Drops that I had on hand; I turned back to look at the Shadow with my Second Sight and confirmed the suspicion I had, that the Shadow was of the same strength as the last two Shadows barring the third Will Seed.

“That’s the final Will Seed, there was an enemy in Ouvrard’s and Kamoshida’s, it’s likely a theme of Palaces to have a strong enemy guarding the deepest Will Seed,” I commented. It was certainly annoying to have to face down such powerful enemies but the worth of the Crystal would outweigh the risk presented to us. We proceeded to dart out into the vision of the Shadow who jumped slightly at our appearance.

“How did you all- know what? It doesn’t even matter, now that you’ve seen this place, you won’t be leaving alive!” The Shadow declared. We had no intention of perishing against this Shadow and with six of us gathered together, I’m certain that we’d be able to overcome it with more ease that the previous two enemies.

“Hmph, this room will only be your end. We’ll be passing through!” Fox declared. The Shadow was not happy to hear such words coming from Fox and quickly shifted its’ shape into something that looked like a blue statue of a humanoid but with bulbous shoulder area, arms and legs as well; red eyes glared down at us.

“Don’t use Skills! Arahabaki Reflects both. It also resists Bless and Curse! Luckily it’s Weak to Psy and Nuke!” I warned. With a quick pull of my mask, Joker’s magical attack was raised. Unfortunately, Arahabaki unleashed a very concerning aura that twisted around all of us. Freakishly, it had a very similar feeling compared to what I felt during my counselling session but much weaker. All it took was a brief mental humming of the Velvet Room song and it lost all effect.

Joker, Panther and Skull also seemed to be fine. But one look at Fox and Mona proved that they weren’t if the glowing pink within their eyes was anything to go by. Arahabaki didn’t give us much of a chance to be concerned for our friends and it quickly unleashed another attack upon us. At least this one was a physical attack which allowed us to dodge it even with the attempt to steal our sight from the bright flash that follow it. Yet neither Fox nor Mona made any move and thus got hit with the attack.

“Why’d you guys stay still?” Skull questioned. That didn’t seem to be the right question to ask, as the moment he did, Mona moved. Mona leapt at Skull with a vicious yowl – I vaguely heard something about Panther but not much – and swung his sabre at Skull. The blonde yelped and swung his weapon down to stop the attack. This allowed Joker to grab Mona and restrain him. “What the hell?!” Skull asked.

“Panther! Restrain Fox! Now!” Joker ordered. Panther did as instructed, quickly tangling the boy up. I quickly rifled through my pockets and pulled out some gel, I tossed a sample to Skull and motioned for him to head for Fox. I went over to Mona and smeared some of the gel over the cat. The effect was instantaneous as the pink colouring faded from Mona’s eyes and he stopped struggling.

“It took control of our minds!” Mona exclaimed. Well, that was terrifying, but not much we could do now. We all climbed to our feet and Joker immediately used Kodama’s Psy to knock the entity down. Mona looked ready to dive in to attack along with Fox, but Joker never gave the signal for us to move in. “Err… Joker, we can attack now,” Mona pointed out.

“Not after that, we need to play it smart,” Joker decided. He used Kodama again, but this time to weaken its’ defence. Panther nodded her head and proceeded to reduce its’ offense. Skull quickly passed out healing items and more of the same gel from Mona’s pack. Fox boosted Mona’s speed while Mona healed us. I quickly boosted Mona’s magic, hopefully this would be enough.

Arahabaki got back to its’ feet and unleashed another physical attack against us. Most of us managed to dodge it and Panther quickly used Dormina. It only just managed to catch Arahabaki. Skull quickly used his Electricity after getting a speed boost from Fox. The attack sent it down and we quickly moved in this time; hacking, slashing and hammering as much as we could. Once we pulled back, Arahabaki attempted to use that same mind control on us once again.

We all dodged it this time and Mona didn’t give our opponent long to rest. Instead, he slammed it with a Frei Spell that seemed more powerful than normal. One All-Out Attack later and Joker was using Kodama to send our opponent back down for another beating. Arahabaki got up and seemed to be shivering with barely restrained rage at being beaten so much by us. It unleashed the same blinding Skill as before, but this time it seemed to hit properly. Not only did I feel it hit me, but Panther suddenly started to stumble about with her eyes seemingly crossed as she tried to stay up right. Arahabaki used the opportunity to charge over and send the girl flying across the room.

“Panther!” Mona cried. Said cat darted over and immediately healed the girl of her wounds. Skull let out an angry yell, but smartly used his Spell to attack it. I called upon Phantom’s power to unleash a hail of rocks upon Arahabaki, deeply wishing I could drop magical defence, but no such Spell existed. A quick glance showed a furious Fox glaring at the demented statue as he utilised his Ice Spell.

I looked over at Joker who was glaring with such venom it was actually quite chilling to look at. He tore off his mask and had Ame-no-Uzume bombard it with a Nuke Spell. He successfully knocked it down but gave no order to move in. Instead, he moved over to Panther. I kept a sharp eye on the enemy if it decided to move with Skull also glaring at it. Thankfully Panther was okay and she took the opportunity to weaken its’ attack once again.

With everyone back on their feet, we started to get back into a rhythm. I boosted Mona and Joker’s magic. Fox improved their speed. Skull and Panther handled healing while the four of us peppered in attacks when possible. As for Mona and Joker, they used Nuke and Psy Spells with a Baton Pass between them to knock it down. We dove in for an All-Out Attack and successfully defeated it.

Each of us breathed a heavy sigh of relief, but we were also pretty exhausted after that battle which was not helped by all the battles prior to this one. Joker recovered himself and cut apart the ropes, we stepped inside to find the final Will Seed which Joker quickly plucked and it immediately started to glow along with the other two that Joker had collected. They slammed together into the Crystal of Vanity which had an interesting ability.

“We’ll need to take this to Jose to draw out its’ full power but for now, it’s ability to nullify weaknesses is pretty useful,” I acknowledged. We made our way back to the Safe Room and out onto the balcony area behind it, which allowed us to swing across to the balcony area on the opposite side via grappling hooks. We quickly dealt with the Shadows that were there and raided the chest in that area.

Once done, we made our way down the hallway and reached the end which had a doorway, it was pushed open and we stepped inside. It was a large room with what looked to be some kind of computers sealed within bookcases, a large opening was at the other end diagonally across from us, tables of wood with different apparatus scattered across the surface. A large window filled with a blue light was near the opening and a lever was slightly underneath it with a cable running away from the lever and out the opening.

“Huh? Is this some kinda security room too?” Skull wondered. It didn’t look to be that sort of room since there weren’t any obvious computers present like in the previous security rooms, plus none of them were filled with what seemed to be miscellaneous items either; whatever this room was its’ purpose was different to other rooms we’d come across.

“No, it is most likely where all the mechanisms in the exhibition hall are controlled from,” Fox theorised. That seemed likely what with the cable attached to one part of the wall. “Given the number of hanging works, it would make sense to have a room dedicated to controlling them,” Fox added on. Panther compliment Fox’s observational skills while a small hum escaped from Joker.

“Hanging… and we’re pretty high up,” Joker muttered. He suddenly darted to the other side of the room and jumped through the opening there, exchanging looks with each other we followed after him until Joker came to a stop crouched down at the end of a wooden platform. “And we’re right above the Treasure here,” Joker commented.

“This is quite a large hole in their security… but what do we do? Jump down to retrieve it?” Fox suggested. While his observation was an obvious one, I really did not think it was such a good idea for us to just casually toss ourselves down into a cage to grab the Treasure; the drop wasn’t the problem and instead it had to do with something else entirely.

“Bad idea, we’d be caught instantly with no way back up, the rope we’ve got certainly isn’t long enough to reach,” I stated. Even with such an easy way to access the Treasure, without anyway to escape it was basically suicide and the moment we sent the Calling Card to achieve materialisation, the Security Level would automatically disable any attempts to travel by Safe Room if we tried to get out and even if we tried to use the Goho-M.

“But it’s plenty if we use that. Look up,” Mona insisted. We did and saw a large hook hanging from the ceiling right over the opening that would likely be capable of reaching the Treasure. “The controls should probably be around here somewhere,” Mona stated. Given the hook’s proximity, they were likely close by which would make it easier to find.

“I think I spotted ‘em back in that control room, there was a lever right next to some twisted rope,” Skull pointed out. Skull then darted back in and must have found it because in a few moments the hook lowered down, it kept going and going until it got very close to the hazy form of the Treasure; but that also meant that it was getting close to all the Shadows.

“Stop! Stooop! They’ll notice if you keep that up! Get back up there! Go, go, go!” Panther panickily warned. The hook stopped and then started to retreat and we all gathered back in the room where Mona immediately claimed this was useful, which was quite true since it opened up the possibility of a plan that we could use.

“Do you plan on descending on that hook? Would they not spot you the moment you lowered down?” Fox questioned. Fox’s warning did make sense since the hook had almost been within eye reach of the guards before Skull managed to stop it; but it seemed like Fox was forgetting something we had experienced recently that would be able to mitigate such a danger.

“Not necessarily. There’s something you guys can do to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mona answered. A coy smile on his lips as he looked at us, Panther and Skull seemed confused as to what Mona could possibly be getting at, while Fox was frowning deeply and seemed to be in thought; thankfully the expression on Joker’s face meant that he understood what Mona had been getting at.

“Kill the lights, it’s only for a short time, but it’d be enough for you to reach the Treasure and be pulled back up, so long as you were here before hand,” Joker suggested. The faces of the other three quickly lit up once they realised that the killing of the lights would protect Mona from being instantly discovered as Mona smiled brightly at our leader understanding the plan.

“That’s right Joker. We split the tasks and work together to pull this off. One group shuts down the power and the other will lower the crane, while I grab the Treasure,” Mona explained. It was a good plan, but there was one thing that could make this all go south if we weren’t careful about it; after all no plan was safe without an escape route.

“We should also have someone guarding our backs, just to make sure it doesn’t get blocked by guards,” I warned. Joker and Mona both agreed with me, if our route out got cut off then we’d just be trapped in here and would have quite the trek to get out of the Palace with the Treasure which would lead to a lot of unnecessary fighting.

“You sure that’s gonna work? Seems like they’d realise what’s goin’ on at some point,” Skull wondered. He sounded slightly worried about the risk that was present, not that I blame him since this was quite the risky move to take; but it was the only move for us to take since we had very limited options since the lasers couldn’t be turned off.

“Sometimes bold moves have the greatest pay out. Unless someone has a better idea?” Mona answered. We all looked at each other, concern apparent on our expression but no one opened their mouths to say anything which indicated that none of them had any better ideas about ways to get the Treasure out of the cage.

“This plan sounds good, let’s do it,” Joker insisted. With our route secured, we decided it was best to leave the Palace.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 42: - The Forger of Vanity, Azazel

The next day, all of us gathered at the café and quickly took our seats at the ground floor booth. I had made sure that Niijima-senpai wasn’t around before approaching the others who were already there. None of us ordered anything since we were much too tense to even try and actually consume anything whether it was food or drink.

“We can now take him down, yes?” Yusuke asked. I could practically feel Yusuke vibrating with energy even though he sat directly across from me beside Ann; if anyone was eager to take down Madarame then it would obviously be Yusuke, but it seemed that he was desperately trying to keep himself as controlled as possible to ensure he gave nothing away.

“Madarame’s going to be a changed man,” Morgana reassured. He was sat beside Ren but on top of the boy’s bag so that we could all see the cat who looked so statuette like with his positioning. “There won’t be any way to reverse it though. Are you sure you’re okay with that?” Morgana asked. His intense blue eyes were focused directly upon Yusuke, we certainly needed the boy to be on board with this decision before going ahead with it.

“I have thought it over carefully and I cannot think of a future in which he does not pay his due. He has preyed not only on the art world but on countless talents… so, I humbly request your help,” Yusuke reassured. At least we had the boy’s support in going through with the plan to change Madarame’s heart, though he certainly sounded very formal when he asked for our help.

“Alright then,” Ren commented. He seemed to relax slightly upon hearing those words from our newest member, Yusuke proceeded to apologise for ‘making’ us do this. “Yusuke, we were going to do this anyway. Nakanohara asked us to stop him,” Ren admitted. Yusuke looked down at that with a sad expression, I wish there was something I could say to brighten the boy’s mood, but I was drawing a blank on how to do that.

“Yeah, no need to apologise. We just didn’t want to impose if you weren’t feeling up to it, Yusuke,” Ann added. She reached out and gently patted his hand which succeeded in bringing the boy’s head back up as his sad expression faded away. “But if you’re already determined to do it, then there’s nothing more for us to say,” Ann insisted.

“If I recall, our next step is sending a calling card, correct? What a suave manoeuvre,” Yusuke commented. He seemed intrigued by our method of working but he needed to understand that the calling card wasn’t a flashy move to attract attention; I looked at Morgana who gave me a nod of his head as if telling me to go ahead with telling Yusuke about the need for the calling card in his place.

“The letter is an important step. By sending one, we’re forcibly changing our target’s cognition in order to materialise the goal. You saw the state it was in yesterday, that hazy form renders it untouchable to anything, so we need our target to believe his distorted desire is something solid,” I explained. Yusuke gripped his chin as he seemed to be thinking something through with some intensity.

“A change in cognition, that reminds me, you went through some trouble regarding that before,” Yusuke pointed out. He released his grip upon his chin and proceeded to look at us, there was really only one incident that he could be talking about due to how we had a significant issue with resolving that particular obstacle.

“Ah, you must be talking about when we forced open that security gate in the courtyard.” Morgana realised. Yusuke nodded his head to show that he was correct, but how to go about explaining it, Yusuke was a fairly smart individual but if we accidentally mess things with the wording then he might not understand it. I tried to think of how to structure this so that Yusuke would certainly understand.

“The challenge is a cognitive world, so changing its’ Ruler’s cognition changes the topography!” Ann explained. I snapped my head up to look at the girl, surprised that she managed to find such a good way to explain the situation, then again, she did have a decent grasp of languages so it might make communication easier. “I think,” Ann added on. That was perfect description to use for what we were doing.

“That’s actually a good way to sum it up Ann-chan. Remembering that fact will be a vital tool in future challenges,” I admitted. Yusuke also seemed to understand what Ann had been saying but his eyes darkened suddenly and I wondered what he could possibly be thinking about to cause such an expression to take residence upon his face.

“Actually, may I ask a truly basic question?” Yusuke wondered. All of us focused upon him, intrigued by what he had to ask. “You continue to mention cognition quite readily, but why does this world formed from materialised cognitions even exist to begin with? Don’t tell me… has it always existed, while we go about our daily lives completely oblivious?” Yusuke wondered. Talk about a loaded question.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Morgana admitted. Yusuke focused upon the cat as he seemed very interested in the answer that might be provided. “At the very least, I know it existed before the Kamoshida incident… but that’s all,” Morgana answered. Yusuke proceeded to turn his attention to me, I could already tell that he was silently asking me if I happened to know anymore.

“I wish I knew,” I admitted. And that was the truth, I truly didn’t understand how the world of cognition even came to be only that it did exist alongside our own. “I was trained by people who understood this madness on a level we never could, but even they seemed confused as to why these worlds of the mind exist. All I can tell you is that the Metaverse is only the newest incarnation of such a place,” I admitted.

“Natsumi, that’s a little terrifying to hear,” Ryūji admitted. I looked over at the boy and saw a pinched expression of fear resting on his face, I proceeded to look at the others and found expressions of concern and worry resting upon each of their faces; it was probably best that I reassure him that those worlds wouldn’t be causing a problem for us.

“Don’t be spooked, those places don’t exist anymore. We aren’t the first team of our kind to encounter these worlds and fight back, others came before us and succeeded in dispersing those worlds,” I reassured. All of them, including Morgana, seemed to visibly deflate with relief at knowing that we wouldn’t run into the other worlds suddenly.

“It’s kinda weird thinkin’ there might be whole world we just don’t know a damn thing about,” Ryūji admitted. At least the boy had popped up slightly after my admission, he proceeded to turn his gaze to Ren “Did the thought ever cross your mind Ren?” Ryūji asked. Our leader proceeded to give the boy a raised eyebrow in surprise at his question.

“Of course. Since Kamoshida’s madness, hard not to think about that kind of stuff,” Ren admitted. That was quite true, well it was for me at least but I can’t say whether the others were as compulsive about thinking about it whenever they have a free moment; I should probably do something about that now that I think about it, I can’t become obsessive.

“Don’t be so anxious. You don’t even know everything about the city you live in, after all,” Morgana reassured. Very true, but something like the Metaverse perked curiosity unlike Tokyo, but that might be because I could actually fight the dangers in the Metaverse. “All that’s important is that we know how to make use of that world and how to traverse it,” Morgana reminded.

“Anyway, we have our route and our plan, everyone in favour of sending the calling card?” Ren asked. Most of us agreed to go through with the sending of the calling card, except for Yusuke who seemed to be in deep thought about the plan; he adjusted his position to look at us with concern in his eyes which caused worry to start stirring within me about what could be concerning him so.

“A calling card, hm? Will he take it seriously? He is famous, after all… he has often received slanderous letters till now, as well,” Yusuke wondered. That was a concern we needed to address, a famous person would receive questionable or even accusatory mail – I think it was par for the course of being famous – so we had to ensure that Madarame would be thoroughly convinced by the letter we were going to send.

“If you use the right wordage he will, maybe include something only Madarame could know. That will really scare him,” Ren reassured. A good idea, if we referenced things from the Palace with just the right wording then Madarame would instinctively know it’s true and that would cause the change of cognition we needed; of course, the question about writing immediately made me turn to a certain blonde.

“Are you going to write it again, Ryūji? That last one was questionable at best,” Morgana warily asked. I’m glad that someone else was being cautious about the writing aspect of the calling card; we didn’t need something done in that style again. Suddenly a clap sounded and I looked over to see that Ann had a bright smile on her face and her hands were pressed firmly against each other as if praying.

“Yusuke should do it! Make it really artistic and stuff!” Ann cheerfully suggested. That was a good idea since Yusuke would be able to word it in a good way that would ensure the change of cognition; however, when I looked over at Yusuke to see what he thought of the idea, his expression showed that he didn’t think that was a good idea at all.

“No. It’ll end with him figuring it out. He knows my drawing and writing styles all too well,” Yusuke insisted. That was definitely something dangerous, we didn’t need Yusuke to be put into anymore danger than he already was; but luckily there was something Ryūji had done with the previous calling card that might be able to cover us on that base.

“Then don’t write it,” I suggested. I pulled out the calling card I had brought with me and handed it to the painter. “The cut out kanji will prevent him from realising its’ you,” I suggested. He opened it up and looked over the message that had been sent; he even went as far as to nod his head in agreement with the idea to use the kanji instead of his own handwriting. Suddenly Ryūji pumped his fist into the air.

“Yeah! I’ll think it up and Yusuke just has to make it cooler!” Ryūji decided. That was a good idea, refining Ryūji’s work would also put another layer of protection over Yusuke, Yusuke smiled slightly and nodded his head in agreement before folding the card up and slipping it into his pocket before anyone saw. He grabbed his bag and proceeded to stand up with a pleased expression upon his face.

“Designing a calling card, hm… interesting. It shall become proof that we do exist,” Yusuke decided. We all smiled at each other, feeling relaxed that we would finally be able to stop Madarame’s cruel ambitions.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The time we spent in school while we waited for the end of the day was practically gnawing at my mind, I barely paid attention in Chouno-sensei’s class, which was probably a bad thing since she sprung a difficult question about word roots on Ren which – apart from the discussion of synaesthesia – was all I could recall of the lesson.

Once school was finished, we met up with Yusuke who privately showed us the calling card and it was amazing. The wordage was almost poetry in how it flowed and the icon that Yusuke had designed was quite eye catching. It kept the hat and mask from Ryūji’s design but ditched the smirk, both of these were much more stylised than the previous cartoonish version with the left eye hole of the mask taking on a flame like appearance. It was enough that Ryūji had updated the Chat icon to that symbol last night.

We headed for the exhibit with Yusuke having already distributed the calling cards at the exhibit. Yusuke stepped out into the open to stand beside Madarame who had a crowd of people gathered around him. That meant we couldn’t use them as cover so we instead hid behind some paintings where we could still see Madarame and watch his reaction. A member of the staff walked up to Madarame and they moved over to the other side of the painting so we adjusted ourselves to watch.

“A letter?” Madarame asked. The man took a hold of the calling card and held it up. “Sir Ichiryūsai Madarame, a great sinner of vanity whose talent has been exhausted. You are an artist who uses his authority to shamelessly steal the ideas of his pupils. We have decided to make you confess all your crimes with your own mouth. We will take your distorted desires without fail. From, The Phantoms,” Madarame read. He quickly scrunched up the calling card as his eyes narrowed into a glare. “Whose doing is this!?” Madarame demanded.

“We don’t know! The same letter has been posted everywhere,” The staff member revealed. Very nicely done Yusuke, we weren’t even concerned when Madarame brought up security cameras. “There were no signs of the culprit… all we saw was a cat in the recordings,” The staff member revealed. All of us focused on Morgana, who was preening a fair amount, as we each gave him silent congratulates for his hard work in spreading those calling cards.

“Remove these at once!” Madarame ordered. The staff member agreed but he then whispered something to the man that none of us humans heard, but Morgana claimed he was worrying about the media’s reaction to the post. “Are you insinuating that this slander is true?” Madarame questioned. He even stamped his foot as he said those words, the staff member denied this and that was when it happened.

“It’s those damn brats’ doing, isn’t it?” Shadow Madarame snarled. The haze was in full effect as I saw the Ruler’s true thoughts to this event. “Well, it means nothing… they’ll only be able to do as they please until the exhibit is over,” Shadow Madarame claimed. Unlike last time there was no additional weigh to show an increase to the Security Level, but we weren’t inside the Palace this time so all I got was the faintest sense of agitation. Yusuke turned and walked over to us in a calm and easy manner.

“Will that do?” Yusuke asked. His expression was uncertain as he looked at me since we had warned him of the way the Ruler should be affected by the card, I grinned at the boy and nodded my head to show that the calling card had done the trick. “I thought so, but to know it is a different feeling,” Yusuke admitted. His tension faded away as he rested a hand on the centre of his chest.

“Yup! It was perfect! The composition was way cooler too!” Ann congratulated. Morgana agreed that the Treasure should have appeared now as Ryūji claimed Madarame’s freedom would be coming to an end; that was when we learned people were already talking about the calling card over the internet… word can spread terrifyingly fast.

“I’m sure you know, but we only get one shot to pull this off!” Morgana reminded. The serious weight of his words caused any sort of relaxed atmosphere to evaporate like water in the desert, it was replaced with a seriousness as we all exchanged looks; we nodded our heads in agreement with our healer’s words, knowing this would be our only chance to stop Madarame for good.

“Let’s do this,” Ren ordered. With that, we proceeded to leave the exhibit with no one the wiser.

*Persona 5 Royal*

“The atmosphere in here seems significantly different,” Fox noted. He twisted the ring he now bore; it was the Ring of Attachment which had been replaced by the Ring of Vanity for me, primarily for its’ weakness nullification effect which would keep me safe from the three elements, although the barrier effect it could produce would be useful.

“I mean we did basically declare war on him by sendin’ that card,” Skull commented. Not too far off the mark since that is exactly what it felt like with the amount of pressure the Security Level was putting down upon us; but with our plan in place and route secured then we’d have nothing to worry about… so long as nothing unexpected happens that is.

“But there’s nothing to fear. We’ve secured a route and we’re ready to go. We’ll take the Treasure in style!” Mona reassured. With that, Joker opened a passage for us to the nearest Safe Room, we quickly ran over our accessories to make sure none of them needed to be changed but apart from me and Fox, the others would be okay with what they currently had on.

“There will be no turning back once we begin the operation,” Fox admitted. We were all aware of this fact, but it almost seemed to add a weight of seriousness to the matter which made it feel more real than even the weight that came from the Security Level; I took a deep breath in order to settle my nerves so that they didn’t start running amok before we even started our heist.

“And if worst comes to worst, we might have another of those fights on our hands,” Panther admitted. That was the one thing we wanted to avoid, but the truth was we had all agreed it was the most likely scenario, so it was a case of worst case scenario but we were all prepared for it; Joker had made sure to stock up on medicine just for such an occasion and dole out new armour for everyone which he had cleaned.

“That’s right. Are you ready, Joker?” Mona asked. Joker nodded his head and we all focused upon our leader; he’d outlined the plan to us in a Chat but hadn’t yet decided on what roles people would be playing only that we’d be split into three groups: one to support Mona, another to handle the power and a third to cover our escape route in case any Shadows attempted to close to off.

“Alright, everyone here are your roles,” Joker stated. I could practically taste the tension that his words had caused. “Fox and Amazon, you’ll go with Mona to steal the Treasure. Skull and Panther, one of you will lead any Shadows away from the control room while the other kills the lights. I’ll cover our escape since I can handle our enemies the safest,” Joker explained. That caused a worried feeling to gnaw at me and everyone else seemed to feel the same from their expressions.

“Just be careful, you going down will really hamper our capability to fight if it comes to that,” I insisted. Joker nodded and so we gave him a vast chunk of the medicine along with a few elemental attack items; with that done Joker along with Skull and Panther shot down the corridor. I really hope that those three will be safe, especially Joker since his weaknesses were exploitable even if they were rather unpredictable.

“Let’s get moving you two,” Mona insisted. We trailed after the cat shaped thief and grappled over to the other side of Treasure Hall where we’d find the maintenance room, we got inside and while Fox stood by the lever ready to pull once the lights were out, Mona and I moved over to the cane. “Make sure to tie it tight Amazon,” Mona reminded.

“I know Mona, we don’t want our best healer falling into such a trap,” I agreed. I pulled out the rope and tied one end around Mona’s torso, using the rope I lifted him up and chucked the over end over the hook. Once Mona’s back was secure against the hook but not uncomfortable, I wrapped the rest of the rope around him and the hook before tying the end around one of the other pieces of rope.

“And now we wait,” Mona whispered. I nodded my head as Mona proceeded to look down into the laser cage and I followed his gaze, the Treasure had taken its’ solid form, but I couldn’t tell what it was not only due to the distance, but also due to the face that it was covered by a purple shroud, but the shape did indicate it was thin and rectangular. “That looks like a painting,” Mona commented.

“If it’s a self-portrait Skull will never shut up,” I joked. Mona cracked a smile at that, but the silence was a bit stifling in my opinion. “Hey, remember you own me lock picking lessons after this, so come back safe,” I insisted. I’d only really said that to keep the worry in my body from overpowering me, I couldn’t see or hear any of my teammates apart from Mona and Fox; a quick glance down to the control room proved no one friendly was in there yet. I wish there was some way for us to communicate with each other, but most technology couldn’t work in here, so we probably need something very special.

“Of course, Amazon, a gentleman never breaks a promise to a lady,” Mona reassured. I gave him a smile as he said that, especially since I saw the comforting gaze he was shooting me, before he took in a deep breath and his tail started to swish through the air quite happily. “Ah, only the best can appreciate these critical moments. Plus, this feels like we’re really phantom thieves!” Mona cheered.

“Our second heist in such a fancy, if gaudy, place, it’s certainly a step up from a crumbling old castle,” I admitted. I looked down again and saw Panther in the control booth, I gave her my signal before turning back to the opening and rushing over. “Get ready Fox! Light’s out soon!” I warned. Right as I said those words, the lights vanished putting us in darkness.

“And our dramatic heist begins!” Fox declared. Hearing the crane activate, I carefully made my way back over to the edge and reached my hand out to feel the crane as it descended down; I heard Panther arrive at our location as she apologised for the wait when I felt a movement through the cable that was different to its’ previous movement.

“Treasure secured!” I called. The crane immediately started to retract as the lights came back on, briefly blinding me, once Mona was up with me, I gripped the Treasure and set it beside me then grabbed one of Mona’s hands and pulled the rope free. Mona used my arm as a swing to reach the wooden planks as I swiftly coiled up the rope and tucked it away; the Treasure was secured to Mona back when I turned around as he hopped over to the maintenance room.

“Heehee, how’s that for a skilled plan!” Mona celebrated. At least he wasn’t losing his mind like last time, I heard the commotion as Shadow Madarame and his goons realised the Treasure was gone; once back in the room we made our way to the door and Panther pulled on it, but it didn’t move. “Seriously! It’s not opening!?” Mona exclaimed. Things quickly got worse when I heard voices ordering the crane to be checked out. “Wh-wh-what do we do!?” Mona panicked.

“Forgive me, but what sort of master thief lacks an escape plan?” Fox questioned. He sounded much too calm for the situation since we were about to be discovered. “In any case, let us search for another way out. We must escape!” Fox insisted. I twisted around and darted for the table, I seized paper and pen to scribble out a quick note to Joker, and hopefully Skull too, before tying it to one of my arrows with a bit of string.

“Back to the Treasure, quickly!” I insisted. We shot back through the opening as I prepared my bow, at the edge, I positioned myself to see the room that led to the distorted world; once set, I loosed the arrow and watched it disappear through the arch. “I’ve sent a warning to Joker, let’s hope Skull is with him and they’ll meet up with us,” I stated. Standing up, I hooked my bow back in place and we quickly started to hop across the boards towards a glowing blue window.

“Go through! Now!” Joker’s voice ordered. I glanced back to see him leaping over towards us with Skull slightly behind him; we didn’t wait for long and quickly dove through the opening, only to emerge into what looked to be roof of the Palace, we had escaped from being instantly caught but now we needed to actually find our way down from here.

“Whoa, this shit’s real high up,” Skull commented. Mona reassured him that we at least were outside now, before reminding us that we still needed to escape; Joker immediately got moving and we followed him down a series of blocks that acted like steps twice before heading down some actual stairs and reaching a glowing red doorway.

“Is this another portal to an unknown destination?” Fox wondered. Joker didn’t give us much time to hesitate and instead quickly ushered us through the opening which turned green upon approach; shockingly enough this led us right out into the courtyard which had required Panther’s decoy act to get through.

“I knew it! All that security would’ve been meaningless if it just led back inside!” Mona declared. We were still technically inside but I suppose this was the closest thing to a halfway point; Fox claimed we’d escaped a siege, but at that moment I heard an unsettlingly familiar meow escape from Mona which caused us all who knew that sound to give him intensely concerned looks. Fox of course looked completely confused.

“Dude! Why’s Mona getting’ excited now of all times?” Skull questioned. Mona insisted that we take a look at the Treasure despite the fact that we were still in significant danger of being found, but no one else seemed concerned as Mona removed the painting and set it on the ground. Skull and Panther knelt down on either side of the healer while me, Joker and Fox arrayed ourselves in a triangle to watch for any danger.

“Treasure!” Mona squealed. He threw himself on top of the painting as if to nuzzle it, before suddenly going very still. “Hrm?!” Mona sounded. He sounded rather confused, so I looked down only to see Mona pull back which revealed a rather crude drawing of a face made in simple lines; it wasn’t something I’d expect to be the Treasure of a vain man.

“This is the Treasure!?” Skull questioned. However, none of us could respond when Fox suddenly yelled for us to get back. We all jumped away just in time to avoid being caught by an extremely powerful electrified fence that had leapt up around the painting, thank goodness for Fox’s keen eye otherwise we would have been trapped.

“Meddlesome vermin,” Shadow Madarame spat. We all turned to face him and found the man standing there with two Shadows and I quickly noticed that one had a golden frame underneath its’ arm; all of us gathered around in front of the Ruler. “Is this what you’re looking for?” Shadow Madarame asked. That meant the frame the Shadow held had to be the real Treasure.

“How dare you try to trap me like some kind of mouse!” Mona snapped. I couldn’t blame Mona for feeling that way as it was quite annoying, did the Rulers have a habit of setting up a trap for us once the calling card was sent? Kamoshida and Ouvrard had used an ambush while – as Skull right accused – Madarame had a fake Treasure set to ensnare us.

“Counterfeits are accepted in the world of Japanese art,” Shadow Madarame commented. Not this time they wouldn’t be, we wanted the genuine article and there was no way any of us would be leaving without it; all of us were prepared to fight, up until Fox stepped forward slightly. At Joker’s nod, we stood down and allowed Fox to confront the man he owed a great debt to but had also wronged him too much.

“What made you change like this!? Is it because you became famous?!” Fox questioned. He sounded more torn up than I had expected him to be, but I suppose he couldn’t cast aside everything he felt towards Madarame so easily, no matter how determined he was to see the man pay for his crimes. “Can’t you understand how much it pains me to inquire about the crimes of my foster father!?” Fox pleaded.

“Now that I think back, the only reason why I took you in was due to my ties with your mother. That woman never lost her passion for painting even after her husband died. Her skills and talents were quite astonishing… that’s why I decided to look after her,” Shadow Madarame stated. I couldn’t believe the heartlessness that this Shadow was showing, had he never even cared for Yusuke, even a smidge? “Your mother and the artwork she created, they’re all MY works of art!” Shadow Madarame declared.

“How low can you sink?!” Panther accused. A snarl on her lips and twisting up her voice, I felt my free hand twist into a tight fist at the cruelty within Madarame’s words; to think that he would claim someone’s own life as belonging to them, it was terrifying to see how much I was reminded of Ouvrard by looking at and listening to this man, it was the same horrible way Ouvrard had spoken of my voice.

“I suppose I can grant you a gift before you die. A glimpse of the genuine Sayuri!” Shadow Madarame declared. Fox was obviously confused by those words, after all it hadn’t made much sense when Fox knew what the real Sayuri looked like; the Ruler nodded to the Shadow holding the frame. It repositioned the frame and held the Treasure proudly above its’ head so that we could see its’ true form.

“That’s the real Sayuri!” Fox questioned. I could understand his confusion, the painting was almost an exact match for the Sayuri we’d all seen, but there was one glaring difference. The fog was gone and, in its’ place, cradled in the woman’s arms, was a baby… a baby with the same dark hair and moonlight skin as the woman. “This can’t be?!” Fox denied. Somehow, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Fox knew exactly who the woman in the painting was. “Mum,” Fox called. I heard the tears in his voice as he seemed to curl in on himself.

“Indeed, it is. This was painted by your mother. It’s a portrait of herself. A woman who knew her death was coming painted her last wishes, for the son she would leave behind. That is the truth behind the mystery of Sayuri’s expression!” Shadow Madarame declared. He dared to claim that artwork belonged to him! That painting belonged to Yusuke! If Yusuke’s mother had painted it for him, then that was where it should have been! Yet Madarame had the gall to deface it and claim it as his own!

“You stole something that personal!?” Skull questioned. Madarame claimed he knew it would be a huge success if he changed it and used his own name when it was released; I couldn’t believe this man could exist. He was worse than Ouvrard, at least my voice could never be taken from me in such a literal manner but to think he stole something so deeply important to both Fox and his mum, of all things… this had to be the worst crime Madarame could commit.

“But the baby in the picture… why did you paint over it?” Fox questioned. Apparently, that was to add mystery to the reason behind the expression that Fox’s mum bore and Madarame believed that this mystery was why people were drawn to it all because critics had written that comment several times over.

“I always felt something was off about all this… now I know what it is,” Panther calmly stated. Of course, that calm was a mask for the fire that burned within her eyes, she looked an inch away from tearing her mask off to launch some fireballs… not that I felt any better if I’m honest. “If you really treasured that painting, you wouldn’t even think about replicating it for profit! You don’t love art at all!” Panther snapped.

“Though you have a real Treasure, your true skills are nothing more than those scribbles on that fake!” Mona accused. Skull claimed that he was going to laugh, everyone one of them was right; I’d wondered why vanity was his distortion and now I knew why, he believed himself so great and incredible that he thought he could do whatever he wanted when in truth, as Mona said, his skills weren’t worth the air to talk about them.

“So, you’ll defy me no matter what… well then, since you’re my work of art Yusuke, I’m going to reap you for the sake of my future. Along with those insolent friends of yours there,” Shadow Madarame stated. It looks like we’d have to end up in a fight again, I prepared myself for the fight to come as I waited for Madarame to transform.

“I can’t believe you’re treating both mother and son like they’re objects… you’re inhuman!” Panther cried. My eyes darted over to Fox who I noted seemed to be deep in thought, as if considering something important, before he lifted his head to focus cold eyes upon Madarame; yet his body still trembled slightly as if he struggled to hold himself back from acting.

“I’ve heard that you destroy your ‘art’ once they outlive your usefulness… did that include my mother as well?” Fox questioned. I think I might have preferred Fox and Panther to attack me with their elements – at the same time – than to hear that suggestion; I looked at Madarame as he stared at his former pupil in silence for a moment.

“She just so happened to have a seizure in front of me. That’s when a thought crossed my mind… if I don’t call for help and leave her be, I could obtain her painting without any strings attached,” Shadow Madarame admitted. The sensation of ice so cold it burned encasing my body fell away under the heat of rage the roared to life upon hearing what Madarame had done.

“Murderer!” I snarled. I took one step forward before something grabbed my arm while a difference force wrapped itself around my leg. “You as good as murdered her! You stole her life and Fox’s future! All for your selfish desires!” I yelled. I was feeling incredibly out of control, so it was probably good that Skull and Mona had intervened as I wasn’t entirely sure that I could hold myself back.

“She was physically weak. No one would doubt if she just dropped dead because of a seizure. Above all, Yusuke, didn’t you think it was odd that I discovered your talent when you were only three?” Shadow Madarame wondered. My eyes widened as I felt my body slacken, allowing the two boys to release me but not of their own volition as they also proceeded to stare at Madarame in horror.

“You didn’t,” Joker hissed. I’m starting to think there was nothing we could imagine that this man wasn’t capable of doing with all these infernal revelations. “You taking Fox in had nothing to do with artistic talent and everything to do with keeping him from realising you stole his mother’s artwork,” Joker realised. I felt like being sick, especially when Madarame proceeded to shrug his shoulders in response to Joker’s accusation.

“Correct, the artistic talents Yusuke inherited from his mother were a delightful miscalculation, though,” Shadow Madarame admitted. He even seemed proud of what he’d done, as if it wasn’t something horrific. “If I’m going to steal ideas, it’s much easier robbing the future of brats who won’t talk back than adults. It’s thanks to you that I came up with the idea. You have my gratitude,” Shadow Madarame admitted. Shockingly enough, a chuckle came from my right and I looked over to see Fox standing there seemingly composed.

“I thank you, Madarame!” Fox spat. Were it not for the venom that his voice had been so heavily laced with, I might have been concerned about what Fox had just said. “Every reason for me to forgive you has disappeared without a trace at this very moment! You aren’t just some rotten artist… you’re a despicable fiend who wears the skin of an artist!” Fox declared. Fox was certain to fight at full fury now that he knew Madarame had never felt anything towards him beyond profit.

“All you good-for-nothings! Barging into my museum and doing whatever the hell you want!” Shadow Madarame declared. A dangerous aura surrounded the Ruler at that moment and I think all of us knew what was coming. “Those who have the connections make the rules; those who don’t, follow them. Not to mention, the value of art is all subjective! I make the rules in the art scene! I am a supreme being! I am the god of the art world!” Shadow Madarame bellowed.

“Here it comes! Get back!” Mona warned. We did as instructed and put some distance between us and Madarame who started to laugh in a deranged maniacal fashion as his appearance distorted, growing and stretching until it split apart into four different framed pictures, consisting of two eyes, a nose and a mouth.

“I’ll paint all over you!” The paintings declared. I quickly pulled on my Second Sight in order to identify what these were, but instead of getting a singular pulse of information and the name of this transformed state, I received four. Each of the four paintings were named differently and when I focused on their weaknesses to see if we could use one, I felt like my blood drained through my feet and my mouth became filled with ash. “Now, let’s begin to vermin!” The paintings decided.

“You used others for your own despicable desires, Madarame. You aren’t even worth the art you ‘create’!” Fox insulted. I could feel myself trembling slightly as I took in the information that I had received thanks to my eyes, it was something I hadn’t anticipated showing up and that meant we would be in one hell of a difficult fight, if I could just get my mouth working!

“Let me guess, no weakness,” Joker commented. I still couldn’t force my voice to obey me as I could only soundlessly gape at the horrifying thing I was seeing. “Amazon? Hey, Amazon, what’s wrong?!” Joker questioned. He moved over to me and gripped my arm, not tight but it was enough to jolt my voice out of my throat.

“It’s… all different, all of them are different,” I revealed. Joker seemed disturbed by my revelation as I took a breath to focus myself instead of losing my head completely and my tongue shrivelling up again. “The eyeballs drain Wind, Fire, Earth, Electricity, and Ice. The nose drains Psy, Nuke, Curse, Bless, and Gravity. The mouth drains both types of physical attacks. There are no weaknesses for any of them!” I warned.

“Should I use my ring’s power?” Fox asked. It would certainly be useful if he did decide to do so, but the Soul Power price might be too high, especially if we had to fight against an actual demon version after this painting fight or it ended up wearing off at some point; we needed to be smart about the things we did in this battle and be very cautious.

“No! That’d take you out of the fight faster than a normal attack!” Joker insisted. We all gathered in close to our leader who had a grim expression upon his face as he looked over our enemies quickly. “Amazon! You’re with me, use Gravity on the eyes! Panther! Mona! Use your Spells on the mouth! Skull! Fox! Skills on the nose!” Joker ordered. We all gave a positive response and Joker tore his mask off.

A skeleton in a suit of green-blue and white, holding a red cloth and a sword appeared, I realised that it had a sensation that seemed to connect to Takemi-sensei. Psychic energy suddenly spiralled around one eye and crushed down on it. It immediately drooped in response. I quickly acted to have Phantom crush the other eye so that they matched.

But the mouth chose that moment to attack. It surged forward and clamped down hard on Skull’s harm before he could dodge. Panther healed him up the moment it pulled back, so Mona attacked. His Wind Spell surrounded the mouth and it sunk down slightly. A fiery aura began to come from one of the eyes and it blasted out towards Panther.

The girl took the hit before patting herself down and even flicking a ponytail with an unimpressed look on her face. Skull laughed loudly before having Captain Kidd attack which was followed up by Fox’s own move. The nose retaliated by bringing down a blast of lightning upon Fox. Our newest member mostly dodge, but his sleeve got slightly scorched as a result of the attack.

“Concentrate on the one I’m going to weaken!” Joker ordered. He summoned Atlanta who allowed a weakening aura to swallow up one of the eyes. I quickly followed orders and attacked the eye. It slumped down even more, allowing Mona’s slingshot to drop it completely. With one enemy out of the way, it might make this fight just a little easier for us.

Unfortunately, that was when we got a very nasty surprise thanks to that infernal mouth. It proceeded to emit a healing aura which twisted around the eye that had just been defeat. Said eye proceeded to stretch slightly and then popped back up into the air beside the other eye. It wasn’t at full health, but it coming back was bad enough for us.

“They regenerated!?” Mona exclaimed. I could see that anger was present on the others’ faces at knowing our enemies were capable of returning to the fight at any moment after getting knocked down. “Damnit… those things can come back if we don’t take them down at once!?” Mona realised. We needed to target our attacks carefully to ensure that they couldn’t pull this trick on us too often.

“Change of plans. I’ll weaken their defence! Amazon and Skull, boost everyone’s offense! The rest of you attack until we’re done!” Joker ordered. Me and Skull quickly got to work to boost everyone as quickly as possible. Joker started to reduce the defence. As for the other three, they proceeded to target each enemy, Panther took the mouth, Fox handled the nose and Mona struck the eyes.

Of course, we had our own problems to deal with thanks to the retaliations from our enemies. The eyes attempted to weaken us – thankfully Mona dodged – and strengthen itself which succeeded. The nose released a burst of wind. That was followed up by a blast of ice from the mouth. Once me and Skull finished our empowerment task and Joker finished his weakening, we got back into the fight.

Suddenly, a strange aura began to radiate from the right eye and suddenly ink surged out. It sprung towards Mona who wasn’t able to dodge the ink and instead became completely drenched in it. He slumped down slightly, as if bearing some heavy burden all of a sudden. I did not like the fact that something strange had happened, almost like that stupid volleyball spike or the singing.

“What is this attack!? There has to be more than just our colour changing! We should be cautious!” Mona warned. I didn’t know exactly if it would work on the Personas we had, I knew I could see their stories, but I’d never tried for their actual capabilities, but we needed to know something. I focused my Second Sight upon Mona and got the third nasty surprise of this fight.

“Oh no! Mona, you’re weak to everything!” I exclaimed. Everyone’s expressions became fearful upon learning that. Things got even worse when the other eye proceeded to surround Mona with a weakening aura which he couldn’t dodge this time. A burst of powerful wind erupted from the nose and charged towards Mona. Thankfully, Joker jumped in front of Mona and his mask glowed. The wind struck him and it seemed to dissipate harmlessly around his body.

“Protect Mona from all attacks!” Joker ordered. The rest of us flocked to him and surround Mona on all sides but the back to protect him from any of the paintings’ attacks. Mona pulled off his mask and tried to heal himself with Patra, but the ink didn’t fade away. It was the same story for when Joker attempted to use a fairy creature – not unlike Pixie but quite different since it was called High Pixie – to heal with Baisudi.

“Here, have some more!” Madarame declared. He then began to spew more ink from the mouth painting, Joker grabbed Mona and jumped away with the rest of us following. We scattered through the courtyard, desperately dodging or hiding to avoid the ink. What a horrifically nasty ability, I’d prefer that damn singing over something that reduced me into a being practically unable to fight back.

“His cognition covers things with paint. Because of that, Madarame is convinced he can control anyone!” Mona warned. I rolled across the ground to avoid another spray of ink and ended up ducked behind a patch of flora with Joker and Mona. I quickly looked around and found the other three hiding behind their own protection.

“We’re getting nowhere like this!” Fox declared. He was right, we needed to do something about that infernal ink that he kept spewing, even after he stopped this round of attack. I looked over at Joker and saw that he was attempting to rub the ink off of Mona, but the expression on his face proved it was a fruitless endeavour. He stopped rubbing and looked up, but something caught his eye as he turned his head to the side.

“That ink, it’s the same stuff that Madarame is using,” Joker realised. I looked over and saw cans of ink resting off to the side, if that was the same stuff that Madarame was using to twist our elemental affinities then maybe it would be possible for us to use that very same ink to force the same condition upon him; better than continuing to hide from the ink and only getting pot shots in, like Skull and Panther happened to be doing.

“I say we give him a taste of his own medicine,” I suggested. Joker nodded his head, agreeing that this was possibly the best move for us to make to hopefully stop this nonsense; a sound echoed near us and I snapped my head over to see it, naginata at the ready just in case. Thankfully it was only Fox who was now crouched beside us with a fierce expression in his eyes.

“Leave it to me,” Fox insisted. Joker nodded his head with a happy smirk on his face, with that he called for Skull and Panther to join us. They scurried over while dodging the ink as Mona tried to find ways to clean himself of the increasingly stubborn ink. Once they joined us, Joker laid out a new plan for us to use, once the spewing had stopped, we leapt out to commence the attack.

Panther and Joker both tore of their masks. A red bipedal horse looking creature with a dark mane called Orobas manifested behind our leader. Flames sprang from both of them and slammed into the mouth and nose respectively. Skull used Captain Kidd to ram into one of the eyes, while I had Phantom twisted a well of gravity around the other eye. This was really all a distraction for Fox to strike.

Like some kind of ninja, Fox pounced over, a paint brush and ink can in hand. He quickly smeared the ink over the paintings, no sense of artistry given to the way actions. As a result, all of the paintings immediately slummed down, I quickly proceeded to use my eyes, just to make sure that the ink had acted as intended; it had… kind of.

“Good news, bad news. Bad news, it hasn’t lost its’ drain abilities. Good news, weak to everything else,” I revealed. Joker started us off by removing his mask and having Shiisaa use Frei upon the mouth. A quick Baton Pass to a recovered Mona – thank goodness! – allowed the healer to blast the nose with Wind. Skull received the next one and had Captain Kidd slam one of the eyes, I took the pass and knocked down the final piece with one last Gry Spell.

On Joker’s command, we all leapt in to attack them all before pulling back. The paintings didn’t spring up this time, instead they twitched slightly before proceeding to start melting, turning into ink and the liquid drained away. Fox put down his tools as we watched the gold clad form of the Ruler finally emerge from the paintings, he’d distorted himself into.

“Madarame’s out!” Mona cheered. We moved into our Hold Up positions, it was a relief to know that we had been able to knock him of those creepy paintings, but I was still waiting for whatever he would pull on us because something told me that this fight wasn’t over for us just yet, even if we managed to commence an All-Out Attack.

“Damnit… I’m the great Madarame. The Madarame who gathers a full crowd every time he opens an exhibit! I’m not someone that worthless brats like you are allowed to defy!” Shadow Madarame ranted. I let out a scoff and rolled my eyes, he had such an overblown ego that it was amazing he wasn’t floating in mid-air, all the others looked equally as unimpressed with his words.

“Enough of your egotistic ranting!” Fox ordered. I felt a smile pull at my lips upon hearing the sharp and angry tone that the painter was using on him. “Taste the wrath of all those you’ve preyed upon!” Fox demanded. With that command, we dove in to perform an All-Out Attack with Fox actually leading the charge this time, but I don’t think anyone could stop him. We eventually pulled back and quickly set ourselves upon seeing Shadow Madarame climbing to his feet.

“I’m the great artist, Madarame! If you brats can’t fathom that… then you’ll witness it for yourselves! Behold my master craft!” Shadow Madarame declared. I sensed a gathering power rising up and it then swiftly flowed passed all of us, that power coalesced into five spots surrounding the Shadow. A wave of energy rippled out and when it faded, I saw that five more Shadows had shown up; all of them looked identical to Madarame except for what they wore. The clothes were either blue, green, red, brown or a lighter shade of yellow, but most worryingly were the elemental auras that surrounded each of them.

“Wha-!? He made copies of himself!?” Mona exclaimed. It was quite the surprise to see but with everything that we knew about him it also shouldn’t have been that shocking. “Ha, I see. Creating duplicates is his speciality!” Mona mocked. A few chuckles escaped us at Mona’s cutting words, but I had to focus to get the true information out of the new enemies that had manifested before us.

“Azazel, so that’s your name hmm,” I realised. At least now I was getting a proper reading on the Shadow. “Green Repels Ice and Wind! It’s weak to Electricity! Blue Repels the same! Weak to Fire! Yellow Repels Fire and Electricity! Weak to Wind! Red Repels the same as Yellow! Weak to Ice! Brown repels all of those plus Earth! Weak to Gravity! All resist physical attacks! No weaknesses or strengths for the real one!” I advised. We’d need to be careful since they could likely use the Elements they repelled to attack.

“Baton Passes this time everyone! Match up against your best opponent!” Joker ordered. He didn’t hesitate before tearing his mask off, Atalanta appeared and quickly weakened Azazel’s defence. The rest of us scurried into place and Skull started us off. A quick blast of Electricity sent the Ersatz Mirth to the ground.

“Panther, knock ‘em dead!” Skull encouraged. A cheerful response came from the girl as she took the Pass, One fireball later, Ersatz Sorrow was also down. Panther darted to Fox whose icy magic flattened Ersatz Fury. Mona took over and Ersatz Joy was a heap on the floor. Mona joined me and when he passed I realised that I held the ability to exchange my own Soul Power for the one I held, four passes must have been enough to create it. But better to hold off on using it.

“Too bad I don’t have a multi-target Gravity Spell,” I muttered. Raising my left hand, I pulled off my mask. “Sing Phantom!” I commanded. The gravity well surrounded Ersatz Bravery and it was taken down. I darted over to Joker and passed the gathered power to him which he quickly raised to his mask to infuse the power instead of draining his own. Matador emerged and psychic energy pummelled the entire group.

We continued this trend, with Fox and Mona setting off two more Baton Pass strings. Each time they ended properly on Joker who uses Shiisaa and Archangel’s multi-target spells to render the group of counterfeits reduced to flakes of Shadow dust and Azazel looking quite worse for wear. If only we could have defeated him or at least knocked him down to at least initiate an All-Out Attack.

“Stop this… is this how you show your gratitude to the man who raised you?!” Azazel questioned. Gratitude?! After everything Madarame had done to Fox, the other students and now as we know Fox’s own mother! This man didn’t even deserve to ever be thanked for the cruelty and trauma he had inflicted upon innocent children all for his own selfish gain.

“Silence! Don’t waste your breath!” Fox commanded. Azazel responded to this denouncement by creating more fakes, but this time these were only the Sorrow and Fury ones which meant things wouldn’t be as smooth as it had been previously; but it also wouldn’t be anywhere near as difficult as it could have been.

“I don’t have an Ice Persona! Fox! You’ll have to take down both red ones!” Joker revealed. Before any of us could react, his mask was off and Orobas came out. He doused one Sorrow in flames and quickly passed to Panther. The blonde model quickly copied our leader’s move which dropped the other Sorrow. Panther swiftly passed over to Fox who promptly knocked both of the red clad fakes down.

“Fox! Pass to me, I can strike all of them!” I insisted. Joker agreed and Fox quickly gave me the pass. I quickly used the gathered Soul Power and proceeded to have Phantom use Matera on all of them. Which didn’t get rid of them unfortunately. Even worse was when one of the Sorrows proceeded to climb back to its’ feet.

“You dare defy an esteemed elder? May you all be frozen in fear!” Sorrow declared. It proceeded to project a cold aura that twisted spiked balls of ice around Skull. He got hit but better him than Panther. Especially since Mona quickly healed all of us just to be sure. The other Sorrow got up and attacked Fox with the same attack. Of course, the boy wasn’t even bothered by the ice beyond his breath getting slightly chilled. But then a Fury proceeded to stand up.

“Damn clueless brats… my fiery rage shall reduce you all to mere ashes!” Fury declared. A blaze of fire was soon projected and danced across Joker’s form, however Orobas didn’t seem resistant to flames given Joker’s flinch, but neither was it weak. The other Fury rose up and proceed to use the same attack upon Mona who – and I was seriously worried – seem to catch fire!

“Mona!” Panther cried. Thankfully Joker quickly swapped masks to use a Spell that quickly put a stop to the flames as Panther healed Mona of any damage. Skull let out a cry as he had Captain Kidd use a Skill called Rampage. The wildly swinging boat slammed into all of the enemies and, in spite of their resistance to Physical attacks, the fakes proceeded to vanish once again.

“Damnit! Damnit! Stop it you brats! Or else,” Azazel attempted to threaten. But Fox just casually dismissed the words, not even fazed by the weak threat to us, Azazel proceeded to create more fakes, three Mirth, one Sorrow and one Fury this time around. Fox quickly knocked down the Fury and darted over to Skull who proceeded to slam each of the Mirths into the ground. Panther got back in the fight and took the pass to burn the Sorrow quite furiously. Panther handed it over to Joker who used Matador again to bombard them all. That was when a Mirth got back up.

“Disappear from my sight without a trace, like dust scattered in the wind!” Mirth declared. A cyclone of wind proceeded to reach out and twist around Mona who easily shrugged it off. The cat shaped thief then used his ring to incinerate the Mirth that had climb to his feet. This allowed me to use Matera on all of them, skewering each with sharp rocks and turning the fakes into dust.

Azazel was quick to summon out more fakes, this time made of two Sorrows, two Joys and one Bravery. The presence of that last one meant I couldn’t use Matera to deal some damage to all of them – I really wish I had a multi Gravity Spell – like previously. Yet the moment I looked at them, I got the sense that something was distinctly wrong with the five fakes that had just been summoned.

“Hey, something seems wrong, could he have…,” Mona wondered. Azazel also released his mistake, that mistake being that some of the copies were afflicted with status ailments. It was truly a ridiculous mistake to make since that just left him exposed as the fakes would be that much more vulnerable to our attacks now. “Looks like you’ve reached your limit. Failing to even make a counterfeit? You’re really looking like a joke now!” Mona mocked. Mona was being ruthless, but it was quite an appropriate thing to say, only three full revivals of his fakes and he was exhausted… talk about pathetic.

“So, this is the true limit of your skill… how infantile,” Fox lamented. If even the true master painter thought this display was a farce, then I knew it was bad. “To think you’d fail to produce even one of your counterfeits. Please, don’t disappoint me any further!” Fox insulted. He seemed to be taking this inability to create the fakes consistently quite heavily if the cutting edge to his eyes was anything to go by, but this screw-up just made our job easier.

Actually, too easy. The reason for that was that the moment Mona used his Garu Spell on a Joy, it vanished into smoke. We all exchanged looks of surprise at this before Mona quickly passed to Panther who had the same ease. I took out the Bravery and Joker used a Persona like a woman crossed with a cat called Nekomata and Orobas to strike down the remaining two. Joker passed things over to Fox for a very good reason. Goemon possessed a Skill called Giant Slice which took advantage of the Baton Pass to make itself stronger.

The Japanese thief manifested behind Fox and swung his pipe down hard on the forger. Skull got in another hit on Azazel. The process just repeated really, Azazel kept summoning messed up fakes, not all the time but more often than not. We focused on knocking them down, either with Weakness attacks or by taking advantage of their Ailment state. Whenever one showed up without an Ailment that was when Joker and whoever naturally had the corresponding weakness would strike it down. Carmen’s Trait to save on Soul Power expenditure and Captain Kidd’s Trait to boost our physical attack also came in handy.

Eventually we were finally able to deal the final strike and it fell to the most appropriate person. Joker cleared off a Joy thanks to Nekomata and then quickly passed to Fox who glared at the forger, once more completely alone and looking quite ragged. He tore off his mask and had Goemon surround the cruel man in ice which shattered apart and forced the old man to his knees. With the fight over, Fox began to approach Shadow Madarame.

“No one cares for true art; all they want are easily recognisable brands! I’m a victim too! Wouldn’t you agree!?” Shadow Madarame rambled. Me and Joker had to quickly grab Panther and Skull respectively since they looked like they wanted to interfere, but this was Fox’s decision to make; he knew harming the Shadow could kill Madarame so I wouldn’t need to do anything risky to get the warning across.

“Excuses now?” Skull mocked. He pulled slightly against Joker’s grip but not with any real strength from what I could tell, even he could understand that this was Fox’s task; I was probably only remaining calm thanks to a certain cat shaped thief who had assumed his cat form and was currently curled up on my shoulders with a gentle brushing of his tail over my neck working to keep me calm.

“The art world revolves around money after all… you can’t rise up without any money. Yusuke, you understand, don’t you!? Being a poor artist is truly miserable! I just didn’t want to return to that life!” Shadow Madarame protested. That got a reaction from Fox as he lunged down to seize a hold of his mentor and haul him off the ground slightly.

“A fiend like you has no right to speak about the world of art! You’re done for, along with this whole wretched world!” Fox declared. The Ruler quickly proceeded to plead for his life, but Fox simply shoved him to the ground. “Return to yourself in reality and confess your crimes! All of them!” Fox ordered.

“Y-You’re not going to kill me?” Shadow Madarame asked. Fox simply demanded a promise that Madarame would confess. “Alright! Alright!” Shadow Madarame agreed. He looked at us warily slightly before turning his gaze away. “Wh-What about the other one though? The one with the black mask?” Shadow Madarame asked. That immediately snagged my attention.

“Black mask? What are you talking about?!” Joker demanded. Mona hopped down from my shoulder and quickly assumed his normal Metaverse form, Panther and Skull also relaxed but only so that they can exchange concerned looks, I pulled my hands back, but the tension seemed to be piling up hearing that sentence.

“It can’t be… there was another intruder besides us within this Palace!?” Mona questioned. I really hoped that wasn’t the case as this would add an unknown variable to any further Palace infiltration, plus it immediately brought to mind how someone would be able to even get in here without the Meta-Nav, which seemed to jump from Ren’s phone, or my eyes.

“But how? They’d need the Meta-Nav and a Persona to get in here and survive,” I pointed out. Before we could continue our discussion, the Palace decided that would be a splendid time to start shaking. “Of all the times!?” I exclaimed. Seriously, this was really bad timing especially since we had learned something that seemed incredibly important and potentially rather dangerous as well.

“There’s no time! Hurry!” Skull yelled. Thankfully Mona proceeded to transform into his van form and we bolted for the vehicle, Fox climbed in last tenderly holding his mother’s portrait in his grasp, I adjusted the mirror to look behind us and saw the Shadow fade away from sight right before Joker slammed down hard on the accelerator.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The destination has been deleted. Well, that confirmed it, the Palace had properly dissolved, Ren tucked his phone away as Morgana insisted that we leave as quickly as possible in order to avoid anyone getting suspicious about us hanging around here. I looked over at Yusuke who was holding the transformed Treasure, which wasn’t all that different to its’ form in the Metaverse, all it lacked was the golden frame.

“Yusuke c’mon,” Ryūji insisted. The painter agreed and proceeded to say goodbye to the man who had taught him; we quickly made our way back into town and to the café where we sat down and a few of us ordered drinks. “I guess the mission was a success. All that’s left is to see if he had a Change of Heart or not,” Ryūji acknowledged. He took a sip of his coffee before grimacing heavily. “Ugh, so bitter… why’d you get it black?” Ryūji protested.

“The Sayuri,” Yusuke spoke. Ryūji teased Yusuke by asking if he was going to start crying and calling out to his mum. “To think this painting was the source of Madarame’s distorted desires. The only saving grace is that my mother won’t know of what transpired,” Yusuke admitted. He seemed truly pleased to have the authentic item in hand, which was where it truly belonged in my opinion.

“The genuine painting at his atelier has been altered, after all. Ironic as it may be, this one here is her true self-portrait now,” Mona morosely commented. It was sad that the painting had been defaced in such a manner that prevented it for being truly admired for so long; but at least the artist’s son could properly admire it now.

“It’s a wonderful painting and, although it took some time, it’s in your hands now, Yusuke,” Ann acknowledged. A shame that it had taken such a long time for it to reach the person it should had been with from the beginning, but I suppose the saying ‘better late than never’ certainly applied to this situation as at least now Yusuke had received the message his mother tried to leave for him.

“I’m thankful for that,” Yusuke admitted. He seemed to be more attached to the painting now than before he had known who had truly painted it, no surprise there. “However, it’s impossible for this painting to be acknowledged by society anymore,” Yusuke stated. That was honestly the worst part about all this, Madarame’s actions had tainted this majestic piece for the rest of the world.

“That’s a shame, everyone should know the real Sayuri,” Ren commented. However, he suddenly shifted his stance as a question seemed to fill his grey eyes before he focused upon Yusuke once more. “Actually, was Sayuri your mum’s name?” Ren asked. Hmm, if that was true then perhaps there would be some way that could enable someone to let it be known who the real painter was.

“I can’t recall, but I don’t think so,” Yusuke admitted. Well, that was a shame, but I guess we’d had enough luck so far. “I must inherit my mother’s wishes and improve myself even further,” Yusuke decided. At least he now had a stronger motivation to keep picking up his brush, well… I actually think I feel a little jealous of him. “So, this is my mother… there’s no way that I would remember her face clearly but I was right about the rush of emotion I felt when I saw this painting,” Yusuke explained.

“I don’t remember what my family looked like,” I admitted. Yusuke turned to look at me with wide eyes as Ann clapped hands over her mouth while Ryūji choked on what he was drinking, Morgana gave me a soft look as Ren looked away and frowned. “But there are things that my heart recalls which my mind doesn’t. I think that’s probably it, Yusuke, your heart recognised your mother despite your memories having faded,” I added on. Yusuke looked back at the painting with a heavy expression.

“So, what’re you gonna do now? We’re gonna keep targetin’ big shots?” Ryūji asked. He was clearly trying to clear the air to prevent us from staying morose for so long, but we needed to refocus ourselves and learn if Yusuke was going to keep fighting alongside us, I wouldn’t begrudge him leaving us, but I think we’d all appreciate him sticking around with us.

“Why do you do such things?” Yusuke asked. His tone was inquisitive as he looked at each of us, I suppose that we would need to answer him, I looked at the others wondering who would speak up first about the reasons that we had decided to make the choice to keep fighting back against them; we each had our own reasons and shared reasons for doing this.

“It’s to get back at society and like society in general. We also wanna give courage to the people that’re sufferin’ ‘cause of selfish adults,” Ryūji answered. That was pretty much the reasons why we were doing this, both boys wanted to stop others from suffering as they had, Ann hoped to give courage to others, I wanted to stop people from thinking they were all alone and Morgana wanted his memories back.

“Courage, hm… what good does that do? You mean the courage to stand up for themselves, correct? Will acquiring that make them happy?” Yusuke asked. His tone had gone sharp as he asked those questions and his eyes were piercing into us, Ren’s eyes must have built up our immunity because no one flinched, but they did look a little uncomfortable and admittedly so did I at the pointed questions.

“We can’t say that it will make them happy,” Ren admitted. Yusuke’s gaze was like a laser as it zeroed in on him, clearly intrigued by his answer. “But if they see people willing fight those believed untouchable, maybe they’ll be able to get free of such terrible situations and at least find their happiness. I’d rather give them the chance than do nothing at all and leave them to suffer,” Ren explained.

“Ren’s right, there’s no way of knowing that. We just have to give it a try,” Ann agreed. Her expression had lightened up and she was smiling again, it really was all we could do to help those suffering in silence, opening up the possibility that they might have some way to escape from their turmoil. Yusuke still seemed a bit more tense than before but at least he was relaxing ever-so slightly thanks to Ren and Ann.

“You can’t really save someone else; you can provide them the tools or the places to escape. But in the end, if someone really wants out of a desperate situation, they have to save themselves,” I admitted. It was something I had to realise upon meeting Shadow Ouvrard; Yusuke seemed to fully settle down as he heard my words, perhaps finding more understanding in my words than in the others.

“In other words, it all depends on the person, hm?” Yusuke muttered. That was really all that it came down to in the end, the person who was suffering. “Then the same can be said about myself right now. I also suffered because of an adult’s selfish act. Moreover, if we investigate these Palaces, it may expand my artistic repertoire,” Yusuke decided. I couldn’t help but let out a laugh at that statement.

“You are one interesting person Yusuke,” I admitted. I couldn’t believe that someone actually thought they could find inspiration in such disturbing places, but to each their own I suppose; Yusuke smiled a small bit at hearing my laugh until Ryūji let out a chuckle and we all turned to look at the boy, wondering what he would say.

“Yeah, you really only think about art, huh? You’re impressive,” Ryūji acknowledged. The others proceeded to grin at that while Yusuke nodded his head slightly as if agreeing with the words that had been spoken, at least he was well aware that he was a little more eccentric than most other people would be.

“Well, I won’t take part in any inelegant plans, alright?” Yusuke stated. We proceeded to laugh a little bit more after hearing that, I was glad that he was staying with us since it made things easier for us to have a second Physical attacker, another Support caster and an Ice wielder which removed the burden ever so slightly from Ren’s shoulders.

“No worries, I’ve got us covered!” Ann cheered. She seemed rather happy to have another member on our team and the cheery energy spread over us like a warm blanket. “Plus, we have a rule that says we always have to decide on a target unanimously,” Ann added on. Yusuke seemed surprised by this admission, but it was the best way we could manage our targets and get everyone onboard with it.

“How about it, Joker? We can give our calling cards a lot more ‘oomph’ if we have Yusuke on our team,” Morgana wondered. All of us turned to look at the leader of our team, we could certainly do to keep Yusuke around for the poetic sounding calling cards at least – please no more from Ryūji! – Ren smiled before extending his arm across the table to Yusuke.

“We’d be happy to have you join us Yusuke, you proved a valuable asset in our fights and with your keen eye, we might be able to figure out any illusions without straining Natsumi’s eyes,” Ren admitted. Yusuke smiled and lifted his arm in order to rest his hand within Ren’s grasp, it seemed that we had made another step in the right direction.

“Thank you, Ren,” Yusuke stated. They proceeded to shake hands and then pull back at the same time; it was a wonder as to where we could go from here, we had to get through Madarame’s Change of Heart before we made any other moves, but it would be nice to consider the possibilities once Mementos opened up a little bit more.

“At any rate, I’m curious… another intruder besides us, huh?” Morgana stated. And just like that, I was dragged back to the present and Ann’s infectious cheerfulness was immediately wiped away with those words; I felt much more than simple curiosity regarding that titbit of information, in fact my body felt like someone had wrapped it up in ice.

“Curious? I’m deeply concerned. The other side isn’t something to be known by the general public, it’s too scary to know what people would do with that kind of power. It’s apparent to me this Black Mask is not dissolving challenges,” I pointed out. The others proceeded to look at each other at my words, perhaps realising just how dangerous this entire situation could be.

“Our only clue’s a black mask, so that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s just one person, right?” Ann warily asked. And that just made my stomach drop like a stone, the thought that more than one person could have the Meta-Nav or some other way into the Metaverse was rather terrifying to consider; the wrong people knowing about that world was the last thing any of us needed.

“But there’s no way to check anymore. The Palace is gone,” Ryūji pointed out. I was doubtful we’d find any evidence of this Black Mask in there anyway, nothing had jumped out to me about that place or even Morgana, so whoever had been in there either knew enough to cover their tracks – which was too scary – or they had carefully kept to themselves to avoid leaving traces just in case, either way whoever it was, was likely a very methodical and cautious individual.

“Doesn’t mean whoever he, she or they are, aren’t going to be in others or even training,” Ren stated. That just increased the chances that we’d run into whoever this was, we’d be at a disadvantage then since if they saw us before we saw them then we’d likely be on the receiving end of an ambush; the best bet would be for me to find them in this world.

“In the meantime, I’ll try probing Madarame. I may be able to learn something from him,” Yusuke decided. That could work, in his current state then he might retain some memory of what happened within the Palace or perhaps he knew who the Black Mask was on this side and had subconsciously connected the dots; but I did not like the idea of Yusuke going back to that shack to be near his treacherous mentor, pending Change of Heart or not.

“Are you sure? I mean-,” Ann began to protest. But Yusuke cut her off by promising to contact us if anything happened to change, Ann pulled back with a frown on her face, but she likely knew it was best not to argue with Yusuke. “We should probably exchange our contact info with you then,” Ann stated. We quickly did that and Ann added Yusuke into the group chat.

“An artist and… a member of our social activities, it seems I’ll be engaging in two trades from here on. Very well, you only live once, after all. Still the incident about the other intruder does concern me a little,” Yusuke admitted. With that, we proceeded to part ways.

*Persona 5 Royal*

With Madarame’s condition now out of our hands, we could do nothing but wait, so I decided to focus on the homework I’d been putting off during this heist and trying to plan out what to do as I waited for anything to change. My phone vibrated so I set aside my languages work and brought it over to see what was being discussed, perhaps Yusuke had learned something important already.

Ryūji: Yo, good job guys.

Ann: We all did our best.

Natsumi: Definitely, we each pulled our weight in this fight.

Yusuke: Allow me to express my thanks once again.

Yusuke: Because of you, I was able to retrieve the painting that has been filled with my mother’s love.

Ren: We’re happy to know she’s back where she belongs.

Ryūji: Hearing you say that makes the whole thing worth it, Yusuke!

Ann: Seriously.

Ann: I wasn’t sure you’d really want to change Madarame’s heart.

Yusuke: I’m sorry to have worried you. I have no regrets about it now.

Ann: And the Change of Heart WILL happen this time, right?

Natsumi: Everything went the same as the previous times.

Natsumi: No reason it shouldn’t work.

Ren: I think we’ll still have to wait and see.

Ren: Yusuke, I’m trusting you to keep an eye on Madarame for us.

Ann: I’m still curious about what he said at the end.

Ryūji: You mean about the other intruder besides us?

Ryūji: It was something about a black mask, yeah?

Yusuke: That may have been nothing more than a lie.

Yusuke: Madarame was quite deranged at that point, after all.

Natsumi: I don’t know, making up a lie like that on the spot.

Natsumi: Plus the colour of the mask, maybe he was telling the truth.

Yusuke: For now, we should wait for his change of heart in peace.

Ann: Okay.

“An intruder in a black mask… I hope this turns out to be nothing major,” I muttered. But I think in my heart, I knew that wouldn’t be the case.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

So, this is a bit of an experiment for me, a reviewer asked if I could have the thoughts of other people be done in Third Person so I figured the best time would be every meeting after the first one between Natsumi and her Confidants. I have no clue if it works or not, but I have my fingers crossed.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 43: - Moon, Tower, Sun

The first day after the fight against Azazel, I could still feel it weighing heavily on my body, but I needed to carry on as an ordinary student despite my exhaustion. So here I was at school, sat in my chair, I looked over at Ren and Ann, both of whom seemed tired as well and a quick glance at Morgana proved that the human turned cat was currently deep asleep.

“First I have an announcement for an upcoming school event,” Kawakami-sensei revealed. I lifted my head at those words, confused as to what this event was, nothing had been planned around this time in the last year. “As part of a city beautification project, the entire school will be participating in a public cleanup campaign. That means we’re going to Inokashira Park to pick up trash,” Kawakami-sensei announced. People were not happy about that judging by the words that bounced about. “Settle down! The clean-up will take place next week, on the thirtieth. All students are to wear their gym uniforms during the event, so don’t forget to dress the part,” Kawakami-sensei stated. Right on cue my phone vibrated.

Ryūji: You guys hear about this cleanup bullshit at Inokashira Park?

Ryūji: I guess it’s the principal’s idea. Damage control after Kamoshida scandaled up the school’s rep.

Ann: Pretty sure ‘scandaled’ is not a verb.

Natsumi: It definitely isn’t.

Ann: But I get what you mean. Even the counselling stuff seems like a desperate move.

Ren: It’s actually annoying how much they’re scrambling.

Ryūji: All the girls in our class have been freaking out over this new guy, too.

Ryūji: I’ve been hearing Maruki’s ‘hot’, ‘kind’, ‘sensitive’… basically everyone thinks he’s, their type.

Ann: Whoa. I guess he’s pretty popular, then.

Ann: Oh yeah, did you guys go to his counselling yet?

Natsumi: I did.

Natsumi: It… helped.

Ren: I went.

Ryūji: Oh shit. I forgot.

Ryūji: But I dunno… I don’t really feel like going.

Ren: We need to avoid suspicion. Not going after being told it’s mandatory is suspicious.

Ren: Especially since the rest of us have.

Natsumi: But don’t rush.

Natsumi: Really think it over.

Ryūji: Fiiine…

I set my phone away, I honestly didn’t know what to make of this whole clean-up event, it was ridiculous to force us into doing this thing just because of Kamoshida’s horrid actions and confession. But, cleaning up the park would at least make it nice for the other people to enjoy; I guess I just didn’t want to be forced into it like that worthless principal was doing.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Mishima Yūki was practically vibrating with joy throughout the first portion of the school day. Another Calling Card had been posted! The Phantoms had struck again and at the famous artist Madarame this time! Honestly, Mishima had been shocked that such an old man had actually been a criminal, but the Phantoms were always right! Which meant that Chiba’s assertion they weren’t all powerful was wrong!

‘Ack! Bad!’ Mishima chastised himself. He hadn’t intended to think something so horrible about the only person who was nice to him in middle school; even after her weird personality change, she had always been a very kind individual. He didn’t understand why she didn’t believe in the power of the Phantoms even though – as he looked over at the girl – she seemed rather close to Amamiya. ‘Maybe I should talk to her again, try and bring her around.’ Mishima decided. With that he got to his feet.

“Chiba-san,” Mishima called out. The girl turned to look at him and Mishima saw the worried look Amamiya was shooting between the two of them, Takamaki was even giving them odd looks. “Could we talk about what we discussed the other day?” Mishima asked. A heavy cast came upon Chiba’s face before she nodded her head in agreement, she gently waved at the other two and then moved away.

Mishima was quick to follow after the girl as she led them out into the courtyard where they actually had some privacy. Chiba sat down and looked at the boy, yet it still felt like she was towering over Mishima due to how intense her green eyes were piercing into him. It caused a lump to swell within his throat and he fought it down in order to start talking to Chiba.

“I was wondering if this recent event has caused you to change your opinion?” Mishima admitted. However, instead of bursting into gushing about how amazing the Phantoms were – which they were! – Chiba just remained silent and even seemed to be confused if the carefully measured blinking of her eyes was anything to go by. “On the Phantoms,” Mishima clarified. An expression of understanding came onto her face as Mishima almost bounced slightly in place.

“Hardly. My feelings remain the same,” Chiba easily answered. Mishima’s bouncy energy scattered apart as he practically dropped his shoulders to the ground while his mouth opened in shock at the blatant refusal that had come out of the girl’s mouth. “I assume you’re referring to when I said that they couldn’t solve every issue?” Chiba questioned.

“Yes! Why wouldn’t them going after Madarame change your mind?!” Mishima exclaimed. It was impossible for him to wrap his head around why anyone from Shūjin would continue to deny them existing after the second calling card had been sent; especially when the one who was doing the denying had some kind of bond with the obvious leader of the Phantoms! It was madness in Mishima’s eyes, a madness he could not understand, nor could he understand the calmness that continued to radiate from Chiba like she was someone kind of wise woman.

“Because it doesn’t mean they can, or even should, solve every little problem people trip across in their daily lives,” Chiba protested. That string of words actually made Mishima flinch back as if he had been physical struck, even though he was well aware that Chiba’s hits would do more damage than what he felt, it was something quite unsettling. “Have you read through every post on the Phan-site? Really looked at their contents?” Chiba asked. That question drew Mishima back in ever so slightly.

“Well, no but that isn’t my job. I just run the site,” Mishima protested. Sure, he passed along some requests to Amamiya, but only if they really caught his eye; other than that, his job was a very simple one, manage the site so that it continued functioning properly and ensure the Phantoms were sufficiently promoted so that more people would come and share their requests to boost the Phantoms’ fame and renown. He should probably consider looking into security options just in case anyone figured him out.

“I have read several of them,” Chiba revealed. She pulled out her phone and quickly opened it up while he simply blinked at the girl in surprise that she did something so pointless, since she wasn’t a Phantom after all. “‘The girl I like won’t even look my way. Can you change her heart to help me?’, ‘How about changing my dad’s heart to give me more money.’, ‘I loaned my stuff out to a friend, but it hasn’t been returned yet.’, ‘My boyfriend’s constantly messing things up, I want him to act more like a gentleman.’. And I could go on, there are many of these kinds of posts. Do you really think the Phantoms should take these requests?” Chiba asked.

Okay, now that Mishima had been forced to listen to some of them and he knew Chiba wasn’t a liar, it actually made him really uncomfortable to hear some of those things were what was being posted on his site. It was meant to help people talk about evil adults or other horrible individuals and let the Phantoms know who was in need of a change of heart. Those issues Chiba had read out, they just sounded so petty and selfish, some even seemed manipulative.

“Well, not some of them… they don’t really sound like societal issues just… stuff,” Mishima admitted. He was a little hesitant now, he hoped that the Phantoms hadn’t been duped into going after some of those victims, Mishima didn’t know whether Chiba had picked the worst ones or just whichever she came across, either way it was pretty horrific. “But what am I supposed to do?” Mishima wondered. It seemed wrong to silence any voices, if Mishima did that then people might stop trying to share their voice and then innocent people would suffer because the Phantoms didn’t know who to help.

“You’re the administrator, it’s up to you how you aid the people using your site,” Chiba stated. The bell sharply rang, indicating that their food break was over – shoot! Neither of them had eaten – Chiba swiftly stood up and walked up to Mishima before taking his hand which caused him to jump. “I’ve said this before, you’re a kind person Mishima. You’ve been in a terrible situation, why don’t you try to use your own understanding of suffering to reach out to those who are suffering themselves?” Chiba suggested. Her hand was surprisingly rugged for such a delicate looking girl, yet the callouses seemed to make her gentle grip feel even more real than if it had been smooth as Mishima expected it to be.

With those words passed along, Chiba proceeded to turn and walk away from Mishima who allowed his eyes to trail after her as she head back inside the building. Mishima looked down at his hand and his eyes widened when he saw that resting in his palm was a mint green bento box, Mishima could only blink in surprise at the object’s presence in his hand especially since it was clear who it had to belong to.

“And she says I’m kind,” Mishima commented. A small smile came on his face, Mishima made his way back to class while sneaking only a few bites of the perfectly ordinary meal, yet it tasted so warm to him and his hand seemed to almost tingle with warmth as he remembered the way Chiba’s hand had felt as it gripped his.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Suzui Shiho was utterly bored, not that there was much to do when she was still confined to a hospital bed most days. At least the physiotherapy was working, since her legs were getting better enough to take a few small steps without her legs immediately shaking so badly. Shiho knew she owed it all to the people who helped her, the physio, her parents and most of all Ann and Natsumi.

Ever since the first day, when Natsumi had encouraged her to not give and let that man win, Shiho had held those words close to her heart, it had been the biggest motivator to get her legs back in working order. She just really wanted to walk again, volleyball wasn’t something Shiho even considered anymore, there was too much pain and darkness attached to the sport now for her to ever consider going back to it. But she would walk!

“Shiho!” Ann’s cheerful voice came. Shiho twisted in her bed and grinned upon seeing her best friend, only for her grin to practically split her cheeks when Natsumi’s green eyes and dark hair poked out from behind Ann. “Surprise combo visit!” Ann cheered. Natsumi laughed at the blonde’s joyfulness, it certainly made Shiho smile to see her best friend smiling so much more; there were times when Shiho wished she hadn’t jumped, despite the dark voice that had screamed at her it would be better, all so that Ann wouldn’t had to have seen it. But a part of Shiho knew that her attempt had led to that man’s punishment, Shiho had no idea how but a part of her knew it was true.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Natsumi asked. Shiho wondered how Natsumi had become so calm and gentle, but often waved it away, that wasn’t important after all; what was important was that Ann had another friend at last, someone she could rely on while Shiho was cooped up in the hospital and eventually when she moved away from Tokyo to restart her life properly.

“I’ll be going into the hydro-pool today,” Shiho answered. It had been a new suggestion from the therapist after the bar exercise had proven a little too strenuous for her, yet Shiho had been too stubborn to stop moving, the hydro pool was meant to be gentler on her legs. Natsumi and Ann proceeded to share similar looks before looking back at Shiho.

“Oh, will we still be able to join you?” Ann wondered. She sounded rather concerned, but then the two of them had been to as many sessions as possible, just like her parents had, so they were obviously concerned about being so suddenly cut out and thus depriving Shiho of the encouragement that had almost been like sustenance to Shiho’s recovery progress. Luckily for them, Shiho had already anticipated this question.

“Yes, so long as you stay well away from the pool,” Shiho admitted. She’d asked when she’d first heard that would be happening, after all Ann and Natsumi’s encouragement helped her to do her best; Ann grinned and pumped her fist into the air while Natsumi smiled and moved over to start helping Shiho get herself sorted to leave the bed.

When the physio arrived, it was an easy move into the wheelchair which Shiho could now do on her own much to her glee. The trio of girls chattered along the way, mainly about books and music though whenever music came up, Shiho noticed Natsumi would touch her throat briefly with a strange expression on her face that would have encouraged Shiho to speak up were they not in the company of the physio who Natsumi might not be so keen to talk around when it was about something that was clearly very personal.

The four reached the hydro pool and Shiho was taken to get change into a swimsuit, then brought out to the pool, thankfully it was empty. Except for Ann and Natsumi who were huddled in a corner together, they seemed to be discussing something important – probably the exams, Ann likely did horrible as per usual in all subjects but English – but broke off when they came in. The wheelchair was secured and Shiho hobbled to the edge with aid from the physio and slipped into the water.

Being in the pool was quite relaxing, enough that Shiho let out a sigh of relief and just barely stopped herself from moving onto her back so that she could just float there and enjoy the temperate water that surrounded her and seemed to relax all the muscles in her body. Soon after though, the physio joined her and they got to working on the routine that the physio had designed for her.

The water flowed around her in a gentle manner, helping to relax her body even more as she looked down and focused on moving her legs forward, her hands gently held by the physio to keep her upright. As she moved forward, Shiho didn’t stop smiling as she heard the joyful encouragement of Ann and the gentle reassurance of Natsumi bolstering her to keep going until a weight of exhaustion washed over her, but it only left a satisfied feeling in its’ wake.

With some effort, Shiho got out of the water and back into the changing room, once sufficiently dry and back in the clothes bought from home, Shiho was pushed out to join the others two. Ann congratulated Shiho on how she had done that day which Shiho answered with a tired smile, meanwhile Natsumi held one of her hands and gently rubbed a thumb over Shiho’s knuckles as she easily kept pace with the motions of the wheelchair.

Once back in the room and in her bed, the physio proceeded to leave the room thus allowing the girls to talk about whatever they wished. Although Ann was searching through her bag while muttering something under her breath something Shiho didn’t quite catch and a quick glance of her eyes at Natsumi proved that she was as baffled by Ann’s unusual action. Shiho turned back to watch her friend’s frantic search before she huffed out a sigh and pulled the zip of her bad shut.

“Sorry Shiho. I was going to bring you something, but it looks like I’ve forgotten it,” Ann apologised. Shiho burst out laughing, because it was so typical of Ann to forget something like that, Shiho would have loved to have learned what Ann was intending to bring her but the ability to laugh and see Ann acting more like the girl whose terrible paintings they’d bonded over were much more precious treasures to Shiho than something that she could get at any time.

“It’s fine Ann, just bring it the next time,” Shiho reassured. Ann smiled brightly at her, but it was at that moment that Shiho realised just how dark things had become; Ann darted over and tightly hugged Shiho, wishing more encouragement to Shiho before reluctantly drawing back and leaving the room, Shiho turned to look at Natsumi who had remained and instead sat herself in her chair with a wary look in her eyes.

“How are you doing mentally?” Natsumi asked. Of course, Natsumi would ask such a probing question, Shiho had always known the girl to be highly observant since she’d seen her dodge volleyballs and other things with shocking ease, even when her back was turned. Besides, Natsumi was aware that Shiho still had flashbacks to that terrible moment, the muscles in Shiho’s arms reflexively tightened as she looked down at her legs which started to tremble ever so slightly.

“So-so. I don’t let the others know, but there are times when I can still feel him, it’s weaker now but still there,” Shiho admitted. The physiotherapy was helping her to get better at suppressing her memory of that event, Shiho was able to focus on the better things in her life right now; but then the night came and with it the memory leeched back in and inject Shiho’s mind with dark thoughts once again. Natsumi’s lips pulled into a frown at Shiho’s words.

“There’s a councillor at Shūjin, he was brought in after… well I’m sure you can guess,” Natsumi revealed. Shiho’s lips thinned at the hint of her s-s-suicide, it still hurt to think of it with phantom pains surging across her back as if recalling the moment of impact, Natsumi seemed uncomfortable even bringing it up.  “He’s a bit of an oddball but he’s really good at his job, you could try talking to him,” Natsumi suggested. Shiho felt a little spark run across her nerves, as if she wanted to shift and twitch in place, especially her legs, so settled for gently tapping a rhythm with her finger.

“I… don’t know. I don’t want to tell some stranger, even one who’s an expert at this sort of thing, about what happened to me. I’d rather just talk to someone who already knew about it all,” Shiho admitted. Shiho did not feel comfortable at all, even if Natsumi was vouching for him, she didn’t want someone’s false pity and empty kindness; Shiho wanted something that was more real… something like what the girl in front of her had already shown Shiho. “Would you be willing to listen to me?” Shiho asked.

“Of course, Shiho, that’s what friends do,” Natsumi agreed. The ease with which Natsumi answered calmed Shiho’s heart and allowed the wounded girl to smile in relief knowing that with Natsumi being here to listen to her, Shiho might be able to finally expel some of the darkness that seemed to be festering within her heart. If she could expel that darkness then maybe the cold voice that haunted her would finally leave her mind for good, allowing Shiho to actually start rebuilding her life.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Kujikawa Rise pulled the headphones off and shook her head, causing her hair to splay about her face. Her new song was going to come out soon and she had to make sure it was completely finished which was not helped by her slightly distracted state that came from personal issues. A thumbs up came from the recorder which meant she was free to go, thank goodness because she could do with resting her voice. Stepping out the room, she moved over to the drinks specially made to help their voices, no matter how vile they tasted.

“Heya Rise-senpai, good session?” A voice called. Rise looked over to see her friendly rival Kanami, Rise nodded her head to show the answer to the question. Kanami looked at the rest of her group and waved her hand to dismiss them before turning back, cutting her brown eyes about in worry before moving closer so that her massively curly hair could obscure them. “Have you found him yet senpai?” Kanami asked. She was the only one Rise had confessed to about her personal issues, but only because Rise trusted her above everyone in this side of her life.

“No, not yet, but I’ve got a reason to keep going back to Yongen,” Rise admitted. This caused Kanami’s eyes to widen slightly as Rise smiled slightly upon thinking of the girl with such a pretty voice, but it was a sad sort of smile. “There’s a girl there with a voice that sounds like she’s been trained, but she doesn’t like people knowing. I’m worried it’s something like what I went through five years ago, even though I’ve never seen or heard of her before,” Rise confessed.

“If it’s like your situation Rise-senpai, I can understand why you’re going to keep seeing her. I wish you luck,” Kanami admitted. Rise smiled at her friend, who pulled back and bounded away with her energy, Dropkick and Sapphire were coming out back-to-back so both of them were pretty overworked as of late. Rise could only be glad her release was a single instead of an album, poor Kanami and her Kitchen.

With the recording done for the day, Rise grabbed her bag and darted out of the building with a pair of shades shoved over her face. Surprisingly a pair of sunglasses was more effective of a disguise than Rise had expected them to be, sometimes she wished she still had the glasses Teddie had given her to see if anyone would recognise her with them on. A giggle escaped her at the thought of her crazy friend.

‘But to think I’d run into another Betwixt.’ Rise thought. She’d never expected it, but honestly, knowing she had met someone with those other world seeing eyes, it actually opened up a pit within her stomach at the thought that something as dangerous as what she faced could be threatening Tokyo. It wasn’t helped by those weird breakdown incidents that kept happening. ‘I wish I could use Kouzeon in this world, I might be able to get some kind of answer as to what’s going on.’ Rise believed.

She arrived in Yongen and quickly made her way to the place she had run into Natsumi. Rise was a little concerned that she probably turning into a stalker by waiting here for the girl, but it was the only location she knew the girl would come apart from the coffee shop that Rise had visited thanks to Natsumi. The sound of footsteps came and Rise turned to look, smiling slightly when she saw the girl she’d come to visit stopping short at her appearance.

“If you’re going to visit me Rise-san, I’d appreciate a little bit of warning before hand,” Natsumi insisted. Rise had honestly been surprised by how different the girl was to Izumi, so poised and almost delicate looking with such a quiet voice compared to the almost menacing – upon first meeting that is – and bold Betwixt she had met before. Though their eyes, despite the different colours, were very similar in the intensity.

“Okay Natsu-kun, next time,” Rise promised. Natsumi’s lips made the slightest of twitch as if she was moving towards smiling at the idol’s words, but it suddenly stopped as she returned to scrutinising the elder, thank goodness Rise was used to people with probing eyes otherwise she’d be fidgeting quite intensely. “I see you’re calling me Rise instead of Risette,” Rise acknowledged. It was a little odd, but Rise didn’t mind the sudden change.

“I… um, well, it just… I didn’t know which you’d prefer,” Natsumi admitted. The younger girl shifted her stance slightly and twisted her head to the side which caused Rise to frown, Rise wasn’t entirely sure whether the girl was – for lack of a better phrase – comfortable in her own skin or not, she had seemed so before when they first met; but after the voice incident and right now, Rise wasn’t too sure.

“Which ever you prefer is fine by me Natsu-kun,” Rise decided. Better to let the girl decide, hopefully she could relax and open up to Rise about her aversion to her voice. “Listen, about what you mentioned last time, I’m not gonna tell anyone!” Rise began to speak. But she immediately saw the shifting of Natsumi’s left leg and her tensing muscles, the girl could be quite combative whenever her voice was concerned. “I was just wondering if you wanted to talk about it, my voice caused me suffering to,” Rise admitted.

“You mean when you went on hiatus five years ago?” Natsumi asked. Rise nodded, she could never have imagined what had happened just by making a choice to run away; so many friends gained who saw the real her, a way to express herself that set her free in a way she hadn’t expected, acceptance of her idol persona.

“I’ll tell you about it, if you want,” Rise offered. Going first, speaking the truth of that event, it might just be what Natsumi needed to open up and tell Rise her story; Rise really wanted to help the younger girl embrace her voice, herself, properly and maybe that would enable her to finally be free about it to others in her life.

“My home is a short distance away, we can sit down there and talk,” Natsumi offered. The girl glided forward with an almost ethereal movement, Rise quickly followed after her while thinking that Natsumi almost seemed to have been made to be an idol with her trained voice and graceful movements. The doorway opened and Rise moved into a house that immediately chilled her to the bone.

It wasn’t that the house was cold, it was a perfectly normal temperature for the season, but to Rise’s honed navigator’s senses, it felt as if there wasn’t anything alive in here. The house had a very empty feeling to it, yet Natsumi didn’t seem even a little bothered by the cold atmosphere, frankly that fact was more than a little unnerving to Rise; she said nothing of this so instead follow Natsumi into a decently sized kitchen.

“Tea? Or something else?” Natsumi offered. Rise accepted the tea and sat down at the table, trying desperately not to fidget in response to the chilled energy that blanketed the building; there wasn’t much in the way of decorations either, simply books with a wide variety of fiction and Rise was certain she spotted both of Izumi’s books on the self at perfect reaching height for Natsumi.

“Five years ago,” Rise spoke up. Natsumi proceeded to set the tea down and sat right in front of Rise so that the two could look at each other. “I quit because I ended up losing sight of myself,” Rise admitted. Natsumi seemed confused by the expression that Rise saw upon her face. “The person everyone saw on the stage, Risette, she wasn’t the real me or that was how I perceived her at the time. I was so angry at not being able to be my real self and not knowing if everyone admired me, or the identity I took on stage,” Rise admitted. The memory of those feelings was still strong, but she used it as a reminder to always be true to herself.

“Really?” Natsumi asked. Rise wondered what the girl could possibly be thinking after hearing Rise’s confession. “I always figured the Risette who appeared wasn’t the way you acted in private. But I never considered her to be a fake. Everyone’s got different facets to themselves and we can’t always show every facet of ourselves to every person in our lives,” Natsumi admitted. Now that surprised Rise, but the words made sense given who she had to be.

“Spoken like someone who’s faced her own Shadow,” Rise acknowledged. However, despite the fact that this must have been how Natsumi awakened her Persona, there was a rather baffled look upon her face; almost as if she didn’t understand a word that Rise had spoken. That obviously confused Rise and the two stared at each other in silence for some time.

“I… never faced my Shadow, I’ve tamed it but that’s not how I got my Persona,” Natsumi admitted. Rise’s mouth opened in surprise at that statement, unable to control the shock that flooded through her in response to the words; her mind was running about a hundred miles a minute as she tried to process the words that had just been spoken, while also trying to come up with a proper response.

“Could you tell me more?” Rise asked. She hadn’t expected that admission, she’d never learned how another team of Persona Users had awakened theirs, which made her wonder if it was really different for each team. Natsumi seemed to be thinking about something before shrugging her shoulders as if deciding something.

“Sure, I guess since you already know, it’s safe. So long as you tell me what that giant Persona of yours can do,” Natsumi insisted.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 44: - Death, Chariot, Magician

Takemi Tae sat within her office, organising the medicines she had stocked up, noting down what she needed to get more off, and ensuring she knew what new concoctions she’d be applying to her guinea pig when he next came in. Though the thought of the curly haired boy she’d been using in her medical tests immediately made her think of the girl who had accompanied him and her unusual request.

Takemi immediately locked her eyes upon the pieces of paper that she had organised. It was extremely basic work, but it would be enough for a complete amateur like Chiba to help out that stubborn friend of hers, now she just needed to stop by and pick them up. But the girl hadn’t been at LeBlanc recently, well Takemi did have her contact information so just decided to send her a message.

Tae: Hey, come down today.

Tae: I’ve got your information for that friend.

Natsumi: Understood Doctor.

She was a weird girl. To so easily response to what was clearly a shadily worded message, not to mention she had turned to the aid of arguable the most hated individual in the medical community – well in Japan at least, overseas she was still respected – in order to get her friend back on track. There was also the irritating fact that she knew the family name of Chiba from somewhere, it was itching at her mind persistently.

Takemi stubbornly returned to her work, sorting and organising the patient records, even looking at the flyers that she hung in her office and seeing if any needed replacing or updating. Takemi didn’t know why she was so concerned about the girl’s impending arrival; she didn’t get like this before Amamiya proceeded to turn up for his experiments. Takemi shook her head and tried to understand what her brain was up to.

“I’m not too early am I, Takemi-sensei?” Chiba’s voice sounded. Takemi turned around to see the girl standing in the doorway dressed in her student uniform, well Takemi didn’t want to make the girl end up being late, an afternoon arrival would have been better, but it also meant that there was a higher chance of her running into Amamiya.

“Nah, it’s actually good that you’re here this early. Means you’re not interrupting any of my other patients,” Takemi stated. Not that there was many of them, but some instinct told Takemi that the girl would not be happy to find her friend taking part in, technically, a sketchy drug trial. Her showing up earlier was much better in Takemi’s mind.

Takemi motioned for the girl to follow after her and they entered into the private room that Takemi used for her examination. The doctor sat down in her chair and proceeded to pull over the papers she had constructed from various other articles detailing this sort of knowledge. Chiba sat down in the chair across from Takemi and the doctor set the papers down near her.

“Here is all the information I managed to get; you’ll first have to evaluate exactly what’s state his leg is in before starting any treatment. I’ve marked which ones to use at different intensities,” Takemi explained. Chiba proceeded to pull the papers and immediately began to leaf through them, giving each page only a quick glance but making sure to look carefully with some intensity at each of them before moving on.

“Thank you for this Takemi-sensei,” Chiba admitted. Takemi raised an eyebrow upon hearing her voice again and it immediately confirmed something that the doctor had expected from their second meeting; Takemi took up and quickly grabbed a cup, with the quick and precise movements born from years of practice stretching back to her childhood, Takemi quickly crafted a slightly cloudy drink, which she placed beside the girl. “Um… what is this?” Chiba asked. She was blinking her green eyes at the cup as if not understanding what it was for.

“A medicine I made to deal with strained vocal cords. I heard it the first time I heard you speak,” Takemi admitted as she sat back down. Chiba’s hand seemed to move on impulse towards her throat, gently pressing over an area directly above the area between her clavicles; as a doctor, Takemi’s interest was piqued and she wanted to ask the necessary questions; what strained your voice? How long had it been like this? Were you doing any unnecessary vocal exercises?

But Takemi held herself back, after all this girl wasn’t a patient of hers, merely seeking medical advice for someone else who was extremely stubborn. Besides the girl could be getting medical advice from another source or had been unaware of her condition until this very moment. Chiba didn’t say anything and instead just reached out for the medicine and quickly swallowed it in a few gulps.

Unlike the drugs she’d been feeding to Amamiya for her research, this one wouldn’t have any adverse side effects like causing her to faint or anything dramatic, it might just give her a tingling sensation or heat up her throat. Takemi watched as the girl gave a small cough as if trying to expel something from her throat. Chiba even proceeded to rub her hand up and down it in a practiced manner, she certainly seemed familiar with how her vocal cords could function.

“Thank you, Takemi-sensei,” Chiba admitted. She proceeded to gather up all the files and organised them into a neat pile which was quickly slipped into her bag, Takemi found that action very familiar almost as if she had seen it somewhere before, but the gut feeling she had indicated that it belonged to a much older black haired individual. “Goodbye,” Chiba bid. She proceeded to rise to her feet and walked out of the room without looking back.

‘I’ve got to get rid of this itch I keep having.’ Takemi decided. Perhaps figuring out where she knew the surname from would finally allow her mind to properly rest.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Ryūji stared at his phone in, well he wasn’t entire sure if he was just nervous or outright terrified. He didn’t even care if the teacher – what class was he in again? – noticed that he was staring at his phone. He was already tense over waiting for Madarame’s Change of Heart or even any news about Madarame from Yusuke. And the way this message had been worded in a way that played off of that stress.

Natsumi: Ryūji, my house, this afternoon.

Natsumi: Do not miss it. Come in exercise clothing.

Natsumi: It’s not training.

Honestly, even though he trusted Natsumi to have his back in a fight when they were acting as the Phantoms, that didn’t stop Ryūji from being rather terrified of her. There was just something about Natsumi that was so intimidating; before he knew her, he’d never flinched when thinking about her, but now Ryūji did… maybe it was because he was well aware of how easily Natsumi could kick his ass.

Ryūji: Okay, I’ll be there.

“OI! Sakamoto!” Ushimaru’s voice roared. A torpedo chalk swiftly smacked him between the eyebrows and he almost tipped his chair back from the force of the blow, right… he was in Social Studies. Ryūji set his chair back on the ground and tucked his phone away before rubbing at the area which had been attacked.

Thankfully the bell soon rang, which released Ryūji from any further punishments as he bolted out the room like the ex-runner he was. Ren was only a few steps away, so he quickly grabbed his best friend’s arm and pulled him away before Ushimaru could come out and collar him for having his phone out in class. He pulled the curly haired boy until they were outside and he turned to face the boy who was swaying in place slightly.

“Hey man, sorry but I’m gonna have to bolt. Natsumi’s got somethin’ planned for me and well… I think if I don’t show up, she might be a little mad,” Ryūji admitted. He slumped down slightly as he told Ren what happened; a small airy sound came from in front of him and Ryūji lifted his head to see that Ren was trying to restrain his laughter. “Hey!” Ryūji protested.

“Fair enough, best not to incite the wrath of our weapons master,” Ren commented. That was the nickname that the rest of them had taken to calling Natsumi, but then again it made sense since it was only thank to her that they could actually wield their weapons without – well in Ryūji’s case mostly – falling flat on their faces. “I’ll talk to you later okay,” Ren stated. He lifted a fist towards Ryūji and the blonde punk grinned broadly and knocked his own fist against Ren’s, with that Ren turned his back to head away, at that moment Morgana popped out of Ren’s bag.

“Whatever you do Ryūji, don’t make her mad,” Morgana teased. Ryūji flipped the cat off in response, before deciding the damn cat had a point and bolted towards the train station since he needed to get home and change before meeting up at Natsumi’s house; Ryūji ran as fast as he could manage with his bad leg, silently cursing that bastard Kamoshida for breaking it the way that he did.

Ryūji just managed to catch the train back to Shibuya, slumping down in his seat out of relief that he’d made it safely. Ryūji pulled in deep breaths in the practiced manner to get his breath back before the train reached his stop, once it did the blonde was out of his seat and on the run again back to his home. Luckily for Ryūji, when he reached home, his mum happened to be out; Ryūji felt a pang in his heart despite the smile that came to his lips at his amazing mum, Ryūji knew he was lucky to have someone like her.

He quickly changed clothes and then bolted out the building to get the train to Yongen. Once that bit of his journey was done, Ryūji decided to change gears, so that instead of sprinting all over the place he was lightly jogging in order to reach the building Natsumi lived in – that empty place wasn’t any home – to ensure his leg didn’t give out like it had back in the Palace. Upon arrival, he quickly knocked on the door and it practically jumped open.

“Come on in,” Natsumi insisted. Ryūji just caught the sight of a light blue shirt and dark blue skirt before the girl walked away, after getting his trainers off Ryūji followed after her into the front room and found her stopped near the couch “Lay down there,” Natsumi ordered. With the way the cushions were positioned, it made it clear where his head was supposed to go, still nervous about what Natsumi had planned but glad he wouldn’t be moving yet, Ryūji led down.

Right after his head had hit the cushions, Natsumi had seated herself in a chair beside the couch, nothing happened immediately afterwards beyond something rustling beside him, but Ryūji was getting antsy. He wasn’t the kind of guy to stay still, he preferred actually moving especially if he was running but exercise in general was more his speed than sitting down and being still. Suddenly a pressure appeared near his right ankle and Ryūji instantly shot upright.

“What are you doin’ Natsumi?” Ryūji asked. He stopped himself from swinging his leg up and jumping to his feet only after seeing that Natsumi had gripped both sides of his right pant leg and had been pushing it up when his actions stopped her; Ryūji spotted some papers resting in her lap and wondered what she could need those papers for and why she was lifting his pant leg.

“Assessing the state of your leg,” Natsumi answered. She proceeded to continue pushing it up, until it reached passed his knee and she stopped it there; Natsumi then release the pant and rested her hands on his lower leg. “I went to Takemi-sensei and ask her for advice about your leg. We need you in fighting fit condition for more Palaces, if your leg acts up and you fall again… I don’t want your life in danger,” Natsumi admitted. A grim expression on her face as she thought of that possibility.

“Oh, right,” Ryūji spoke. For all that Natsumi terrified him, he had to remind himself that she was a real kind person, Ryūji decided to trust her and proceeded to lie back down on the couch, he could feel the presence of Natsumi’s fingers on his leg but beyond the delicate presence she exerted nothing else happened.

“You didn’t trust her and I probably couldn’t talk you into getting treatment from a stranger. So, I’m the next best thing,” Natsumi explained. Ryūji knew she was right; he was never going near that terrifying punk rock woman again! Ryūji didn’t even believe that woman was a licenced doctor no matter what her office looked like or how spookily accurate her questions were about how his leg had been injured.

“Thanks, Natsumi,” Ryūji admitted. He knew that he needed his leg in better condition than it currently was and his running with Ren made that all the more apparent; his stamina was absolute shit! He was nowhere near as quick as he used to be and it wasn’t getting better fast enough, maybe this therapy thing would be the missing piece he needed to get his leg back on track and stamina up.

“Of course, Ryūji,” Natsumi responded. However, her tone wasn’t what Ryūji had been expecting, it sounded kind of like she was dismissing his thanks which wasn’t something that the blonde punk wanted, for all his actions there was one thing Ryūji valued more than even his ability to run; that was his family and friends. Ryūji pushed himself upright which stopped Natsumi from pressing at his leg and she proceeded to look at him.

“Nah, I really mean it. This isn’t somethin’ I ever thought of doing. I was just so mad at Kamoshida for what he did to me, gettin’ better was the last thing on my mind,” Ryūji explained. He’d wallowed in his rage, lashing out in every direction he could – except for his mum, he’d never hurt his mum the way that bastard had – just to do something with the fire that burned his heart. Ren, Morgana and Natsumi coming in with the Metaverse brought the first spark of focus to his randomly wandering mind.

“Like I told Shiho, getting better is the best revenge, we’ve already torn him apart. Now his victims – including you – can deal the final blow by getting better and moving passed him,” Natsumi explained. Ryūji was surprised to hear that Natsumi was referring to Suzui by her first name, but his attention focused upon the rest of her statement; the more Ryūji thought about it, the more a massive, ear-splitting grin spread across his lips.

“Yeah, you know that actually sounds real cool when you say it like that,” Ryūji decided. He’d already worked out so much of his anger at Kamoshida on the ugly Shadow he’d fought and watching the bastard’s Change of Heart had made him feel vindicated; but some of it still remained. “So, what have I gotta do?” Ryūji asked. Perhaps channelling his rage into actually getting better would be a good way to finally get rid of it.

“First of all, I need to establish how bad your leg is. Then, following Takemi-sensei’s advice, I can use that to help you strengthen your leg again,” Natsumi explained. Natsumi returned to her prodding of Ryūji’s leg and he tried to remain still, but a few movements caused him to yelp or shuffle in his seat. “I know you’re running with Ren, but how much and how stressfully?” Natsumi asked. The sensation of Natsumi’s fingers left and then scratching of something on paper sounded.

“It can get kinda intense, but I think that’s on me. I get a bit competitive, with myself, to push myself to get faster,” Ryūji answered. He remembered the first time he’d run with Ren, knee lift sprints all the way around the school, those had been easy as breathing to him before the track team got dissolved, but that day it felt like his legs refused to move afterwards with how tight they became and he could barely get any air into his lungs when he stopped. It had been a real blow to Ryūji’s pride, especially when his legs started shaking.

“That competitive energy is good; it’ll drive you to get better and overcome the challenges such a process will present. But you can’t push yourself too hard, too fast. It’ll actually make it worse rather than better,” Natsumi explained. That didn’t sound good to Ryūji, it sounded to Ryūji like Natsumi was telling him that he wouldn’t be able to keep on running!

“But if I don’t push myself, how will I know I’mma gettin’ better?!” Ryūji demanded. He couldn’t just stop running, it was a great way for him to relieve the build-up of stress, plus it was how he and Ren hung out; Natsumi lifted her eyes which were icy in their intensity and Ryūji leaned back. Seriously, those eyes were terrifying, especially when that face was so carefully blank as it currently was, the terror factor of Natsumi’s burning eyes were cranked up.

“Physiotherapy takes time Ryūji. It’s unfortunate but true. You’ll be in your best state for fights, where we will need you most of all,” Natsumi insisted. Argh, damnit! Why did Natsumi have to have such a logical head on her shoulders? If it was Morgana, he’d probably be able to argue with the arrogant feline, but Ren and Natsumi… no way. “I’ll ask Ren to keep an eye on you in your running sessions, he has a better chance of keeping a hold of you than I will in those moments,” Natsumi stated. The words took a while to actually settle into Ryūji’s mind, but once they did, a sparkle appeared within his brown eyes.

“Wait, so I can still run?” Ryūji asked. The light of his happiness must have shown on his face because Natsumi allowed a small snort to escape from her as her shoulders jumped slightly; Ryūji liked it when Natsumi smiled and laughed, not in a romantic fashion, just a general he was happy she seemed happy since it was something that she seemed to do very little of and in Ryūji mind, she needed the warmth fuzzy feeling after Madarame’s Palace sent her into shock… least that was what Morgana had caused her freak out moment.

“Yes, you still need to keep exercising, it’ll actually be good for you to keep moving. Just not so intensely as before. Instead of sprinting everywhere, try jogging instead, or as slow as a run as you can manage,” Natsumi explained. Okay, that might be something he could manage to do, actually he could try the hard exercises in a slower form which might be able to help him improve better. “I’ll still have Ren keep tabs on you, just in case,” Natsumi added on. Hopefully, Ren could approve of Ryūji’s idea.

“Alright! Let’s do this!” Ryūji cheered. He flopped back down, in a rather happy mood as he allowed Natsumi to continue with whatever it was the crazy ‘doctor’ had told her to do.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Morgana strode calmly across the wall, a few locks picks clutched within his mouth as he made his way to Natsumi’s house. Via Ren, of course, she had confirmed Morgana’s availability for a lesson tonight and with Ren out with Iwai then it was probably a good time to get the teaching underway. It would be good for them to have another lockpicker on their team, just in case anything went wrong.

The human turned cat, for he was, leapt onto the ledge of a window outside of a bedroom, a quick little scratching at the edges summoned Natsumi to his location. She opened the window and welcomed him in, Morgana easily leapt into her room and looked around. It was much nicer than the loft that Ren had to stay in with a decent looking bed in soft greens and blues, a deep red wood wardrobe with matching desk and bedside table. But that was it, the same empty feeling of the house was even present here.

“Morgana, I have some milk, water or tea, do you want anything?” Natsumi asked. The girl placed some bottles and a cup in front of him, so Morgana opted for the milk with a nudge of his head; a small saucer of that and some fish chunks on a separate plate were put on Natsumi desk. “Didn’t know if you’d eaten or not but just in case you were hungry,” Natsumi explained. Morgana smoothly leapt up onto the desk and was please to see several different kinds of locks resting on the desk near her chair. Morgana set the lockpicks down and moved over to the saucers.

“Thank you for the meal Natsumi,” Morgana stated. The girl sat down and picked up the tools then slip over a lock. “Just remember to stay calm and take your time. Although I suppose this is going to be much easier than lockpicking under pressure. If something feels off, just speak up and I’ll see what you need to do,” Morgana advised. Natsumi was a proficient individual, when she kept her cool, likely thanks to her father’s teachings giving her a natural dexterity which Ren was a bit lacking in; Morgana expected Natsumi to pick this up quite fast.

“Of course, Morgana,” Natsumi agreed. She pulled over a lock that was much smaller than the one they’d found in Madarame’s shack and she secured it into a decent sized vice in order to keep it steady while she got to work; she lifted the strips of metal and position the finer ends near the opening for the key, but Morgana had one last warning to give to Natsumi so he quickly moved over and rested a paw on her wrist to stop her.

“Natsumi word to the wise, each lock is an individual, you can’t go in thinking they’re all the same,” Morgana warned. Natsumi nodded her head and turned back to the padlock, she took a deep breath, Morgana nodded – please with her actions – and moved over to take part in the meal that Natsumi had been kind enough to make for him.

As soon as he was finished, Morgana focused all of his attention upon Natsumi and her work, she’d managed to unlock the first padlock and had since moved on to a second, there were five in total for Natsumi to work away at. Occasionally, the girl would stop and ask Morgana for information, so the master phantom thief slinked over to listen to the mechanisms inside as Natsumi worked, gently guiding her movements until she got it right. Other than those odd moments, Natsumi got through the second and third padlocks quite easily. This allowed Morgana time to think and think he did, about one very particular incident that had gnawed at his mind for a little now.

“Natsumi, I was wondering,” Morgana spoke up. The girl lifted her head to look in the human turned cat’s direction while stilling her hands, Morgana was pleased as this reduced the chance of her making a mistake on her lockpicking. “Why did you randomly freeze up when looking at Atalanta?” Morgana asked. He had been curious about that, no other Shadow – not even a transformed Ruler – had drawn such a reaction from her, yet such an ordinary Persona as Atalanta had. Natsumi gently set her lock pick down and looked down at the lock she was meant to be working on, Morgana patiently waited for the girl to sort through her words; a gentleman such he always waited for a lady to speak in her own time.

“When Joker summons a Persona or frees a Shadow from a Palace, I’ve been sensing these… connections for lack of a better word to actual people who I know. As for Atalanta, she’s the second entity who I’ve felt a connection to, it just ended up distracting me,” Natsumi admitted. As she spoke though, Morgana perked up and focused upon the girl quite intently, for the truth was he actually understood a part of what Natsumi was saying.

“You can see what the Shadows truly are and are sensing connections to people. I can’t do that, but all of the Shadows can be connected to Arcana,” Morgana stated. One of the many abilities he had cultivated over his experiences – he thinks, but without a memory he has little clue to its’ truth – was to perceive the twenty-four Arcana to divide the Shadows by. “Perhaps these Arcana are somehow linked to the people you sense the Personas linking to,” Morgana theorised.

“Hold on, Arcana? What do you mean by that?” Natsumi asked. Honestly, Morgana didn’t have any idea why the term Arcana was used to describe this classification, he wasn’t even sure where it had originated from, but that was the classification so that was what he used. Morgana could at least explain what he knew about the Arcana and the Personas that Natsumi might have had sensed a linking between their companions.

“I… don’t know exactly. I just now each Persona has a corresponding Arcana. Like my Zorro is a Magician Arcana, Carmen is Lovers, Captain Kidd is Chariot, Goemon is Emperor, Phantom is Voyage and Arsène was Fool,” Morgana explained. That seemed to spark something within Natsumi’s eyes as she focused upon him with a great deal of intensity; seeing those eyes, green with a ring of blue or gold at the centre, seemed to jolt something within Morgana’s empty mind before it faded, leaving only the faintest snatch of an aria behind.

“The first time I sensed this connection was when Joker summoned Agathion and that linked it to Skull, you were connected to Cait Sith, I’ve also sensed links from Boss, Panther, Takemi-sensei, Maruki-sensei, Mishima, Iwai-san and yet some without any at all,” Natsumi revealed. Now that was interesting to hear, Morgana could understand links between himself and the other members of the Phantoms, but not those who weren’t able to enter the Metaverse yet were intrinsically connected to Ren. But it was curious as to why Natsumi had an empty space for some of them yet not others.

“Hmm, maybe you need to meet both a human and a Persona who resonates with the Arcana before you can identify a link. But is there something else involved or is it just the Arcana,” Morgana wondered. It was a possibility; one sensation would inevitably lead to the other being sensed once Natsumi managed to meet the one she was missing, such a curious ability her Second Sight. In truth Morgana knew she wasn’t telling them everything, but that was something she had to reveal in her own manner, not something he blurted out.

“I’m trying to understand what you mean by Arcana and how you came across those names… or why Personas would be classified in such a manner,” Natsumi admitted. If he had been in his human form, Morgana would have grimaced, he wished his memory hadn’t been erased along with his true form; if he just had those memories then he’d be able to properly articulate what it meant to Natsumi.

The girl looked at him for a few moments, before turning back to her lock and continuing to work on it. Morgana allowed her to do this in silence, since she seemed to have the hang of it already, as he was turning over an idea in his head. This whole discussion of the Personas, Arcana and their links to living people can ignited his sense of curiosity and that curiosity demanded to be sated. The plan was risky, true, but it might help them to understand the Shadows more and more information was only more power to them. As Natsumi finished the fifth lock, Morgana made his choice.

“Natsumi, when we next have some free time, let’s go down into Mementos. Just the two of us,” Morgana suggested. It was a risky manoeuvre to make, but Morgana had been too intrigued by their discussion to simply let it go, he was eager to find answers about what the connection between the Arcana, all those people Ren had bonds with and the Personas truly were. Natsumi’s eyes went a little wide, despite the fact that she had terrified the Shadows on the first level into fleeing from her on sight.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Natsumi asked. Ah, Morgana realised that Natsumi had assumed he meant for them to go any deeper into the place they could train; Morgana had no intention of doing such a thing, he was an extremely cautious gentleman and would never subject a lady to such great potential danger. Only when he was certain of his and Natsumi’s overwhelming prowess against the Shadows was a concrete fact would he dare to suggest they go further alone.

“Me and you on the first level of Mementos, I don’t think there’s any need to worry, perhaps we’ll have a better understanding of the Arcana link if we go down there,” Morgana admitted. Natsumi proceeded to smile at Morgana’s words which made the distorted human extremely happy; Ann-dono may be the woman who owned his heart, but that didn’t make Natsumi any less of an important person in Morgana’s eyes.

“Anything to clear up this mess of a confusion and explain the bonds I’ve been feeling,” Natsumi agreed. A purr that almost sounded like the sound that rumbled within his van mode escaped him, he was greatly pleased to know that Natsumi had agreed to their joint excursion; Morgana just hoped that Ren wouldn’t get too suspicious of him randomly disappearing and coming back slightly roughed up late at night.

“Goodnight Natsumi,” Morgana chimed. With that he jumped through the window she had opened for him, as he was eager to get back to the attic at LeBlanc, odd as it might be the place had become something of a home for him; he would enjoy the rest he could make in that drafty area and think over the things he had learned today, so many fascinating things and perhaps he’d be able to pluck up that snatch of an aria Natsumi’s eyes had summoned again.

“Night Morgana, you get home safe now,” Natsumi insisted. Morgana turned and padded off into the night, sure that Natsumi was safe by the closing of the window behind him.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy.

Chapter 45: - Temperance, Lovers, Hierophant

Kawakami Sadayo very much felt the desire to slump over her desk and simply sleep for the remainder of the day. This whole crazy mess with Kamoshida was dumping more stress on top of her already far too full plate. First there was Kobayakawa putting the transfer student in her class, though at least Amamiya was behaving himself, then of course her damn night job just kept getting worse and it was attracting Chouno’s attention due to how exhausted Kawakami was feeling, which the exhausted teacher didn’t need. Her regular teaching job was already suffering, but this whole mess was making things worse!

“Kawakami-sensei,” A delicate voice spoke. Kawakami jolted up right at the voice she heard and stared right into the green eyes of Chiba Natsumi who looked quite annoyed, even now the Japanese teacher couldn’t understand how the ever quiet girl had suddenly changed and seemed to be changing more every day. “You were about to fall asleep,” Chiba pointed out. Kawakami stifled a deep yawn behind her lips, not wanting to reveal just how sleepy she actually was.

However, it seemed Chiba must have noticed something. Her tense expression melted away suddenly and worry replaced it, the girl turned her back and quickly walked off, only to return and set her chair right in front of Kawakami’s desk which caused the woman to blink in confusion at what she was doing, it was dinner break so Chiba should be out with her friends. It didn’t escape the teachers’ notice that Chiba, Amamiya, Takamaki, and Sakamoto had suddenly become friends.

“Is everything alright Kawakami-sensei?” Chiba asked. A genuine concern shimmered within her eyes and Kawakami felt terrible, how bad was she looking that one of her own students was going so far as to actually worry about her. “You don’t need to tell me any details, but something is clearly depriving you of sleep and that is only dangerous for you,” Chiba stated. Kawakami tried to smile but she knew it came out as more of a grimace by the darkening expression of Chiba’s face.

“Oh, no. Nothing’s wrong Chiba-san,” Kawakami lied. There was a lot wrong, but Kawakami felt it was wrong to tell any of this to a student even if they had just asked for the basics; besides that Kawakami knew she couldn’t tell anyone about the full reason, her night job that she was too ashamed to even admit she had; but she needed it, it was the only way to atone for what she had done in the past. However, the response was clearly not going to dissuade the young girl seated in front of her

“Fine,” Chiba muttered. She shook her head and then grabbed her bag which she reached into and started to pull stuff out, a bentō box followed by a couple of small round containers and a large thermos; this only earned a very confused look from the teacher, as Kawakami didn’t quite know what to make of the sudden surge of stuff appearing on her desk from arguably her best student. “You’re too exhausted to keep doing you’re work. It’s clear sleep isn’t solving it and as a student I have no right to pry into your private life. But the fatigue will only get worse and I’m not about to let that happen. So, I made you this meal, it’s pretty basic but hopefully it will help you,” Chiba stated. The girl then stood up and approached the door to leave Kawakami’s classroom. “Please take care of yourself sensei,” Chiba requested. With that, the girl disappeared out the door.

Kawakami couldn’t find it in herself to do more than gape after the girl, it was quite forward of the girl to just do something like this for her and so unexpected as well. But it would probably be rude to ignore such a gift, especially when Chiba had gone out of her way to make something like this. Kawakami reached out to the thermos and twisted the top off in order to look inside.

A clear liquid with no scent greeted her, a quick sip proved it was just basic water as opposed to anything alcoholic, not that she expected that from Chiba, it was actually better than Kawakami had been expecting it to taste. Setting the thermos aside, Kawakami looked in the round tubs, one was filled with a mixture of seeds and nuts while the other was filled with grapes and slices of apple. A lump appeared in Kawakami’s throat at the effort that Chiba had put into this.

Swallowing down, Kawakami reached for the bentō box, determined not to fall apart over something like this, Kawakami didn’t believe she didn’t deserve the kindness Chiba was showing her, so Kawakami was going to keep herself together. A hitch in Kawakami’s breath was her response to the sight in the box. Perfectly cooked rice, a diced cube of tofu, a large slice of fish, some leafy greens dotted with tomatoes and peppers.

Placing the lid down, Kawakami took in a deep breath to control herself and prevent the stinging in her eyes from spilling out and over her newly acquired food as she didn’t wish to contaminate the effort that Chiba had put into making it. Luckily for Kawakami, she could eat all of the food that had been prepared, Kawakami picked up the chopstick and quickly clapped her hands together.

“Thanks for the food,” Kawakami choked out passed the tears she fought down. The food wasn’t anything special, but to Kawakami, it was a gift from the gods.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Ann was really glad that Natsumi had agreed to meet her after Ann had gone to see Shiho that day, they rarely got to meet up and go to see Shiho together likely the other day. But Ann still went every opportunity she got so long as no model work got in the way, yet afterwards… after watching Shiho struggle through her work outs, Ann needed someone to talk to. She was already training her heart with Ren and didn’t feel right burdening him with more emotions, but Natsumi had been there for her and Shiho from the get-go.

“Enjoying yourself?” Natsumi’s voice cheerfully asked. Ann opened her closed eyes and stared into Natsumi’s glimmering eyes, they had decided to meet at Inoshakira park and Ann… well despite the mess she had decided to sit down underneath a tree, just to try and get a little more comfortable. “How was Shiho today?” Natsumi asked. The girl didn’t even hesitate to sit down beside her friend.

“She’s okay, but it’ll be a long road to recovery according to the physio, but Shiho’s really throwing herself into it,” Ann explained. There was such a determination within Shiho when she did any physiotherapy, Ann could understand Shiho wanting to get her full mobility back but it was also a little unnerving for Ann to see Shiho pushing herself so hard, but all Ann could think to do was gently encourage her friend.

“No surprise, on the first day I may have… encouraged her determination as a way to get revenge of Kamoshida,” Natsumi revealed. Ann’s head snapped over to look at Natsumi who had a slightly bitter smile on her face, but no hint of regret for doing what she did; honestly Ann felt more than a little giddy when she heard the reasoning because it was so perfect.

“That’s a good idea. It certainly explains Shiho’s fire, I haven’t seen her this determined since she first took up volleyball,” Ann admitted. The brilliant joy that had shone in Shiho’s eyes when she first joined the volleyball team back in middle school and how happy Shiho had been whenever she talked about the sport still gleamed brightly in Ann’s mind; it was such a shame that Kamoshida had destroyed that joy.

“How are you handling it, the physiotherapy?” Natsumi asked. Ann frowned as she looked at Natsumi, that was an awfully strange question to ask so suddenly and with how Natsumi’s green eyes were boring into Ann – making the model feel like a butterfly about to be pinned in a case – then Ann knew she wouldn’t relent without hearing an answer; but Ann needed some serious clarification to answer it properly.

“Me? Why would the physiotherapy affect me?” Ann wondered. After all, she wasn’t the one fighting against her own body in order to recover from a suicide attempt, all she could do was be there for Shiho and help her in any way possible; Ann really wished she could do so much more to help her friend but it wasn’t like she could take Shiho into the Metaverse and heal her wounds… Ann had already experimented with that secretly.

“Ann-chan, seriously?” Natsumi questioned. Natsumi even proceeded to raise an eyebrow at the blonde model. “Your best friend, the most important person in your life, jumped off a roof and was hospitalised, now you watch her fight to get her body back under her control. That must be difficult for you to watch,” Natsumi pointed out. Ann mentally cursed the fact that Natsumi always seemed capable of asking the probing uncomfortable questions.

“Okay… yeah, it is… it’s hard to watch Shiho being wheeled about. Legs shaking like a new born animal. She’s so tired as well, something I normally never attribute to her. I honestly feel like crying whenever I see her struggling so much,” Ann admitted. Ann felt like her throat was suddenly turned into a vice as she got the words out, her blue eyes were staring at the ground.

“And?” Natsumi asked. Ann felt Natsumi shuffle closer and sensed the girl wrap an arm around Ann’s shoulders, pulling the model close enough so that their sides were pressed against each other and their opposing hair colour proceeded to mingle together; Ann sniffled slightly as she dragged up the courage to answer the question.

“And I feel so pathetic,” Ann answered. It was something she had to do deal with every time she left the physiotherapy, it was so easy in the beginning to watch Shiho work through her exercises and chat with her on the way to the exercise, but afterwards… Ann always had to leave quickly in order to fight down the tears that always seemed determined to spill over her eyelids as she watch, it was only when she was alone that Ann finally cried and this feeling always followed after her.

“Why do think it’s pathetic?” Natsumi asked. Her tone wasn’t condescending which lightened Ann’s tumult slightly, it was instead rather soft and warm sounding; Ann shuffled closer to her new friend despite their already close proximity, but she needed a bit more of the steady presence that Natsumi seemed to radiate with such confidence.

“Because I’m not the one who’s bones and muscles were broken from jumping off a roof. Shiho isn’t letting one tear slip free, yet I keep feeling like I’m about to turn into a blubbering mess,” Ann explained. It really wasn’t fair that she felt like crumbling to pieces when Shiho was facing down her treatment with her head held high and a fire in her heart.

“You’re wrong you know,” Natsumi stated. This caused Ann to jerk backwards and she looked at Natsumi with confusion on her face and a watery stain to her blue eyes. “Shiho is crying, but I think she doesn’t want you to worry. Shiho is putting on a brave face, doesn’t mean she isn’t hurting inside,” Natsumi revealed. Well, that just served to make Ann feel even more horrible than she already felt.

“I must be a horrible friend. First, I don’t realise that Shiho is being hurt by Kamoshida and now I don’t even realise how much she’s hurting,” Ann cried. The tears finally tumbled from her eyes and she started to sniffle and hiccup, Natsumi pulled Ann back into their embrace with Ann’s eyes pressing against Natsumi’s shoulder as she felt a slightly calloused hand rub her back through her jersey.

“No, you’re not horrible. It’s just that Shiho doesn’t want to burden you, she knows how much you’ve been hurt by Kamoshida. I’m sure she just wants you to be free of him. Both of you are so compassionate, but you both need to realise that you can rely upon each other instead of staying silently strong,” Natsumi reassured. That caused a scoff to escape from Ann as she proceeded to pull back and wipe away the watery residue.

“Says the pot to the kettle,” Ann commented. Despite the croaky sound of her voice, her words were understood when Ann saw Natsumi give her a confused look. “Come on Natsumi, you opened up about Ouvrard but only the bare minimum. None of us know the details but I’m starting to think it was much worse than you told us given how you reacted in the challenge the other day,” Ann pointed out.

“That’s um…,” Natsumi tried to explain. It looked like she was struggling for words and that hurt Ann, not that Natsumi couldn’t trust her but how Natsumi couldn’t even open up; Ann still trembled when she recalled the stricken expression on Natsumi’s face when they saw that statue and how she had gouged red lines into her own throat which, if Morgana had treated when he did, might have turned to rivers of blood.

“I’m not saying that you have to open up to me, but I do think you need to open up to someone. Whether it’s me, or Ren, Morgana, Ryūji, Maruki-sensei or even Yusuke since he might know what it’s like, but I do know that you can’t keep quiet anymore, it’ll only end up hurting you even more,” Ann insisted. Natsumi sighed and slumped back slightly as she gazed at the ground with a complicated expression on her face.

“You might be right, it’s just…,” Natsumi began. Ann didn’t say anything, opting to simply cup Natsumi’s elbows and silently wait for her friend to speak up about what happened. “I’m so used to not talking about it, at least not unless I’m directly asked and that was normally not to check on my health but my progress. My answers were either yes or let Ouvrard explain,” Natsumi explained.

“Who the hell is that heartless?” Ann wondered. She couldn’t stop herself from saying those words and it truly baffled Ann as to who had such a cold heart that they were completely oblivious as to the suffering of a child that they saw regularly; it looked like there might be someone else in Natsumi’s life that was in desperate need of a Change of Heart.

“My uncle,” Natsumi answered. That caused Ann to deeply frown at this fact, she couldn’t imagine one of her own family members doing something so horrible. “He’s the one who took me in after my family died and also the one who brought Ouvrard in,” Natsumi added on. That was worse in Ann’s mind, Natsumi might still be in danger of being hurt because of this man. Her panic must have shown as Natsumi take Ann’s shoulders a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, I don’t live with him anymore, so he can’t influence my life,” Natsumi revealed.

“Good, still sounds like the kind of person who deserves a Change of Heart,” Ann commented. A chuckle escaped Natsumi which caused Ann to perk up, Natsumi had a really cute laugh after all.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sōjirō wiped down the counter, feeling relaxed as the only customers in his café that day were the regulars and not that man. Sōjirō had to take a deep breath in order to avoid trembling with barely restrained rage at the fact that he had been discovered by someone like him; it would cause a lot more problems if he kept sticking around and that was the one thing that Sōjirō wanted to avoid, for the sake of someone so precious to him.

“I’m heading out Sakura-san, goodnight,” Amamiya stated. The boy darted passed, Morgana’s face just peeking out of the bag that he carried with him, and out the door; Sōjirō didn’t have a clue what to make of the boy. He had been accused of assaulting someone – whoever that was, Sōjirō didn’t know – but Narukami had sworn up and down that was impossible when he pleaded for the barista to take the boy in.

Even now Sōjirō didn’t understand why he’d agreed to take Amamiya in, but nothing to do about it now. His bell jingled and he looked up, silently breathing a sigh of relief upon seeing Natsumi walk in, she gave the usual order and Sōjirō quickly got to work on it. As he worked, the man took notice of how much lighter the girl appeared when compared to how she had been a short time ago when they’d discussed her acquaintance.

“Here you go kid,” Sōjirō stated. He set the meal in front of her and watched her green eyes light up, they did that every time and it was like a knife to his chest whenever he saw that expression if only because it reminded him so much of another girl and how she used to light up for his curry. “Are you feeling any better? You were little down the other day,” Sōjirō wondered. He didn’t like seeing Natsumi unhappy, he couldn’t help his daughter but maybe he could at least ensure Natsumi got what she needed.

“Yes, I’m fine Boss. The person I mentioned is safe now, he realised how horrible his situation was and got to safety,” Natsumi answered. Sōjirō was relieved to hear that the thing which had caused Natsumi so much pain was over and done with, he slipped into the seat across from the girl as she took a sip of her sweetened coffee.

“Good to hear and to see you looking brighter,” Sōjirō admitted. Natsumi tenderly smiled at him as she lifted up the spoon to start digging into his curry with a gleam of enjoyment in her eyes. “You asked a really cutting question the last time you were here Natsumi-chan,” Sōjirō commented. That caused Natsumi to pause in her eating, she proceeded to set the utensil down and a small frown appeared on her face.

“I’m sorry about that Boss, I shouldn’t have been so probing,” Natsumi apologised. Sōjirō was surprised that she looked so remorseful about asking that kind of question, he didn’t hold it against her though since she had seemed desperate for some kind of parental guidance; with a warm smile on his face that he reserved for Natsumi, his daughter… and begrudgingly Amamiya, Sōjirō reached over and patted the girl’s hand gently.

“Ah, it’s alright, you did nothing wrong,” Sōjirō reassured. The frown left Natsumi’s face and the barista’s heart ached in response to the ease with which it left, how Sōjiro wished he could bring a smile like that to his daughter’s face, but it felt like she was slipping away from him more with each day that passed; he was desperate to help her but had no idea how to do that.

“By the way, I wanted to know,” Natsumi began. Sōjirō felt a tickle run across his body when he heard how serious Natsumi sounded and the stern expression that she happened to have on her face. “Did that shady man show up at all afterwards?” Natsumi asked. A grimace immediately pulled at the barista’s lips as he recalled that unwelcomed visitor that he had some weeks ago.

Unfortunately, Arata had returned just the other day, he had been pestering Sōjirō for money once again and the barista hadn’t been interested in giving him any, not after what Arata had done. As luck would have it, he’d been tutoring Amamiya on how to brew coffee at the time and that kid had been quick witted enough to pull out his phone and surreptitiously call Sōjirō after the barista had lied about a phone call to get rid of Arata and it had scared him off. The man normally didn’t have anyone else’s contact info in his phone apart from his daughter, but he was glad that he and Amamiya had that information now.

“Sakura-san! Good to see you again, no brat this time either!” Arata’s voice came. Sōjirō lurched up from his seat and saw the man standing in the door with that infuriating fake smile on his face, the man moved over to stand beside the table and Sōjirō was about to tell him to leave when someone else beat him to it.

“Excuse me, sir. But, once again, could you please leave?” Natsumi coolly asked. Sōjirō focused upon the girl and took in the rigidity of her shoulders and the white knuckle grip she had on her cup as she took a sip from it, appearing to Arata as a calm high school student but the ice in her eyes set off warning bells in Sōjirō’s head.

“Look girl, don’t you give me that kind of lip, I’m just visiting my old friend Sakura-san. So, butt out!” Arata sneered. He even went so far as to harshly jab Natsumi in the shoulder; but the moment he did that, things changed. Sōjirō had been about to snap at him, ordering him to leave or something like that, but he never got the chance because Natsumi beat him to it. Natsumi had somehow sprung to his feet and gripped Arata’s hand hard enough to force him back so that she could stand out side of the booth and somehow twisted Arata’s arm around to the point she was behind him with her hand braced against his shoulder.

“I don’t believe I gave you permission to touch me,” Natsumi hissed. All Sōjirō could do was gape in silent shock, he’d never seem Natsumi move or even act like this before and the barista was having a hard time reconciling the normally sweet, quiet, book loving student with this almost fierce and powerful warrior currently bearing down on Arata.

“How dare you, I’ll sue you for assault!” Arata yelled. Sōjirō’s heart leapt with fear at the prospect of Arata ruining Natsumi’s life just because she had stepped up to protect him from Arata’s questioning; the man reached out to try and stop Natsumi when a sudden snort of amusement seemed to escape from the girl.

“Really, because what you did was more in line with assault, what I’ve done is self-defence,” Natsumi calmly stated. Sōjirō blinked his eyes in shock at how relaxed Natsumi seemed to be taking this whole situation. “Also, you’ll have a hard time proving assault with no injuries and no witnesses. I’m holding you tight enough to immobilise but not bruise and I’m betting Boss doesn’t like you so he’s on my side not yours,” Natsumi explained. Sōjirō had heard enough and gently put a hand on her shoulder, causing blazing green eyes to lock on him.

“Kid, let him go,” Sōjirō softly insisted. Natsumi remained silent for a few moments longer before her hand opened, allowing Arata to go stumbling forward since he had been struggling – which only terrified Sōjirō more when he considered the implications that made towards Natsumi’s strength – to escape the grip.

“Damn brat,” Arata hissed. He grabbed the wrist that Natsumi had held and then turned around to glare at her with a sneer that was too familiar to Sōjirō and every impulse in him urged him forward to bring Natsumi back and shelter her behind him, keep her safe; but Natsumi surprised him once again by taking a single step forward and putting herself directly between Arata and Sōjirō

“Leave!” Natsumi ordered. Natsumi was about average height, but right now she seemed to loom over Arata in a manner that seemed very suffocating with her shoulders thrown back, head held high and legs parallel to her shoulders. “You aren’t welcomed here, so leave and don’t come back,” Natsumi snarled. That caused Sōjirō’s eyes to widen as he’d never considered Natsumi to have so much venom in her, Arata seemed to realise it was best to retreat and he did, fleeing out of the door without a backwards glance.

Once Arata left, the oppressive aura that had been emanating from Natsumi seemed to evaporate almost instantly. Her shoulders relaxed and the girl easily walked over to the booth and slipped back into it, acting as if nothing had happened. As if Sōjirō’s entire perception of this girl hadn’t just been upended in a single event, the barista warily approached and looked down at the girl who still looked the same but Sōjirō was completely baffled.

“Please Natsumi-chan, don’t do that again. I don’t want you to get hurt,” Sōjirō pleaded. He needed to say those words, even if it seemed obvious that Natsumi could take care of herself after that display, he didn’t want Arata to have any reason to go after Natsumi; Arata had already ruined one brilliant girl and Sōjirō would never forgive himself if he allowed it to happen again when he could stop it.

“No,” Natsumi refused. She set the spoon down with a loud click and Sōjirō couldn’t stop his jaw from stopping as Natsumi gave him a burning emerald look. “Even though it’s only been twice, I can see that man’s presence is hurting you, I may not know why but I don’t want someone as kind as you to be hurt,” Natsumi insisted. At least that remained the same, the sweetness hadn’t been an illusion and for that Sōjirō was grateful.

“And I don’t want you getting hurt, you got lucky this time, but what if he’s prepared next time!” Sōjirō protested. He didn’t want Arata to do anything to harm Natsumi the way he had done to Futaba, even if it seemed that Natsumi was capable of physically protecting herself from any harm; Sōjirō doubted that Arata would stick to physical attacks after seeing the kind of person he was dealing with.

“So, I should just let him keep hurting you?” Natsumi questioned. Her tone was incredulous, likely annoyed that Sōjirō was asking her not to get involved, really the barista couldn’t understand why her – or Amamiya for that matter – seemed to like involving themselves in other people’s problems, but it also caused some warmth to start bubbling up within his chest at this expression of concern.

“Natsumi-chan… you are really stubborn you know that,” Sōjirō stated. He couldn’t think of anything else to say towards the girl, she was so stubbornly opposed to standing down against Arata and would likely get herself hurt because of this situation; Sōjirō didn’t want her to get hurt but that was quite likely to happen given how obtuse she happened to be acting about this whole issue.

“So are you,” Natsumi responded. Sōjirō really couldn’t argue with her about that, the barista was well aware of how stubborn he could be; Natsumi let out a heavy sigh as she rested her elbows on the table top. “Look Boss, I’m not saying that you should let me punch him, no matter how satisfying it would be to do so. But you also can’t just keep letting him come in here and make your life miserable,” Natsumi insisted.

“What makes you think he’s doing that?” Sōjirō asked. She wasn’t wrong though, Arata certainly was making him miserable by coming into Sōjirō’s life and harassing him as he had been doing which was definitely something he could do without; but how did Natsumi know that he was feeling unhappy with Arata pestering him as he had been.

“I thought that was kind of obvious?” Natsumi stated. She even went as far as to shrug her shoulders in response to this comment. “You clearly don’t like him being here, your voice is icy whenever he turned up, discussing him makes you uncomfortable, he apparently wasn’t meant to know about this place, and he seems to be aware of things in your past that you don’t broadcast to others,” Natsumi pointed out.

“Well… I can’t deny that you’re right. But what are you even going to do, Natsumi-chan?” Sōjirō wondered. Just how crazy observant was this girl, and if she noticed all of that stuff then there was every chance that Amamiya had as well; Sōjirō didn’t particularly want either kid getting wrapped up in his personal business, though for rather different reasons.

“I’m not going to hurt him, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Natsumi answered. Sōjirō didn’t even contain a sigh of relief at knowing that Natsumi wasn’t going to do anything violent towards him. “But I’m not just going to stand on the side-lines and be quiet. I’ll probably just try to annoy or scare him into leaving, if he ever come back after that display,” Natsumi acknowledged.

“I’m not sure whether I should be grateful, or terrified,” Sōjirō admitted. And Sōjirō had to wonder just how little he actually knew about this girl.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I’ve decided that regarding the Confidants, only Councillor, Faith and Judgment – who is not Sae I will say that much – will be from Natsumi’s point of view.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 46: - Hanged Man, Councillor, Emperor

Iwai Munehisa was a cautious man, given his previous lifestyle that was no surprise and even more so with the cops sniffing around his shop like they currently were… just because he was good at making fake guns look real. The kid was useful for being a proxy, ballsy too which caused Iwai to smirk as he remembered some of the snark that came out of Ren when he felt like it, kid looked shy, but he had fire.

Which is why Iwai was concerned if he was making a mistake, he was currently looking at bows and all for the chick that Ren had gone and brought in the other day. Iwai didn’t know if she was his girlfriend, relative or just a friend but it might just get him trouble to help the girl out with her bow issues. Why were they even asking him in the first place? He made guns, not bows, perhaps Iwai could convince her to buy a gun instead.

“Good morning, Iwai-san,” Natsumi’s voice greeted. Iwai jumped to his feet and shifted into a basic defence stance, because how the hell had she got into the store without him hearing the bell? She was stood there, cool as a cucumber, perhaps not even realising how she had spooked him. Nah, Iwai realised, the chick was evaluating his stance, like she knew it. “Impressive moves, you clearly have experience in combat,” Natsumi noted. That caused him to relax as a small sound escaped his lips and he fixed his hat.

“Girl your age shouldn’t be sayin’ that kind of stuff,” Iwai stated. Natsumi shrugged, completely unconcerned by what had just happened, and walked up to the counter and proceeded to set a pile of books on his counter. “Before we start, I’ve got to ask, would you consider just buying a gun?” Iwai asked. The effect was immediate, Natsumi’s expression changed with her eyes warily looking at Iwai’s stock as her lips pulled into a pinched line which turned her face rather sour.

Well, that look made it clear she wasn’t interested and Iwai wasn’t going to force her to do so, he didn’t like the idea of forcing anyone to something they didn’t want now that he was out of that lifestyle of his. Iwai sighed, resigned to the fact that he was going have to figure out how to improve on the girl’s bow if he wanted to help her; and helping her would mean she’d be less likely to run to the police and get him in trouble.

“Alright, let’s get to work then,” Iwai decided. Natsumi’s expression proceeded to relax immediately as a calm descended upon her, girl swung between being an open book and a steel vault to her expressions; it was a little spooky, but kind of fun in Iwai’s mind as he tried to read her. “So, what’s the problem with your bow?” Iwai asked. The bow had looked fine when she brought it in the other day, so it not being good enough was confusing to him.

“I’m not too sure, but during our social activities, it didn’t pierce as deeply as it did before. I’ve checked the arrow and that’s not a problem and my arm strength is the same, so it has to be the bow,” Natsumi answered. Hmm, that was an interesting choice of words, social activities without actually explaining it; could be that they did so many different things that it was just an easy umbrella term or what they did was extremely shady.

“Hmm, the draw strength of the bow might be the problem, then,” Iwai mused. Whatever these kids did, he didn’t have the right to tell them to stop and besides poking his nose where it didn’t belong could make the two retaliate, both Ren and Natsumi seemed like the cold anger type of people and they were the scary ones. “Look, I have some… friends. One’s a bit of weapons nuts, I can call her and ask if she’d look at your bow. Her suggestions would be the best for us to get started,” Iwai suggested. That would be an awkward conversation to have.

“Alright, if you trust her. Just tell me where and when she can meet us and I’ll bring the bow,” Natsumi decided. She pushed the books towards him and Iwai noted that they each had titles on them that proved they were all connected to archery in some manner, that would hopefully be useful in learning how to improve the bow once Iwai’s friend got her hands on it.

“I really don’t get you girl, I could be luring you into a trap and you’re just gonna come, easy as that,” Iwai pointed out. As he had been ruinating on what to do, Natsumi had made her way to the door and her hand was prepared to open it, but his words caused the girl to still as she cast her green eyes back at the man who steadily held her gaze as he waited for a response.

“You don’t come off as that sort of depraved man, I trust my judgment and I trust Ren’s sense for people. You’re not a bad person Iwai-san,” Natsumi stated. That caused Iwai to go still as he tried to process what had just been said as Natsumi opened the door. “Besides that, I can protect myself pretty well,” Natsumi reassured. With those parting words, she disappeared out the door which swung close behind her.

Iwai proceeded to slump back in his seat as he tried to process the words that the girl had just spoken. Not a bad person, hah! If only the girl knew the kind of stuff he had been mixed up in several years ago, there’s no way she’d be saying such words and especially to his face. But, despite the absurdity of her words, Iwai couldn’t help the smallest of smiles that graced his face as he reached for his phone a dialled an old number.

“Hey Kichō,” Iwai greeted. Immediately, angry snarling words that could make even a pirate blush started to stream out of the voice on the other end, but that was par for the course. “Ah, save your cursing, I’ve got a favour to ask of you and you might like it,” Iwai tempted. The cursing stopped but the unintelligible grumbling didn’t, Iwai rolled his eyes at the woman’s grumpy attitude; somethings don’t ever change. “How would you like to enhance a traditional nisun-nobi?” Iwai asked. He immediately chuckled when he heard the woman cursing under her breath because he knew he had her hooked on the offer.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I decided that today would probably be a good idea for me to talk to Maruki-sensei today, after everything that had happened with Madarame’s Palace it might be best for me to talk about what had happened to me. I’d have to be very vague to avoid accidentally outing us, but it might be a good choice to get the incident off of my chest. Leaving the classroom, I easily made the walk to the nurse’s office and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Maruki-sensei’s voice called. I pushed the door open and I proceeded to step inside, the brown haired therapist gave me a gentle smile “Ah, Chiba-san, what can I do for you?” Maruki-sensei asked. It was so strange how he could make you feel so relaxed, but I suppose that a counsellor would need such an energy around them.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you about something?” I asked. Maruki-sensei motioned for me to sit down so I joined him, hopefully that strange fuzzy feeling wouldn’t show up again to interrupt the session. That had been such a strange sensation to be suddenly assault by, but nothing had come afterwards, it could have honestly been the drain from the Palace but it was so unusual.

“What is it you wanted to talk about?” Maruki-sensei gently probed. I looked at my fingers and twisted them in nonsense patterns as I tried to organise my thoughts much like when Morgana had sprung his Atalanta question on me, and just like the human turned cat, Maruki-sensei was kind enough to let me arrange my words how they needed to be arranged.

“I ran into someone whose situation mirrored mine in an uncomfortable way,” I started off. I’d need to be careful in how to word my sentences in order to avoid Maruki-sensei getting any suspicions about me or my friends being members of the Phantoms; he might give off the aura of a bit of a moppet, but he was also insightful and I didn’t want to get the wrong kind of attention drawn to us.

“Someone who lost their parents and was raised by a… actually I don’t think you ever told me who took you in, but they aren’t a pleasant person,” Maruki-sensei clarified. Heck, I really hadn’t told him that it was my uncle who’d adopted me, also of course he wouldn’t understand that I wasn’t referring to my adoption; looks like I’ll have to come clean about that to Maruki-sensei in order to get the proper advice.

“Um, only slightly but there was a bit more similarity than that… I haven’t actually told you about that. Also, it was my maternal uncle who took me in,” I clarified. Maruki-sensei nodded, although I noticed that a spark of anger appeared within his eyes as if he was struggling with the information I had given him; no surprise there since most people wouldn’t expect family to do something so cruel.

“Then I think you should tell me about that, before this other issue, I can’t help you otherwise,” Maruki-sensei insisted. I knew this is what I’d have to do but it still felt like a lead stone sinking in my stomach at the fact that Maruki-sensei had insisted I tell him about Ouvrard; I took in a deep breath in order to prepare myself for what had to be done.

“Oh-okay… I… I’ll try… but it’s difficult… for me to speak about,” I admitted. Forcing the words out passed the block in my throat, it had seemed to swell up the moment I started trying to get the words out and my tongue almost felt like it had dried out. A warmth spread across my hand when Maruki-sensei reached over and clasped his hand around the appendage.

“Just take your time Chiba-san, remember what I said the first time you came in,” Maruki-sensei gently reassured. I nodded my head, knowing that he was essentially telling me that I could run out of this room at any second and there would be no judgment coming from him which was quite comforting in all honesty and I think that is what gave me the courage to finally work passed the blockage and dryness.

“After I was taken in by my uncle, my life became very empty. There wasn’t much I could do, in my uncle’s house as he had forced me to either give up or very cleverly hide all things tied to my family. Anything he found, he destroyed. The one thing I… found real… comfort in… was… my… singing,” I explained. The words were still difficult to get out but at least I managed to get them out.

Maruki-sensei had surprisingly remained silent, I could feel his eyes gently resting on me. His silence wasn’t painful or uncomfortable, it actually made me think of a blanket that my mother used to swaddle me in when I was cold; something incredibly warm and encompassing, causing the tension that was building in my shoulders to slowly ebb away and they slowly started to move down from the bunched position near my ears.

“One day, my uncle heard me and he decided to bring in a former opera singer in order to train me. But her training was… brutal,” I continued on. The memories of what Ouvrard had made me undergo, how I started to retreat into myself more than before; after losing my family it had been a reaction to my uncle’s words and probably a defence mechanism, but the training just made me cut myself off from everything and everyone in the world.

“How was it brutal?” Maruki-sensei tentatively asked. He sounded almost scared, as if he didn’t want to image what I had been put through by someone else, all at the willing hands of my family member; perhaps I shouldn’t have smiled ever so slightly but his natural concern was rather endearing and it helped to ease the memories that were taunting me.

“She… ran my voice… ragged. It w-would h-hurt during… her training a-and s-she just w-wouldn’t… let me r-rest. B-But… that w-wasn’t… the w-worst p-part… of i-it… a-all,” I began to speak. The words just wouldn’t come out easily, it was a chore or more accurately a battle to drag the words out of my throat and I could feel my breath getting much heavier as I forced each word to come out.

“You don’t have to force yourself to speak, Chiba-san,” Maruki-sensei gently soothed. But I shook my head, I was holding onto what happened and it wasn’t healthy; Shiho, Ann and Ryūji were working towards getting better by overcoming their own pain but how could I keep encouraging them to heal if I never did, I was essentially being a hypocrite by encouraging what they were doing yet not doing it myself.

“No… I need to do this,” I insisted. Maruki-sensei nodded, in an almost grim manner but he neither said nor did anything to stop me, merely kept his hand gently pressed to my own. “I can’t sing anymore. It’s not a matter of capability in a physical manner, but an emotional manner, I… I l-lost any… interest in singing d-due to what she d-did to me,” I finally forced out. It was almost like a heavy weight was off my chest and I slumped back into my chair, all energy feeling like it had been drained from my body, I actually find of felt exhausted yet relieved at the same time.

“That must have been hard for you,” Maruki-sensei stated. He finally pulled his hand back, perhaps realising I didn’t need the comfort anymore, but it had been nice almost like Hikaru-nii’s touch, soft yet strong in its’ comforting energy “Is there any chance you could sing again?” Maruki-sensei wondered. A scoff escaped my lips at that question.

“I highly doubt it, that was so viciously soured it would be a miracle for me to feel like ever singing again,” I admitted. A scowl dragged my lips down and I folded my arms across my chest as I tried not to let all the kindness Maruki-sensei gave off be washed away by the bitterness that was escaping from me at such a question.

“But if you could, would you sing again?” Maruki-sensei asked. I perked up at his question, completely surprised by the words, I looked at the man and found nothing but his compassion and empathy staring at me; none of the others who knew what I went through had asked me such a question, maybe they didn’t want to push me into talking about it, but the question was rather intriguing to ponder.

“If I could, without remembering what happened,” I wondered. Maruki-sensei grinned broadly, practically lit like a sunbeam, as he nodded his head almost eagerly “In a heartbeat,” I honestly answered.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Yusuke was relieved that he had didn’t have to pay for the train ride to Yongen, he was quite terrible about manging such a material insignificance that it often ended up disappearing before he realised it. Fortunately, his school benefits still encompassed the Yongen area for train travel which made his ability to get away for the evening much better.

Yusuke had quite enjoyed today, being able to head with Ren into Mementos and finding a magnificent use for his painting skills in order to copy those odd Skill Cards Ren had. Mementos was such an awe-inspiring, if slightly horrifying, place to walk and he could feel his mind swirling with ideas. But today, Yusuke must put aside the paint brush and take up the new tool that he had gained, a short knock on the door of the building summoned his teacher.

“Yusuke? What are you doing here?” Natsumi asked. The girl’s wide green eyes blinked in confusion at his presence, which is no surprise as Yusuke hadn’t exactly sent anything ahead to warn Natsumi that he would be dropping by; it had honestly been a spur of the moment decision instigated by the man he had once admired to the point of foolish zealotry.

“I was hoping to get some training done, I would like to take my mind off Madarame’s current predicament,” Yusuke admitted. Natsumi’s eyes softened and Yusuke was struck by the urge to capture her gaze in painting; it was the sort of gaze that evoked a gentle warmth within Yusuke’s heart, perhaps because it was born of understanding more than such an almost empty thing as pity.

“Sure, come on in,” Natsumi agreed. The weapons master – a fine nickname for the girl in truth – proceeded to step back and allow Yusuke to follow after her, they moved towards the dojo and it was unlocked. “Do you want to practice with me in sparring for go through a kata on your own?” Natsumi wondered. Yusuke shifted his stance as he contemplated which route to take.

“Perhaps both, I’ve found some videos of different sword styles and I’d like to hear your thoughts on how to best utilise them, a spar would greatly help with that and after I can put your recommendations into practice with a solo kata,” Yusuke suggested. A grin appeared on Natsumi’s lips, apparently pleased with such a suggestion.

“Sounds perfect, get your weapon,” Natsumi agreed. Yusuke eagerly darted in, surprised at how much he had come to look forward to this; but there was such beauty within Natsumi’s movements when she had torn into him that day, a deadly grace that Yusuke had the deepest urge to recreate in his own style… Natsumi might not believe herself to be a master but in Yusuke’s heart she certainly was one.

After Yusuke retrieved his weapon, they proceeded to set themselves into their stances. Yusuke took the time to analyse Natsumi’s stance as he gripped the pommel of his blade. Within his mind’s eye, the videos he had watched flittered across as he pulled forth his sword. Natsumi remained steady, rooted, as if she was an ancient tree and unwilling to bend to the young sapling challenging her.

Yusuke quickly pushed off with the balls of feet, darting across the flooring as swift as he could. Even though he advantaged on her at a decent speed, Natsumi remained stationary except to move her weight onto the balls of her feet. The moment Yusuke got close, he attacked, swiping the blade from the sheath to attempt a cut.

But Natsumi was much quicker. Yusuke could only watch as with a surge of strength through her legs, Natsumi leapt out of the way of the attack. Once her feet hit the ground, she thrust out with her weapon towards Yusuke. The artist barely twisted himself to the side to avoid the blow. Yusuke lifted the sword and attempted to slash down onto the weapon. But a force hit his foot, sending him off balance. Yusuke scrambled to stay upright and lost his aim for the weapon.

Natsumi used the distraction to pull her weapon back. Thankfully Yusuke had recovered his foot before she could strike. Acting quickly, Yusuke pulled the sheath free and blocked Natsumi’s strike. Twisting his katana around, Yusuke struck out, attempting to land a blow on Natsumi. However, the girl twisted to the side to dodge the blow.

The change of her position brought the girl’s face to a different angle and in that moment, Yusuke noticed something that had him staring. The centre of her irises were different colours, one was an almost golden yellow almost like sunlight while the other one was a much lighter blue, like the clear summer sky. Yusuke was so entranced by the different colours, that he wasn’t entirely sure how he ended up disarmed and on his back. Natsumi stood over him and proceeded to reach a hand down, which Yusuke grabbed to haul himself upright.

“Impressive,” Natsumi complimented. Yusuke couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged at his lips at the words that slipped passed the woman’s lips. “However, you ended up getting distracted right at the end. Now, I don’t know why but, focus on the battle. All its’ components, your capabilities, the enemies’ weakness, your allies’ capabilities, their health, your health, everyone’s movements and many more that you can only learn by experience. The artist must be put aside so that the warrior may flourish, the battle is a moment, and in that moment, you must exist,” Natsumi lectured.

“I should probably try to practice that,” Yusuke admitted. It would be difficult for him to block out the artist compulsions whenever he spotted something incredible enough for him to want to capture it within canvas and paint, but if his compulsions endangered the others then better that he learn here, where it was safe, than out in combat which could result in serious injury to himself or the rest.

They broke apart and Yusuke assumed his stance. The false katana hovering right between his eyes as he stared straight ahead. He began to move, swiftly cut up and down, then side to side, recalling the image of what the swordsman had done in that video. Yusuke turned the intense focus from when he was painting to his practice. The world fell away as he envisaged the movements of his sword slicing through enemies and carefully stepping forward or backwards and even a few shuffles side to side.

Eventually Yusuke stopped, allowing the world to come rushing back, and with it an image of perfection. All the while he had been practicing his kata, Natsumi had been performing her own set of movements. Her movements were of such fluid grace that it was like the girl was part water creature, yet each strike was filled with such strength that Yusuke was certain she could pierce a samurai’s armour. He could not resist the urge to raise his fingers and frame the scene. An Onna-musha, peacefully training in her sanctuary before the next battle to come. Yet looking at her, a thought sprang to mind that Yusuke did not stop.

“Natsumi, may I ask you something,” Yusuke asked. The girl did not even break her focus as she moved through her motions, her only response was a curt nod of her head as she swiped her naginata horizontally around her as she twisted. “You were taught singing by Ouvrard, weren’t you?” Yusuke asked. That certainly got a reaction out of the girl.

Her naginata slashed down in an almost violent manner, extremely at odds with her previous poise and grace, her entire body went rigid and her eyes were wide as they drilled into the floor with great intensity. Yusuke did not forget how she had almost violently lashed out at Madarame’s Shadow after learning of his mother’s fate – a fact he respected Natsumi for immensely – and this position gave off the same energy.

“Yes, I was,” Natsumi admitted. She pulled back, only slightly more relaxed but not by much, the tension still rolled off of her in waves as she flicked her naginata around to rest it on the ground as Natsumi raised her green eyes to pierce into Yusuke. “I just don’t like talking about it, even now. It’s nothing against you Yusuke, it was an entirely personal reason that I’m just starting to learn to get over. Why do you ask?” Natsumi added on.

“When you spoke to me, after that time I… threatened all of you,” Yusuke began. A feeling of shame welling up within him as he spoke, dismayed with how he had acted towards people only trying to help him, not out of misguided self-righteousness or a presumption of better-ness but from genuine empathy. “You happened to touch your throat as you mentioned your own experience with such a mentor and you spoke in depth about Ouvrard’s distortion. It wasn’t hard to make the connections,” Yusuke admitted. He could still vividly recall the way Natsumi’s hand had moved and tighten around her neck in an almost violent manner.

“Of course, you’re an artist and it’s become apparent that I’m still hung up on my voice,” Natsumi mused. She seemed contemplative as she twirled her weapon around in her hand, Yusuke watched the girl in silence for a few moments as he tried to figure out what to say next, it was quite the conundrum for the young painter; especially with the things he wanted to say to the girl about what he had deduced.

“It may not be my place to say such things, but I can’t keep this quiet,” Yusuke decided. This stopped Natsumi from twirling the weapon as she gripped it and inclined her head to look at Yusuke. “I think it is a shame that you are turning your back upon something you once loved and must have some skill at to have become the focus of a woman skilled in singing herself,” Yusuke stated. Natsumi’s eyes widened in surprise at his words and this embolden Yusuke to push on to what he truly wanted to say. “I think you should try to continue pursuing your singing,” Yusuke admitted.

“You’re right, it isn’t your place,” Natsumi stated. Her voice was very cold, enough that Yusuke actually felt terrified, before Natsumi’s body slumped and she slipped to the floor in an almost dejected heap, Yusuke moved over to sit beside her though in a more graceful manner. “But I appreciate your candour. Someone else has actually spoken to me about my voice, something she seems to have an understanding with,” Natsumi added on. Her normal warmth having rushed back which relieved Yusuke; to know he hadn’t really angered her with his opinion.

“Perhaps she might be able to help you. I think it would be a shame if you continued to deprive yourself of the joy of singing,” Yusuke admitted. This caused Natsumi to look at him with a raised eyebrow as she adjusted herself into a proper seating position, much more befitting of a woman of her skills and appearance.

“You haven’t even heard me sing, how do you know I’m any good at it,” Natsumi questioned. Ah, such a simple question with quite a simple answer in truth; Yusuke knew talent when he saw it, plenty of the other students had none but their hard work more than made up for their lack of innate ability, others who barely put in the effort thanks to their talent, then those like himself in possess of talent and skill. Yusuke might not know her skill, but if there was one thing Yusuke knew for certain, it was that Natsumi had talent.

“Because no one would be so hurt over something they weren’t capable of doing better than anyone else,” Yusuke answered.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 47: - Fool and Strength

Ren walked down the pathway towards Shūjin, Natsumi at his side as had become quite commonplace since they ran into each other that day in April, it was such a comfort to walk at her side perhaps because in a way she reminded him – very, very minutely due to the colossal differences he couldn’t ignore – of his big sister. Actually, almost all of his current friends made him feel like he was back at home for some reason despite their wildly different personalities to those he knew.

“Oh yeah, the cleanup event is the day after tomorrow. My class has to go in the opposite direction of Inokashira Park,” A female voice complained. Though even that sounded kind of forced, like she didn’t even care about the clean-up, Ren frowned at the thought of the park, it was nothing like Yoyogi Park and he’d noticed it when he met up with Ann the other day, it was kind of awful that people were so callous with their litter.

“I’m kind of looking forward to it. That honour student is actually in my group!” The boy beside her revealed. Honour student… was he talking about Niijima-senpai or the red headed girl he kept running into, given that he sounded younger than Ren or Ryūji it was probably the later individual. Either way, he seemed unusually excited about having the girl on his group.

“Huh? What, is she like, you type or something?” The girl asked. Ren couldn’t tell if she was annoyed by this piece of information or not from how her voice sounded, why were city people so lethargic? You’d think with all the hustle and bustle going on, they’d be more energetic. “Either way, too bad. I heard honour students are exempt from the cleaning. Totally unfair, am I right?” The girl explained. Ren had to agree that it did seem rather unfair for some people to be exempt from the clean up just because of their status.

“Wha… so, am I alone on a team of upperclassmen then? This sucks. I wanna just ditch now…,” The boy whined. Ren rolled his eyes at this pathetic admission as a huff of annoyance escaped the girl beside him, Ren shot her a small smile which Natsumi returned with one of her own as they entered the building.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The rest of the day passed without incident and Ren was glad about that, although he was really concerned that Kawakami-sensei was going to faint at some point given how tired she looked, as he was packing his cat to avoid detection, a vibration came on his phone. He slipped it out and looked at it to see who had messaged him.

Natsumi: Hey, do you want to meet up today at Yoyogi Park?

Ren: Of course.

Ren: See you there.

“Morgana, I’ll be hanging out with Natsumi today,” Ren revealed. Morgana had a tendency to slip away whenever Ren hung out with his friends or other associates; Ren did not question where he went and Morgana always seemed fine whenever he came back, although the fact that he almost got kidnapped recently worried Ren more especially since they hadn’t found any information about the woman who tried.

“Alright, take care of her Ren,” Morgana insisted. Ren nodded his head, Natsumi had seemed so strong and unshakeable after she opened up about Ouvrard, seemed to be getting better but then that infinite spring statue seemed to trigger some kind of PTSD attack, Maruki-sensei had described it to him when Ren explained how police officers terrified him, so Ren was deeply worried about his friend’s health.

Ren picked up his bag and proceeded to leave the building to head for the beautiful park where he’d first really got to know Natsumi, it really felt like that place was where she dropped all of her walls and pretences in order to properly opened up to him. Ren could only hope that he’d be able to further break Natsumi out of the shell that she had gone and wrapped around herself for three years.

‘Heh. Shells, as if Natsumi’s the only one hiding themselves away.’ Ren ruefully thought. He wasn’t always so shy and reclusive, though he also wasn’t an outgoing person by any standard, but ever since that horrible night it wouldn’t be hard to say he pretty much shut down in response to how he had been treated. It was only when Natsumi had appeared in the dungeon with Arsène’s words ringing in his mind that he felt the shell crack just a little, then his friends proved very good at prying that shell apart.

“AMAMIYA REN!” A loud voice yelled. Ren jumped and twisted around to face the person, dropping into a fighting stance that he had developed from his training even though he was lacking his dagger, although he relaxed slightly when he saw Natsumi standing there with a raised eyebrow. “Well at least I’m glad to see you dropped into a stance but the way you were so distracted was more than a little concerning,” Natsumi commented.

“Sorry, Natsumi, just lost in thought,” Ren admitted. Then again, the girl was so light on her feet that it was a miracle if any of them actually managed to detect the girl as she approached them; Natsumi proceeded to sit down on the bench that he had stopped nearby and Ren proceeded to join her, taking note of how Natsumi was fiddling with a lock of hair as if she was nervous about something.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re here, but what did you want to do. I know I suggested we meet up, but I can’t quite decide where to go from here,” Natsumi admitted. Ah, so she was concerned about what they should be doing, honestly Ren was a little concerned about what to do given the promise he had made to her back in April.

“I said that I’d help you find your heart. I think the best way to do that is to walk back through as much as your life as possible,” Ren suggested. It seemed the best way to start, Natsumi had started to feel numb after her family’s death so the best place to start might be at the place where the accident she had mentioned happened. “You mentioned you were getting picked up from a school club, let’s start there,” Ren suggested.

“Better plan than nothing. I can still remember the way,” Natsumi agreed. She stood up and Ren proceeded to follow after her as they moved towards the train station, a quick ride brought them into the school’s location; Natsumi stopped across the road and took a deep quivering breath before walking towards the building and in through the front door.

“Excuse me,” Natsumi called out. There was a woman with greying hair stood near the entrance, when Natsumi called out she turned around and Ren spotted her brown eyes widen in shock. “Sensei?” Natsumi asked. Ren looked at the girl with widened eyes as he hadn’t expected us to run into a teacher that Natsumi happened to know from her time here.

“Chiba Natsumi, this is a surprise, why have you decided to visit us with such a charming young man?” The teacher asked. She seemed nice, despite the phrasing of her question sounding a little odd, the kind gleam in her eyes and the gentle up turn of her lips showing that she wasn’t annoyed by the girl’s sudden appearance after a few years.

“Taking a bit of a trip down memory lane, I was wondering if we could have access to the Koto clubroom,” Natsumi explained. Ren was curious as to why Natsumi had wanted to head specifically to a clubroom off all things, he had his suspicions given things she had mentioned but he wasn’t going to pester her for information, the best way would be to gently ask when they were somewhere private.

“You’re in luck, their practice had to be cancelled today, I’ll take you two there,” The woman stated. She had them sign in and then provided two visitors badges to both of them, Natsumi followed after the woman and Ren trailed after her as they wound through the corridors which seemed much warmer than their own school, it actually reminded Ren of his previous schools back in the countryside which made him feel more relaxed.

Eventually they reached the practice building area and came to a stop in front of a door, the teacher opened it and gestured for the two of them to enter, they slipped inside and Ren immediately started to look around. The room was fairly large with a sizeable collection of other kinds of instruments hanging on the walls – making Ren immediately think of the dojo – while the kotos were set out in a semicircle with each of them having a different number of strings. Chairs were stacked at the edges of the room where no instruments were hung.

“How are you finding Tokyo?” Natsumi asked. He stopped gazing about to focus upon Natsumi and he saw she was delicately running her fingers over the edge of one of the koto, despite her words Ren almost got the sense that she was half-listening to what he might be saying. But Ren didn’t mind, the slightly edge of her face that he could see was relaxed with her eyes close, as if lost within memories, maybe not happy but certainly not painful.

“Loud, cramped, too many buildings, too little green, and people are way too detached. You’d think living in a city that doesn’t seem to stop would give them more energy, not less,” Ren commented. His words seemed to jolt Natsumi out of her memories as she threw her head back and laughed heartily which caused Ren to grin broadly. “It’s not all bad, I suppose. There’s certainly more to do and see than in my hometown, but I miss the peace and serenity of the countryside,” Ren admitted.

“I’ll bet. I’ve only ever lived in Tokyo so I can’t imagine what it’s like to live anywhere without the hustle and bustle. But it’d certainly be interesting to visit such a place, I can imagine it be quite relaxing to go to a place that’s a lot less manic, especially in light of recent events,” Natsumi admitted. She pulled her hand away and turned to full face Ren, Ren was actually quite happy to hear her words; maybe once he could go home, he’d be able to show it off to his friends.

“It is very relaxing. When I woke up, I could hear the birds chirping in the sunlight. The air is so much cleaner, lighter almost without some funny tang to each breath. There’s this river that runs through our town where me and my family would take picnics every so often,” Ren explained. He noticed that Natsumi’s gaze seemed to sharpen in that instant and her eyes bore into him with a curious intensity.

“You know, I’ve heard about your situation, but I don’t think you’ve ever spoken about your family, I’d like to hear about them. If you’re okay with that?” Natsumi suggested. Ren frowned and looked down at the flooring as his hands tightened into fist, part of his ‘sentence’ was that he was forbidden contact any of them, not his parents back home or his sister wherever she might be at the moment, he couldn’t talk to anyone from his hometown because they might be ‘a bad influence’.

Despite how dark Ren’s thoughts had become, he could still hear his mum’s soothing lilt as she held tight to him, his dad’s near crushing embrace as if he didn’t want to let go of his youngest. Luckily for him, his sister hadn’t been there when he was taken away; it actually terrified him to think what could have happened had she been present that day, no matter how much he wanted to hear her reassurances. Hiding away his pain, he looked up at Natsumi who was patiently gazing at him in silence.

“My dad’s name is Kazuma and he’s a doctor; he works in the town’s hospital. He always gets to know his patients personally, it’s not that he doesn’t trust the nurses, he has immense respect for them, but he always thought a doctor should know who he was treating, remind themselves of whose life was in their care. My mum’s name is Akane and she’s a florist, there’s nothing more she loves than making the perfect bouquet for someone, especially on Valentines, White Day and don’t get her started on weddings,” Ren recounted. Natsumi’s lips twitched into a smile at his words. “Then there’s my sister, Izumi, she’s older than me by five years and while to everyone else she was the closed off punk rock dressed girl who glared at everyone and detested being in public, to me she was the kindest, boldest… most wonderful sister in the world,” Ren added on.

“Wow sounds like a great family,” Natsumi admitted. Ren knew he had a lot more family to speak of; none of them blood related but all of them were the best friends of his sister and had been around a lot when he was younger, there was also Izumi’s boyfriend who Ren perceived as a big brother and his own dear friend despite their significant age gap. But for now, he’d not over burden Natsumi with information and besides there was something else he wanted to try and ask.

“You said you forgot your family’s faces but is there anything about them you do remember,” Ren wondered. He knew her father had some samurai heritage and her sister liked photography, but those were kind of empty without more to know about them, especially since he knew nothing about the mother or brother – hell, Ren didn’t even know their names – and this might be a way to help Natsumi remember them. But given the way Natsumi turned around, Ren was worried that he had over stepped.

“I… I don’t think I’m ready for that Ren,” Natsumi admitted. Her throat was a little tight, as her hand that was resting on a koto twitched as if wanting to curl up, Ren frowned slightly at her words but figured it was best not to shove her; gentleness would be required, like the way his mum would carefully select each flower. Ren walked over to Natsumi and gently rested a hand on her shoulder which drew her gaze to him as he gave her a gentle smile.

“One day, one day you’ll be ready and I’ll be here for you Natsumi. I promise,” Ren reassured. Natsumi gave him a smile that seemed a bit weak and it wasn’t helped by the water that seemed to be growing within her eyes, immediately Ren’s mind jumped for a way to distract her from her sadness before his gaze landed on the koto. “You must have wanted to come here for a reason, how come?” Ren asked. It had been something he meant to ask, but they had been a little distracted.

“I was a member of the club before quitting after my family’s death, it’s why they were picking me up. I guess… this was the best place that came to mind when I wanted to start looking back,” Natsumi admitted. That seemed reasonable, it was also interesting that she didn’t seem to feel any negativity when she was here, but Ren would take what victories he could at this point. An idea sparked into his mind when he recalled how she had reacted to the koto’s touch.

“Can you play something?” Ren wondered. Without responding, Natsumi quickly moved over and with a practice born of memory, she located the finger picks needed for the koto and moved over to the twenty string instrument that was set up; she moved through checks on the string instrument to ensure it was in perfect working order.

She finished her checks, seemingly satisfied and took up her position and immediately angled her hands. She then started to pluck at the strings, first in a simple manner that seemed to be like she was testing each sound that was emitted by each string before nodding her head pleased with the sounds. Natsumi then started to pluck at the strings, allowing soft and beautiful music to ringing out through the empty room; but Ren was less focused on the music and more concerned with Natsumi’s expression.

It had started out as being incredibly focused, with a noticeable tension in her shoulders despite the seemingly loose movements of her arms at wrists, but as the music continue to echo through, the stiffness in her shoulder started to loosen and drop away as her expression relaxed and her eyes drifted close on occasion before opening up again. It almost seemed like she was getting lost in the music as she started to sway slightly and her mouth opened; if any sound came out, Ren couldn’t hear it, but her lips were moving as her fingers continued to pluck and press the strings of the instrument. Ren was too enchanted watching Natsumi’s walls come down once again and could only stare in silent shock at how free Natsumi looked until she eventually finished her performance.

“I’m amazed I can even remember how to play it,” Natsumi remarked. But there was a happy smile on her face, one that seemed to make her green eyes shine with a brilliant light. “Good grief, would you look at how late it is,” Natsumi suddenly commented. Ren furrowed his eyebrows in confusion before looking over and seeing that it was quite late, they quickly gathered their stuff and found the same teacher from before outside, she led them out and they returned the passes before departing back to the train station.

Once back in Yongen-Jaya, the two continued walking with small snippets of conversation darting between the both of them before splitting off from each other. Ren kept moving until reaching LeBlanc while wondering if he should head to Untouchable to help out Iwai-san, but upon reaching the door, Ren’s phone rang which jolted him out of his thoughts. Ren pulled it out and saw it was Natsumi so he quickly answered it.

“Hey, I just wanted to say thank you. Not just for walking back through my old school but also for talking to me about your family,” Natsumi admitted. She sounded alright which caused a small smile to appear on Ren’s face at how well she sounded; Ren had been worried that going back to the site of the accident or such a place connected to it might have caused her to unravel, but it seemed Natsumi wasn’t as temporarily fragile as they’d all feared.

“It’s fine Natsumi. Honestly, I liked being able to tell someone about my family. I hope I can tell you more about home someday,” Ren admitted. His hometown was such a lovely place, it still hurt his heart to think that he’d been drag away from it by some uncaring coward; it was just annoying that his memories of that night were so foggy now, it was hard to recall anything about the coward’s face, although his voice was loud and clear in his mind.

“You said you’d be there for me. The reverse is also true. We all need to lean on each other if we want to get through challenges as a team,” Natsumi stated. Ren blinked his eyes in surprise, true he was helping out all of the others in their team and some others with their issues; but none of them who he was close to had ever told him this, he felt like he would be unnecessarily burdening them if he ever opened up about himself but here Natsumi was encouraging him to do so.

“Well, you aren’t wrong, but like you it might take me a while to-,” Ren began to admit. However, a sudden shocked gasp escaped Natsumi which immediately put Ren on alert. “Natsumi! What’s wrong?!” Ren panicked. If she was in danger then it wouldn’t be too hard for him to run to her location in order to keep his friend safe from harm, whatever that harm may be; he never wanted any of them to be hurt as they had already been.

“I’m sorry, but there’s something I’ve got to do,” Natsumi rushed out. But her voice sounded completely distracted as she rambled out those words, as soon as she was done Natsumi hung up on him before he could formulate a response. In fact, he was so shocked that he barely registered Morgana jumping onto his head and then using his shoulders as a resting area.

‘What just happened?’ Ren thought. He’d never heard Natsumi so shaken in a good way and it was quite baffling to overhear.

*Persona 5 Royal*

My legs pumped hard as I ran after the blonde hair and blue dress that had drawn my attention, it was probably rude to bolt out on Ren after that, but I’d call him later and apologise; I couldn’t resist chasing after that colour combination, it was the best lead I had to the Velvet Room since it disappeared so suddenly and I couldn’t just push it away if I had a chance to get some answers.

The woman up ahead was moving quite swiftly and turning around corners almost impossibly fast, if I hadn’t been determined to avoid being stared at, I’d have given into the urge to use higher areas in order to follow after her better. Thankfully when she turned around a corner, I knew this to be a dead end and increased my stride to a sprint and turned the corner. She had stopped moving so I reached out to grab a hold of her arm.

“Eliza- oh,” I began to call. But when the woman turned around, I was proven quite wrong in who I had suspected it to be, despite the platinum blonde hair and gold eyes matching both Lavenza and Elizabeth, she was significantly different; she was a much more elegant appearing lady, reminding me of Haru-senpai, her dark blue dress was quite different as well, gold metal circles ran down  in parallel lines with a belt cinched around her waist and long sleeves with what looked to be buckles on the wrist area, she wore matching high heel shoes with black tights, she also carried a blue and gold book titled Le Grimoire. “Sorry, I thought you were-,” I began to apologise.

“My younger sister Elizabeth,” The woman cut me off. I almost felt like sighing in relief that it was still a resident of the Velvet Room who I had chased after instead of some poor random woman. “My name is Margaret, I take it you must be the newest Betwixt, Natsumi,” The woman introduced. That meant someone must have talked to her about me, so maybe she could help me with the Velvet Room issue.

“Can we please talk, there’s something I’d like to discuss,” I requested. If she was a Velvet Room attendant and knew who I was, then she might be aware of the current weirdness that was a missing Velvet Room; without being able to show the others that ethereal place – despite the weird dream from a while back – there was no way that I could ask them for their aid, Ren was still cultivating his Personas so he had to be able to access it, but I had run through various ways to start that conversation and all of them were uncomfortable weird.

“I’ll assume it concerns the mysterious disappearance of our sister and master,” Margaret stated. I nodded my head, supremely relieved that it wasn’t just me to had misplaced a world between mind and matter, which must have shown on my face. “Yes, me and Elizabeth, along with our brother Theodore are aware of this,” Margaret explained. Her expression was so grim that I thought someone had died, which was something I wanted to avoid quite desperately,

“Yes, can we please about that?” I requested. Margaret waved her hand and I followed after her once the woman moved around me, we left the dead end and I had to wonder if Margaret had intentionally lead me to such a remote area of Yongen before allowing me to catch up to her; however our meeting had occurred wasn’t as important as getting some answers about where Igor and Lavenza could have disappeared to.

Margaret guided me through the area until we came to a rather deserted location, had this woman not been a member of the Velvet Room I wouldn’t have even considered entering this place. But given that she was someone Igor trusted, that allowed me to enter the area with minimal trepidation as we approached two figures; one of whom I quickly recognised as being Elizabeth.

“You’ve already met Elizabeth, this is our younger brother Theodore,” Margaret introduced. Theodore had hair that was much closer to white than the blonde in his sisters’ hair but at least he had the same yellow eyes. He wore a black collared and long sleeved shirt under a blue suit which was complemented with a blue necktie, he also wore black pants with blue lines running through the sides, black shoes, and a hat similar to the one that Elizabeth wore. “Theodore, this is Natsumi, the newest Betwixt,” Margaret introduced.

“A pleasure to meet you miss,” Theodore enthusiastically greeted. He came over and extended a hand to me, I took it and shook the offered appendage, Elizabeth moved over and smiled brilliantly at me, she didn’t appear to be harmed in any way and that removed a sizeable weight from my chest since I had been worried that the sudden disappearance might have badly affected her.

“I am delighted to see you again Natsumi,” Elizabeth spoke up. She even sounded the same, that kind of airy lightness that made me wonder if her head was permanently stuck in clouds if it weren’t for the undercurrent of sharpness that I could just barely detect; I pulled my hand back from Theodore and proceeded to give Elizabeth a smile.

“Pleased to meet you too Theodore and I’m glad to see you’re okay Elizabeth,” I greeted. Margaret moved over to stand between her younger siblings which meant I had all three attendants standing in front of me as she lightly knocked her compendium against her leg with a serious cast to her eyes. “But I think we have more important things to discuss,” I began. Margaret gave me a grateful look at turning to the concern at hand.

“The Velvet Room has disappeared and with it, our master Igor and little sister Lavenza,” Margaret stated. With that statement, the joviality and lightness seemed to almost evaporate from the two younger attendants, Theodore shifted his weight and it was then that I noticed he was lacking a compendium of his own which was curious but not important enough to distract me as Elizabeth released a heavy sigh.

“Yes, most concerning, I know I left my position as an attendant, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what happens to them,” Elizabeth agreed. She raised the arm holding her compendium up to her chest and pressed it tightly against herself, I certainly don’t recall seeing Elizabeth looking so concerned, when we had been facing off against Dantalion she’d seemed totally unflappable.

“It was quite sudden as well, all I can recall is stepping out to speak to one of the elder Betwixt and next, the door had vanished,” Theodore spoke up. Well, that was interesting to hear, I already knew that Rise had encountered a Betwixt – and probably worked with one – but to know that there were multiple who were still alive was quite interesting to hear, I wonder if I could meet any of them.

“All I know is that they vanished one day and the only thing left behind was this,” I admitted. As I did, I reached behind and pulled off the butterfly clasp I always wore, the three attendants drifted in closer to look at it as if trying to define some meaning from its’ presence; however, Margaret pulled back first and proceeded to shake her head in dismay with the younger two pulling back with frowns on their faces.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything special about this clasp you have,” Margaret bemoaned. Well, that was a disappointment, I had hoped that they’d be able to provide me with some new information about the clasp but apparently not. I sighed and proceeded to clip it back into place on my hair as I focused on the trio of attendants.

“I think we should be more concerned with the dark aura surrounding Tokyo,” Theodore commented. That set of words however drew my attention as a yawning pit seemed to open in my stomach, I did not like the sound of some kind of dark energy pulsing around my home city; Tokyo wasn’t perfect, but it held everything and everyone that I held dear.

“Dark aura?” I questioned. I needed to know what they meant by this dark aura, if it had anything to do with the Palaces then I’d be calmed down by the fact that as me and my friends continued our activities then the dark aura would fade. But my concern was if it wasn’t linked to the Palaces, then what could it mean and how would we be able to stop it from hovering over us.

“Yes. There is a terrible oppressive energy surrounding Tokyo and it always seems to spike whenever those terrible accidents occur,” Elizabeth explained. That caused my attention to sway to her as I processed her words, terrible accidents that had something to do with a dark aura; I could only think of one possibility and it honestly chilled me to the bone to consider such a thing… but in light of what Madarame’s Shadow had said, it wasn’t something I could ignore either.

“By terrible accidents, do you mean the mental breakdowns that have been occurring?” I wondered. The mental breakdowns had to be connected to the way that someone reacted when their Shadow was killed, or at the very least that was my theory which had only become stronger since Madarame’s Shadow had mentioned a black masked individual wandering around his Palace which was the only indication of someone else being capable of entering the Metaverse.

“Yes, those accidents aren’t normal, unfortunately without our master none of us can find the source,” Margaret admitted. But Igor hadn’t mentioned anything to me about the source of the mental breakdowns, granted they had only been growing more frequently in recent months, but they’d been happening over the course of two years. “While we normally do not involve ourselves in the journey of other guests, such as yourself and your Wild Card, this time is… unusual. We’ve never lost the ability to step into the Velvet Room before,” Margaret revealed. Worry plain on her face at this highly troubling incident.

“Then it’s probably time to get involved,” I suggested. All of them proceeded to look at me with wide eyes but given how unusual the situation was, I wasn’t going to let these three just wander around without putting their knowledge of the collective unconsciousness to use, if they couldn’t find the Velvet Room then they might at least try and do something else.  “What would you do?” I asked.

“I believe that looking into these… mental breakdowns, you called them, would lead us to an answer. I suspect something otherworldly is at work here,” Margaret admitted. It was good to see that Margaret was already considering their next step forward in trying to figure out what the heck had happened to the Velvet Room; I wished there was an easier way to find them, but this might just be our best bet.

“In which case, would you be willing to assist us Natsumi?” Elizabeth requested. That set of words startled me enough to cause me to jump, I twisted my head to look at the woman with her siblings also proceeding to give her a strange look; I tried to process exactly what she was trying to ask even as Theodore seemed to understand it by his lightening expression, but my brain simply wasn’t putting the required puzzle pieces together.

“What?! Why me?” I questioned. I really needed to hear her explain why she thought it was a good idea to drag me into this search, from the heavily scrutinising look and slightly scowl on her face it seemed like Margaret was in the same boat as me given that she was flicking her eyes rapidly between her two siblings but that did nothing to lighten the heaviness with which she gazed at each of them.

“Well, you are a resident of this world unlike us. We wouldn’t even know where to begin searching. In sort we’d very much be in need of a guide,” Theodore explained. I took a step back slightly, running my eyes over the trio of attendants before me, mentally cataloguing their blonde hair and golden eyes which would stick out more than Ann’s looks since it was paired with their very eye-catching blue clothing. I don’t know if the attendants could be seen by normal people but if they were then they certainly would be noticed.

“You know… that makes sense… because outside of Harajuku, you three stick out like sore thumbs,” I agreed. If someone like me was with them, then any officers or generally nosy people might be suspicious but if I simply call them cousins visiting then it won’t be so strange. “Alright, I’ll… actually I have no clue how to contact any of you, so we need to find a way to meet up, because if I suddenly have three random people living in my house it’ll cause more trouble than it’s worth,” I admitted.

“Don’t worry, we can call you,” Margaret reassured. At least that’s what she probably meant by the words, but it slightly disturbed me that they would just be able to randomly call me whenever they felt like it, I know that I can’t limit these three by normal capabilities, but it was still more than a little unsettling to hear them easily admit to being capable of essentially hacking my phone.

“Alright, call me when you guys are available,” I agreed. Perhaps the question that had been bugging me for months would finally be answered if we ended up looking into these cases.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 48: - A Day Out

A vicious ringing pulled me from my slumber, I was significantly exhausted after my unexpected trip down memory lane and then running into Elizabeth and her siblings. So, it had seemed rather appropriate for me to simply fall into my bed and immediately start sleeping to recover my strength for whatever was coming the next day. Which meant I was rather angry at being disturbed from my much-needed slumber.

“So help me if that’s Ryūji, I’m going to make his next bout of training more painful,” I croaked out. I pried my body off the mattress and madly patted about until I found the switch for my lamp, a quick flip allowed soft grey light to light up the room thanks to the colour changing bulb. I grabbed my phone and opened it up to look at the chat.

Ann: Ryūji just let me know.

Ann: Mishima’s so insistent on finding our next target that he’s gonna start looking in Harajuku.

Natsumi: That’s not good, the boy is too overzealous.

Natsumi: Want to tag along to keep an eye on him?

Ann: Absolutely!

Ann: Ryūji’s gonna tell Ren so we all might be going.

Natsumi: The more the easier it’ll be to keep Mishima out of trouble.

Natsumi: See you tomorrow.

Ann: See ya!

I dropped my phone onto my bed and then dropped my head back into my pillow with a small groan.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Somehow, despite being disturbed, I had actually managed to have a restful sleep and so here I was with the rest of the group. Yusuke couldn’t come due to something happening in his high school’s arts division, so it was just the five original members of the Phantoms here to make sure that our administrator didn’t get himself in some kind of crazy trouble.

“It’s so crowded, just like I expected. The perfect place to start our investigation,” Mishima stated. He then turned to look at us with a bemused expression upon his face. “But I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting all of you to come along,” Mishima admitted. I looked at the others wondering what answers they would probably be concocting in their heads as to explain our presence to Mishima.

“I had a photoshoot nearby, so I figured why not?” Ann admitted. She even shrugged her shoulders as if to give the impression that she had decided to come here on a whim; it was probably the best answer to give the boy who had somehow sussed out that Ren was a Phantom Thief, I don’t know if he suspected the rest of us of being members but best to avoid rousing his suspicions.

“But why Harajuku, Mishima?” Ryūji asked. At least someone had managed to distract him from our presence here; it did seem a little odd for Mishima to choose to come to Harajuku of all places, I don’t see how such a vibrant place could possibly have any target for us to face. There was no Palace hovering over this place so that at least meant there was no Ruler here for us to deal with and everyone seemed perfectly content as they walked around, no one stood out as having a particularly prominent Shadow.

“Well, Harajuku’s this big cultural hub, right? People from all over the world come here. So that means there might be all kinds of international villains walking around in broad daylight!” Mishima theorised. I stopped looking around and proceeded to instead shoot Mishima a disbelieving look for what he had just said, as I tried to wrap my head around how he’d come to such a conclusion.

“I’m not sure how that logic works Mishima, surely criminals would try to avoid attracting attention to themselves,” I pointed out. Working from that perspective, I certainly wouldn’t like to be spotted if I had been accused of a crime and were currently on the run, especially if the possibility of being well known was a danger that would have to be dealt with.

“Yeah, I dunno if I get that logic,” Ann agreed. I shot the girl a grateful look that someone else was agreeing with me on the craziness of the logic that Mishima was using to explain why he decided this would be a good place to investigate; it seemed too obvious a place to be for a criminal especially one that might not be native to Japan or even Tokyo in general, those would be the first places any competent investigator would start looking.

“Uh, for example…,” Mishima commented. It seemed that he was ignoring mine and Ann’s confusion about his actions to instead look out over the crowd. “Oh, check that guy out! He’s definitely suspicious! I mean who wears black leather long coats at this time of year!? He’s gotta be shady! And all those belts must be supplies so he can tie people up. Oh man… do you think he’s an escaped convict?” Mishima theorised.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just a goth style,” Ann coolly responded. I looked over at the guy that Mishima had pointed out and found him casually sat at a table and sipping on a drink, there didn’t seem to be any trace of maliciousness as he calmly looked around while enjoying his beverage; he actually seemed rather relaxed and happy.

“But my phantom thief senses are tingling! Don’t you think he’s suspicious, Amamiya?” Mishima asked. Mishima glanced back at our leader who had a kind of dazed look on his face but managed to focus upon hearing Mishima call out his name, but it seemed like he might not have been paying attention to the question if his blinking owl eyes were any indication.

“You’re uh… tingling?” Ren asked. He seemed deeply confused by the words that Mishima had used – not that I blame our leader – to describe his suspicion of a seemingly innocent individual who was happily enjoying his surroundings without any sign of discomfort or darkness; I really think that Mishima might be stretching his suspicion of the individual.

“Well, I mean, ‘cause I’m the Phantom Aficionado Website admin, and-,” Mishima began to explain. But his eyes widened suddenly as if coming to a realisation and he stopped talking all of a sudden, we looked at each other with confusion. “Look, that’s not important! You know what I mean!” Mishima exclaimed. Honestly, I really didn’t know what Mishima could possibly be meaning with his words.

“If you think he’s that suspicious, then go talk to him,” Ryūji suggested. Mishima was freaked by this suggestion while I proceeded to give the blonde punk a raised eyebrow at his words. “You’re the one who’s all hyped up about this investigation, right? So hey. Go up to the guy and ask ‘Yo, Captain Trenchcoat! Sorry to bother you, but are you an escaped convict?’,” Ryūji added. That was likely to anger even the most placid person and depending on the temperament of the one being accused… well Mishima might get hurt.

“You’ve got to be kidding! He’d have that belt around my neck before I even finished talking!” Mishima panicked. He was quite right that something dangerous could happen to him if he made such a random approach and accusation to someone simply minding their own business; besides, the more I look around, the more it became obvious that such manner of dress wasn’t all that unusual.

“It’s normal to see people dressed in unusual clothes here,” Ann admitted. She even waved her hand about to draw Mishima to the existence of other unusual kind of styles that were on display here. “Honestly, I think it’s kinda cool. Like they’ve got the confidence to wear whatever they want, you know? Like… nothing’s gonna keep them from expressing their own style,” Ann commented. A smile upon her face as she said those words with a bright warmth upon her face.

“Cool or not, they’re definitely not lettin’ anyone hold them back,” Ryūji complimented. It was quite something, that they were brave enough to dress how they wanted to without caring about what people might think of them for dressing in such a manner; it was something that we should probably all be capable of learning from, to be as true to ourselves as possible.

“What do you think about unique fashion like this, Ren?” Ann wondered. Everyone turned to focus their attention upon the country boy, I noted that Ren was continuing to stare around the shopping centre with wide grey eyes, occasionally resting on a building or person that seemed to have caught his eye before turning to gaze back at the rest of us.

“I’m getting culture shock,” Ren admitted. We all proceeded to laugh at his admission which caused Ren’s lips to spread into a wide smile and he soon started to join in our laughter; it felt so good to actually be able to enjoy myself with other people after so long of being isolated, just to spend time with all of them without worrying about other things interfering with our enjoyment. Ann eventually calmed down and proceeded to focus upon Mishima.

“Anyway, no more judging people here by how they look. If they’re wearing what they want to wear, that’s something to admire,” Ann lectured. She lightly poked him in the chest as she said those words, a smile on her face showing she wasn’t really mad. “Heck, I’d say it means they’re honest. Not like people who seem nice on the outside, but turn out to be terrible,” Ann added on. Something we were all too familiar with given Kamoshida and especially Madarame most recently.

“Never judge a book by its’ cover, as the saying goes,” I spoke up. First impressions might matter when it comes to things like job interviews or other such things, but you can never really understand someone from just a singular meeting; I much prefer to have multiple conversations with someone before deciding what I actually think of them as opposed to making a snap judgment.

“I guess you’re right,” Mishima admitted. He did seem mollified by what Ann and I had said, it wouldn’t do for Mishima to put himself into such dangerous situations because of rash judgments he made based upon how a person looked, especially if he was going to keep getting involved with trying to find targets for us by going out and looking for them instead of letting the Phan-site collect those reports; it might be doing more, but it put him in increased danger and we wouldn’t always be around to pull him back if he went too far.

“Ann-dono is absolutely right. After all, I look like a cat but I’m actually a dashing, noble gentleman!” Morgana chimed. The feline had popped out of the bag to finally join the conversation, a bit unusual for him to have not interjected earlier but that might have been because of Mishima being with us; Mishima looked over with a raised eyebrow at the sight of Morgana’s presence.

“Now that I think about it, it’s kinda Harajuku-ey to walk around with a cat in a bag,” Ryūji commented. It did actually seem like the kind of thing you’d see in such an unusual place as Harajuku, certainly no one was staring at Morgana as they walked passed, taking that fact in stride, which might imply that animals in bag or other kind of unusual placements much have been slightly common to this place.

“True! He’s like a really specialised fashion accessory,” Ann agreed. I stifled a chuckle at her words as I wondered how exactly how Morgana would take being called an accessory by the girl that he was quite charmed by; I looked over at Morgana in order to gauge exactly how he would be reacting to the words.

“Is… that a compliment?” Morgana asked. His brilliant blue eyes blinked in confusion for a few moments before a slight purr proceeded to emanate from him and he dipped his head to look at Ren. “I guess you’re lucky, Ren. You can get popular just by having me around,” Morgana gleefully stated. Well, at least he seemed accepting of being called an accessory, allowing me to relax slightly since he wasn’t going to get upset.

“So, Mishima… I take it you didn’t actually have any leads,” Ryūji pointed out. Mishima led out a sad and dejected ‘nope’ as a response, that meant that there was no reason for us to stick around any longer; but I actually didn’t want to leave yet, Harajuku felt so lively and free unlike Shibuya, so I wanted to stay and enjoy myself for a little while longer.

“Yeah, figures. Well as long as we’re here, let’s have some fun,” Ann suggested. If it was possible then I’d probably glowing from the smile that came onto my face at someone actually suggesting we hang around for even a little bit longer, I’d never actually visited Harajuku before today so it would be nice to wander around and see what this place had thanks to the cultural melting pot atmosphere of the area.

“Then let’s get Ren dressed up!” Ryūji declared. He seemed extremely keen to get this decision underway; Ren proceeded to shoot the blonde punk a wary look before glancing down at himself with a questioning gaze, as if silently wondering what was wrong with his current attire, before shooting another worried look at Ryūji as if he expected something to become clear with that look.

“Natsu-chan too!” Ann agreed. I proceeded to mimic Ren in that moment, shooting my friend a baffled look before glancing down at my own outfit; an elbow length sleeved blue blouse, paired with a knee length dark blue-black skirt, black tights, and blue canvas shoes, a handbag was over my shoulder which contained the essentials that I needed to come here. Was there something wrong with my outfit?

“Oh, and Mishima too. Maybe Ann can get rid of your weird anti-Harajuku prejudice,” Ryūji added on. That didn’t really allow me or Ren to relax since it seemed our two blonde friends were getting too into the idea to force the three of us with dark hair colours to be turned into dress up opportunities; Mishima spun around with a panicked look on his face.

“Huh?! Me too!” Mishima exclaimed. He seemed quite spooked by the possibility of being forced to dress up, then again, I don’t think me or Ren were any better as Ren’s own face looked panicked and that was probably the exact same expression that I happened to be wearing; I really wanted to figure out if there was a probability of escaping from this situation before things got crazy… well crazier.

“Don’t we get a say in this!?” I questioned. I didn’t want to end up dragged into the insanity that would likely happen if Ann and Ryūji decided to keep going down this path, it wasn’t that I didn’t trust them but I’d always been pretty basic in picking my clothing out; so long as I liked the colour and it fit then I was perfectly happy to wear it… but something in my gut told me that the model I’d befriended wasn’t going to let that slide.

“Actually… if I’ve got any hidden talent for fashion, this’d be the perfect chance to discover it,” Mishima admitted. Well, it seemed that one of us was agreeing to be turned into a fashion project; I sent a worried look at Ren who also looked concerned about what was going to be happening to us if we didn’t stop this conversation thread.

“Ann-dono, Ann-dono! Help me get all fashionable too!” Morgana pleaded. And there was someone else not helping us, at Ren’s slumped shoulder I could tell that he had pretty much given up any chance of escaping this situation which caused me to deflate slightly as I realised that there was probably no chance for escape and that I might as well just resign myself to the madness that was coming.

“Alright! We can squeeze in a trip to the pet shop for Morgana!” Ann decided. I proceeded to give Ann a concerned look since Morgana had made it very obvious that he disliked being addressed as a pet, even though that was probably the only place that we would find anything that would even be appropriate for Morgana to have baring any handkerchief that might be lying about.

“I’m not a pet!” Morgana protested. I rolled my eyes at this response since I had expected him to react like that, Ren proceeded to quirk his lips into a small smile at the reaction that Morgana had given; in fact, as I looked around, I saw that Ann and Ryūji also had smiles on their lips at our healer’s reaction. The only odd one out was Mishima who was giving Morgana an odd look as he cocked his head to the side in confusion.

“You know, Amamiya… sometimes it sounds like your cat’s really joining in on the conversation,” Mishima admitted. All of us proceeded to look at each other as we tried to come up with an answer to what Mishima had just spoken, we couldn’t actually tell him that Morgana did understand us since that would just baffle the poor boy – and potentially leak more secrets about the Phantom Thieves if Mishima decided to start nosing around – Ren however seemed to relax. Our leader raised his hand and proceeded to run a finger over Morgana’s head.

“Morgana’s so intelligent it wouldn’t surprise me if he understood every word we were saying,” Ren stated. Mishima shrugged his shoulder as if accepting this explanation and the rest of us proceeded to smile in relief at this event; we wouldn’t need to run the risk of potentially being outed now that Ren had covered for us regarding Morgana’s speech capabilities.

“Then let’s get going! Just follow me, I know a place!” Ann declared. She seemed to have brightened up quite a bit, while I would have been fine with just wandering around it seemed like dressing up was on the agenda as Ann hooked her arm around one of mine which left me with no way to escape from this situation and looking back so that Ryūji had grabbed a hold of Ren in a similar manner with Mishima left on his own since he wanted this to happen anyway.

“It’s all on you Fashionista-san!” Ryūji decided. With that, we were quickly dragged into the shopping hub of Harajuku with Ann happily pulling me into the building as Ryūji and Mishima worked to herd Ren inside with big smile on their faces whenever I managed to glance back and check on our leader who was looking a little paler than normal.

Once both of us were inside the building, Ann set out on a mission with a glowing smile on her face. As much as I’d rather not be twisted into some kind of dress up party, I couldn’t deny that it was kind of fun to see Ann looking so happy. Ren suddenly let out a snort then clamped his hand over his mouth, I looked over and saw he was staring off to the side and when I followed his gaze, I saw why. Ryūji and Mishima seemed to be going a little crazy and were pulling off the weirdest clothing styles or patterns and trying them on.

An annoyed groan echoed and I looked over to see that Ann had returned with two sets of clothing draped over different arms, although she was giving the other two boys an impressive stink eye. Ann set the clothing onto different chairs and then lifted one piece up. It was a grey long sleeved shirt but it looked like something that could be worn in all types of seasons instead of just Spring or Autumn.

The fabric was held up next to Ren’s face and Ann lightly bit her lip as she seemed to be scrutinising the clothing and Ren quite intently. Suddenly, Ann sharply nodded her head and separated the shirt from the pile and gently folded it up onto another chair that was nearby before moving onto a different item, this one a bright red jacket that Ann seemed to treat rather different quite swiftly judging by how soon her eyes narrowed in distaste and the way she practically dumped it onto the chair in a heap.

Such a trend continued for a bit as Ryūji and Mishima continued to run amok in the shop, both of them trying on insane or ridiculous styles then disappearing for a few minutes only to return. Ann would hold up each piece of fabric to scrutinise against Ren and either accept it or reject it with no input being given from Ren. Occasionally Mishima and Ryūji would return bearing other clothing and offer it up to Ann like they were attempting to make some kind of tribute. Ann scrutinised and then made a choice, she would then bundle the duo up with Ren’s rejected clothes and they took off to return them to hangers; I noticed that most of the colours were kind of light shades of blues, greys, browns with some blacks and dark reds and blues scattered among them.

“Do I dare ask what is going on?” I questioned. Ann had gone through the entire array of clothing that she had brought over for Ren – I assume that the other chair was for me – with some of it staying while others were dismissed for whatever reason she had decided on; it was all a bit baffling for me to witness and Ren didn’t seem any better.

“I’m looking to see if the colours would look good on you with your skin tone, hair and eye colour. It’s what happens to me when I’m trying on an outfit, though that does include make-up in the mix as well. I don’t know your sizes, so you’ll have to help me find those later and pick what you like best out of the clothing. I’ll pay, consider it my treat but that’s also why I don’t what you guys to buy a lot,” Ann explained. I nodded my head in understanding, at that moment Mishima and Ryūji ran passed in garishly vibrant colours; Ann’s shoulders dropped in disbelief. “Those two are so distracting,” Ann bemoaned.

Despite her words, Ann perked up and proceeded to move over to the pile of clothing that she had selected for me. The clothing was more varied in colours; blues, greens, whites, purples – all in different shades – along with pinkish-reds, pale yellows. Tops, skirts, jeans, jackets, and cardigans were pressed against my skin by a very ecstatic Ann as she went through the clothing choices and separated them.

“Right then, you two pick out what you want,” Ann insisted. Then a sudden ferociousness seemed to start emanating from her as she twisted on her heels and almost seemed to glare in that direction. “Mishima! Ryūji! Get over here!” Ann ordered. She then stormed after them as if Captain Kidd had somehow joined his elemental powers to Carmen. I shot a glance at Ren who was also looking at me and we then proceeded to break down into laughter.

“Well, Ann’s certainly enjoying herself,” Ren commented. I nodded my head in agreement and then made for the clothing, I rifled through it and selected a cardigan and skirt while leaving the rest behind since I didn’t want to take advantage of Ann’s kindness; Ren only selected two items as well as Ann returned and started the process all over again for Mishima who seemed too excited to stay in place too much.

As Ann dressed up Mishima, we all helped out and eventually left the building with laughter and a few bags as we made for the pet shop for Morgana.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I was chopping up some vegetables for my tea when the phone’s Chat alert went off, I quickly finished my chopping and set the knife down while twisting the heat on the hobs to the lowest possible setting while still being turned on. I scooped the phone up and quickly moved to check on the Chat, if Yusuke knew anything about Madarame it would be good for us to know as soon as he brought it up.

Ann: Yusuke, any changes yet? How’s Madarame?

Yusuke: Nothing at the moment. He’s still bedridden.

Ryūji: Wait… you think this was too much for that old bastard’s heart?

Natsumi: Unlikely.

Natsumi: We’re changing his metaphorical heart, his emotions and morality.

Natsumi: There shouldn’t be any effect on his literal heart.

Yusuke: Natsumi is right.

Yusuke: There’s no need to worry. His life does not appear to be in any danger.

Ryūji: I hope we didn’t eff up on our first official mission.

Ryuji: Can he talk at all?

Yusuke: So far all he’s said to me is, ‘I’m sorry’.

Yusuke: I haven’t been able to speak to him since though. He is in no state to hold a conversation.

Ryūji: For real?

Ann: If he ends up taking legal action against us, our leader will be in big trouble!

Ren: Please don’t remind me of my probation.

Ren: I’ve got very good at ignoring it.

Yusuke: Probation? That would be problematic then.

Ann: Hey, we’re gonna be okay… aren’t we?

Natsumi: All we can do is hope.

Natsumi: Everything is out of our hands now.

Ren: But everything went the same as last time.

Ren: The fight with the Ruler, the recovery of the Treasure and the crumbling of the Palace.

Ren: We should be fine.

Ryūji: If Ren says so, I’m sure it’s true!

Yusuke: I will contact all of you if any progress is made.

Ryūji: Let’s just wait for the Change of Heart for now.

Ann: Yeah… well, we’ll be waiting for your updates, Yusuke.

‘I hope everything is fine, but…’ I thought. The memory of Azazel speaking about a black masked intruder surfaced, it was a worry that would continue to needle my mind until the question of who the masked individual was had been resolved.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 49: - A Graceful Faith

It was the day of the dreaded park clean-up and I was quite glad that the sun was out, better this than wet weather, although hopefully it didn’t get too hot while we were travelling – especially on the train – in our gym clothes. Ren brought Morgana along as was customary and we tried to distract ourselves on the journey; when we reached the Shibuya station courtyard however, I ended up stopping in place at a scene I saw.

Only a short distance away from us was the red haired first year that I’d kept running into for a while, unlike me and Ren she was dressed in her school uniform which was a bit odd given what was happening today, unless she had some sort of exception. But the concerning thing wasn’t her outfit, no it was the creepy man who happened to grab her right as she was attempting to walk away from him.

“Ah!” The red haired girl exclaimed. I did not like where this was going, she was clearly unhappy about being grabbed by the man and yet he didn’t seem to be willing to let go of her despite this; I adjusted my bag so that it wouldn’t get in the way in case I had to actually intervene and he decided to get violent as a result, he seemed like that kind of horrible person.

“C’mon, there’s no need to be shy,” The man commented. A slimy aura practically rolled off of him in waves, it actually made my skin itch something awful; the people surrounding us were getting worried from their hushed whispers and expressions but none of them were making any moves in interfere with this scene… at least no one had phones out like they had with Shiho, but it still sickened me.

“Like I said,” The girl tried to protest. But the man didn’t care he even went as far to get in her face and offer her his phone number to contact him later, ignoring the fact that the first year shrunk away from him and didn’t seem even remotely interested in having anything to do with him. “Stop it,” The girl pleaded. Her head moving about to look at the people staring at the scene, a few of whom walked away; cowards!

“Let go of my kōhai right now!” I ordered. I proceeded to charge over to the two people with a furious expression no doubt pulling at my face because of this incident, I could faintly hear footsteps coming after me which at least reassured me that Ren was going to be there to back me up in case things went badly for me or the red head.

“What do you want?” The man asked. He had turned to glare at us as we approached, clearly not happy that we had decided to intervene, but I wasn’t about to let him do anything that could lead to this poor girl suffering something like what Shiho went through at the hands of Kamoshida; especially since no one else besides my friend was actually going to be stepping up to stop this horror.

“You’re hurting her, so let. Go,” Ren growled. I didn’t bother to send a glance back at the boy, instead opting to keep my gaze glaring sharply at the monster that was hurting this poor girl who had been unlucky enough to catch this horrid man’s eye; but I knew that he was probably glaring at the man as well, though whether his glasses were on or not was the only question.

“Don’t get worked up. I’m just being friendly here,” The man insisted. He didn’t seem to be bothered by our presence, so Ren’s glasses were likely still on, but I wasn’t about to buy into the nonsense that was spewing from his lips; with the way that the girl was shaking, there was no way that he was friendly in her mind. At least he had released his grip on her thanks to us confronting him.

“Friendly? Where I come from, men don’t grab a girl trying to walk away and make offers she clearly isn’t interested in. That’s not being friendly, that’s being a creep,” Ren snapped. The girl then proceeded to run behind Ren and dragged me closer by the arm – she was much stronger than she appeared – to ensure she peered out over our shoulders but the rest of her was safely hidden from view.

“Oh, what the…,” The man commented. He actually seemed surprised by the reaction she had given, which caused me to roll my eyes at his stupidity. “What’re you getting so jumpy about? Like you’re anything special!” The man snapped. The man turned to walk away, but I swiped my foot out just in time to catch his ankle and trip him up; he almost fell to the floor – shame – but managed to catch himself before he face planted into the ground, though by the time he got up to glare, my foot was resting flat on the ground as if it had never moved, he finished walking away.

“Are you okay?” Ren gently asked. We moved away from the girl once the man had left our vision which meant he wouldn’t be capable of retaliating against us or proceeding to hurt the girl who had needed protecting; once he was gone, we stepped forward slightly and turned around to look at the girl who seemed to be breathing heavily.

“Thank you so much! I’m sorry for the trouble!” The girl exclaimed. I felt my eyes widen in shock at the fact that she had actually gone as far as to apologise to us for something that was completely out of control; it was completely mad that she thought that this whole incident was in any way her fault when the real fault was on a completely different person’s shoulders.

“You don’t need to apologise, he needs to apologise to you,” I insisted. That man was completely horrible in everything he had done to her, I wanted to make sure that this girl knew she had done nothing wrong during that whole incident; she had been the victim here, as a victim of unwanted harassment from a complete stranger. She needed to not be so concerned about the situation that had just happened.

“So long as you’re okay, that’s all that matters,” Ren reminded. His expression was gentle and kind, probably trying to ensure that she was as relaxed as possible after the horrible tenseness that had come due to the incident that had just happened; she was still rather tense and was shaking across her shoulders, arms and legs, she was also bowed over slightly while gripping the area that she had been grabbed ever so lightly.

“Yes, I’m fine now. It was pretty scary, though…,” The girl admitted. No surprise that she was so scared after that incident, probably most normal people would be scared if they faced something like that. “Ah-um… may I ask you something?” The girl wondered. Both me and Ren nodded our heads in agreement to hearing whatever she had to say to us. “So… what made you step in to help me?” The girl asked.

“It’s how I was raised, to help people. I can’t look away from something like that,” Ren explained. Given that his father was a doctor, it was no surprise that he had it ingrained in him to help people in difficult situations and I was quite glad that such a wonderfully warm person had come to Shūjin when I rather needed the aid to stop Kamoshida’s reign of terror.

“No one else was going to step in and you needed help,” I admitted. I proceeded to look around at the crowd of people who were slowly dissipating from the surrounding area since the scene had ended but none of them seemed even a little bit ashamed of having simply stood aside and seemed almost willing to allow that horrible man to do whatever he had wanted to the girl.

“I…see,” The girl stated. I didn’t know if the girl was satisfied with our answers or not from her words. “Well, I apologise for asking something so strange. You’re both headed to the clean-up as well, right?” The girl asked. We nodded our heads once again to show that she was right. “The clean-up?” The girl questioned. It almost seemed like she was forgetting something and she then quickly pulled out her phone. “Look at the time!” The girl exclaimed. I glanced at my watch and saw it was getting close to the time of the clean-up's start. “I’m so sorry, I haven’t even thanked you properly yet! Oh no! I forgot my gym clothes at school! I’ll see you at the clean-up, soon. We can talk more then, if you’d like. Pardon me,” The girl rushed out. With that, she bowed and ran off.

“That girl is way too formal,” I commented. Once she disappeared, we proceeded to keep moving on our way towards the park that we were being forced to attend by our school; I couldn’t help but wonder if that girl would be okay after what happened, especially with how skittish she was acting after that incident, no one deserved such harassment like that but for someone as nice as her to be targeted… well it raised my hackles, probably because all I kept seeing was Shiho in the girl’s place instead.

Upon reaching the park, I immediately curled my lips in disgust, there was so much trash littering this place that it was sickening especially when there was more trash here than when I’d visited a few days ago with Ann. It was horrid to see the natural beauty of this place being ruined by uncaring individuals, Ren tugged on my arm and I followed him over to where Ryūji and Ann were standing.

“Yo, what took both of ya so long?” Ryūji asked. He was already in his gym clothes and seemed completely relaxed as he leaned against the tree, at least someone seemed at ease, he was focused upon the two of us clearly wanting to know what had delayed the two of us so much; I’m just glad that me and Ren had managed to make it to the park in time for the clean-up, because I’m betting that would have got us – especially Ren – in trouble which was definitely not needed.

“Did you really come here from home in your gym clothes?” Ann asked. In contrast to Ryūji, the blonde model looked rather tense and her blue eyes were constantly darting to the side as if she was continually checking on something but all I saw was a long line of students; also Ann was actually dressed in her typical school uniform which was a little confusing as I looked at our Fire wielder.

“One of our underclassmen was getting harassed by a creep so we stepped in and yes,” Ren answered. A look of concern flashed across their faces when Ren brought up the scenario that we’d ended up coming across earlier, they only relaxed when Ren informed them of our actions in a concise manner; honestly, I was more concerned for Ann at this current moment.

“I’m surprised you didn’t come in them,” I commented. We were supposed to be doing the clean-up in our gym clothes, so it made a lot more sense to simply perform the commute in that outfit rather than needing to get here early and get changed at some point; it wasn’t that much different to travelling anywhere in our school uniforms.

“Yeah, ain’t it normal. And, uh, are you plannin’ on doin’ this clean-up in that outfit?” Ryūji asked. I seriously hope Ann wasn’t considering doing that, our gym clothes were better suited to taking the punishment that would be required for performing a clean-up task when compared to her normal school uniform.

“Of course not! I brought my gym clothes with me. I was gonna change in the bathroom but now there’s a huge line,” Ann admitted. Ann proceeded to turn her face to gaze at the large gathering of students which I now realise must have been the huge line that she mentioned as being present; Ann shoulders slumped down as she realised that her plan had been basically copied by… I think that was the rest of the school’s population of students.

“Ohhh, that makes sense,” Ryūji agreed. But it was also a rather common idea given the large amount of people gathered in that general vicinity. “Sounds like it sucks to be a girl,” Ryūji stated. I loudly cleared my throat and gave the false blonde a hard stare. “A girl not anywhere half as smart as you, obviously!” Ryūji rushed out. He seemed to be sweating bullets in response to my death glare and I felt slightly placated by that decision, but also a little annoyed that he’d insulted Ann who was currently glaring at him.

“I’d take offence… if it wasn’t very true that Natsu-chan is smarter than me,” Ann agreed. Her glare relaxed and she proceeded to shrug her shoulders in response, I grinned at her which Ann returned with her own smile; I just glad that Ann didn’t take offence to Ryūji’s words which the boy seemed to share if his sigh of relief was anything to go by.

“It’s such a nice day out that even the weather seems to be mocking us,” Mishima commented. All of us practically jumped to turn and look at the boy who had just casually made his way over to the rest of us as if we’d invited him to join us; while I have nothing against Mishima as an individual, I was more concerned by the fact that he’d have heard something important if we’d been stopping Ryūji from discussing our Phantom Thief activities.

“Dude, could you try pushin’ your way into our conversation a little less awkwardly next time?” Ryūji requested. There was also the fact that he had done that, while he had been fairly pleasant company yesterday, making us laugh on several occasions and actually making me enjoy recalling my middle school days when he brought up those incidents, it was still very out of place how he’d suddenly popped into our conversation.

“I bet some Kichijoji clean freak hung paper dolls all over and prayed for clear skies today,” Mishima stated. I looked up and saw that the sky was indeed fairly clear today with only small puffy white clouds hanging about; but I didn’t see what the issue with having such nice weather during this time could be, after all it could be much worse.

“Would you prefer for it to be pouring rain? If I had to pick one, I’d rather clean up in shine than rain,” I commented. Ann violently shivered when I mentioned pouring rain and even Ryūji looked at little wary if the stare he shot at the sky was anything to go by, Ren shot a glance at his bag, likely thinking of how Morgana might have taken being out in a shower… which was probably not good; Mishima cocked his head as if seeming to think about the options before nodding his head in agreement with my words, if we cleaned this place in the rain when there was a good chance, we’d all get sick.

“Hey. Morning everyone,” A familiar voice greeted. I looked over to see Maruki-sensei had walked over to join us, what was he doing here? Mishima even asked if he was here for the clean-up. “You got it,” Maruki-sensei admitted. Ryūji posed the clothing question to our therapist since he was dressed in his typical fashion. “Oh, no. I’m in a different-,” Maruki-sensei began to explain. But he was interrupted by two girls coming over and insisting they were starting ‘prepping’ soon.

“Prepping what?” Ann asked. Turns out the good doctor was a part of the cooking crew who would be providing meals for us after the clean-up was done with, at least we would be able to have some food after such activity; our counsellor proceeded to walk away with the students that had interrupted him and we all watch him walk away.

“More like Popular-sensei,” Ryūji sneered. Ren poked Ryūji him in the shoulder and gave the boy a bland look at his words, I really didn’t understand what was up with Ryūji dislike of the man, Maruki-sensei was a perfectly wonderful man after all; I’d already decided to put him in the safe trust category as with Sōjirō, Kawakami-sensei and Takemi-sensei.

“I’m sure the Phantom Thieves will be even bigger someday,” Mishima stated. I don’t think any of us knew what to say in response to that as we all exchanged uncertain looks with each other while Mishima seemed pretty happy to simply be standing there among us; a suddenly loud tapping sound thankfully distracted all of us.

“Good morning, Shūjin Academy students and staff,” Niijima-senpai’s voice rang out. Saved by the bell, so to speak, I turned around to face our upperclassman who was on a box to slightly elevate herself. “Please pick up all trash located in the areas assigned to your group. Once the clean-up is completed, a dinner of miso soup with pork and vegetables will be served,” Niijima-senpai insisted. Well, that food didn’t sound too bad.

“Ooh, pork miso soup! So that’s what Maruki-sensei’s fan club is making,” Ann commented. She seemed interested in tasting the food, I just hope it was something that was actually edible otherwise we’d probably all be raiding the nearby store; I was quite glad that a certain individual was not involved in the cooking process otherwise I’d have instantly abstained and dragged the others with me just to save them.

“FYI, the school already assigned the groups at random. They’re four people apiece, boys and girls mixed,” Mishima warned. Ryūji slumped down with a dejected aura radiating from him at those words, it was slightly annoying that they had already decided who was in what groups, especially since there was a high risk of us not being with Ren in order to protect him from any cruel words that others would be most likely to shoot at him.

“Now that those announcements have been made, please break into your groups and head to your assigned areas,” Niijima-senpai insisted. I quickly looked at Ren and gently rested the back of my hand against his own, Ren smiled and moved his hand around to grasp my own and gave it two quick reassuring squeezes before letting go of my hand, which continued to tingle with warmth.

“Alright, let’s just get this over with as fast as possible so we can chow down on that soup and get outta here!” Ryūji suggested. He was also shooting a concerned look at Ren which Ann was giving him as well, Ren smiled at us reassuringly before turning and heading off to find out his group, we all followed and – as anticipated – we were all separated so I headed over to the area my group was assigned to.

I walked over and spotted an older boy who was probably the third year of the group, I also noticed that one of the first years happened to be the boy I’d overheard the other day discussing the clean-up with an honours student who was supposed to be excused. Which caused me to raise quite the surprised eyebrow when I spotted a third individual and even more so when I recognised the red hair tied into a ponytail that was becoming rather familiar to me by this point.

“And so, we meet again,” I commented. I grabbed a tool to help clean up along with a bag as I moved over to the red haired girl, she jumped up and turned around to look at me, allowing me to confirm that it was indeed the girl that I had been running into as of late; upon seeing me she smiled brightly before dipping into a bow.

“Oh, senpai, hello again,” The girl greeted. She seemed quite happy to see me though that might have been due to this morning’s incident but when I looked over, I thought I saw a sneer on the upperclassman’s lips which caused confusion to pulse through me before dismissing it as him just being annoyed that were we standing around talking. Shaking my head at his foolish response, I proceeded to spear a piece of plastic before depositing it into the bag.

“You know, once is commonplace enough, twice is a little unusual, three times is suspect, four times is a pattern and by this fifth meeting of ours, we might as well just exchange names,” I admitted. The girl proceeded to giggle at me words before adjusting her tools so that she could hold out a hand towards me which I immediately clasped once my own tools were adjusted to free up a hand.

“Oh yes, I’m Yoshizawa Kasumi,” The girl introduced. She happily shook my hand and I was glad to finally being able to stop referring to her as, the girl, since that was slightly annoying in my mind but I’d never heard any part of her name or anything else about her so it had been the only thing I could call her; thank goodness I could actually address her as something else now.

“Chiba Natsumi,” I stated. With that we got back to our work on collecting as much of the refuse as possible, I pierced as much as I could before dumping it into the bag while Yoshizawa reached into the awkward areas and pulled out any bits that we weren’t able to reach with the stabbing tool; all the while I noticed that the upperclassman was acting weirdly and it set me on edge just a little.

He would call me over at random moments, primarily when I was actually helping Yoshizawa by holding something out of the way or acting as her eyes so that she could grab a piece that couldn’t easily be seen from where she had to stand to get it. I always refused and came over afterwards, but he seemed annoyed by me and kind of dismissed me rather rudely – ruder than Ryūji had ever acted – in response, yet still kept doing it. He also kept the underclassman away from Yoshizawa at every opportunity despite the boy trying to come over on occasion.

“The clean-up is officially complete. Thank you for your hard work, everyone,” Niijima-senpai announced. I proceeded to stretch my arms over my head and I swear something shifted around in my spinal cord which gave a rather satisfying sound, rather back breaking work that was, certainly worse than fighting Shadows. “Would the leader of each group please come and get the soup for their teams?” Niijima-senpai requested. The third year proceeded to walk away from us as we set our tools aside for now.

When the third year returned, I immediately furrowed my eyebrows in confusion when I spotted that the tray he seemed to be carrying only contained three bowls which was rather strange, even if people thought our group only had three members, surely he should have corrected them. The upperclassman set the tray down before picking up a bowl and giving it to the male first year, the second bowl came to me and he then took the last one for himself.

“And where’s Yoshizawa-san’s portion?” I asked. The boy proceeded to look at me before allowing a small scoff to escape his lips and I immediately narrowed me eyes in anger as I realised that he had been acting in a manner that was identical to how people were no doubt treating Ren. “I see,” I coldly stated. With that icy comment, I proceeded to turn and gently placed my bowl into Yoshizawa’s hands.

“Senpai! No! This is your- woah!” Yoshizawa exclaimed. However, her words were cut off when I spun her around and proceeded to gently manoeuvre her away from those two individuals; the audacity of an upperclassman to do that to someone – especially a first year! – for what had to be a completely petty reason in my mind, was absolutely absurd and I could feel my heart thundering in my ears in fury.

“Come on, let’s get away from those rude children. Besides, I’m sure you’re wanting to thank Ren aren’t you,” I commented. If I could, I might have been spitting fire at the way that Yoshizawa had been treated just now, she was likely as tired and hungry as the rest of us, yet he had decided that his petty actions were far more important than having some common decency and getting a hungry girl some food.

As I kept moving about, I eventually saw my curly haired friend sat all by his lonesome on a bench; well, he wasn’t completely alone as I spotted his bag resting by his left leg which at least meant that Morgana was with him. Of course, there was the distinct lack of not only his other three group members but also a bowl of food. My friend was just sat on the bench with his head tilted towards the sky.

“Ren,” I called. At the sound of his name, the boy perked up and tilted his head down in order to see me and his expression was brighter as his lips curled into a smile upon seeing me approach him, I drifted in front of Yoshizawa as I walked up to him. “Let me guess, they ditched you because of the stupid rumours and didn’t even bother to get you food,” I hypothesised. A dry laugh escaped from him as his smile took on a grim edge.

“Nail on the head Natsumi,” Ren admitted. I sighed and shook my head at people’s lack of common decency; at that moment Yoshizawa proceeded to come up to stand at my side which caused Ren’s eyes to flicker to look at her and his eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, hello again,” Ren greeted. Yoshizawa proceeded to greet the boy.

“I’ll fetch food, you two talk,” I insisted. With that, I turned and jogged over to where the food was being dished out to the students who were gathered around; once they were all sorted, I managed to reach the front and thankfully Maruki-sensei was stood there with a ladle in hand. “Hello sensei, can I have two bowls? Two people have been left out,” I explained.

“Amamiya-san and Yoshizawa-san I bet,” Maruki-sensei commented. His expression was rather grim as he said those words and I knew that he must have understood the reasons why they’d been excluded; I didn’t understand why Yoshizawa was being treated in such a manner, but it just made me sick at how they were being so cruel to them.

“Yeah, but I gave my soup to Yoshizawa-san, so I technically need some,” I admitted. Maruki-sensei’s eyes darted to me with a thankful gleam to them as he grabbed two bowls and proceeded to dole out some of the soup into them, thankfully there was still plenty of steam rising from the soup pan which reassured me that the food would still be warm.

“That’s very kind of you,” Maruki-sensei admitted. He passed me the two bowls and I returned to the other two, I found the two of them sat beside each other and they appeared to be silent which a slightly awkward air between the two of them. I reached Ren and handed him a bowl before sitting down on Yoshizawa’s other side and we proceeded to dig into the food which was actually quite good.

“Thanks for the food,” Yoshizawa stated. We had finished the food off and we set them down on my other side since that was the only free space on the bench and we’d be less likely to forget them there unlike if they were on the floor. “I wanted to thank both of you again for this morning. That man was even more frightening than he might have appeared to you… so I truly appreciate what did for me! Thank you so much,” Yoshizawa admitted.

“Don’t worry, it was nothing,” Ren stated. I could see Yoshizawa look surprised by how calmly he had said those words which caused my lips to pull into a smile at how he was acting so calmly; I rested a hand on Yoshizawa’s shoulder which caused the girl to primarily focus her attention upon me instead of lightly flicking her head like she had been when she thanked us for helping her out.

“He’s right, you’re our kōhai so looking after you is part of being a senpai. Besides, it’s also a basic part of human decency… though that seems to be lacking recently,” I agreed. Though I did mutter the last bit under my breath, of course the two sat with me heard my words and Yoshizawa frowned deeply while Ren scowled slightly at the truth in my words; I’m starting to think that dark aura that the Velvet siblings had warned me of might have something to do with it.

“There’s one more issue I need to address… I’m also so sorry for what happened the other day!” Yoshizawa exclaimed. She had moved her head so that she was looking at Ren as she said this so it must have been to do with him, although Ren looked very confused by this exclamation. I had no idea about what they could possibly be talking about either, so I was in no way able to help them understand what was going on.

“You’re going to have to clarify,” Ren requested. It was probably the best way to get any kind of understanding about the situation that Yoshizawa was referring to, though given how Ren was so confused I could only assume that it was something that had completely slipped his mind; I focused on the red headed girl who was looking quite uncomfortable.

“The run-in we had outside of the guidance office,” Yoshizawa clarified. That only got a confused exchange of glances and a shake of the head from Ren. “Kamoshida-sensei had just told me about you a moment prior, so I sort of spoke without thinking there… I heard some of my classmates gossiping about you, too,” Yoshizawa explained. That much have been when she came to me about the rumours.

“That?” Ren asked. He suddenly snorted and started laughing slightly, a relaxed expression on his face which caused Yoshizawa to untense her muscles. “That was hardly even something I paid attention to, no need to apologise,” Ren insisted. A breath of relief rushed out of Yoshizawa knowing he wasn’t offended by that incident. “Well, what did you think when you heard I was a dangerous criminal,” Ren asked. His tone just fighting off the darkness that edged in whenever he thought of his unjust punishment.

“I was surprised, but I don’t like gossip or rumours like that. But hearing from a teacher… well I found Chiba-senpai and asked her about you. She told me to use the moment we interacted at the train station to evaluate you, not the rumours,” Yoshizawa admitted. Ren shot me a thankful look and I gave him a smile. “And I know this’ll sound strange since I just met you, but you don’t seem like the kind of person they describe. It’d be a different story if all those rumours were actually true, though,” Yoshizawa added on. I was feeling a little worried about what these rumours where. “What were all the crimes I’d heard? Burglary, murder and… elephant tusk trafficking, was it?” Yoshizawa mentioned.

“I get falsely accused of hitting someone and this is what happens,” Ren muttered. He hung his head in dismay and I understood exactly where he was coming from; while burglary might be people playing a game of telephone, I don’t understand how they came up with the murder charge since Ren would be imprisoned if that was true and where the trafficking rumour came from… people’s minds were truly baffling sometimes. “I swear, I have done none of that and hearing that is a first for me,” Ren promised.

“It’s absurd, isn’t it? Rumours can’t be trusted at all, yet everyone starts shaking in their boots whenever they hear your name,” Yoshizawa admitted. At least she did seem to care about what was being said about Ren which had me feeling relieved about that fact. “You know what, it just hit me, I haven’t introduced myself yet!” Yoshizawa exclaimed. So, she finally remembered that Ren didn’t know her name yet.

“I’m Amamiya Ren,” Ren introduced. He was just being polite, yet Yoshizawa’s face turned almost as red as her hair while her eyes when wide with some kind of emotion that I didn’t know what to make of it; it seemed to be a rather extreme reaction to have simply to hearing Ren’s name, unless these two somehow knew each other but that would be a heck of a coincidence to be happening right in front of me.

“Oh, I’m sorry to make you go first Amamiya-senpai. I apologise this was such a long time coming, but I hope we can get along well!” Yoshizawa apologised. She was flustered over not introducing herself first… too formal. “I believe you already learned from our meeting at school that my-,” Yoshizawa began to introduce but a sudden cry escaped us nearby; the cause of this was a child who lost hold of their balloon.

Yoshizawa reacted immediately. She sprung from her seat and once on two legs, she jumped. Her legs stretched out as if she was a ballerina and she deftly grabbed the balloon string. As gravity reasserted its’ pull on the girl, she snapped her legs together and curled them. This allowed the balls of her feet to impact the ground first and Yoshizawa easily curled into a ball to roll forward slightly.

“Wh-what the hell just happened!?” Morgana exclaimed. Not that I can blame him since I was staring after her in surprise at what she had just done. “Oh look,” Morgana pointed out. I followed his directions and saw that on the ground was a Shūjin pocketbook, Ren reached down and flicked it open, seeing a picture of the girl – albeit with brown hair instead red but an exact match none the less – with Yoshizawa’s full name inside of it.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to run out on you like that,” Yoshizawa apologised. She must have returned from catching the balloon and I had some questions to ask her about how she had managed such a thing since it seemed like she was quite skilled; Ren proceeded to flick the pocketbook closed as he lifted his head to look directly at the first year.

“It’s fine, Yoshizawa Kasumi-san,” Ren stated. He then held out the pocketbook towards her, I watched the girl to see how she would react to Ren suddenly knowing her name and I saw that her eyes were wide and rather unblinking as she stared at the boy in silence as she seemed to be processing his words before finally blinking her eyes after what felt like a long time but was likely only seconds.

“Huh?” She expressed. Yoshizawa turned to look at me, but I shook my head and then pointed in the direction of her pocketbook, Yoshizawa looked down and understanding filled her eyes and she took the object back from him to file it away. “I guess you sleuthed me out before I got to tell you,” Yoshizawa stated. Ren nodded his head in agreement before seeming to shift his focus suddenly.

“That was impressive, by the way. Are you an athlete? I think my homeroom teacher implied you were,” Ren wondered. It was the most likely possibility as she had moved in a manner that spoke of quite a long time of practice and the way she had held that split leg pose seemed to imply some kind of dancing movements were involved in whatever it was that she happened to be a part of.

“Figured that out too, huh? Well, yes. I compete in rhythm gymnastics,” Yoshizawa explained. Ah, that would explain the movements that she had made, since that sport was rather close to dancing in its’ style. “It’s not that difficult once you get the hang of it, just a hop, skip and a jump,” Yoshizawa explained. She seemed pretty dismissive of her skills which didn’t sit well with me.

“That would explain why it looked like a ballerina pose,” I acknowledged. Yoshizawa nodded her head in understanding as I proceeded to shift my position slightly to look at Yoshizawa more directly. “Also, don’t sell yourself short. All skills are things that take hard work and effort, you’ve clearly put a lot of time and energy into refining your ability,” I chastised. She should have more faith in her capabilities especially with how elegantly she had moved to retrieve the balloon.

“Thank you senpai,” Yoshizawa admitted. But she didn’t look happy, her lips were pinched and she was staring off to the side as if something I had said was actually causing her pain which caused my eyebrows to furrow at how she happened to be acting; I don’t know if I had said anything that should cause her to look so upset but I just have for her to be acting this way.

“Gymnastics huh? Hey, don’t you think some of those moves would be awfully useful? I was just thinking about how the Phantom Thieves need to get some sweeter moves, too,” Morgana suggested. It did seem like something that would be useful to us, if we could learn how to move as flexible as a gymnast could then it would benefit us if we ever needed to escape from an ambush.

“What’s the matter senpais? Wait… is there a cat somewhere around here?” Yoshizawa-san wondered. Ren adjusted himself in order to put his arm over his bag as casually as possible so that Yoshizawa wouldn’t get suspicious, nor would she realise that Ren had a cat with him which could get back to the teachers and get him in trouble if they later found our healer at the school with Ren.

“Would you be able to teach me how to do that?” Ren asked. Thank goodness he had diverted her attention with that as Yoshizawa’s wandering eyes immediately focused back on Ren and she seemed almost delighted by what she had just heard if the gleam in her brown eyes was anything to go by; I was curious about expanding my repertoire as well, so I shifted slightly to lean my elbows on my knees.

“Both of us, actually, that was pretty incredible,” I added on. This caused Yoshizawa’s expression to start rivalling Ann’s in its’ brightness as a smile made its’ way onto her face; she seemed rather happy to hear that we were interested in learning about her sport, although I don’t think it was enough for her to start rivalling the sun with that bright smile, but I was glad that she seemed so happy compared to be scared or slightly sad earlier.

“Does that mean you’re both interested in gymnastics?” Yoshizawa asked. We nodded our heads in answer to that question, even if we had different reasons than any she might think of. “That makes me so happy! I’d be honoured if you’d allow me!” Yoshizawa cheered. She certainly seemed to be energised after hearing our request to learn but then her expression darkened slightly. “The only problem is… I have a favour to ask for myself as well if you don’t mind,” Yoshizawa wondered. Me and Ren shook our heads to show we had nothing against this. “Lately, I haven’t been getting the results I want from my performances and I’m worried that I’m overthinking things. So, it would be wonderful if you could give me some advice whenever you have the time,” Yoshizawa admitted.

“Sure… but why me? Natsumi already gave you good advice, so she makes sense, but why include me?” Ren asked. It did seem a little odd to ask for advice, especially considering it was with a subject that neither of us had much knowledge of; I might be able to help a little bit more since I could identify physical aspects of her routines given my dad’s training, but I don’t know how much help I’d be.

“I… don’t know, actually. I just get this feeling, that you two would give some really good advice,” Yoshizawa admitted. I could understand that reasoning, Ren gave me some pretty good advice and sometimes he could see straight to the heart of a matter while the rest of us got a little bit confused and lost trying to solve it. “Though, it might be best if I trained you two separately, that way I could really concentrate on each individual,” Yoshizawa added on.

“This sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me, what do you think?” Morgana asked. I had nothing against such a thing, the separate training sessions would honestly be best for us since it would enable Yoshizawa to focus on each of us as individuals to better access our abilities and then we’d be able to give her the best advice we could as we learned about her as an individual.

“We have a deal/Looking forward to it,” Ren and I spoke at the same time. It seemed that we would have something new to start learning and I would have to find a way to pass it on to the others, I didn’t want to overwhelm poor Yoshizawa especially if she had to deal with Yusuke and Ryūji’s personalities; plus, it also mitigated the risk of someone accidentally blabbing to her about our activities.

“Yes sir, ma’am!” Yoshizawa energetically replied. That seemed a little bit much but at least she was enthusiastic about us learning. “Wait that’s a little overboard. But I promise! I’ll glean as much as I can!” Yoshizawa declared. I chuckled slightly at her energy which seemed to rival Ryūji’s normal bouncy energy. “Oh, why don’t we exchange contact information,” Yoshizawa realised. She then pulled out her phone but then looked down at it in confusion which took away that bright energy. “Huh? It shut down… sorry, my smartphone’s been acting up lately,” Yoshizawa admitted. Well, that was rather strange, I wonder why it was randomly acting up, I couldn’t see anything odd about the phone from where I was sitting so it didn’t look damaged. “Ha, it’s back! Okay, I’ll contact you when I’ve got free time, if that’s fine!” Yoshizawa decided. I decided to ignore how strange that situation was as we quickly exchanged numbers and an announcement came that the clean-up was ending soon so we were to bring our empty bowls over.

“Since we’re already here and it’s a nice day, plus we’re in our gym clothes, do you want to get the first lesson in, Yoshizawa-san,” Ren suggested. Our new friend agreed and she had us do some stretches before moving on to core exercises.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 50: - More Mementos

Before I could even consider my plans for the day, a message had popped up on the group Chat from Joker, it requested that we meet up at the café for some Mementos exploring. I quickly got myself sorted and took off, running into Ren and Morgana along the way obviously. At the café, Ann was already waiting for us and we sat down to join her with Yusuke coming over in a few moments and it took a little longer for Ryūji to arrive.

“This is our intel on the cat abduction incidents occurring in Yongen,” Morgana revealed. All of us proceeded to exchange concerned looks since Ren and Morgana kept us updated on the progress they had made on this case. “Our target is Aino Ryoko, who lives in Yongen. It sounds like many cats have fallen victim, and the neighbourhood’s residents have already made complaints,” Morgana summarised.

“You almost got abducted too, right Morgana? It seems super dangerous and I heard that the police aren’t willing to do anything about it either… we’ve got to help out the cat owners in any way we can,” Ann insisted. That had been quite a terrifying bit of information and led to Ann and I giving Morgana rather tight hugs while Ryūji had been quite angry and Yusuke expressed a sense of deep worry for such an incident occurring.

“Yeah… but there is somethin’ that I’m confused about,” Ryūji admitted. All of us turned to look at Ryūji, wondering what the blonde punk had to say about the incident which was already highly unusual to begin with. “Why the hell would anyone call Morgana a snowball? He’s barely got any white fur,” Ryūji explained. That had been an odd development and Ryūji did make a fine point about the paradox between Morgana’s appearance and calling him a Snowball of all things.

“I was wondering the same thing. We may be missing a piece of the puzzle here, but I’ve already sent a calling card, so we’re all ready to go. Let’s solve this one for all the cats in Yongen and their owners!” Morgana declared. Hopefully we’d be able to confront the Shadow and get some answers out of her to fill in all the pieces of the puzzle. Ren lightly knocked his fist again the table top which focused our attention upon him.

“We also have some new intel on a cowardly kid at our school who’s carrying out horrible events using the bullies that are under his control,” Ren spoke up. That must have been related to the previous bullying case we solved the other day. “Apparently, he’s the one who’s behind Takanashi, the bully we trained against recently. It seems that Sakoda Yoshimori is blackmailing people with videos they don’t want made public,” Ren added on.

“Sure, let’s break that bastard,” Ryūji insisted. We were all in agreement to go after these targets, so we decided to head into the strange world.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We arrived in Mementos and the same creepy energy fell upon us, Joker shook it off and proceeded to move towards the wall, opening up a shortcut which got us to the end of the first area. At least we’d be able to see what kind of Shadows popped up in this second area for me and Mona to analyse them, which would make it easier for us whenever we came down to check out the first area.

“Hm, I’m sensing the targets are in a deeper area,” Mona admitted. We proceeded to head into the second area and immediately piled into the Mona-van, Joker quickly got us speeding down the tracks and we occasionally encountered Shadows which manly consisted of Agathion, Bicorn, Incubus, Kelpie, Silky, Obariyon, Berith, and Kodama.

I used my eyes to see them while also trying to make sense of their connections but for some I couldn’t feel any kind of connection to a person. Thankfully Mona came over after each fight and enabled me to list these Arcana that each of the Shadows were attached to which I’m quite glad that Mona could see them no matter what, smoothing over our little investigation. We eventually reached the fifth area, with Mona freezing up suddenly as his ears twitched about.

“I can sense one of our targets in this area! Let’s scour this floor for them!” Mona insisted. Mona quickly assumed his van form and Joker took off into the twisting tunnels of this world until we came upon the entry point, the van proceeded to jump through the portal and we found ourselves facing down one of the Shadows we’d come to face. “Look. It’s Sakoda’s Shadow!” Mona exclaimed.

“Look at ‘im… thinks he’s some kinda hotshot,” Skull sneered. It certainly did seem like Shadow Sakoda seemed to be assuming that he was some kind of important individual from the expression that he had upon his face and the infuriatingly smug smirk just made it even worse. We proceeded to approach the Shadow who adjusted his stance ever so slightly when we approached and I could practically feel the animosity rolling off of him.

“You think you can blame me for what I’ve done? It’s a dog-eat-dog world, morons. Didn’t you hear? Might makes right,” Shadow Sakoda claimed. I was feeling rather irritated just listening to this guy, after all the words that he’d just used were so like something my uncle would say and it really made me want to be sick at hearing someone who seemed so young spouting the same horrendous nonsense.

“No jerk’s got the right to go around blackmailin’ people!” Skull snapped. I was grateful to the presence of my friends as I’m certain that had I been here alone, then I might have got a little more heavy handed with him that was strictly advisable, any reminder to my uncle was something that I was deeply repulsed by; seriously, I even covered my ears whenever his little speeches came on if I was somewhere public, in private the TV was never on to begin with.

“The weak who can’t survive in this world become prey for the strong. Nothing’s wrong with that!” Shadow Sakoda claimed. I sucked in a breath through my teeth in order to keep myself controlled from losing my head too quickly given this fool’s determination to keep reminding me of my uncle; his belief was also a boatload of absolute nonsense.

“Survival of the fittest is a law for the wild world. But you aren’t strong, you are a coward who hides behind manipulation and fear. Why don’t we show you what true strength looks like,” I challenged. This child needed to be taught a lesson about what strength really was, I had some of the strongest people on my side for this fight. However, the Shadow proceeded to let out a mocking laugh that would have been insulting had I been someone not involved in the Metaverse or trained by my dad.

“Haha! You’re a stupid bitch that’s all bark and no bite,” Shadow Sakoda insulted. Was that really supposed to hurt me, frankly it sounded rather childish to me. “Changed my mind. Dogs are stronger than cats or mice. You’re just trash! Now, die!” Shadow Sakoda demanded. He was consumed by black goo and when he remerged, the Shadow looked like Jack Frost, except the body was black, the clothing was purple and the black eyes were a rather intimidating shade of red. “Let me help you understand what survival of the fittest truly means! I’ll devour you!” Shadow Sakoda threatened.

“Watch out! This Black Frost Absorbs Ice, Reflects Fire and Curse, and Nulls Nuke. It hasn’t got a weakness!” I warned. This was going to be a fairly difficult as a fight, but we’d probably have to utilise the Ailment Spells the others had as much as possible in order to actually deal the most damage possible to this extremely powerful enemy. The little twisted snowman spun around as dark energy flowed out from it.

I sensed death within the attack, a deep cloying feeling heavy with a weight that seemed to remind me of mud and stone. I quickly threw myself out of the way alongside a few others. But Fox and Skull got caught, yet despite the creeping eerie aura surrounding them, nothing happened to them. They looked confused before shrugging their shoulders.

Despite how baffling the whole incident had been, we quickly acted. Panther flicked off her mask and had Carmen use Dormina. Unfortunately, the little fiend managed to dodge it. Fox used Goemon to increase Joker’s speed. Joker utilised that to properly ensnare Black Frost in a sleep spell this time. With the snowman now asleep, I was finally able to attack.

Phantom’s Tera Spell brought a shower of rocks down upon the twisted snowman. With our opponent knocked down, I quickly passed to Skull. Our Electricity wielder quickly had Captain Kidd smash his boat into Black Frost. Mona used his Wind magic to pile more damage on the demon. Black Frost quickly recovered and moved to retaliate.

A chilling energy spready this time, covering the same area as the Curse spell. Knowing that it was an Ice spell, I quickly moved away from the source to avoid being caught. Panther did the same which kept us both safe from the attack as the other also dodged. Except for Fox who was completely fine except for a little frost decorating his gloves. Joker quickly made his next move, bringing out Atalanta.

From the Grecian warrior-princess, a weakening aura flowed and pinned Black Frost down. A speed spell wrapped around Panther which allowed her to actually hit the darkened snowman with Dormina. It fell asleep this time; Skull quickly used another Skill attack on Black Frost which knocked it down. Skull passed over to me and I quickly used Gry this time. Mona proceeded to heal Skull of his Life Energy drain which made him perk up from him slumped over state.

We pretty much just kept going like that, dodging the attacks as best we could. Using Ailment spells to put it into a state of sleep or blindness then striking at that weak point. Support Spells were used whenever possible to boost our capabilities or weaken Black Frost. Mona, Panther and occasionally Joker would heal us whenever the others got hit by the ice, but we all avoided that cloying death darkness thankfully. Eventually Joker hit it with a powerful enough Psy Spell that it knocked Black Frost down and his appearance changed back to that of the horrible boy.

“I’m not a loser… I’m strong, I’m strong… I am strong… aren’t I?” Shadow Sakoda pleaded. He sounded so pathetic now, now that he had been beaten by people much stronger than him, now he was seeking some pathetic validation of his own strength; Joker walked forward and pressed the tip of his dagger underneath the Shadow’s chin which caused him to tense up at feeling the sharp point.

“I thought you said this was a dog-eat-dog world,” Joker commented. His voice was icy cold as he said those words, it seemed that Joker had taken a great deal of issue with the mind set this Shadow Sakoda said and our leader was using the opportunity to vent those feelings; not that I blame him since he had been raised by people that seemed incredibly kind so perhaps this mentality irked him, or it might have reminded him of that awful man.

“Why don’t you just admit you lost? You’re acting kind of pathetic right now,” Panther chastised. A sneer was upon her lips as she said those words; in fact, a small glance at the expressions upon my comrades’ faces, showed that each of them were pretty much in the same boat as Panther and Joker, we each had problems with the way that this boy perceived the world.

“Yes, I know I am,” Shadow Sakoda agreed. Well, at least we could see that the Shadow had been affected by our actions, the Change of Heart was likely going to take effect now that we’d beaten him; hopefully he’d get rid of all that blackmail material now which would stop all of the bullying that had been going on at our school, the less chaos we had to deal with would be better for all of us.

“Alright. Now, it’s time for you to get eaten. The strong eat the weak or somethin’, right? When I’m done with you, there’s gonna be nothin’ left but bone. You ready?” Skull threatened. Shadow Sakoda panicked, begging for forgiveness when hearing those words while we all turned to give some wide-eyed looks of worry. “Kiddin’. You don’t gotta say sorry to us. Go apologise to who you really need to apologise to!” Skull insisted. His dark expression bright with a sunny smile now, which relaxed all of us; Shadow Sakoda vanished, which left behind an object that identified as being called an Evil Snow Crystal which Joker snagged and I had no idea what to make of it given its’ strange energy.

“Our other target is a bit further down, so let’s keep going,” Mona insisted. We all agreed and proceeded to leave the sectioned off area, once back Mona transformed and Joker quickly got us off towards the next area; let’s just hope that Shadow Aino was a much more palatable individual than Shadow Sakoda had been.

We proceeded to race through the eerie area until we reached the next area and Mona immediately sensed that our next target was located in this section, which started our search for the hole that would bring us to Aino’s location. Soon enough we located it and proceeded to jump inside the hole which would bring us to the crazy cat-napping lady.

“There! That’s Aino Ryoko. Let’s Change her Heart for the sake of all the cats in Yongen!” Mona insisted. We definitely needed to get those cats some help, if the information Joker had learned was anything to go by then they were in some pretty serious distress; that couldn’t be healthy for them, plus she’d almost kidnapped Mona which was definitely not a good thing for us to endure, especially poor Mona.

“Aino Ryoko? You’re gonna let all the cats in Yongen go,” Skull insisted. We had reached the Shadow who had actually seemed pretty meek when we walked up to her, but the moment those words left Skull’s mouth, her entire demeanour changed in an instant, she became tense and I sensed some anger start to build within her.

“No! Without me, Snowball and all the other kitties won’t be safe and happy!” Shadow Aino insisted. However, her words seemed to be a little off, apparently Aino had been referring to each of the cats that she chased down as being Snowball despite many of them not actually being white; but the reference to other kitties was the most unusual thing which caused me to tilt my head slightly in curiosity.

“‘Other kitties’?” Mona echoed. It seemed that he had also caught on to the unusual phrasing of her words, I was trying to wrap my head around the way that Shadow Aino’s mind was working at the moment. “Hey, what are you talking about?” Mona questioned. But the moment Mona called out, Shadow Aino focused upon him and her eyes went wide with an almost frenzied kind of delight.

“Snowball!?” Shadow Aino cheered. Panther quickly scooped Mona up and held him close to her while turning her body to the side to protect Mona from the Shadow. “C’mere kitty! You’ve gotta come over, too!” Shadow Aino insisted. She reached her hands out towards Mona, but Panther stumbled back to keep our healer safe, Shadow Aino took offence to this and proceeded to transform into a Nekomata. “I’ll be the one to protect the Snowballs! I won’t let anyone stand in my way!” Shadow Aino vowed.

“It resists Psy and is weak to Electricity,” I warned. Joker immediately had Atalanta out and lowered Nekomata’s defence in order to make this fight slightly easier than the previous one. Skull cracked his knuckles and quickly fired off a bolt of Electricity. Nekomata was knocked down and we all dived in for an All-Out Attack. Unfortunately, she managed to claw to her feet and Nekomata lashed out.

The cat lady lunged forward and swung her claws towards Fox. She managed to lash the needle points into Fox’s arm. Thankfully the Rebel’s Armour stayed strong but the pain on Fox’s face was clear even through his mask. Panther lashed her whip out, tangling it around Nekomata’s waist. Joker ran over and helped Panther haul the cat woman away. Mona quickly healed Fox’s wounds. As for me, I pelted Nekomata with a lot of rocks.

Skull proceeded to toss some lightning at Nekomata which allowed us to enact an All-Out Attack. But this time when the cat lady got back to her feet, there seemed to be something different about her. Instead of getting back into the battle, Nekomata remained hunched over as she tentatively began to move towards us. I saw that she seemed to be slightly defeated from the way her shoulders were collapsed and the flickering wildness within her eyes as her wickedly sharp claws were clasped together in front of her chest in a rather meek manner.

“Please! Stop it!” Shadow Aino pleaded. She was hunched over and seemed to be struggling with something which confused me even more, this whole issue was more confusing than any of the other requests we’d dealt with. “If I’m gone, there won’t be anyone protecting the snowballs!” Shadow Aino insisted. That caused all of us to stop and we proceeded to look at each other in confusion.

“Joker, it seems like there’s something going on with this one. Maybe we should try talking to her,” Mona suggested. Joker nodded his head in agreement, unlike other negative emotions, this seemed almost like Shadow Aino was suffering from some kind of sadness instead of the typical arrogance or rage. “Okay, here’s what we know about her. She’s calling the cats she catnapped ‘snowballs’ the catnapped cats are ‘stressed out’ and lastly ‘the pet owners are giving up’,” Mona reminded. Let’s hope this information would help us.

“All I want to do is protect the snowballs. I have to protect them; I just HAVE TO PROTECT THEM!” Shadow Aino ranted. Her sadness was clearly turning her emotions into a rather intense protective drive, which could only make this fight worse if we let it continue; Joker acted quickly and put his dagger away while holding his hands up, likely trying not to present himself as being a threat to the woman.

“It’s alright, just calm down,” Joker insisted. We definitely needed the Shadow to cool off if we wanted any chance of talking her down from the clearly distressed state that she had worked herself in; if definitely couldn’t be good for her sake to keep all of this bottled up inside of her, the stress must have been hurting her as surely as the stress was harming the cats she had locked away.

“I am calm… of course I’m calm… I need to stay calm for the snowballs,” Shadow Aino insisted. There she went again, her mind was hyper focused upon calling the cats snowball and it was starting to weird me out, something must have happened to cause this because I’m fairly certain that no amount of colour blindness could turn everything – or at least every cat – white.

“What does she mean by snowballs? That’s so weird. Are all cats snowballs?” Mona wondered. It was certainly a fair question to ask, but we’d only get the answers by asking Shadow Aino, I just hope it was something that the rest of us could actually understand because so far, I was drawing a blank about this whole situation.

“Snowballs are snowballs,” Shadow Aino insisted. Well, that made about as much sense as throwing wood on a fire to put it out, I really wanted to know what was running through this distressed woman’s head because it was clearly affecting her ability to think with even the tiniest grain of rationality; even the others seemed baffled by the words that Shadow Aino was speaking… we certainly had our work cut out for us on this one.

“Are there a lot of snowballs?” Panther asked. Her tone was gentle and soothing, likely hoping to ease the distressed Shadow so that we could get some answers out of her; Panther was giving Shadow Aino quite the concerned look and I didn’t know what could be spinning around in her mind, but it was obvious that the Shadow’s state was really hitting something inside of Panther.

“That’s right… they’re all snowballs. I have to protect them. As long as I protect them, the snowballs will be happy,” Shadow Aino insisted. She was clearly oblivious as to how the current arrangement in their lives was actually having a negative impact on the cats she had imprisoned; Shadow Aino needed to understand this so that the real Aino would, but if any of us made one mistake then we could easily re-spark the fight.

“Don’t you realise the cats are stressed out,” Skull commented. His expression was also concerned, but more of the baffled variety, though whether that was at the way the woman’s mind had been twisted up or something else I couldn’t tell; we just needed to figure out the answer before things got out of hand again and from the flash across Shadow Aino’s face, it seemed like we were actually getting somewhere.

“W-Well that’s…,” Shadow Aino spoke. So, it seemed that she did realise how the cats were suffering, but for some reason she was turning a blind eye to it, which was quite concerning given how obsessed she seemed to be about the cats. “But if I don’t keep an eye out for the snowballs, they’ll die too,” Shadow Aino claimed. That caused all of us to exchanged wide eyed looks, everything finally falling into place.

“They’ll ‘die too’. I guess that means the real Snowball is already gone?” Fox realised. That had to be it, the death of the original Snowball had triggered a breakdown in Aino’s mind which was the cause behind her running around and catnapping every feline that she came across; the poor woman definitely needed someone to help her out of this situation.

“I think this is enough for us to work with. She’s calm enough for her to be talked down. Would you do the honours, leader,” I suggested. Joker nodded his head and gently approached the hunched over Shadow, with a soft expression on his face, I did feel sorry for this woman and how her life had suddenly been upended all because of whatever had happened to her cat.

“Snowball is gone,” Joker calmly reminded. We needed to clear up her mind so that she could accept the fact that her Snowball was gone and that she could not keep treating the other felines this way; I could respect that she was actually trying to do something kind for the cats she found, but the way she was going about it was the wrong thing.

“You’re… right,” Shadow Aino agreed. Her form then returned to the human form it had when we first got here, proving that she had calmed down now. “I found this white kitten and took it home, but it wandered outside while I wasn’t looking. And then… I saw it get run over by a car. The car just kept driving, even after it ran over the kitten. Since then, I see that kitten in every cat. I always think ‘I have to protect it this time’!” Shadow Aino explained.

“It’s brought you a lot of suffering, huh,” Mona realised. It certainly had, this was also a real eye opener for us, it wasn’t just the arrogant, self-centred and cruel emotions that could cause people to develop Shadows; it was also others, sad emotions, like hurt and loss, something which I guess I understood given the confusion that had spawned Rise’s Shadow five years back.

“No… the people who really suffered are the owners and their cats,” Shadow Aino admitted. Well, we couldn’t really argue with that comment either, as they had most certainly suffered but that didn’t mean that Aino hadn’t suffered either; whoever that person was who ran over poor Snowball was to blame for all this suffering.

“It’s all right. You realised your mistake… just don’t do something like this again,” Mona insisted. We really needed her to not do this again, those poor cats had been through enough already and so had their owners, it would be best for everyone if Aino finally gave up her desperate desire to protect every cat she came across, in place of the one that she perceived she had failed.

“Yes. Thank you, Kitty-san. Um… I have a lot of cat food at my place. So please come over sometime,” Shadow Aino requested. That showed that beneath the intensity she had display, Aino Ryoko actually had a very kind soul; she had been so desperate to avoid the cats suffering from the same pain that her Snowball had endured was the whole reason behind her actions and distorted mind.

“I am not a cat!” Mona protested. Panther and Joker both nudged the cat who calmed down slightly as he focused upon Shadow Aino once more. “But… that sounds nice,” Mona decided. A big smile spread across Shadow Aino’s face at those words; hopefully she could be a bit freer after this incident and let the cats she’d taken go back to their owners which would certainly make them happy.

“Thank you,” Shadow Aino admitted. And with that, she disappeared leaving a cat brooch behind, Joker took a hold of it but the frown on his face – a frown that all of us shared – proved this had been quite the perspective changing request.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 51: - Strength, Tower, Fool

Margaret leafed through the Compendium that her Wild Card had left behind, it didn’t really supply her with any answers, but it did give her a sense of comfort to think of the trials that Yu had endured and overcome, hopefully Margaret would be able to do the same. Their investigation would be beginning today and with it maybe the attendants would be able to find their own truth as to the fate of the Velvet Room.

“I have contacted Natsumi and she will be meeting us shortly,” Elizabeth called. Margaret lifted her head to look at her younger sister, as much as Elizabeth might irritate her, they had put aside their differences in order to work together; even though Elizabeth was reluctant to give up her search for a way to safely dissolve the Great Seal. Theodore released a sigh of relief; he had successfully found a recent site of such an accident and they were currently outside the train station in the area they had encountered the young Betwixt.

“Let’s just pray we’ll find something before something else happens to us or this city,” Margaret insisted. The eldest attendant couldn’t deny how agitated this made her, even if their master rotated the attendants for each guest, none had ever been excluded from the Velvet Room before; in fact, they typically cared for the Personas and Compendiums of ages past, so long as their training had been completed of course.

“It is a shame that neither Izumi-san nor Sakuya-san can aid us in this endeavour. I feel it is wrong for us to drag Natsumi-san into our issues in spite of her encouraging us to actually do something this time around,” Theodore spoke up. Margaret couldn’t deny that having one of the elder Betwixt would have been preferable, but neither of them seemed to be capable of coming to Tokyo at the moment which Margaret found quite suspicious… as if something was repelling them intentionally.

 “We must make do with what we have little brother, whether we like it or not,” Elizabeth advised. Theodore nodded his head, but the grim expression on his face did not change and Margaret wondered if they were doing the right thing about hunting for the information regarding those unnatural accidents; a quick shake of her head dispelled those thoughts as the elder attendant focused herself, this needed to be done and Margaret couldn’t afford to question it.

“You do realise that it’s half five in the morning,” A groggy voice commented. All of them look over to see Natsumi walking over to them, she wore an outfit that looked to be a uniform with a bag over one shoulder; in her right hand was a large flask releasing steam, which she took a quick drink from. “Most people my age, are still dead asleep,” Natsumi pointed out. Her hair was still slightly mussed from her sleep and her eyes were slightly droopy.

“Which makes it the perfect time to go to the train station,” Elizabeth pointed out. Natsumi shot a mildly dark look at the cheerfully smiling attendant, but Margaret knew that not only was Elizabeth immune to such looks, but also Natsumi’s attempted glare was ruined by the sleepiness that was still bleeding into her eyes. Natsumi returned her gaze to Margaret and she sealed up the flask that she had brought.

“I take it because of the accident back in April, that was because a train driver sped the train into the station and it derailed into the platform. People resigned because of that,” Natsumi pointed out. Theodore shrugged his shoulders, in truth none of them had been paying attention to human news. “Alright, let’s get going,” Natsumi stated. She led the way into the building and set about buying all of them tickets before they got on board the train.

Margaret had to aid Natsumi in wrangling her more air headed and easily distracted siblings, sometimes even dragging them back into the seats they had managed to get. Margaret felt concerned for Natsumi who seemed unnaturally tired, as if all the Soul Power within her had been wrung out, the girl was leaning her head against the heel of her palm with closed eyes. But that just made her exhaustion stand out much more, Margaret decided to insist they avoid such early morning excursions again, a weakened Betwixt couldn’t do her job after all.

Eventually the train rolled to a stop and Natsumi immediately guided the group out of the metal contraption. The moment Margaret’s feet hit the platform, she felt an intense chill rush its’ way up her spine as her eyes widened, something was definitely wrong here, the dark aura seemed to have amplified rapidly, becoming almost encompassing and crushing in its’ presence. A quick glance at her siblings proved they had also sensed the increase in strength.

“This is Shibuya, it’s sort of a central hub for Tokyo. Come on. We can’t stand around here,” Natsumi encouraged. Margaret proceeded to shoot the girl a disbelieving look, shocked that she seemed to be taking this dark presence in stride; it was as if she hadn’t even noticed the heavy choking presence that seemed to almost threaten their very existence. If it had been here a long time, then it might be understandable, but it was still a fairly new thing.

Following after Natsumi, they left the platform behind, but the darkness did not leave them, instead it persisted and Margaret deeply resisted the urge to bat at the air around her in a wild fashion to ward it off. Instead, the eldest attendant held onto the book in her hands and kept casting quick looks about, wondering if she could spot some kind of source for the darkness despite it so obviously being other world in origin.

The siblings wandered around the underground area they had been brought with different auras; Margaret was deeply concerned as she could see nothing to indicate what was causing the darkness. Whatever the source of this darkness was, it was completely different to the fog that had coated Inaba only five years ago, despite something about it feeling familiar, and there seemed to be no physical point of entering it from this location making it feel a little like the Hollow Forest.

“I have to say, it seems most likely that the source of the dark aura likely resides here,” Margaret admitted. She had looked around slightly outside before returning to her siblings, although they seemed to have lost Natsumi, and Margaret knew that the darkness got less the moment one got even a small distance away from the train station; that alone seemed to indicate that this place was the anchor point.

“Yes, I concur. Ever since we reached this area, I’ve felt the oppressive and haunting aura of this place only growing stronger, it’s definitely here,” Elizabeth stated. Elizabeth and Theodore had more experience with other world locations having an anchor in the physical world than Margaret did; interestingly enough, this darkness seemed to carry traits of both the fog and Tartarus which unsettled Margaret slightly as it seemed to imply that the collective unconsciousness was learning somehow.

“However, we don’t exactly have the ability to look for it. We possess no eyes to see the collective unconsciousness and no way to travel there outside of the Velvet Room. We’re lucky nothing bad has happened to us since we were suddenly ejected from our domain,” Theodore reminded. That had been quite frightening, losing their only home so suddenly had shaken Margaret quite a bit… the fear of losing her master and Lavenza continue to be a bitter taste in the back of her throat.

“This is Mementos,” Natsumi’s voice came. All of the attendants turned to face Natsumi who had returned to them with a bland look on her face, reminding Margaret for just a moment of her immediate predecessor. “By the way, could you guys stand out a little less. Your looks and clothing will make people stare anyway, but maybe stop acting so strange… I had to stop several suspicious people from coming after you,” Natsumi added on. A small spark of annoyance laced her words.

“Thank you for your care Natsumi-san,” Margaret admitted. The girl was going out of her way to help them in finding answers about the disappearance of their home and the strangeness that was hovering over Tokyo, yet it seemed their ignorance of this world was making that difficult for her; Margaret didn’t know how to help the girl, but she was grateful for the aid that Natsumi was giving to them.

“What is Mementos, though?” Theodore asked. An appropriate question as Margaret had never heard of such a place before, Natsumi didn’t immediately answer, instead she snapped her head about as if looking for something before motioning for the three siblings to follow after her. They trailed behind the Betwixt with Margaret feeling a little perplexed by the girl’s actions, eventually they reached a fairly deserted area and Natsumi came to a stop.

“Mementos is the collective unconsciousness that exists here, a world where people’s Shadows and others are projected and we can interact with them,” Natsumi explained. Her voice was low and soft as if she was worried about the words being projected away from their conversation; but her words caused Margaret to realise why the feeling was something akin to the fog from Inaba.

“The TV World,” Margaret breathed. The way that Mementos had been described bore a startling similarity to the location that had been the source of the fog; perhaps it was the same thing here and Mementos was the source of the dark aura. Natsumi proceeded to give the elder attendant a confused look before something sparked within her eyes, as if the girl had come to an unspoken realisation.

“Yes, it does seem to bear more links to what your Wild Card went through than ours with Tartarus,” Elizabeth acknowledged. Natsumi’s look of confusion returned as she looked at Elizabeth and Theodore, but it seemed like she wasn’t about to start asking questions about what they were talking about; quite polite of her in Margaret’s opinion since it would prevent their conversation from being derailed.

“But… the last time wasn’t someone in command of such a place, does anything seem to be controlling Mementos?” Theodore asked. That had indeed been the case, Margaret still recalled the panic that had almost engulfed Yu when he realised that someone had been ruling over the TV World this entire time and was prepared to make a move; the power Yu had gathered was barely enough to protect him in time.

“Not really, it keeps changing but it’s a massive collection of people’s thoughts all gathered together, it makes sense for it to change. But I’ve never sensed anything odd about it, it’s got an oppressive energy but not one that seems to have a source,” Natsumi explained. Interesting, that was certainly different to how the TV World operated as each area was rather set in its’ appearance, even if each area was unique based upon which person had created it.

“Intriguing,” Theodore admitted. It certainly made Margaret’s mind spin as she tried to come up with some kind of explanation as to how the new collective unconsciousness could be functioning, each new form always seemed to be different to the previous one and was unique in how it operated; Natsumi suddenly pulled out her phone and frowned at whatever she saw on it.

“Look, I got to get myself ready to go to school. I’ll meet up with you guys later and we’ll continue this. I hope we’ll find something,” Natsumi explained. Ah, yes, Natsumi was still at the age where her education was paramount and it was understandable that she needed to prioritise that; Natsumi proceeded to bid her goodbye and left the area.

“It seems this will require more investigation than we thought,” Margaret admitted. They had some answers, but far more questions had popped up in place of the questions which had been answered; they needed to keep looking into these incidents in order to actually figure out all of the questions that came up.

“Indeed, quite concerning. But at least with Natsumi, we’ll be able to find these places we must visit,” Elizabeth acknowledged. That had been their main problem, Theodore can basically stumbled upon this place by pure chance the other day, so they would certainly need the aid of someone experienced with the area to help them find their way.

“Now, how about we choose where to visit next,” Theodore encouraged.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Shiho did wonder if she had made the right choice to burden Natsumi with the things that had been spinning around in her head, but Shiho also knew that she couldn’t keep all of this darkness bottled up inside of herself, it would be bad for her. Natsumi seemed like the only reasonable choice as her parents would just try to force her into therapy and Shiho wasn’t ready for that yet and Ann didn’t deserve to hear any more about that monstrous thing.

“Good afternoon, Shiho,” Natsumi’s voice came. Shiho’s head perked up and she looked over, seeing the girl gracefully slipped into the room. “No physiotherapy today?” Natsumi asked. She had likely caught onto the way that Shiho was dressed in clothing more suitable for relaxation than her usual exercise outfits.

“No physio today. This is one of my scheduled rest days, I can’t always be burning my muscles,” Shiho admitted. The rest days were randomly assigned based upon how Shiho was feeling after each respective exercise and the following day; sometimes she was perfectly fine to do a slightly less intensive exercise, but today was one of the days where it was better to let her shrieking muscles rest and recover.

“That makes sense, your muscles will need time to recover after each strenuous activity,” Natsumi agreed. She moved over to sit on the chair that was beside the bed, Shiho nodded her head in agreement to those words; this allowed a lull to come over them but while Natsumi seemed completely at ease within the silence that coated them, Shiho couldn’t help but feel a little agitated as she tried to think of some way to lead into the topic that she had asked to sneak to Natsumi about.

“Natsumi, do you like games?” Shiho asked. It was completely different than what she had wanted to talk about, but she did have an idea about what to do with this topic; Natsumi ended up raising an eyebrow at Shiho’s words before a small smile came onto Natsumi’s lips as she proceeded to lean a little closer to Shiho who had scooted closer to the bed’s edge.

“Depends on the type of game you’re asking about,” Natsumi responded. Shiho understood why she had given that response, games nowadays certainly had a much broader definition than the one it used to have; but Shiho had a rather simple idea in mind, it was hopefully something that would take away the unease that was clawing away at Shiho’s insides.

“I was thinking more a card game, can’t exactly play video games in a hospital and I’ve never been interested in them to begin with,” Shiho admitted. Natsumi nodded her head and seemed to relax slightly at hearing that it was a card game; perhaps she didn’t have as much as an interest in video games, similar Shiho herself which warmed the girl’s heart a little. Natsumi clasped her hands together as she focused her sharp eyes upon Shiho with a spark of intrigue in the green irises.

“Which game were you thinking of?” Natsumi asked. Shiho’s lips curled into a bright smile as she quickly reached over to the bedside table and picked up a small notebook that she had managed to get her mum to bring in the other; the games were at least something that could keep Shiho occupied when her school work was finished and she was on a rest day which meant nothing else to look forward to.

“Koi-Koi, I played it a lot with Ann…,” Shiho spoke before trailing off. Shiho flicked to a blank page and quick split it in half with black pen, Shiho stopped and lightly tapped the pen against the page as she focused upon Natsumi again. “And I thought, maybe if I was a little more relaxed, it’d be easier to tell you about what’s going on in here,” Shiho admitted. Natsumi smiled in an encouraging manner which lightened Shiho’s anxiety.

“Let’s try it, do you have a deck?” Natsumi decided. Luckily Shiho did, Ann had managed to bring it by – which is what she’d forgot the other day – so they could play again; Shiho proceeded to use her ingrained dexterity to quickly shuffled the cards several times in quick succession while Natsumi pulled over a table for them to use. “Is a year alright with you?” Natsumi asked. Shiho nodded her head and they each quickly drew a card to determine the dealer.

Shiho won that draw and proceeded to deal the twenty-four cards to start their first round. It was quite easy to get lost within the game as Shiho focused on the strategy, but it wasn’t easy to ignore the pressure that Natsumi’s eyes exerted. That intensity made it slightly difficult for Shiho to focus despite her intent and she ended up losing the first round when Natsumi managed several sets and finished the game after Shiho had recklessly declared a Koi-Koi on the previous turn.

As Natsumi gathered up the cards and proceeded to start shuffling them with her own impressive dexterity and while Shiho watched the graceful movements of her fingers, Shiho’s thoughts focused on the looks she had been given. It wasn’t cruel or anything, nor had Natsumi actually said anything, but it almost felt like her glance was filled with all the words that hadn’t been spoken; Shiho couldn’t help but open her mouth as the words practically rushed off her tongue.

“Sometimes when I feel his touch on me, I just need to get to the bathroom and… scrub myself as hard as possible. But even that doesn’t seem to get rid of his touch,” Shiho admitted. That occurrence had been extremely common shortly after waking up from her coma and she’d almost thrown herself out of her bed in desperation to feel clean again; it had led the nurses and doctors to leaving a jug of water, a cloth and soap nearby if this ever happened and no one was in the room with Shiho. It had faded, but only ever so slightly and Shiho was still randomly awakened in the middle of the night sometimes with that same urge.

“Maybe next time this happens, instead of rushing, do it with purpose. So instead of violent scrubbing firmly press with a single strong wipe down your skin,” Natsumi suggested. Shiho looked at the girl who had a contemplative look on her face, likely trying to think about how to help as her hand was set on the table. “Then afterwards, just gently dab or brush at the area with the cloth. If something doesn’t work, then don’t keep trying it, you probably won’t change the outcome,” Natsumi added on. Those words sounded rather familiar just in a different kind of arrangement, soon Shiho recalled why those words had been so familiar.

“Isn’t that like the basic definition of insanity nowadays?” Shiho asked. A smile on her face as she said those words, a part of Shiho almost felt like she was going insane from everything that was happening to her; it was moments like these with those who cared about her and who cared about her in turn that really grounded Shiho and reminded her that she wasn’t completely losing her mind.

“Yeah, I think it is, but I let you in on a little secret Shiho,” Natsumi agreed. The dark haired girl waved Shiho closer, curious, Shiho shuffled over as Natsumi bent her head to Shiho’s ear with her hand cupped around the ear. “Everyone’s insane, there’s no such thing as normal or sane,” Natsumi whispered. Shiho couldn’t help but laugh at her words, feeling strangely relaxed despite the oddity of their conversation.

They continued their game with Shiho eventually winning the whole game and feeling much happier about talking to Natsumi than she did earlier.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Ren was walking through Yoyogi park, the sun was just starting to set beyond the horizon when Natsumi had contacted him with a request to meet up, he hoped that Natsumi would be more willing to open up today. He knew the topic of her family was still a painful thing to speak of, but Ren really believed that getting Natsumi to open up about them would be able help her the most in allowing Natsumi to actually find her heart.

A soft sound echoed towards Ren and the boy raised his head to look at the source, finding Natsumi had arrived at last. The girl proceeded to sit down beside him and they stayed there in silence for a while, Ren wasn’t entirely sure how to start their conversation but it seemed that Natsumi was in the same position. Ren took in a silent breath before deciding to prod at the sensitive subject, just to see if she would be willing to talk about it.

“Are you up for talking about your family today?” Ren asked. He felt his body tense as he waited for her reaction, waited to see how she would respond to this question a second time; Natsumi exhaled and then proceeded to shift her body so that she was leaning back with her head tilted towards the skies despite her eyes being close. Her face was carefully blank which prevented Ren from knowing what she was thinking.

“Yeah… I’m feeling good about it today,” Natsumi admitted. A soft breath of relief escaped from me at this admission, Ren was glad that she was open to talking about them today as at least it didn’t mean he’d have to scramble for conversation or another idea. “What do you want to know?” Natsumi asked. Her head had tilted down and eyes opened to look at Ren with that intensity common to her green gaze.

“I think we need to head to somewhere you used to spend time with your family first,” Ren suggested. Natsumi suddenly dropped her head down and the curly haired boy furrowed his eyebrows at this action since he had expected her to stand up and start leading him to the location of her old home perhaps or some other place; Ren tilted his head slightly and saw a small upturn of her lips.

“We’re… kind of already there,” Natsumi admitted. She lifted her head to look at Ren and finally saw the confused expression on his face, Natsumi raised her hand and proceed to gesture to their surroundings with her hand. “Yoyogi Park, I used to come here all the time with my family,” Natsumi revealed. Well, that did explain why Natsumi hadn’t made a motion to move away from the bench.

“Huh? Well, show me what all of you would do when you came here,” Ren suggested. He hoped that Natsumi would be able to open up just a little more about her family; Ren knew he couldn’t push too far or too hard, otherwise Natsumi might shut down like she did back in the club room. Ren hoped he’d picked up a thing or two from Maruki-sensei during their sessions.

“Picnics. Especially during spring, we’d always come when the cherry blossoms started to bloom,” Natsumi revealed. She started to look around before spotting something which caused her to reach out and point to an area near two trees which almost seemed to have the tops woven together from how close they were together, perfectly shading the area directly underneath it. “That’s where we’d set ourselves,” Natsumi explained.

“Why there?” Ren asked. It was oddly specific to choose one location, in response, Natsumi grinned brightly and Ren was so struck by the sun beam expression that he barely registered being pulled to his feet and guided to the area that Natsumi had pointed out. Once there, Natsumi let go and thrust her hands out in front of her, indicating that Ren should look in that direction and so he did.

The scene that greeted his eyes was quite impressive, the vast lake stretched out in front of him, making it almost seem like their little area was an island so long as he kept looking forward. The trees on the other side rustled in the breeze which allowed the light to shift and change as it fell through the boughs. When the artificial geysers in the water erupted, the clash with the light would briefly create rainbows that arced through the sky briefly before dissipating. The rippling water was crystal clear and gently reflected the light back off the surface.

A soft sigh escaped from the girl beside him, Ren turned around and found that Natsumi had proceeded to sit on the grass and she had curled her legs around to the side. Natsumi’s gaze was soft, completely open and staring across the lake with a happy smile curving across her lips; Ren lowered himself beside her as softly as possible, to avoid disturbing whatever she happened to be thinking about in this moment.

“I think this view is what convinced Mirai to get into photography,” Natsumi admitted. Ren focused his ears on the conversation but kept his eyes focused on the scenery, he could certainly see how a young child would be encouraged to take up capturing such a beautiful imagery if treated to it every so often. “And Hikaru would always help mum with making the meals that we brought with us,” Natsumi added on. A soft hum, more to let Natsumi know that he was listening to here than any type of response, escaped Ren’s lips.

Natsumi fell silent after those words and Ren started to worry that he might not have said or done the right thing despite Atalanta’s vibrations within his soul guiding him on what to say. But Ren didn’t want to risk speaking up if it disrupted Natsumi when she was busy thinking about something she wanted to tell him; a sudden sniffle came from the girl and Ren’s head snapped towards her. His vision was filled with Natsumi’s legs up to her chest and arms wrapped around them, her head buried against the limbs.

“Hey Ren,” Natsumi muttered. A soft sound that Ren didn’t truly know what it meant slipped from his lips as he focused on the sound of Natsumi’s voice, slightly weary and as if her throat was clogged with something. “Is it wrong, for me to miss my family so much?” Natsumi asked. Ren wondered if it was possible for anyone to hear how much his heart broke when he heard those words.

“No,” Ren answered. He then moved closer and gently wrapped his arms around Natsumi, pulling her unyielding form into his chest as much as possible, Ren lay his head gently on top of Natsumi’s coal black locks. “It’s not wrong, I miss my family every day. The only thing keeping me sane if that I’ll eventually see them again. But you don’t have that reassurance, so it’s naturally you miss them so much,” Ren soothed.

His hands moved in a gentle, soothing motion, one that his sister liked to use on him whenever he got really worked up about something. One hand gently rubbed up and down Natsumi’s right upper arm with a firm squeeze upon her shoulder whenever he managed to grip it, the other was a sweeping motion from side to side across her back where her shoulder blades were with firm presses into her skin every so often.

“Sorry about this,” Natsumi croaked out. Ren frowned at her words, not happy that she was deciding to apologise so suddenly all for letting herself cry; a sudden fury blazed to life within him, the urge to press her for information about her family, try and get information about her uncle, or track down those who knew her in the past and see if they had any information about him rose like a storm. Ren wanted to make the man pay for the pain he had inflicted upon the poor girl and how lost she felt about her own emotions. “I always seem to be getting your clothes wet,” Natsumi added on.

The fury was douse. The urge to press for information snuffed out. A light laugh escaped Ren as he felt his darker impulses fade away in the wake of her words, he was just relieved that she hadn’t been sorry about crying about her family like he had feared. Ren actually took notice of the slight damp feeling that was on the sleeve of his jacket, reaching into his jeans, Ren pulled out a small square of cloth in a bright red shade just like his gloves.

“Don’t worry,” Ren insisted. With that Ren pulled back from the embrace while Natsumi lifted her head, despite how hard it was to see her crying, Natsumi eyes glimmered like jewels when the sunlight caught her tears; swallowing a lump that had appeared in his throat, Ren extended the cloth to Natsumi. “I brought a handkerchief this time,” Ren reassured. And, despite the tears that continued to tumble down her face, Natsumi broke out into genuine laughter. Loud, full and vibrant laughter that echoed over their area as she used the square of cloth to wipe away her tears.

Ren took that incident as a victory for her heart, with a soft smile on his face at the joy radiating from his friend. They remained in Yoyogi park until it got late enough that Ren was sure Sakura-san would get suspicious if he remained out any longer, the two of them stood to their feet and they proceeded to walk away from the park to reach their way home.

Separating from each other, Ren continued his walk to LeBlanc when his phone went off, this was actually a fairly regular occurrence whenever he hung out with his friends or the other people he interacted with. He actually enjoyed the slight check-ups that they engaged in whenever he reached his current dwelling.

“Hey Ren,” Natsumi greeted. “Thank you. And not just for today either. You’ve done more for me then you probably realise,” Natsumi admitted.

“It’s alright Natsumi, you’re a precious friend to me, plus you’ve had a lot of cruelty done towards you recently, it feels like you need to have plenty of kindness given,” Ren admitted.

“You’re a good friend and I’m lucky to call you one of mine. Although…,” Natsumi commented. Ren furrowed his eyebrows at her words, trying to figure out the reason behind her odd pause all of a sudden. “Maybe don’t go forgetting your stuff, like the handkerchief,” Natsumi added on. Ren’s eyes widened at her words before a smirk made its’ way onto his face.

“What if I didn’t forget it? What if it's a gift?” Ren responded. It was the truth, Ren had bought that handkerchief just in case Natsumi ended up crying again, but it was also meant to be a reminder to her that someone was there for her, exactly the reason why he had chosen the bold colour of his Rebel Gloves; a point that Natsumi would be unable to miss.

“Smooth, leader. You been taking lessons from our gentleman healer,” Natsumi teased. Ren could hear the joy within her tone as she said those words and it caused a flutter to occur within his heart, she always seemed so poised and serious that it was a relief to Ren whenever she managed to relax slightly and open up, he didn’t know what happened with the others but hopefully they were also helping.

“Maybe,” Ren responded. The both of them broke into laughter at their shared joking, it was also a relief to Ren to hear Natsumi joking around; she didn’t do it as much as the others, but it was still nice to hear her being so joyful. “Good night,” Ren bid. Natsumi returned it and they hung up, Ren was also quite glad she had suddenly run off like last time… that was so weird.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 52: - Chariot, Faith, Hierophant

Ryūji was at a secluded area of the school, it was a better place to meet since his special training spot had been taken over and Ryūji wanted to avoid angering Nakaoka and the other track team members. He was currently using some abandoned planks of wood as a step up to help with testing his legs. Natsumi was sat to the side, a stopwatch in hand, timing how long he could keep up the exercise at different intensities while tapping her pencil away on the papers she brought.

“You’ll want to increase the amount of meat, eggs, diary products or other foods that can help build muscles. They’ll obviously build up the muscle but can also help with the bone repair. Also, leafy greens, fish whose bones you can eat, anything with fortified flour can help with bone repair too,” Natsumi suggested. Ryūji felt his legs start to ache and since that was the cut-off point, he clapped his hands as he stepped down so that Natsumi could properly record the time; Ryūji was pretty impressed that she could write with her left hand.

“Good idea, good eats and I get my strength back,” Ryūji agreed. Some of the foods that had been listed were things he’d already aware could help but his head was spinning around wondering about how to put some of those into meals. A small hum came from Natsumi and the blonde punk turned to look at his friend who had a curious gleam within her eyes.

“You were pretty handy in the kitchen the other day when we fed Yusuke, so I think you must do cooking a bit,” Natsumi acknowledged. Ryūji shyly rubbed the back of his head at her words, it wasn’t something he brought up a lot but when they needed to make enough food for five of them, Ryūji couldn’t resists getting involved with Natsumi and Ren, just to try and help out a little bit outside of punching Shadows in the face.

“A lot actually, my mum’s always working hard, so I make most of our meals with whatever we can scrimp together,” Ryūji revealed. A look appeared on Natsumi’s face, it was one that Ryūji was slightly familiar with and its’ appearance made him stand a little bit taller, it was the same impressed look she had given him during their first training session when he’d charged at her while her back was turned.

Once a few more minutes had passed and his breath was back under control, Ryūji stretched his legs slightly before starting to step up and down on the planks. He’d already done the slow routine and Ryūji had just completed the middle level exercise, which meant now it was time for the high intensity one. The blonde punk could not deny how nervous he was, since this one would likely wreck his legs if he went too far or too hard.

But that was why Natsumi was here, she had free reign to do what was necessary to stop him if Ryūji went too far. Ren had been given the same pass and he’d actually had to use it on a few occasions, which showed Ren’s strength in the Metaverse wasn’t merely for show. Right now, Ryūji just focused on moving as fast as he could manage without harm himself, eventually he completed the exercise as best he could and started to get his breathing under control once more.

“Ryūji, you can completely get mad at me if you want, but I’ve just been wondering… you curse a lot, but you never let one particular word slip, why is that?” Natsumi asked. Easy to tell what word she meant, Ryūji slumped down even going as far as to lower his knees so that he was in a crouched position with and irritated expression on his face. It wasn’t Natsumi’s fault, just that the memories her words had stirred up always managed to sour his mood no matter what.

“How much do you know about my family situation?” Ryūji asked. He was honestly curious, Natsumi had never said or implied the extent of her understanding about what his life might be like away from school; it was probable everyone knew that he was the son of a bastard of a man and only raised by his mum.

“Nothing actually. I never really paid attention to rumours,” Natsumi admitted. That caused Ryūji’s head to snap up in surprise with slightly widened eyes as he focused upon Natsumi, her expression was completely open and free, showing that she wasn’t lying or having a joke at his expense… not that Natsumi ever really struck him as the kind of person to mock someone so cruelly; she was rather blunt with her accusations or comments.

“My dad was a deadbeat, always seemed to be drunk off his ass and throwin’ fists. Hurt me and my mum more times than I could count,” Ryūji revealed. He tightened his hands into fists as a grimace made its’ way across his lips, he really hated that man. “He also liked to curse… a lot. But he always used that word more than any of the others. So, I don’t use it because I don’t want to sound like him… bad enough I seem to have his violent temper,” Ryūji muttered. The dark memories of how his mum had been hurt because of that man swam through his mind.

“Violent temper… I can hardly call protecting others violence, you might have a short fuse and can come off as aggressive sometimes, but I think the last word I’d ever use to describe you Ryūji is violent,” Natsumi stated. Those words pierced through the dark memories and caused Ryūji to stare at the girl with wide eyes, hardly believing the words that she had so easily admitted; in complete opposition to everyone else.

“Heh… thanks Natsumi,” Ryūji commented. The girl probably couldn’t know how much those words meant to him, the way she so easily dismissed him having a violent temper despite how true it was and that she saw something different in him to others; his mum had always been the only person to say such things to him. “But you’re wrong,” Ryūji stated. Natsumi casually raised an eyebrow at his words while a grim smirk appeared on Ryūji’s lips as he recalled the past. “The whole track team got disbanded ‘cause I took a swing at Kamoshida,” Ryūji reminded.

“Yes, but why did you take that swing?” Natsumi wondered. Nobody outside the track team really knew why Ryūji had taken that swing at Kamoshida, but everyone had believed the whole it was self defence accusation that Kamoshida spread; well, almost everyone probably believed it, Natsumi likely smelled the lie the instant it started being spread about. Ryūji finally slumped onto the ground and leaned back slightly to stare up at the sky.

“Well, we all put up with the insane workouts he was layin’ down. But then he talked smack about my mum’s situation, my worthless old man and then… I lashed out,” Ryūji explained. Even now, Ryūji didn’t know how Kamoshida knew his family situation, though there was every chance that if Kobayakawa really was Kamoshida’s ass licker as much as they thought he was, the fat man probably let it slip just to give Kamoshida want he wanted.

“Still sounds like you were protecting something,” Natsumi commented. Ryūji turned his head to look at the girl who had a smile on her face as she spun the pen dexterously between her fingers. “It sounds like you were defending your mum’s honour. A very kind and loyal thing to do,” Natsumi insisted. The toll of the bell rang out, alerting the two that they needed to get back to class. “Those, by the way, are the first words I use to think of you,” Natsumi added on. Before Ryūji could react beyond a fierce blush, the girl darted out of their little area.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I had arranged for Yoshizawa to come by my house so that she could have a peaceful place to practice with me, I wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to do but it was far better than not learning how to utilise such incredible dexterity and agility. Hopefully, I’d be able to aid Yoshizawa in whatever might be troubling her enough to affect her physical performance, if it was a physical problem then it needed medical treatment… but a mental or emotional problem would be much more difficult.

A knock resounded on the door, so I moved over and opened it up to reveal the cheerful expression on my underclassman’s face. We exchanged a greeting and Yoshizawa slipped inside the building, I guided Yoshizawa to the dojo and let the both of us inside. Yoshizawa’s lower jaw unhinged and she gazed around at the weapons hanging from the walls, I moved further in and stopped at the centre of the room.

“Shall we get started with the training Yoshizawa-san,” I suggested. It would be interesting to see what she ended up thinking of for the exercises Yoshizawa had agreed for us to go through, although at the moment the red haired girl was busy staring at the weapons that decorated the room’s walls. With a small sigh, I proceeded to walk over to Yoshizawa and gently shook her shoulder in order to bring her back to reality.

“Of course, let’s get started with some poses,” Yoshizawa insisted. We head back to the centre and the red haired girl bounced slightly in place, she seemed quite excited about doing this training. “Just follow my lead,” Yoshizawa encouraged. I nodded my head and the girl immediately started to guide me through the poses that she wanted me to copy.

Honestly, the movements required of those poses were rather difficult to obtain and I certainly couldn’t hold them for as long as Yoshizawa. Add on the fact that I’m certain I was grimacing while holding those poses compared to the almost leisurely smile that was on Yoshizawa’s face and the way I stumbled back to a normal position compared to the graceful and fluid movements that Yoshizawa used, it really showcased the experience that she had getting into and out of those poses. Once we were done, we moved over to the side and I propped myself up against the wall.

“I can’t get enough of the harmony between the internal and external oblique muscles,” Yoshizawa commented. She was bouncing again, filled with a happy energy although I was a bit more concerned with gently massaging my leg muscles in order to try and relieve them of any lingering pain after the exercise which had been more intense than I initially expected it to be.

“Why don’t you show me?” I suggested. Yoshizawa grinned quite brightly and moved over to the centre of the room and struck a pose as if waiting for something to start; I suspect, from what little I know of rhythmic gymnastics, this would likely be the music. Yoshizawa soon started to move with bold and dramatic flourishes from her arms and legs, but my eyes narrowed with each motion that she took the further that Yoshizawa moved through her motions.

Yoshizawa continued to move before eventually coming to a stop for good, I kept myself quiet as I thought over the information that I had learned from the little show my underclassman had put on. Yoshizawa was breathing a little heavily and her arms were trembling along with her legs, likely from the exertion that she had just put her body through. I don’t know if she was aware of the kind of strain that she’d forced her body to endure, but I needed to say something.

“I think I might know what the problem is Yoshizawa-san,” I admitted. The red haired gymnastic twisted to look at me with a certain eagerness in her eyes. “Just now, when you were moving. It looked like your body was hoping to move in one direction, only to end up suddenly forcing it to go in a completely different motion,” I explained. Yoshizawa’s eyes widened in surprise at my words, but it had been quite apparent that was the issue, I was actually worried she’d end up hurting herself before the performance was over. “Could something be impacting your thoughts, something you might not even realise you’re thinking about,” I asked.

“Maybe,” Yoshizawa admitted. She was looking down and shifting her weight from side to side as if whatever she was thinking about was deeply uncomfortable for her. “This spring, before I started at Shūjin… I… I lost someone very important to me,” Yoshizawa explained. My eyes widened at her words as sniffled began to escape from Yoshizawa. “It was my younger sister… Sumire, she… she got hit… by a vehicle… and I-I c-c-couldn’t s-s-save h-her. W-w-we’d… b-be-een ar-arguin-ing a-a-and s-she… s-s-stormed off… r-r-right i-into tr-traffic,” Yoshizawa sobbed. Thick, heavy sobs began to escape her throat as tears tumbled down her face with no hesitation.

“I see,” I spoke. I moved over to her and wrapped my arm around Yoshizawa’s shoulder, pulling her against me so that her forehead pressed to my shoulder. “Is that why you changed your hair colour. Because hers was red?” I asked. Yoshizawa nodded her head which at least confirmed why the picture’s colour had been so different. “I take it she was also a gymnast,” I added on. Another nod.

After that, I had no more questions instead simply kept holding the younger girl against me so that she could let out the sadness that she must have been feeling at having lost someone so close to her. I knew something of what she must having been keeping bottled up inside of her, though losing a twin was probably different to losing an ordinary sibling. Eventually the sobs managed to subside from Yoshizawa.

“Thank you senpai, I’m sorry I’m being so much trouble,” Yoshizawa stated. She pulled back and rubbed at her cheeks in order to dry her tears as much as possible, I handed her a bottle of water so that she could hydrate herself, hopefully she’d feel better after letting out such a cry; I know I certainly had back in April.

“You’re no trouble, you’ve been through something terrible. It’s no surprise that you can’t move how you want to when you’re still grieving your sister,” I reassured. Yoshizawa practically devoured the water inside the plastic and at an alarming rate as well. “Don’t you think you should try stepping back from gymnastics while you recover,” I suggested. Once she was done inhaling the water, Yoshizawa looked at me with a strained expression on her face.

“I can’t, my scholarship at school is tied to my gymnastic success, so I need to keep winning,” Yoshizawa explains. That caused my lips to press into a tight line, how self-centred could some people be that they demanded a grieving child keep doing something just so she could keep attending the damn school! I understand scholarships were like that, but it just shows how apathetic some people could be towards the suffering of others when they didn’t give anyone any leeway.

“That’s rotten,” I hissed. If Yoshizawa couldn’t step back enough to recover from the grief of losing her sister because her school attendance was dependant on it, then there wasn’t much that I could do about it to be frank. “Well, I’ll keep trying to help you, but you need to take time to grieve otherwise you’ll never get passed this block,” I insisted. It was clear that the death of the younger Yoshizawa was an albatross around the elder’s neck and if she didn’t overcome it then she’d never get back to her previous performance capabilities.

“Okay senpai!” Yoshizawa agreed. She seemed a little better now, but the watery edge of her eyes and her dimmed smile were quite apparent still, I allowed a small sigh to escape from me as I tried to think about what to do in order to cheer her up, though her infectiously bubbly energy might even rejuvenate Kawakami-sensei simply by Yoshizawa talking to her. At the thought of my sleepy teacher, I could practically hear the ding of a lightbulb idea going off in my head.

“Hey Yoshizawa, as an athlete, you must know something about nutrition,” I asked. Ryūji might also know but I wanted to ensure he’d focus on himself instead of trying to help me; but unlike Ryūji whose ailment was physical, Yoshizawa’s had an emotional weight which meant this sort of thing might be useful in allowing her to come out of the darkness that she was being sucked into.

“Not much, Sumire was always a better cook than me. But I can do my best to help,” Yoshizawa insisted. I nodded my head and proceeded to guide her to my kitchen so that she would be able to look through what I had available in order to better answer my question since I needed to know whatever information she had available.

“What do you know about food and drinks for fatigue? It’s for someone I know,” I admitted. A small hum escaped from Yoshizawa as she drifted over to the cupboards and began to look through them.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Sōjirō was every much considering taking up some kind of hobby, not anything dangerous really just something relaxing to help him take the edge off having to deal with Arata coming back. Thankfully since Natsumi put the fear of Bishamonten into him, he hadn’t come back but Sōjirō knew he wouldn’t stay away forever, in fact the barista expected him to come through the door every time it opened, especially at night.

When the door open, he tensed up and turned around, only to huff in relief when he saw Natsumi step inside, her eyes cutting around before visibly relaxing upon realising that Arata was not present like she had apparently been expecting him to be. Sōjirō hadn’t spoken to the girl since her terrifying display and equally unnerving promise the other day, it had allowed the barista to take the time to think and he had made a choice. Sōjirō was at least going to figure out who had taught the girl.

Natsumi proceeded to move towards her usual seat after giving her order, which was just a coffee this time around, as Sōjirō got to work on the coffee, he took notice of the girl and realised she was rubbing intently at her arms and legs. Raising an eyebrow at these actions, Sōjirō finished up the coffee and added in what was needed to make it drinkable for Natsumi, he walked over to the booth and set it on the table.

“Say, Natsumi-chan,” Sōjiro called. The dark haired girl proceeded to move her gaze to focus on the man with an open expression of her face. “I was wondering who taught you how to fight like that?” Sōjirō admitted. Natsumi’s eyes widened in response, but she didn’t seem surprised or even offended which Sōjirō was quite glad for; it would have been too painful if he accidentally pushed the girl away from him with this single question.

“Oh, I suppose you must have been surprised to see me doing that,” Natsumi admitted. Surprised was one way of putting it, Sōjirō had lain awake that night replaying those events as he tried to understand what had happened. “My parents taught me the basics, they both believed that you should at least be capable of defending yourself, this city isn’t exactly safe after all,” Natsumi explained. Well, Sōjirō couldn’t argue with that logic, it was pretty dangerous in this world. “But the joint locking was actually taught to me by a friend, she was really good at aikido,” Natsumi added on.

“Well, you certainly seem to be putting their lessons to use,” Sōjirō admitted. That would explain how she had been able to restrain him, but it still didn’t clarify just how much strength she actually managed to possess simply for restraint and not to deal any damage to his skin; Natsumi’s voice suddenly let out a hum and this caused the barista to focus on the girl, he immediately noticed the grim expression on her face.

“Did I scare you?” Natsumi asked. Her face showed that she was unsettled by the prospect of having scared Sōjirō, the barista took a deep breath and then allowed it to flow out, he proceeded to slip into the seat across from her and settled his hands onto the desk as he tried to think about the words that he needed to say to Natsumi, in order to wipe that look from her face and reassure her.

“Well… I can’t deny it was a little unsettling, after all I never knew you could do something like that,” Sōjirō answered. Sōjirō figured it was probably best to be honest about what he had actually been thinking at the time of that incident. “Thought, I think what actually scared me… was the way you suddenly changed,” Sōjirō explained. Natsumi’s lips twitched ever so slightly but the barista couldn’t tell whether it would move into a smile or a frown.

“Ah… I guess that would surprise anyone. I’m the kind of person who gets cold when I’m angry,” Natsumi admitted. Thinking back to that moment, Sōjirō barely managed to restrain the shiver that had rocketed up and down his spine at the recollection of how icy Natsumi had become, almost like she was a yuki-onna despite it being summer.

“Natsumi-chan, I wouldn’t exactly call that cold, I’d call it frozen,” Sōjirō commented. Thankfully, the girl didn’t seem to be offended by the words yet her expression didn’t change at all which caused a hard lump to fill up Sōjirō’s throat as ideas spun around his head. “Still, at least I won’t have to worry about you walking around here at night, knowing you can keep yourself safe,” Sōjirō added on. That finally removed the dark expression on Natsumi’s face as she briefly smiled before it faded away and her expression hardened.

“I’m still worried about you though,” Natsumi stated. That caused Sōjirō’s expression to become confused as he tried to understand what Natsumi could possibly be concerned about. “He isn’t back today, but he might come back at some other point when I’m not here… whoever he is, he’s incredibly persistent,” Natsumi commented. Her eyes cut about as if looking for something with a harsh intensity.

“You’re not going to ask who he is?” Sōjirō wondered. He was a bit perplexed as to why neither of the kids had actually gone and asked the question that he’d been dreading; in fact he almost considering berating himself for even bringing it up in the first place, he should just let sleeping dogs lie, but the words had almost seemed to jump out of his mouth before he even considered what that question could mean for him.

“Not really, if you want to tell me then you’ll tell me. All I need to know that he is someone who is hurting you,” Natsumi answered. A shrug of her shoulder followed her words, it was quite a shock that she was just casually brushing off the idea of questioning him, but her words caused memories, cold and dark memories darted through his mind.

“It’s not exactly me he’s hurting,” Sōjirō muttered. The words had slipped out of his mouth before he even realised and his eyes widened in shock at having let something so personal escape from him; Natsumi obviously didn’t miss it, given the slightly raised eyebrow that she gaze him. “Oh- I… um… well- Natsumi-chan I-,” Sōjirō began to scramble. He was desperately trying to recover from this without putting any danger on Futaba.

“But he hurt someone you do care about,” Natsumi stated. Those words screeched Sōjirō’s rambling to a dead stop as Natsumi calmly looked at him, the barista didn’t really know if she expected him to respond to the question, but he knew that it was right to give her an answer; even though it seemed like she might allow him to get away from actually answering the question, but Sōjirō couldn’t run from this particular issue.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Sōjirō agreed. Arata had harmed Futaba so much before he’d managed to get Futaba to safety and Sōjirō always regretted having not been able to save his daughter in time; he had to do whatever was possible to keep Futaba safe from that man’s clutches, it was the only way for him to atone for his failures and cowardice… hopefully Wakaba could forgive him one day.

“Then that’s enough for me to know, he’s a bad man who keeps intruding in your life,” Natsumi stated. A weight seemed to fall off the man’s chest at the fact that Natsumi didn’t seem even a little bit interested in prodding more at his privacy; truly a miracle that Natsumi was willing to ignore something without Sōjirō even having to ask for her to do so.

“Alright, thanks for not prying Natsumi-chan,” Sōjirō spoke. He was grateful that Natsumi was keeping her silence on what must have been many questions plaguing her mind, Sōjirō was desperate to keep Futaba safe from any harm even if what he was doing might not be the best way to go about doing that task; he still needed to do whatever was in his power… no more pain could hurt that innocent girl.

“Of course, Boss. You have been a good friend since I first walked into this place, yet you’ve also respected my privacy. I don’t know who else would do that,” Natsumi admitted. Hearing Natsumi call him her friend, sent an unexpected burst of warmth running through him, it caused a gentle smile to pull at the barista’s lips as his expression softened a great deal.

“Well, it seemed rather rude to push into a young lady’s privacy,” Sōjirō explained. Natsumi proceeded to giggle at the words he’d spoken which caused a bigger grin to curl upon his lips. “But if you ever need to feel like talking about something, I am here to listen,” Sōjirō insisted. He felt like there might be something burdening Natsumi that she didn’t feel comfortable talking about, hopefully this would allow the girl to open up about that.

“Thanks Boss, it’s good to hear and I might do so,” Natsumi answered. Despite her words, there was a pained expression on her face as if something she was thinking about was causing her pain, which deeply worried Sōjirō. “But you know, you can talk to me as well. Even if it’s just telling me if that man shows up again,” Natsumi added on. Trust Natsumi to spin it back around on him, but it caused a breathy chuckle to escape from Sōjirō.

“Okay Natsumi-chan, if you insist,” Sōjirō agreed.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

First and foremost, regarding Yusuke’s scene in this, I have NEVER attended a tea ceremony so I used some videos in order to base it on and around, I apologise for any mistakes but there REALLY weren’t many that had actual detail in them.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 53: - Temperance, Emperor, Magician

Kawakami was busy wiping down the blackboard which had an image of the phantom thieves’ logo drawn on it, she didn’t know who was responsible for always putting it on the surface, but it was really starting to annoy her. Seriously, the exhausted teacher didn’t want to deal with any more unnecessary stress when she felt like collapsing on the nearest table and just going to sleep despite it having only just reached the afternoon.

“Sensei,” Chiba’s voice called from behind the woman. Kawakami stopped wiping and proceeded to turn around in order to look at the dark haired girl and she immediately darted her eyes down to the package that was being held by the young girl, it was a rather large bentō box and Kawakami already had an idea about what the girl intended to do with such an object in her grasp.

“More food?” Kawakami asked. It was still a little strange in Kawakami’s opinion for the girl to have suddenly started worrying about her enough for Chiba to start making her food, Chiba proceeded to nod her head to confirm the fact that there was more food for Kawakami; the teacher reached up to scratch the side of her head at the fact that Chiba was seriously worrying – in Kawakami’s opinion – too much about her.

“You still look tired, I’m still worried about you,” Chiba admitted. Kawakami allowed a small sigh to escape from her lips, in truth Kawakami had actually felt more energetic after consuming the meal that Chiba had managed to prepare last time, it had really helped her get through the day and even her second job; but that effect had worn off by this point and Kawakami was back to her typically exhausted state of being… she really wished there was some way to get rid of this pressure, but this was her burden to bear.

“Alright,” Kawakami relented. Kawakami walked over to the desk and proceeded to take a seat at it, Chiba set it on the table and proceeded to unlatch the different components from the main base. “It’s probably not a good thing that a student is this worked up over their teacher,” Kawakami acknowledged. This causes Chiba to pause in her movements after setting down a container and lifting her gaze to focus upon Kawakami’s face.

“Perhaps, but at least someone is actually worrying about you. I haven’t seen anyone else worrying,” Chiba stated. That was quite true, but Kawakami needed to keep it that way as after all if anyone actually found out… NOPE! Kawakami had to deeply restrain herself from violently shaking her head at that trail of thoughts, Kawakami couldn’t bear actually having that happen to her after all her hard work in trying to keep her teaching job and other job utterly separate.

“Well… thank you for caring so much Chiba-san,” Kawakami admitted. Chiba proceeded to set a couples of thermoses onto the desk alongside the other boxes for Kawakami to enjoy, that seemed to be the last of it much to the teacher’s relief. “I just hope all of this food preparation isn’t going to be impacting your grades,” Kawakami stated. She would not be able to forgive herself if she ruined another child’s future due to her own actions.

Interestingly enough, Chiba allowed a smile to come onto her lips that was more than a little mysterious in its’ nature, Kawakami couldn’t tell what it was supposed to mean but it almost seemed like Chiba was hiding some kind of secret. A secret that seemed to make it seem like she was finding some kind of amusement within the words that Kawakami had just spoken causing the brunette woman to purse her lips in confusion at the action.

“I’ll be fine, Kawakami-sensei. It’ll take more than this to cause my grades to drop,” Chiba reassured. A small hum of something escaped Kawakami’s lips as she wasn’t anywhere near as confident as Chiba seemed to be about her managing to handle continuing to make food while keeping her grades up and whatever else she might be doing. Of course, before Kawakami could get far in opening her mouth, the dark haired girl was already out the room which caused the teacher to sigh heavily.

“Just when I think I know what’s running around in that girl’s head, she suddenly surprises me,” Kawakami muttered. The teacher proceeded to pull the dishes closer and started to open them up, finding some dishes similar to last time, but at the same time some were slightly different or embellished with some additions. “Wow… she really put some effort into making all of this,” Kawakami realised.

It would be rude to refuse the meal after seeing that Chiba had taken the time and energy to not exactly repeat the same meal as before, especially when there was tea to accompany the food alongside water. With a quick thank you escaping her lips, Kawakami set about digging into the food with some enthusiasm.

And it might have been her imagination, but Kawakami could have sworn there was a little spice to the food this time around.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Yusuke was packing up his utensils after a… semi productive day, he was really struggling with his art in the days since battling Madarame’s Shadow, he couldn’t really think about anything to paint which did put him in quite the pickle. Hopefully he’d be able to find some source of inspiration in whatever outing Natsumi happened to have planned for today, it was something she refused to divulge to him. Yusuke left his school and a short distance away he spotted Natsumi.

“I was thinking that maybe you need to see other things, they might be able to help you refine your swordplay,” Natsumi suggested. That was an interesting proposition to make but Yusuke couldn’t find any fault in it, there was probably a thought behind the suggestion that Natsumi had made; Yusuke was intrigued to see what suggestion she might have for them.

“What were you thinking of?” Yusuke asked. Yusuke did want to refine his swordplay as much as possible and he’d already watched many different videos of sword arts especially Iaidō since it had become so fascinating to him since watching the first video; but apart from continuing to practice his sword and learn of more sword styles, Yusuke couldn’t exactly think of how to use other things to improve his ability. 

“Well, there happens to be a tea ceremony going on which we’ll be able to visit so I thought that might be a good place to start. Swordplay is old but it’s tied up with a lot of older traditions of our culture. And our culture is nothing if not rich in beauty,” Natsumi admitted. Yusuke felt an amazed sensation run through him at the prospect of attending such a place, it might just be the thing he needed in order to break him out of the strange malaise that he had found himself in.

“The tea ceremony is certainly an artistic scene, very well this could be worthwhile,” Yusuke agreed. Natsumi smiled slightly and pushed off the wall before walking away to the destination of the tea ceremony that Natsumi had learned of; Yusuke wasn’t entirely sure how to expect this event to go but Yusuke couldn’t deny that he was quite excited to see what he could possibly learn from this ceremony.

As they quickly rushed to the location of the tea ceremony, Natsumi filled Yusuke in on what it was best for him to do after confirming he didn’t have much experience with tea ceremonies himself, granted Natsumi had only attended a couple. It was apparently a very basic ceremony, therefore was outside, but with a smaller number of guests due to the host’s inexperience with tea ceremonies.

Thankfully, they arrived at the ceremony’s location with a few minutes to spare, there were only a few more people there probably bringing the total to about twenty or so, since Yusuke couldn’t see all of them. Once the start time was reached, two Geisha stepped into the room and bowed to them, Yusuke was quick to follow Natsumi’s acts as he also bowed to them; once that was done the Geisha handed out some cups that had steam rising from them, a quick peak inside showed that it was hot water.

Yusuke took a small sip and found that despite the warmth of the month, it was actually quite pleasant and seemed to ease the nerves that had started up in Yusuke on their rush over, it also allowed the thirst Yusuke had developed to be quenched. Once every guest had finished their drink, they returned the cups to the Geisha, one took the cups and left the waiting room; as for the other, she proceeded to guide us out of the room and into the park where the ceremony was taking place.

Walking along the path that they were being guided down, with the trees forming a kind of tunnel above them to gently block the sun from beating down on them, a kind of serenity started to come upon Yusuke. He observed the natural beauty of the park, how its’ trees and flowers gently swayed within the breeze as birds chirped their songs away within the boughs; his stress from not being able to paint seemed to fade away the longer he walked.

Soon enough they came upon a small area that had been sectioned off and was relatively flat, a cloth had been spread across the ground and on top of it was several cushions for the guests. At the back of the ‘room’ was a young woman in an elaborate kimono with many hair ornaments decorating her brown locks, likely a maiko. The young woman proceeded to bow to the group of them and made a gesture for them to enter; recalling there was to be no speaking, Yusuke only bowed quietly.

One of the aides came over with a bowl of water, allowing each of the guests to wash their hands and month, once that was done Yusuke stepped up to the cloth and removed his shoes as everyone else did then sat upon the cushion, a single flower was present in a small section off area. Meanwhile in the centre, enclosed within another sectioned off area was an iron pot and beside the maiko was the utensils that she was going to be using to make the matcha.

The maiko proceeded to greet each of the guests, her voice was soft and warm, a small discussion was held about the park and the flower between the guest nearest the maiko. Once it was done, the host began to carefully prepare the charcoal for the iron pot, along with burning some incense; this caused the area around them to get warm, but Yusuke noticed how the scent given off by the incense did not interfere with the charcoal and instead gently melded with it.

 As the maiko continued with her preparations, heating the water carefully, the aides proceeded to bring out small plates and carefully set one in front of each guest. Upon the plate was a single sweet and once the hosts moved backwards, each guest proceeded to eat the sweet. The moment Yusuke bit into the sweet, he was immediately filled with the idea that this single sweet had been crafted with the idea of capturing the whole of the season of summer within its’ confines.

With the sweet eaten, the host proceeded to bring forth each of her utensils and removed a cloth from somewhere beside her. She carefully wiped the small cylinder that was black in colour, before setting it aside; she repeated the cleaning with the teaspoon, bamboo ladle, matcha bowls and matcha whisk. Once the cleaning was done, the maiko carefully dipped the bamboo ladle into the iron pot and placed a single serving of water into each bowl. The host then took the whisk and gently dipped it into the water to give a little stir before placing it back onto the cloth

After a few moments, the host and aides quickly yet calmly emptied the water into a bowl behind the maiko. Once all the matcha bowls were back in front of the host, she carefully cleaned each one with a different cloth. The maiko then took the teaspoon and black cylinder, which Yusuke realised must have held the tea and carefully started to measure out each serving for them. Once more water was carefully and slowly poured into a bowl, but just one of them before the maiko picked up the whisk.

Yusuke framed the scene with his fingers, wanting to capture the delicate movements and graceful flow of the maiko’s acts as she prepared the tea, trying to visual how it could work with his sword. Perhaps it was a by-product of Natsumi’s instruction, but as the artist faded for the warrior to emerge as Yusuke’s eyes focused upon the wrist and elbow movements as he took in the movements of the muscles within the joints.

Once the host finished, she handed the bowl with the design facing towards the first guest. At that moment, the Geisha returned with Hi-gashi sweets and served those to the guests; the maiko continued to prepare the matcha as each guest gently nibbled on the sweet, once Yusuke’s own bowl was given and he took a sip, he realise the tea was actually Usu-cha which was a thin type of matcha, it was perfectly complimented by the summer sweet and the Hi-gashi sweets he had eaten previously.

Upon each of them finishing the tea and once each utensil was properly cleaned, the host held out the bamboo ladle to them and they started to look at each of the utensils, Yusuke could see that each of the utensils had been chosen with care, there were marks but these were mere signs of age which proved that each had been carefully cared for over a long time. Yusuke felt an appreciation for the host and aides to trust them with such old yet cherished objects. Once Yusuke had finished his examination and Natsumi had finished hers; they joined then other guests and proceeded to leave the cloth covered area; but before they got too far, all of them turned and bow to host and aides. After bowing, they turned and began to walk away from the tea ceremony.

“I must say, that though your movements pale in comparison to the maiko, you are quite close to being as graceful as her, Natsumi,” Yusuke admitted. He was looking at the girl, wondering how the maiden would react to be compared to someone else and deemed inferior; Yusuke did not intend for it to be an insult but… he was well aware of how his manner could sour his words into something that wasn’t intend. Thankfully, Natsumi’s lips curled into an appreciative smile.

“Thank you, Yusuke, that’s very kind. But that is the best way to remind oneself, no matter how good you are, someone’s always better,” Natsumi stated. Yusuke mentally breathed a sigh of relief that she had taken it in exactly the way he had intended for it to be taken; though her words did call to mind a saying that he had once heard but given his life at the time, he’d never truly believed in it.

“One day the student may surpass the master,” Yusuke commented. Madarame always kept taking his artwork and Yusuke had started to doubt the day would ever come that he would be something more than Madarame’s pupil but now, so long as he could drag himself out of this odd slump he had, Yusuke actually had a chance to show his vision of beauty to the world. Suddenly a hand clapped onto his shoulder, dragging Yusuke from his thoughts and the boy looked over to see a grinning Natsumi looking at him.

“And is that not the day a real master would eagerly anticipate,” Natsumi pointed out. Yusuke felt something flutter through him at those words, he could see – in Natsumi’s eyes – the expectations that she held for her students; Yusuke did not know if it was possible for any of them to ever overcome the person who had studied a craft most of her life…

“Indeed,” Yusuke agreed. But at the very least, Yusuke vowed to do his best to rise to the expectations and trust he saw shimmering within Natsumi’s eyes.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Mona bounced through the opening area of Mementos as he looked around, though no Shadows were present as usual, it never stopped the sensation that Mona felt like his hackles were on the verge of turning himself into a massive ball of fur. The thick oppressive energy that radiated from the very air and ground of Mementos always put Mona on edge, he didn’t know why he was so nervous whenever he came down here.

In an effort to distract himself, Mona turned to focus on Amazon slightly twirled her naginata around as her eyes darted into the far corner, she seemed to do that a lot, but Mona wasn’t entirely sure how to bring it up to her. Whatever she was looking for must have not been there as a grim expression came to her face as her eyes moved over to the entrance to the rest of the collective unconsciousness.

“Shall we get going,” Mona suggested. Amazon nodded her head and so Mona proceeded to transform into his van form, his senses in this form were rather different; his senses of taste and smell were dampened but his eyesight was changed while hearing and touch seemed to be heightened. A small shiver ran across his… wheels? Back? Or maybe his head when Amazon settled her hands on the wheel. Mona really didn’t know as it felt like his nerves got a little cross in this form, but it didn’t really hamper him that much.

With a quick press of the accelerator, they shot off into the darkness and easily rolled around the expanse of Mementos. Mona’s headlight eyes darted about as he searched for any sign of the opponents that they needed to find, Amazon kept a steady hand on the wheel as she listened to his directions whenever he spotted a Shadow in the deep gloom of Mementos before her human eyes could catch them.

The moment that Mona found an enemy, they immediately chased after it until they managed to run it down enough to launch an ambush thanks to Mona tackling it with his might. Once the Shadow was on the ground, Amazon leapt out and tore the mask off, allowing them to see what it looked like. Mona immediately turned back and landed behind the Shadow in order to pin it in place and prevent it from escaping. As soon as they were done getting the information, they defeated the Shadow and moved on.

Eventually, they proceeded to move down to the next level, while they wouldn’t be going any further than this as Mona didn’t want to risk them heading into danger without the others being present, the first level was pretty much the only one Mona felt secure in them being able to tackle without risking themselves. They settled down and Amazon pulled out her notebook so that they could look at the information that they had gathered.

“Let’s see, Pixie links to Panther, Jack-o-Lantern links to you, Mandrake links to Takemi-sensei, Berith links to Boss, and Slime to Skull. We know from the other day that Bicorn, Incubus, Silky, Angel, Archangel, and Kodama I haven’t met anyone for, Cait Sith and Agathion we already know, Succubus is Mishima, Kelpie is this trio of siblings I’ve met, and Obariyon is Joker,” Amazon explained. As she spoke, Amazon scribbled in the information in the respective columns that she had drawn up except for the Personas which she had known already or didn’t know yet.

“Right, Pixie is Lovers, Jack-o-Lantern and Cait Sith are Magician, Mandrake is death, Berith is Hierophant, Slime and Agathion are Chariot, Bicorn is Hermit, Incubus is Devil, Silky is Priestess, Kodama is Star, and both of the angelic Shadows are Justice, Succubus is Moon, Kelpie is Strength and Obariyon is Fool,” Mona commented. Amazon proceeded to set down those words in charcoal before pulling back and looking at him. “What about others?” Mona wondered. It would be best for them to make as many connections as possible before jumping to any conclusions based on only a few examples.

“Looking,” Amazon muttered. She flicked through the other pages that she had filled in with the information before letting out a small hum. “High Pixie links to Joker, Jack Frost and Nekomata to you, Eligor… I think that one resonated with Fox, Orobas to Boss, Ame-no-Uzume and Saki-Mitama to Panther, Shiisaa to the siblings, Hua Po and Inugami to Iwai, Mokoi and Matador to Takemi-sensei, Genbu and Koppa Tengu to Kawakami-sensei, Onmoraki to Mishima, and Kushi-Mitama to Doc. Gnome, Pygmalion and Atalanta linked to me,” Amazon answered. Interestingly enough, Mona recognised all the Personas name and their corresponding Arcana, despite being sure he hadn’t encountered all of them.

“Interesting. All of Joker’s are Fool, mine are Magician, Boss’ are Hierophant, Panther’s are Lovers, Iwai’s are Hanged Man, Takemi’s are Death, Kawakami’s are Temperance, Mishima’s are Moon. Skull’s are Chariot, your siblings’ are Strength, while you are Voyage,” Mona commented. It was intriguing that all of the Personas were the same Arcana instead being different, which meant it probably wasn’t their backgrounds, plus there was some new information thanks to Amazon’s words. “Now we do have a new one as Maruki’s is Councillor,” Mona added on. Another individual without a Persona yet was close to Joker, along with Amazon and Panther.

“So, the Personas we already wield are resonating with the other Personas that share the same Arcana as them… but what does it mean to have so many non-Persona wielders resonating with Personas?” Amazon asked. A fine question, perhaps it meant that if they awakened a Persona then it would also belong to that same Arcana but for some reason, something about that theory didn’t exactly fit well within his mind. Mona didn’t understand why he felt so unsettled with that theory… but maybe it had something to do with his missing memories.

“Good question, I think there’s a piece to this puzzle that we’re missing, I think we need to figure out what the Arcana actually is… there must be something to explain its’ name,” Mona admitted. He felt much better about that possibility, but the real question was what exactly the Arcana could possibly mean; Amazon proceeded to close the notebook and managed to tuck it away within her skirt, Mona might not have pockets, but his utility belt certainly made up for it.

“Agreed. The Personas we’ve run into have a connection to the world’s folklore and myths. Not just Japan but everywhere, in all the information there might be a clue as to what it means. Arcana sounds similar to arcane which might mean their etymology is connected,” Amazon theorised. Mona was curious as to what each of these stories could possibly be, but it didn’t seem to all that important for their research given that the connection was Arcana based, otherwise Mona was sure Amazon would have certainly brought it up by this point.

“Well, I think that’s enough for today, we’d best get back before it’s too late,” Mona encouraged. Amazon nodded her head and she proceeded to create a shortcut that would lead them back to the entrance, they darted through it and Mona proceeded to cast his eyes over to the corner that Amazon always seemed to focus on whenever they entered Mementos.

There still wasn’t anything but Mona got the strangest sense that there should have been something there. Mona didn’t understand why this sensation was tickling across his fur, but Mona proceeded to push it to the side as he bounded towards the exit with Amazon following after him.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 54: - Fall of the Forger of Vanity

It was the fourth of June now and just like with Kamoshida, there had been no new about any change in Madarame from Yusuke; I hadn’t asked the boy yesterday since he had come to get away from that infernal house and his corrupt mentor. I was starting to wonder if I should ask Takemi-sensei for some headache medicine because it definitely felt like I was coming down with something.

A sudden buzzing cut through the meal I was preparing, I quickly set the knife down and cleaned my hands in order to get rid of any debris before scooping the object up. There could only be one topic that was being discussed in any of my Chats to night, so on pure reflex I pulled up the Phantoms group to see if we had any new information to work with.

Ann: The exhibition ends tomorrow… Madarame must have had his Change of heart by now, right?

Natsumi: This is exactly what happened with Kamoshida.

Ren: Let’s hope this is a sign it’ll end the same way too.

Ryūji: I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Ryūji: So far nobody’s come charging us with anything, yeah!

Ann: Except Yusuke said he’d wait to press charges AFTER the exhibition.

Ann: What should we do if someone contacts us about it tomorrow!?

Ryūji: Try asking Yusuke. He’s still staying with Madarame, right?

Ann: Oh, that’s right. Where is Yusuke?!

Ann: I wonder if he’ll be okay with Madarame…

Natsumi: Good question… I saw him earlier yesterday and he was fine.

Yusuke: Sorry I’m late to contact you all.

Yusuke: It seems something will certainly be happening tomorrow; Madarame is on the phone as we speak.

Ren: What do you mean something?

Yusuke: I believe he is preparing for a media announcement. I didn’t hear anything about pressing charges.

Ryūji: Guess we just gotta wait then.

Yusuke: Let us meet in Shibuya tomorrow.

Ann: Okay! See you then!

Natsumi: See you all tomorrow.

Ren: Tomorrow.

“I swear, the stress of the waiting is more nerve wracking than the stress of the actually heist,” I muttered.

*Persona 5 Royal*

We were all gathered together in Shibuya, today had been the day that Madarame intended to bring the hammer down upon us for entering his shack. All of us seemed rather nervous, especially since Yusuke had just told us that Madarame had disappeared by the time that our Ice wielder had woken up that day and the old man could not be contacted.

“Yo, if this goes south, what should we do,” Ryūji asked. His tone and face showed how much he was worried about that incident happening and given the worried looks that were exchanged by the rest of us we all felt that way; however, people suddenly started talking about something which drew our attention up to one of the jumbo screens that decorated the walls of Shibuya’s buildings. On it, was Madarame, which caused Yusuke to bolt to his feet and step just slightly closer as he stared at the man who seemed to be holding some kind of press conference.

“I…I have committed crimes that are unbecoming of an artist. Plainly put… I, um… plagiarised work… I-I tainted this-this country’s art world and… even Sayuri!” Madarame confessed. He then bowed his head down, but it did nothing to hide the gasping sobs that escaped his mouth. “H-How could I… I possibly… apologise to-to everyone for… for what I’ve done… aaaah,” Madarame confessed. He was having a total breakdown thanks to the Change of Heart, much more so than Kamoshida had even if there was no mention of attempting to commit suicide, even he hadn’t been sobbing as much as Madarame was.

“And that was from the urgent apology conference by Madarame that took place just a moment ago. After reporting to the association, Madarame has agreed to the police’s request to turn himself in,” The newscaster announced. All of us proceeded to exchange shocked looks that this had happened so publicly. “On top of charges of abuse to his pupils, Madarame is under suspicion of claiming their works as his own. Some doubt the validity that his maiden work Sayuri was stolen, believing it was used for fraud. This large scale criminal act has caused a great shock to the art world, and after the conference, Madarame was taken to a police hospital for interrogation due to his age. However. initial psych evaluations state that he is mentally sound and likely responsible for his actions. Also, a group calling themselves the Phantoms posted a dubious note at Madarame’s exhibit, the police will investigate their relation to this case, but for now, did not identify them as suspects,” The reporter continued.

“Man, this is starting to get interesting… if we do it right, we can change people’s hearts. With this power… we might be able to do more than just gettin’ back at society. It’ll be a big deal,” Ryūji celebrated. He seemed quite giddy at having successfully taken down such a high profile target, I was just amazed that it had such an effect on the man in question; it was such a shocking escalation in reactions to the Change of Heart and made me wonder if there might be some other component to how a person responded to a Change of Heart.

“True. We can certainly do more than we initially thought,” Ren stated. He seemed to be heavily scrutinising the screen that Madarame’s report had just been on, I wondered what must have been running through his mind as he saw our second success; there were still more Palaces, but we clearly had a set methodology for how to successfully dismantle them whenever we came across our next target.

“As for me, I hope we just keep gettin’ more and more famous!” Ryūji claimed. I didn’t like that he was focusing so much on us getting famous, I know it was a prerequisite for us to get deeper into Mementos and hopefully restore Morgana’s memories; but our primary goal should be helping people not getting famous. It was actually concerning for me that he seemed more concerned with getting famous than either of our goals.

“Something like this happening twice is massive too. It’s too great a coincidence to occur normally,” Morgana admitted. That was true, people would certainly be more inclined to believe in us now that a second Change of Heart had taken place, it wouldn’t be so easy to brush it off as a rumour or prank which would ensure we’d be able to press deeper into the collective unconsciousness.

“If we continue doing this, we’ll definitely be able to give courage to everyone who needs it,” Ann admitted. However, our discussion was interrupted when I sensed something shift closer to us, I quickly looked over and saw that two men had suddenly shown up, one was dressed in a suit with sunglasses and the other wore a police officer uniform. They seemed to be talking but their positioning near us set off some kind of gnawing worry within my mind; my staring drew Yusuke’s attention to them and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“We may want to quiet down a little,” Yusuke quietly insisted. His words caused the other three humans and human turned cat to look over at the two individuals and I immediately saw Ryūji tense up as if he was expecting a fight to break out at any moment while Ren curled in on himself; I immediately moved closer to our leader and gently settled a hand on the space between his shoulder blades while shooting a worried look at Ann who was the only relaxed one.

“Do you know them?” Ann asked at normal volume. Yusuke must have known something about them for him to insist that we be quiet, but I couldn’t understand why Ryūji and Ren had reacted the way that they did, Morgana had a concerned expression on his face, but he seemed more focused on brushing his cheek against the back of Ren’s hair, hoping to try and soothe the boy as much as possible.

“You moron! Those’re attendance officers!” Ryūji hissed. What!? Why were attendance officers hanging around in Shibuya on a Sunday! No one went to school on this day, since there was no school to attend, it didn’t make sense for them to be hanging around near us on such a day and I didn’t like how their presence was causing Ren to fold up like this; I remembered the Wilton Hotel and how the police officers there had upset him which caused me to drift a little bit closer to him when the two officers turned around.

“Hello there. May I speak with you for a moment?” The man in the suit asked. I don’t understand why they had shown up or what they could possibly want with us, but it unnerved me that they were even here to begin with; I marshalled my cold mask to cover up the anxiousness that was pulsing through me, I didn’t need to alert these two to my true feelings and instead focused upon trying to reassure Ren.

“Ah, yes! How can we help you?” Ann asked. Her tone had gone unusual, almost identical to how it had been when she was attempting to distract Yusuke while I was lock picking; I saw Morgana’s tail puff up ever so slightly when he heard that tone and it curled in slightly as if hearing that voice was painful while I noticed the other three were all staring at Ann with Ren and Ryūji looking completely baffled while Yusuke had an eyebrow raised at the tone.

“That monotonous acting of hers never fails to send a chill down my spine,” Morgana admitted. I had to agree since it was quite the… uncomfortable sound to hear coming out of my friend’s voice; she was probably going to be setting off these officers’ alarm bells if Ann kept talking in that weird tone which wouldn’t be good for us if they decided we were the kinds of people who warranted a more thorough search.

“What are you doing here? Are you friends?” The suit wearing officer asked. I did not like the tone he was using, it reminded me of the tone that Niijima-senpai had used when confronting us on the rooftop some time ago; they had no right to be doing this to us. I moved around so that I was stood in front of Ren in order to protect him from the looks of these two men while fighting to keep my expression as placid as possible.

“Forgive me officer, but why are you asking us such questions? What we do in our free time is none of your concern so long as it’s nothing illegal. For your information though, we’d just met up after the Madarame announcement having previously agreed to go for some tea together to discuss our exam results,” I lied. My tone was thankfully steady as I spoke, all I could hope was that the story I was telling was believable.

“Well alright. Just make sure you disperse before it gets too late, okay? There have been some odd happenings lately and the news about that artist has caused quite the stir,” The suited officer insisted. They had no right to tell us to ‘disperse’ when it wasn’t even noon, frankly I don’t like that they had just decided to approach us and boss us about like they had the right to do so.

“We’ll be careful,” Ann stated. Apparently not finding anything wrong with Ann’s tone or my story, they proceeded to turn and walked away from us; the moment I was sure that they were out of sight, I dropped my calm mask and twisted around to face Ren who was shaking ever so slightly and I wrapped an arm around him once again to try and comfort him.

“It’s still light out… man those guys must have way too much time on their hands,” Ryūji commented. I nodded my head in agreement with our Electricity wielder, it was completely pathetic that they decided to take such actions against us; but I was far more concerned with getting Ren to calm down from his agitated state of being, otherwise he might collapse from how uneven his breathing was at the moment.

“Are you alright Ren? You’re looking extremely pale,” Yusuke asked. The artist had moved over and gently rested a hand upon Ren’s shoulder as if trying to be reassuring, the other two also came over but they hovered behind us, likely concerned about how we might be crowding Ren and only suffocating him more. Eventually, Ren got his breathing back under control and full straightened his spine, but his skin was still paler than normal for him.

“I don’t like police officers,” Ren admitted. He glanced in the direction they were going with a deep frown upon his face as he said those words, we proceeded to pull back slightly but all remained close by in case Ren needed us quickly; such a nice day ruined by people barging in where they weren’t welcome, I just hope Ren would be okay after that awful incident.

“From now on, we’ll need to be even more cautious than before. Look at us! Right after the second Phantoms incident, both prior victims are meeting up,” Morgana warned. That was a fair warning to make, especially since I was getting that same sensation of being watched like when Yusuke had been staring at us after our first foray into Mementos.

“Wait, you mean people might be listening to us?” Ann wondered. There was every chance that someone could be listening in on us – thus why I insisted on us using codewords instead of being so obvious – and hearing everything we said. Granted our current position would make it obvious if someone tried and it’d be difficult for them to hear us, but other locations wouldn’t provide us with the same cover.

“Eh, it’ll be fine. Look around. We’re the only people worryin’ about it,” Ryūji commented. That was where Ryūji was wrong, I had started to look around and eventually my eyes had spotted someone who was watching us, thankfully the person staring at us hadn’t seen me so I moved around to adjust my position so that the watcher couldn’t spot my face and realise that I knew we were being observed.

“But we should be worried about it,” I insisted. Everyone proceeded to focus on me and they took note of the serious look upon my face, we needed to be wary of being watched, now more than ever. “Not people, but certainly one in particular is watching us,” I stated. I turned to glare right at the red eyed girl who was watching us, Niijima-senpai stared back with deer in headlights eyes as the others also glanced back.

“Who is that?” Yusuke asked. His tone was arctic as he said those words, at least someone else was realising the kind of danger that we would be under, although a quick look at the others showed that they actually looked angry at having been followed by the elder girl, Niijima-senpai did the smart thing and disappeared into the crowd which allowed us to turn back but I still felt her watching us.

“Niijima Makoto, our upperclassman. She’s also investigating the Phantoms on our principal’s orders,” Ren answered. He seemed deeply annoyed at having a stalker but not as much as Ann did, in fact it even put Ryūji’s shimmering fury to shame, Ann was deeply angry. “Ignore her for now, we’re just friends hanging out, she’s got no proof,” Ren insisted. He placed a gentle hand on Ann’s shoulder which caused the blonde model to deflate slightly but at least her anger had taken a back seat.

“By the way, Yusuke… you able to get anything out of Madarame?” Ryūji asked. His voice rather quiet so Niijima-senpai wouldn’t be able to hear us which was a smart move since we needed to know if anything had been learned from Madarame. “Remember how he was talkin’ about that suspicious person in the black mask?” Ryūji reminded. That was something that we needed to be concerned about, especially if we ended up running into this mystery person.

“Well… I pressed him for answers, but he doesn’t even understand what happened to him to begin with,” Yusuke admitted. That was a bit of a shame to hear, but I suppose there was nothing else to be done about it for now, if he couldn’t recall anything about the black mask – even a sense of déjà vu – then we’d just have to be on our toes for whoever this stranger might be and anticipate this individual showing up eventually.

“It’s not like he actually saw the goal being removed, after all,” Ann agreed. I nodded my head in agreement, but I’d still held out hope for something to come from the incident, especially since the Velvet siblings had made it known that something strange was definitely going on, especially here in Shibuya train station; I was probably on edge about this whole situation and maybe a bit paranoid, but I felt better that way than dismissing it.

“It’s rumoured that he may be sent to prison. In that case, gaining information will be difficult,” Yusuke revealed. Yeah, because there was every possibility that someone would be recording the meetings and hear anything we tried to ask him, besides Yusuke was the only one who could reasonably get inside and I didn’t want him to be involved with Madarame anymore than he already had to after all that he had been through because of that man.

“So, what’re you gonna do now?” Ryūji asked. His voice louder but this was a rather innocent question so it didn’t matter at all if Niijima-senpai had drifted close enough to overhear our conversation; besides it would be good to know where we’d need to find Yusuke if something ever came up and we needed to physically locate him instead of relying upon a phone.

“I’ll be leaving that house. I can’t draw in such a place anymore,” Yusuke admitted. I don’t blame him at all for deciding to escape from that shack after what he suffered, Ann wondered where he would go instead. “The school dorms. I can stay there free of charge thanks to my fine arts scholarship,” Yusuke answered. That caused Ryūji to bolt upright as he looked at Yusuke with wide eyes.

“A scholarship!? Wait, you’re that good?!” Ryūji exclaimed. I chuckled at his exclamation as I thought it would be obvious how good Yusuke was, given that Madarame was intending to use Yusuke’s artwork in place of his own paintings; so, Yusuke having a scholarship wasn’t even surprising to me, I’m just glad he had somewhere to stay that wasn’t that blasted shack. 

“Although Takamaki-san’s house would do as well,” Yusuke stated. Ann was stunned by this random comment and Ryūji immediately started up with Yusuke asking her to model for him again which only earned him a glare and an insult from the blonde girl. I shook my head at the insanity of these two while Ren hung his own but did seem to be suppressing a laugh at their words.

“Then again, now that Yusuke’ll be livin’ alone, it’ll be easier for us to meet up whenever we want,” Ryūji stated. That would be something good for us, since Yusuke wouldn’t have to deal with someone looking over Yusuke’s shoulders everywhere he went; we might have to avoid a curfew but that should be easy enough to be watchful of so long as alarms were set and we didn’t spend too much time in Mementos.

“For the time being, we should wait and see what comes our way,” Yusuke insisted. All of us nodded our heads in agreement since we could take the time now to at least relax for a moment and re-focus ourselves before taking on the next Ruler; though we had to do some hunting for such a thing before actually acting on such a thing, thank goodness for our training in Mementos.

“And it’ll prolly take some time findin’ a target as big as Madarame,” Ryūji admitted. That was true, Madarame was such a high profile target that there were probably rather few people that would be more effective at inspiring people to fight back; honestly I couldn’t even think of who to choose for our next target.

“We’ll be entrusting that to you again Ryūji,” Morgana commented. It had been Ryūji who found the post for Madarame and the Phan-site to begin with so it made sense to leave the looking for a target up to him, besides he’d be able to keep an eye on other requests that came up which might be good for us to use as training in the meantime.

“Anyway, we should just continue on as normal students while we look for our next challenge, okay?” Ann added on. That was the best thing for us to do for now, continuing on as ordinary people who had nothing unusual to hide, it was the only way to throw off any nosy individuals and Niijima-senpai from looking at us too closely

“Alright. Guess it’s just more prep ‘til then,” Ryūji agreed. He looked a little down at the idea of having such a break between now and whenever our next target would show up, but it was for the best; we needed the break in order to focus on our everyday lives and the people in them, otherwise someone might get suspicious of what we were always doing.

“Makes sense to me,” Ren stated. At least our leader was on board with the whole wait and see plan – not that we had much of an alternative – we had come up with. “Just be careful not to draw any undue attention to yourselves and stay safe,” Ren added on. That mention of undue attention immediately brought our uninvited observer to the forefront of my mind.

“And our stalker?” I asked. We needed to deal with her following us around as she was, we wouldn’t be able to go to Mementos at all if Niijima-senpai kept following us since that would risk her seeing us disappear; we’d at least confirmed that only those with a strong enough Will of Rebellion or physically touching us could enter Mementos, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t see us heading to the other side if they actually paid attention.

“Disperse, do whatever you want and we’ll Chat later,” Ren insisted. We all agreed with those words and proceeded to separate from each other, I headed along the path that would take me to the surface as I tried to think about what to do for the rest of the day; suddenly a call of my name came and I stopped, turning around I saw Ann running up to me with an slight bounce in her step as she caught up to me.

“Hey Natsu-chan, I got this flyer the other day and was wondering if you wanted to check it out today,” Ann explained. She held the flyer towards me and I took a hold of the piece of paper; but before I could look at it, my phone suddenly went off. I reached for it with Ann proceeding to make a similar motion, I opened the Chat quickly as I was concerned that something had happened to one of the boys.

Yusuke: You have my gratitude.

Ryūji: What’re you so polite for all of a sudden?

Yusuke: I truly am thankful to you for making me come to my senses.

Ren: You’re exaggerating.

Natsumi: I’m just glad you’re safe.

Yusuke: I most certainly am not exaggerating. I must express my gratitude earnestly.

Ryūji: You’re one of us now, man. We’ll be counting on you, mkay?

Yusuke: Of course.

Ann: And if anything comes up, we won’t hesitate to lend a hand.

Yusuke: Thank you.

Yusuke: Well then, see you.

Shaking my head at Yusuke’s unusual manners, I tucked my phone away and proceeded to look at the flyer with a bit of intrigue which heightened when I saw it was for a cooking class here in Tokyo. There was writing on it that detailed the different types of recipes that were available for people to take part in; I was curious as to how Ann got a hold of this flyer, but it didn’t seem too important at the moment, not when Ann seemed to be bouncing in place with excitement.

“I just thought that we could go together, it talks about working in pairs to make something,” Ann pointed out. She tapped the section which was running down the corner and in a bit of an awkward position for reading. “What do you think about going to it?” Ann asked. She seemed a little nervous as she waited for an answer to come from me, which caused my lips to tick up slightly at her actions.

“Of course we’ll go Ann, it seems quite interesting. Plus, I could do with learning some better ways to cook,” I agreed. Ann smiled, big and bright at my response and as she quickly looped her arm through my and quickly began to guide me towards the lesson’s location as we chatted about everything not related to being the Phantoms.

Those topics mainly consisted of school, Shiho, music from me and fashion from Ann. When we reached the cooking class, we were actually allowed to choose what to cook for our first lesson and Ann begged for chocolate crepes.

It turned into a rather fun experience despite the ingredients getting on our clothes on occasion.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 55: - Councillor and Sun

I believe the saying is, no rest for the wicked, and while me and the others in the Phantoms might not be evil it certainly felt that way, considering that we still had school today and our final exams were next month so things would be getting more intense. Also, today was the day we changed to our school uniforms, so I ditched the polo shirt and jacket and simply made the commute in a light blue short sleeved blouse with silver-grey butterflies around the hem and sleeves, along with the rest of my uniform. Ren was simply wearing the school regulation white polo shirt, albeit untucked and sans the suspenders.

“Morniiin’!” Ryūji greeted. I turned towards him and frowned slightly from seeing him dressed in his winter uniform, even Ren seemed baffled by the appearance. “The response to Madarame’s press conference was huge! Everyone’s talkin’ about the calling card,” Ryūji commented. It had seemed to be on everyone’s minds when we’d been on the train earlier, so he wasn’t wrong. “Girls are checkin’ me out today… maybe they can’t help but sense my overflowin’ pha-,” Ryūji began to brag. Before Ren clapped a hand over the blonde’s mouth, silencing him.

“I think they’re staring because of another reason Ryūji,” Ren pointed out. It was at that point that the punk seemed to realise what me and Ren were wearing, Ren pulled his hand away as Ryūji’s widened with understanding about what Ren had been referring to and a curse immediately leapt from the blonde’s lips almost like a knee jerk reaction, which probably isn’t far off.

"We’re s’posed to switch to summer uniforms today! I knew people were lookin’ at me… oh, goddammit! I gotta go home and change, so you two go on ahead!” Ryūji exclaimed. With that, the boy ran back out of the train platform, me and Ren shared a look before the train pulled in and we quickly got on it; I hope Ryūji managed to make it to school on time.

The ride on the train was uneventful and the only noticeable conversation was about the calling card, luckily Ryūji caught up to us before we got to school, I decided not to tell him off for sprinting in his condition since he did regret it after almost being sick. Ryūji was now wearing a red shirt that read "NO MO RULES," which was quite fitting for him to be honest.

*Persona 5 Royal*

The break in the middle of the school day had come and we were all in Kawakami-sensei’s classroom with the rest of the class talking about the calling card that had been sent which pleased Ryūji a great deal, but he wasn’t making anything obvious. Ann came over to us with her having not forgotten the dress code change – thankfully – since she was wearing a white shirt with a blue jacket wrapped on her waist which made her skirt more visible. She had black socks with white lining and dark brown shoes on, her hairpin had been changed to a red one, and she wears a gold necklace with a clover pendant

“How’s it going? Have you found our next challenge?” Ann asked. That was a bit sudden to ask, after all we had only just confirmed the success of our second challenge and it had taken over a months to locate our second target; even if more people did believe in us, it wasn’t like we were suddenly going to get an influx of information about high profile targets and even then we’d have to ensure that they weren’t lies before making a move

“I just started lookin’ yesterday. No way I’m gonna find one that quick,” Ryūji responded. He had an expression on his face that could either be him being annoyed with the lack of information that we currently had or the fact that Ann had only given him roughly twenty-four hours to actually try and find anything before asking; Ann’s expression fell a bit when she heard so words, but she seemed understanding.

“Oh, yeah. I guess that’s true,” Ann agreed. Hopefully it wouldn’t take us another month, but I wasn’t about to hold my breath on that note. “By the way, Natsu-chan and I decided on the TV station. What about you two?” Ann wondered. I looked over at the two, curious to know what their response would be, Ren looked confused by the question while Ryūji seemed to think he was forgetting something important.

“What are you talking about Ann?” Ren asked. I guess that given his home’s rural location the thing that Ann was talking about might not be a thing that his previous school did, or if they did do it then there was a chance that they scheduled it for a different part of the school year which wouldn’t be that surprising either.

“The social studies trip. We choose locations and go as groups, but we don’t need to stick with our classes,” I explained. Ren nodded his head while seeming curious which at least meant it was something new to him; I wonder what it must have been like to live in the countryside, certainly seems like a nice change of pace compared to how hectic everything was here in Tokyo.

“Oh crap, the social studies trip! Ugh, I just wanna ditch it,” Ryūji admitted. That was hardly a surprise, in fact it was probably expected that Ryūji would just up and vanish on the days of the social studies trip; however, the complaint proceeded to summon Morgana from his hiding place under the desk with an unimpressed glower across his face.

“You’d better go to your school activities. Didn’t I tell you not to draw attention to yourselves?” Morgana reminded. I did indeed recall him saying such words, however there was a slight issue with what he was saying; Ryūji happened to have a certain reputation hanging around him which – to be frank – wasn’t entirely undeserved unlike Ren’s or Ann’s reputation.

“Wouldn’t me suddenly turnin’ into a good student stand out more?” Ryūji asked. The boy had slumped down when he said those words, but he was pretty accurate in what he was saying as there was no way that Ryūji suddenly behaving himself wouldn’t cause a few eyebrows to be raised by the teachers even if they assumed I was having some effect upon the boy’s behaviour.

“He’s got you there, Morgana,” I commented. However, while Ryūji seemed happy about my words, though it wasn’t like I was supporting him or anything, Morgana’s brilliant blue eyes proceeded to narrow into a harsh glare and I just faintly heard the rumbling of a growl coming from the cat as he kept glaring at Ryūji.

“Quit bickering and go,” Morgana insisted. Morgana certainly wasn’t going to relax about this subject and it seemed our Electricity wielder accepted this despite his dejected energy rolling off of him, hopefully the teachers wouldn’t become too suspicious of what was happening with Ryūji; gods know we don’t need more people getting suspicious of us.

“Then let’s all choose the TV station!” Ann suggested. Everyone proceeded to focus on the model who seemed excited about the prospect of us hanging out again even while at school. “I heard we’re gonna get to watch them tape a show! Maybe there’ll be actresses there!” Ann exclaimed. It seemed like there was going to be some interesting stuff happening at the TV station.

“Oh well. Not like I got anything better to do than waitin’ for info to come in online. Plus, Morgana’s right. Showin’ up’ll keep the teachers from getting’ all suspicious of me,” Ryūji agreed. The bell proceeded to ring which indicated that we should get back to our classes, so Ryūji hopped to his feet. “All right, I’m gonna head back,” Ryūji decided. He kind of had to otherwise he would end up in trouble. “TV, huh… maybe I should get a haircut,” Ryūji wondered. He proceeded to walk away from us.

“That guy is such an idiot… I hope nothing happens,” Morgana worried. So long as we were with him then I’m sure Ryūji would be fine, the rest of us slipped back into our seats as Morgana pulled his head back into the under compartment for the table for the next lesson; of course, I didn’t get very far before my phone proceeded to go off.

Ryūji: Feels pretty great having everyone talks about us, huh?

Yusuke: Madarame is the only topic of conversation at my school.

Yusuke: And as I’m his pupil, most of my peers have chosen to ignore me.

Ryūji: For real? That’s bullshit.

Ann: Are you going to be okay?

Natsumi: Please let us know if anyone tries to hurt you Yusuke?

Yusuke: There is no need to worry.

Ren: Still, that’s what we do.

Ren: We’ll always worry about those we care for, so do let us know.

Yusuke: They had already been treating me differently from others as it stood.

Yusuke: This is nothing new to me.

Ann: Okay then...

Yusuke: More importantly, do we have any leads on our next mission?

Ryūji: You kidding? There’s no way we’d find a target that quick!

Ren: We need to wait and see. If necessary, we can go to Mementos.

Yusuke: Understood.

Yusuke: I’ll keep myself free. Please tell me if anything comes up.

The day continued to drag on but eventually it ended and I decided to stop by Maruki-sensei’s office, we hadn’t been able to finish our discussion from the other day due to me needing to have a break after opening up about Ouvrard’s actions. Plus, it looked like Maruki-sensei could use the break as well; I knocked on the door and entered in to nurse’s office.

“Now then, last time you were here, you mentioned how you met someone whose situation mirrored yours’. I assume you were meaning the mentorship issue,” Maruki-sensei commented. He had clearly anticipated what I wanted to talk about and immediately got down to business the moment I had taken my seat; yet despite the seriousness with which he spoke it didn’t seem to spread onto his face which was quite impressive if I’m honest.

“Yes, but I need you to make me a promise,” I requested. Maruki-sensei obliged with a firm nod of his head, I had just needed to make sure of this promise, but more for Yusuke’s sake than my own. “I’m going to be vague for the sake of my friend, but if you do figure anything out, please don’t say anything to anyone?” I asked. Maruki-sensei adopted a caring expression and gave me a gentle smile as if trying to reassure me without any words.

“Of course, Chiba-san. Doctor-Patient confidentiality. Nothing leaves the room,” Maruki-sensei reassures. I let out a breath of relief, feeling the tension in my shoulders proceed to leave me; I probably should have expected that he would give such an answer since Maruki-sensei didn’t seem like the type to just randomly talk about such personal information, but it was a relief none the less to know that he was going to be keep the information secret.

“My friend has artist inclinations just like me, my friend had a mentor who also pursued the same artist school and that mentor used my friend’s artwork as his own,” I explained. Maruki-sensei grimaced at my words but other than that, he showed no other sign, so I ploughed forward. “Unfortunately, my friend was taken in by this mentor at a young age and raised by the mentor, my friend believed that the mentor deserved to take the fruits of my friend’s efforts,” I carried on. If possible, Maruki-sensei looked visible unwell, not that I blamed him in the least, it still made me feel nauseous. “My friend truly believed the mentor loved my friend, but I found evidence that the mentor didn’t think about my friend at all,” I admitted.

“What evidence?” Maruki-sensei asked. He had a concerned look upon his face as he said those words, almost as if bracing himself for what I was about to say; now this I did have to pause and think about because there was no way that I could simply tell him what had actually happened so I needed to take my time and think about the exact words to convey what had happened and still cover up the Phantoms activities.

“Let’s just say… it was a despicable monument to how the mentor saw, not only my friend, but all the students of the artistic approach they all pursued. The mentor viewed the students as property and believed that the students weren’t even worth living unless they gave up their work to the mentor,” I explained. Maruki-sensei proceeded to grip his head and looked as if he wanted to sick at hearing what I had just described to him.

“Gods, I feel so sorry for your friend to have gone through such a thing,” Maruki-sensei admitted. I grimaced in understanding; it really was awful the kind of thing that Yusuke had been forced to endure at Madarame’s hands. “I can also see how you would feel a resonance with that person,” Maruki-sensei commented. At least he managed to see the connection without me having to go into more detail, since that would have put me in a pickle as I was out of ways on how to explain the situation. “How did you feel meeting someone with such a similar backstory to you?” Maruki-sensei asked. I took a deep breath as I recalled the way I had reacted.

“When I saw that monument… I panicked, my body started itching and it seemed to be heavily focused in my throat, my vision seemed to shrink, I heard Ouvrard’s voice repeating what she normally said about my voice, my knees went numb and I collapsed. Luckily, my friends were with me at the time and calmed me down,” I explained. Maruki-sensei’s expression became serious as he proceeded to lean forward with a worried glint within his eyes.

“Sounds like a classic PTSD episode, I can give you some treatment for it, but that will come later, after this session,” Maruki-sensei admitted. Surprisingly enough, hearing that there was actually a diagnosis and even more so that there was treatment for it really relieved me as at least this meant there’d be some way to avoid the situation happening again; or at least curb the symptoms.

“Well, at least it’s treatable… at the time I was just numb, but afterwards… I was pretty scared of what happened, I didn’t know what it could be and if it might happen again,” I admitted. I had considered going to Takemi-sensei about it, but even though she knew about my vocal training, she was unaware of the details behind it and I didn’t want to explain it to another person, I just felt safe enough with Maruki-sensei to actually open up about what had happened to me.

“Now… how is your friend?” Maruki-sensei asked. I smiled at his move, probably wanting to pull us away from the dark topic that our conversation had ended up drifting towards in light of my revelation; but it was also a smile of relief as I recalled Yusuke’s current situation, it might not be the best but it was by far an improvement over his previous one and something to be celebrated in my mind.

“Free. My friend realised the mentor never cared, best of all… my friend can still pursue their art,” I admitted. I even went as far as to slump into the comfy chair as the last of my unease proceeded to bleed out of me as I recalled the gentle expression upon Yusuke’s face as he gazed upon the unaltered Sayuri; he had been so happy to have a hold of it after so long of not knowing the truth.

“Well, that’s good news and perhaps its’ a sign for you,” Maruki-sensei stated. But hearing his words caused me to sit up slightly as I looked at him, the confusion on my face must have been extremely obvious given the smile that was on Maruki-sensei’s face. “If your friend can continue down their art path, perhaps you can return to singing one day,” Maruki-sensei explained. My eyes widened at this sentence.

“I hadn’t actually thought of that,” I admitted. I’d never once thought about how Yusuke’s determination to keep heading down the path of an artist would appear to me; I’d been more concerned with making sure that he never ended up like me, but how did I really feel when I thought about how Yusuke felt towards painting?

“You said it was tainted and a miracle would be necessary for you to return to singing. But you’ve met someone who can keep going down that path,” Maruki-sensei reminded. No, as I thought about it, there happened to be a very sizeable difference between me and Yusuke that made our paths divergent, Yusuke still had a pure and whole attachment to his chosen path that I didn’t possess, that I never had possessed.

“No, my friend got lucky and got away before their attachment to art was completely perverted. I don’t have that fortune,” I pointed out. I’d loved singing just for the sake of actually singing, to me nothing was more fun than getting all the words in my favourite songs right; Yusuke had been directly pursuing the majestic beauty captured within his mother’s self-portrait.

“Ah, I see,” Maruki-sensei commented. I wasn’t entirely sure if he did actually understand my words, it might be that he was only trying to be accommodating towards my certain rejection instead of trying to convince me to actually see things from his perspective; but there might actually be a way to see things from his point of view, just slightly different to what he must be thinking.

“But… there might be someone,” I admitted. Maruki-sensei considerably brightened at my words as I sat up a little straighter as I thought of what I was saying. “I met someone else recently, someone who might be able to understand what I’m going through. They went through something similar not that long ago and might understand a bit more,” I explained. Rise-san had stopped being able to sing but she had clawed it back, if anyone could help get rid of this curse then it was her.

“Have you spoken to this friend about what happened to you?” Maruki-sensei asked. I hadn’t actually done that, we spent most of our previous interaction discussing the difference in how our Personas were obtained and the different worlds we had ended up interact with – there’s one in the TV! – so my voice hadn’t really come up in the discussion.

“Not in detail,” I answered. I’d definitely have to explain what had gone on with me, but if I could just get rid of this darkness Ouvrard kept casting over me, then I’d be glad; being able to sing again was a pipe dream that I wasn’t even going to bother entertaining, I just wanted the lingering shadows to be banished for good.

“Well, I think you ought to start, if you can connect through the burdens you’ve shared, it might help you to start healing the wounds you’ve suffered,” Maruki-sensei advised. It was certainly seeming like a more attractive idea the more that I managed to think about, hopefully everything would go okay once I got to talking with Rise-san.

“That sounds like a good idea, it’s something I should probably do the next time we meet up,” I agreed. Maruki-sensei quickly set about writing down the treatment I could use for my PTSD symptoms, most of it seemed mental based which I would definitely have to leave in Maruki-sensei’s hands, but I could at least talk to Takemi-sensei about the two possible medications for me to look at.

I stood up and left the room, right as I closed the door, my phone proceeded to go off. I quickly pulled the object out of my pocket and opened it up to see what was happening in the Chat; to my pleasant surprise the whole thing had been kicked off by Ann, but the moment I opened the Chat up, my eyes narrowed in anger at something that Ryūji had put up.

Ann: You haven’t heard anything from the student council president, have you?

Ren: Nothing.

Ryūji: Miss Honour Student must be busy kissing ass somewhere.

Natsumi: Don’t be so harsh!

Yusuke: Natsumi, are you alright?

Natsumi: Fine. It just seemed unnecessarily cruel.

Ren: Maybe, but she is keeping an eye on us for the scummy principal.

Ann: She’s definitely suspicious of us.

Yusuke: Are you sure it is not merely a result of Ryūji’s general misconduct?

Ryūji: Shuddup!

Yusuke: Though to be honest, the four of you most certainly stand out.

Yusuke: Do try to be careful.

Yusuke: I cannot be there to look over you at school, you know.

Ren: Don’t worry Yusuke. Morgana, Natsumi and I are there to keep an eye on the other two.

Ann: And I’ll make sure to keep an eye on Ryūji too.

Ryūji: Why do you gotta single me out?

Seeing that the conversation was over with, I moved to close the electronic device when another Chat notification suddenly popped into existence, I checked it and saw that it had come from Rise-san. I quickly opened it up and my eyebrows raised when I read the message that she had sent to me, it looks like I’d be trying out Maruki-sensei’s suggestion sooner than I thought I would end up doing.

Rise: Hey Natsu-kun, I’m coming down tonight.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Rise moved down the pathway, her mind still a whirl with what she had learned last time. Gaining a Persona by rebelling, it was so completely different to the way she had gained a hold of her Persona that it had thrown her for a loop and she’d ended up explaining how she got hers in a way that it almost felt like having an out of body experience as she spoke those words.

‘Perhaps it’s in response to the enemy orchestrating everything. Our enemy was a deceiver and we each got ours by confronting a truth we wanted to deny and then accepting it. Fuuka-senpai told me that their team awoke their Personas upon facing death and fighting to get passed their fear of it, their enemy was a death bringer. So perhaps whoever is behind all this, is an oppressor of some sort.’ Rise wondered.

Of course, getting answers about Personas wasn’t why Rise was here, she wanted to properly talk to Natsumi this time, about her voice and singing. It was mere chance that she ended up here when another group of Persona users were running around and, apparently, stealing Hearts. It was not the weirdest possibility considering what she knew about the Other World, but it was still something she still had difficult to wrap her head around.

Rise was coming upon Natsumi’s house as she tried to think about how to convince the girl to talk about her voice, she was unfortunately coming up short on what to do. Rise felt like groaning in dismay at her inability to think of a way around this; unfortunately, Rise was not Yu-senpai, she wasn’t capable of untangling the complexities of people’s emotions to reach the heart of the matter, or be capable of basically reading a person’s thoughts to interpret what they were trying to say before they got it out.

“Good evening, Rise-san, come in,” Natsumi welcomed. The girl had opened the door before Rise could finish thinking of ways to help and Rise could only smile at the girl, the idol stepped inside and proceeded to slip her shoes off; as she did, Rise observed Natsumi seeing that there seemed to be a kind of lightness to Natsumi that hadn’t been there before, as if she had made a decision or some kind of weight had been removed from her.

“Nice to see you looking so well,” Rise commented. She did seem rather well, though Rise didn’t know what the reason behind it was, Natsumi just smiled and led the way into the dining area where steaming cups of tea were already waiting for them; the two of them sat down and Rise reached for the cup of tea as she tried to come up with a way to broach the conversation about Natsumi’s voice.

“I was wondering if we could talk about what happened to me,” Natsumi suggested. Rise felt like a weight had just been yanked from her shoulders with those words and it caused her shoulders to slump down slightly as Rise realised that she didn’t need to think of anything now; for whatever reason Natsumi had decided to open up herself and Rise was rather relieved that she was doing that. Perhaps she could hear what Natsumi had to say and she could go from there.

“Of course, Natsu-kun, whatever you feel happy with,” Rise agreed. Natsumi smiled, but it was a strained smile which set Rise on edge because she just knew that whatever Natsumi was going to say it was going to be bad. Of course, nothing Rise thought of could have prepared her for the tale Natsumi told her; adoption by an uncle who sounded like a tyrant from the little Rise learned, singing training which practically tore apart her throat as a result.

Rise couldn’t help but feel like she was going to be sick, Rise had never heard of a more disgusting situation, even the reason she had been trawling through Yongen wasn’t this horrific. Rise also felt rage, there was a deep desire for her to find both the singing teacher and the uncle, to punch them for daring to ruin this girl’s love of music with their actions. But seeing the bubbling tears that Natsumi refused to let fall and hearing the strained and cracking tone as she used to describe her experience brought another emotion to the forefront.

“Oh, Natsu-kun,” Rise breathed. Immediately, Rise got up and move over to hug the girl tightly. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, it’s… there’s no words to describe how awful that was,” Rise admitted. Right at this moment, Rise knew the important thing to do was hold the slowly cracking girl together until she felt that she could stand on her own two feet once again; a hand gently reached up to grasp the area just below Rise’s elbow.

“Not nearly as bad as losing sight as one’s own identity,” Natsumi stated. But Rise didn’t like hearing those words, she knew that Natsumi was only trying to be kind in the way she was acting but the idol didn’t want her to just diminish the pain that she had been put through because of other people; it wasn’t something that she liked to hear anyone doing after learning what Kanami had gone through.

“Don’t,” Rise stated. The idol pulled back ever so slightly so that she could give Natsumi a stern look while proceeding to wipe away the tears that were sliding down her face at last, seems like the girl wasn’t one to cry by her own desire. “Don’t go comparing pain, just because we went through different pains doesn’t mean we didn’t suffer the same pain,” Rise stated. Natsumi swallowed whatever the lump must have been in her throat before speaking up.

“Thank you, Rise-san,” Natsumi admitted. Rise proceeded to hug her before moving back around to sit down across from her, Natsumi took a shuddering breath and a large gulp of tea before seeming to have gathered herself together in order to keep talking. “I was wondering if you would be able to help me, I don’t know if I can ever sing again, but I’d like to at least get over this issue,” Natsumi explained. Rise smiled brightly, more than happy to help with this

“I recovered by escaping to my hometown in the countryside, making friends there who saw the real me, working through a mystery together and me realising how much I loved singing through a fan. I eventually accepted just how much I was actually Risette,” Rise explained. While omitting several details truthfully but Rise didn’t want to go into the crazy details that had happened to her while in Inaba since this was meant to be focused on Natsumi not Rise.

“I can’t leave, I have no one to go to outside of Tokyo, beside there’s something I have to do here,” Natsumi admitted. Rise felt uncomfortable knowing that the girl was trapped within this city when it might be best for her to leave, but she also knew that there was another thing hovering over Natsumi that meant she couldn’t leave the city even if she wanted to or was able to.

“You mean the whole Phantoms thing,” Rise stated. Natsumi choked on her drink when Rise said that and pretty much gave her a deer in headlights expression, causing Rise to grin brightly. “Remember, you’re talking to a Persona user, it wasn’t that hard to figure out once I realised you were a Betwixt,” Rise explained. Natsumi seemed like she was struggling to say something and her eyes were darting about a little. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone, you’re doing good stuff, a bit unusual but good because those people need to be stopped,” Rise admitted. Natsumi seemed to lose her energy and slumped onto the table.

“Please don’t scare me like that again Rise-san,” Natsumi pleaded. Rise couldn’t help but giggle at the girl’s plea, it seemed like Natsumi was hyper focused on making sure that no outsiders found out about her and the other Persona wielders activities, quite different to how any of the Investigation Team had acted since they hadn’t cared about anyone listening in on them or learning what they were doing, people wouldn’t have believed them anyway. But things were quite different this time around.

“No problem Natsu-kun,” Rise cheerfully chimed. Still, this at least gave Rise something of an idea to work with, Rise had long denied having any attachment to Risette when the opposite had in fact been the truth, perhaps Rise could use that to help Natsumi recover her voice properly. “First of all, why don’t you try to sing,” Rise suggested. Natsumi’s eyes widened and she seemed to start trembling in place at the suggestion.

“Rise-san, I told you, I can’t sing,” Natsumi insisted. Despite the shiver that wracked her entire frame, Rise was surprised by how shockingly calm she actually sounded but Rise knew that she needed to push here; if Rise didn’t know how much of that was true then she wouldn’t be able to help Natsumi recover and that was Rise’s primary goal here.

“No, I want to know if you can’t sing or won’t sing, if there’s a mental block or you just think you can’t sing,” Rise insisted. Natsumi looked down to the side, as if she was uncomfortable with the mere idea of actually opening her mouth to start. “It doesn’t have to be a song, just a vocal exercise will do,” Rise added on. Natsumi swallowed thickly but – thankfully in Rise’s eyes – she still proceeded to open her mouth.

Rise waited, in silence as she didn’t want to miss anything that Natsumi allowed to escape. But nothing came, Natsumi closed her mouth and tried again but no sound escaped her and Natsumi seemed confused if the hand that reached up to rub at her throat was anything to go by. She leaned forward one would almost think she was silently choking from the open mouth-slumped over position that she had taken. Rise felt her heart sink as that information settled in and she reached out to take one of Natsumi’s hands in her own.

“I’m sorry to do that you Natsu-kun,” Rise apologised. She really felt horrible about having done that, Natsumi closed her mouth and lifted herself up with wide eyes that seemed slightly sacred; Rise frowned as she gently began to rub her hand over the back of Natsumi’s own. “Still, I can definitely tell that it is a can’t sing issue for you,” Rise admitted.

“Is there anything that you can think of to help me?” Natsumi tentatively asked. She seemed a little wary after what had just happened, but Rise didn’t hold that against her, instead the idol was simply grateful that the cracked girl was still willing to ask for her help in overcoming this; whoever had convinced Natsumi to go through with this idea, Rise was very grateful towards them for doing so.

“Off the top of my head, no. I’m not someone who specialises in helping people through things like this,” Rise admitted. In times like these, Rise and the rest of the Investigation team would turn to Yu-senpai for aid and even though he was out of the country at the moment, he still seemed like the best avenue of help. “But I do have a friend who helped me through my issue, I can call him and ask for advice from Senpai,” Rise suggested.

“No,” Natsumi answered. The answer had been swift and cut, so much so that Rise actually flinched back since it almost felt like she had been physically struck with a blade instead of words. “It’s not that I don’t trust you Rise-san, it’s just… I don’t know this friend of yours’ and no matter how much you trust him; I just don’t feel comfortable anyone talking to my issues with a complete strange, at least to me,” Natsumi explained. That Rise could completely understand, but she already had another idea brewing in its’ place.

“That’s fine, I actually expected this answer but that was my best idea to help you, I’ve already got a back-up though,” Rise cheerfully revealed. Even winking at the end, this caused Natsumi to blink owlishly at the idol and she even proceeded to tilt her head to the side, no doubt confused by what Rise could possibly be getting at with her words.

“What back-up?” Natsumi wondered. Rise grinned broadly and proceeded to stand up, she could feel just a little bit more of Risette’s mannerisms flowing into her as she did this; but there was a certain peppy energy to the suggestion she was about to make so it came as no surprise to Rise despite the confusion that was on Natsumi’s face.

“How about you come with me to the studio I work at,” Rise suggested.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 56: - Death and Strength

My mind was whirling with the proposal that Rise had extended towards me last night, visiting her agency wasn’t something I had expected and I really wondered if it would be able to help ensure I managed to get over these PTSD episodes that seemed to be attacking me. Me and Ren stepped into the entrance to school and I quickly started to clear my thoughts so that I would be focused on the upcoming lessons.

“What’s this?” A female voice asked. I perked up hearing those words and looked over to see what was going on, I found a group of students gathered around a notice that I was certain had not been there yesterday. “A request to the student body?” She read aloud. I looked over at Ren who shrugged his shoulders, apparently also oblivious as to what was going on at the moment with this request.

“It says they’re looking for information. I heard Principal Kobayakawa put it up,” Another girl commented. Well, now I knew what was going on here, it seems that Kobayakawa was attempting to pump the student population for any information about us; that probably meant that Niijima-senpai hadn’t been able to turn up any hard evidence which was quite the relief for us, but I wasn’t about to relax yet.

“Please consult the student council president if you have any details,” The first student read. Yeah, Kobayakawa was definitely trying to get information in order to speed up Niijima-senpai’s investigation, but I doubt anything would come from this; unless Mishima ended up doing something rather reckless since no one actually on the Phantoms would go and talk to her after what she had said.

“So, we can go to her for anything?” The male wondered. That really wasn’t what the request was for, but Kobayakawa certainly couldn’t put in writing what he was really looking for, that would be too suspect even to those who didn’t believe in our existence. “Why the student council president though? What does she have to do with Principal Kobayakawa?” The student questioned.

“I mean, Niijima-san is his favourite. Maybe that’s why he asked her to do it,” The second female student suggested. Me and Ren proceeded to share looks with each other and we quickly walked away, I spotted Ren slipping his phone out and I knew he was sending a warning to the rest of the Phantoms so that they were aware of the danger before they accidentally got ambushed by the news.

We continued our walk and settled down into class, Ann came in and looked restless which was no doubt because of the notice; we settled down and the first lesson got under way. Everything was pretty peaceful until my phone proceeded to go off; seriously why did Ryūji have to start Chats when we were in lessons, I quickly pulled it out and opened up the app to see what he was talking about.

Ryūji: Our name did spread a bit thanks to Madarame

Ryūji: But I bet people still wouldn’t care if we came out and said we’re the Phantoms.

Natsumi: Oh, I bet they would.

Ryūji: Really?

Natsumi: Yeah, the police, the prosecutors, Kobayakawa.

Ren: In other words, all the wrong people.

Yusuke: Certainly, no good would come of tell people our identities.

Ryūji: Maybe they’d at least start treating us with some respect.

Ann: We’d be in prison long before that ever happened!

Yusuke: I can understand why he feels that way, though.

Ann: That’s just how things are now, but if we keep doing stuff like this, that will definitely change.

Yusuke: We simply need to devote ourselves to the cause. Our praise will come later.

Ren: Patience is a virtue, especially in this case.

Ann: I’m sure some people out there will understand.

Ryūji: Ugh, I guess we just gotta act like modest heroes for now…

Natsumi: Better modest heroes than famous martyrs.

I slipped it away and could only hope that the blonde punk would be able to keep quiet, his attitude was starting to get a bit worrying in my opinion.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Takemi tapped her painted nails against the desk her computer sat at, she was awaiting the arrival of Chiba for the next meet up and at least Takemi had managed to clear the itch from her mind before the girl’s next visit. Thankfully her research into that name hadn’t caused any trouble for her drug trial on Amamiya, though he had seemed to realise something, but he never said anything… weird kids, the both of them.

A chime came and Takemi immediately called the girl into the back upon checking that it was the one who she’d been waiting for, Chiba quickly took a seat across from the doctor, with a notebook in her hand which she quickly flicked over to a specific page. As Takemi couldn’t technically check up on the boy who the treatment was for, speaking with the middle person for check-ups was the best either of them could do.

“Right, Ryūji’s leg has technically healed since he can walk on it, but it’s clear that there’s not a great deal of bone density nor muscle strength around the affected area. He was able to recall the things he could do before the incident and there’s been a marked decrease in his capabilities, now that might just be degrading stamina, but the affected area is also definitely contributing to the limitations on his abilities,” Chiba summarised.

“Repairing bone is the most difficult thing, surgery isn’t possible since it hasn’t broken enough for skin to be pierced and even so, time has passed enough for the bone to finish its’ healing back to baseline. The only way to help him is to give him stuff that can help with bone repair,” Takemi admitted. Bones, always the hardest thing to repair after the mind in Takemi’s opinion, well that was normal conditions; specialised cases were always the most difficult especially when the cause was unknown.

“I’ve given him information about the kind of foods that he could eat to help with that, thanks to your information,” Chiba admitted. That was good, Takemi might be a doctor, but she was also smart enough to rely upon natural treatments as much as mainstream one’s; in fact, sometimes the natural treatments were even better than what modern medicine could come up with.

“Probably best for me to look for more sources, there isn’t actually any medicine that’s made for this type of treatment. Must make sure your friend keeps up with that diet, he can break on occasion but try to have at least three days dedicated to those kinds of meals,” Takemi advised. In truth, it really was out of her hands now, all she could do was trust in Chiba and her friend to keep moving towards recovery.

“Um, another thing Takemi-sensei,” Chiba suddenly piped up. The sketchy doctor leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms as she looked at the girl, who seemed a little nervous if her twisting fingers were anything to go by. “I was wondering if you could prescribe me one of these two medications?” Chiba requested. She reached into her bag and pulled out a slip of paper which she handed to Takemi who took it with a raised eyebrow, upon seeing the medications, her eyes widened.

“Paroxetine and Sertraline. These are drugs used in the treatment of depression,” Takemi explained. She leaned forward and dangled her arms between her legs as she glared at the girl, wondering what she could be pulling. “They’re not meant to be given to anyone underage, unless in extreme cases,” Takemi added on. She didn’t like seeing such medication being advised for a young person to take, especially since Chiba didn’t seem to be suffering from depression, she showed none of the signs that set off Takemi’s warning bells.

“It appears I might have post traumatic stress disorder,” Chiba stated. Takemi’s mouth opened as she tried to process that piece of information, the girl still hadn’t presented any signs of that mental state. “I had an attack a few days ago and the counsellor I’m seeing believes getting some medicine might be best if I have another attack.

“Except these, take too long,” Takemi bluntly stated. A mutter of incomprehensible words escaped the punk rock doctor as she rolled back and immediately tapped away at her computer, thankfully the name of this therapist was on the paper she’d been given, so Takemi was able to check to see if he was legitimate. He actually was, but Takemi was a cynical individual and she didn’t particularly feel like trusting this Maruki Takuto just because he seemed legitimate.

“Takemi-sensei, is everything okay?” Chiba asked. The doctor shot the girl a look and found the girl was staring at her with intense green eyes, intense enough that Takemi felt a little uncomfortable; the girl probably didn’t mean to make Takemi feel that way, but her gaze just seemed to have a natural heaviness to it that caused the sensation.

“Just fine Chiba,” Takemi answered. Rising to her feet, Takemi moved over and began to rifle through the cupboards she had for the object she was looking for, those drugs took too long to really activate and Takemi had the sensation that Chiba needed it to take effect sooner; especially as she wasn’t really taking anything like that before hand, the girl was in fairly good health. “Ah, there you are,” Takemi muttered. She grabbed the object and turned back to Chiba, holding it out to her.

“What’s this?” Chiba asked. Despite the question, she still took the box and turned it around, likely looking for a name before opening it up and finding a single strip of medicine with eight pieces; Chiba sealed it back up and looked at the doctor as she proceeded to take a seat once again across from the girl who seemed to be patiently waiting for an answer to her question.

“It’s an antidepressant that I made; it works much faster than typical medication like it. However, you are to only take one as and when you needed it. Don’t go popping them like some lunatic,” Takemi insisted. Chiba looked down at the box with a curious expression before lifting her head to look at Takemi with a smile on her face.

“Thank you so much sensei,” Chiba admitted. She then proceeded to start packing her things away and Takemi wondered if perhaps she should bring up what she wanted to ask, before brushing it away; there was a time and a place to ask that question and right now wasn’t the time to be asking the girl about her familial connections. “I’ll see you next time,” Chiba bid. Takemi lifted a hand to wave at the girl as she turned to leave.

“I’ll let you know when I’ve got the information you’re friend needs,” Takemi stated. At those words, Chiba proceeded to turn around and give the woman a warm smile, she already knew who the girl was related to but seeing that smile was like a nail in the coffin as to know for certain just who Chiba happened to be, the smile was identical in every way to that one her friend used to flash her.

“You’re a wonderful doctor Takemi-sensei,” Chiba stated. Before Takemi could react the assertion, the girl opened the door and left through it, leaving the doctor to silently gape at the door as it proceeded to swing close behind Chiba; once the door was shut, Takemi proceeded to sigh heavily and slumped back in her chair with her lips twisted in a way that Takemi wasn’t sure if she was smiling or frowning.

“Huh… your daughter’s one heck of a weird girl,” Takemi sighed. The doctor then turned her head to look at a picture nestled safely on her desk so that only she could see what it contained. “Then again, you were weird yourself, Cho-san,” Takemi admitted. A smile coming on her face as she looked at the picture of her and her friend.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Elizabeth was well acquainted with death, not least because that was what her Wild Card and Betwixt had been forced to face to protect humanity, so she knew that something was very wrong with these deaths that were occurring. The problem was that the sinister presence in Shibuya’s train station was doing a good job of masking the other locations and that made it much harder for them to locate the sharp spikes that had been peppering Tokyo related to those accidents.

Elizabeth wished there was a simple way to figure out what had happened to the Velvet Room, but it appeared that nothing was going to be easy for them in solving this insane mystery that had suddenly attacked their lives. All the comfort that Elizabeth could take was that she had kept the Compendium created by her Wild Card with her and enable her to keep fighting whatever was plaguing this city so much that it was basically corrupted down to its’ cognitive roots.

“I found some sources!” Natsumi’s voice called. Elizabeth, along with Margaret and Theodore all perked up when they heard those words and turned to look at the young girl as she jogged over to them with a piece of paper within her hand. “Bus runaway accident including casualties, bombing at a convenience store, arson within a tunnel, fuel leak at a yacht harbour, an airport bus charging around, a traffic accident, a cyber-attack at the Cabinet Office, a poisoning incident. And most recently an incident at Wild-Duck Burger,” Natsumi listed. Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she recognised the name of the last place that was mentioned.

“What are all these events, Natsumi?” Margaret asked. It was a little odd that she suddenly came over and listed a group of events that sounded quite serious but ultimately it wasn’t anything that they should be concerned with; yet the gleam within Natsumi’s eyes implied that there was something more to these events than the attendants could actually think of.

“They’re reports of extremely unusual incidents, probably like what happened at the train station. Perhaps if we visit these places, we might have a better understanding of what’s going on,” Natsumi suggested. Well, that did seem to be beneficial, if they were incidents that were like the train station but away from it – thank Master Igor in Elizabeth’s opinion – then they might be able to get a better read on whatever had gone wrong.

“Then let’s start with the Wild Duck one,” Theodore suggested. A small hum escaped Margaret and Elizabeth turned to look at her serious sister; it had been such a shock when the Velvet Room had been lost but more because of how panicked and fearful Margaret had become, Elizabeth had been worried of course but her elder sister had seemed almost frantic with worry at the incident; quite the opposite of her normal grace and level-headed demeanour.

“Good idea, it’s the most recent therefore anything left behind would be at its’ strongest, the others we’ll check later,” Margaret agreed. There hadn’t been much left that could help them at the train station, but anything that could have helped was completely overshadowed by the heavy suffocation of the darkness that Mementos exuded which rendered their ability to sense and understand the incident utterly moot.

“The rest seem to be from April and before, so they’re definitely older,” Natsumi agreed. She was doing so much to help them and if Elizabeth was honest, she seemed much more comfortable and happier when compared to how she was when they met inside that Palace, there was a sparkle to her eyes that had been absent back then. “I’ll take you guys to the place where it happened, let’s see what we can find,” Natsumi decided.

To reach it, they had to go by train which meant that Natsumi had to lead them through the train station which none of the siblings liked if the tension bleeding from their shoulders was anything to go by, the moment they got out a collective sigh of relief escaped them. Natsumi kept guiding them to the restaurant that Elizabeth recalled from her tour of the physical world one time, as they looked at it something clicked into place in Elizabeth’s mind

“Hmm, interesting,” Theodore commented. The elder of the two could only nod her head in agreement, the scene before them was quite interesting when compared against the train station which was quite intriguing; Natsumi’s suggestion to visit the other accident sites were bearing more merit before they’d even begun to look into it, even without their eyes the Betwixt were filled with impressive instincts pertaining to the other world.

“The darkness present in this area is less oppressive, but more than that…,” Elizabeth acknowledged. There was something quite different to it that Elizabeth was slightly struggling to put into exact words as she stared at the building; hopefully her serious sister would be able to fill in the bit that she was missing out at the moment.

“It’s also different to what we felt at the train station,” Margaret added on. Yes, there was that difference and as Elizabeth focused upon it she finally found what the difference was and that set the woman on edge; something like this felt almost too familiar to her and it was starting to itch at her mind with increasing persistence that was starting to become annoying.

“How is it different?” Natsumi asked. All three of them turned to look at Natsumi who was giving them an inquisitive expression, they definitely needed to keep the girl up to date on what they discovered with anything that was found otherwise it would only prevent Natsumi from helping and her help was proving immensely valuable already.

“There’s something more… concretely sinister, I suppose is the best way to describe it,” Elizabeth admitted. That was certainly the way that it felt after taking the time to observe it, Elizabeth gripped her compendium, wishing for Minako’s strength to bolster her in light of this unnerving revelation of what was staring them dead in the face.

“Essentially, while there was a sinister feeling at the train station it was a bit more like smoke, there but amorphous, hard to touch let alone see if you aren’t looking for it,” Theodore explained. Natsumi’s expression gave nothing away as she looked between the trio of siblings as she waited for them to finish the explanation they were giving.

“But this, there’s a definite shape to the darkness that hangs over this place, like it’s a bit more real, almost as if it’s encroaching on this world,” Margaret finalised. Natsumi’s expression hardened as those words were spoken, clearly she understood that this wasn’t a good thing for them to be dealing with; Elizabeth had never seen anything like this, whether as her time as an attendant or afterwards.

“Um, excuse me,” A voice asked. They turned to see a boy standing behind them, he was looking between them with a confused expression on his face as he looked between each of them for some kind of understanding, Elizabeth had to wonder how long he had been there. “Are you talking about the nude chef selfie?” The boy asked. Elizabeth blinked her golden eyes as she tried to understand what the boy could possibly be referring to.

“Yeah, they’re psychics who seem disturbed by the incidents that have been going on so came to Tokyo to investigate. Can’t recall how I got swept up in this mess but I’m showing them around,” Natsumi answered. This was exactly why a Betwixt was so necessary, she was able to come up with a convincing enough explanation for what they were talking about, which took the pressure off the siblings.

“Okay,” The boy commented. He was still staring at them quizzically and Elizabeth wasn’t entirely sure if he had bought the reasoning that Natsumi had given, it seemed reasonable but perhaps it wasn’t enough to convince the boy; a sudden clearing of a throat drew their attention and Elizabeth found it had been Margaret who was looking at the boy. As for the boy, he seemed to flush a little red at the focus that she was giving him.

“What do you know about the incident?” Margaret asked. Hopefully that would cause any suspicion the boy had to be diverted otherwise they would probably have to deal with whatever his suspicions of them ended up bringing down; the boy straightened up slightly and focused upon Margaret at bit more intensely but with something about him that seemed slightly saddened.

“The person who did it was my mentor, but he never acted like that before. He was always so serious and dutiful regarding his work. He’d never do something so… bizarre or harmful to the restaurant,” The boy explained. It certainly seemed like he was saddened by the actions that had been taken by the man who took this nude chef selfie… what ever that was, as it went completely over Elizabeth’s head.

“Was there anything about your mentor that seem extremely unusual beside his odd behaviour?” Theodore questioned. Unusual behaviour could be a sign of something completely normal happening but there was something about this sudden change in mental state that was itching at Elizabeth’s mind, as if she should know it from somewhere.

“Yeah actually,” The boy answered. He had been thinking after Theodore’s question and had suddenly perked up as if he remembered something that agreed with the question. “He claimed that he couldn’t remember doing anything like that and seemed horrified to learn what he’d done,” The boy revealed. For some reason, that string of words sparked the connection that had been annoying Elizabeth and she felt her eyes widen.

“Thank you for your aid young man, hopefully we can get to the bottom of this,” Elizabeth rushed out. With that she grabbed Natsumi and dragged the girl away, Elizabeth knew her siblings were following them, but her mind was buzzing with what she had learned; once they were in an area devoid of other people, she twisted around to face them. “It’s similar to Apathy Syndrome,” Elizabeth hissed. Theodore’s own golden gaze went wide as he understood what had so unsettled Elizabeth before narrowing with understanding.

“Yes, I concur sister, this does bear a deal of similarity to Apathy Syndrome,” Theodore agreed. The two of them had seen what Apathy Syndrome could do to a person, how it could so violently change their personalities into almost exact opposites of how they had been before the condition caught the people within its’ claws.

“And you two are going to need to explain that,” Natsumi pointed out. Elizabeth knew that she was right, Margaret knew the basic details but not all of what had happened when they had been responsible for the Velvet Room; it was gone now, thanks to the actions of Minako and her precious friends, so to hear something like it had crawled back set of many of Elizabeth’s warning bells.

“Seven years ago, in Tatsumi Port Island, Shadows were capable of attacking people during a very specific time of the day. When that happened, people would end up losing all ability to care, they’d stop eating, sleeping, caring for themselves and eventually they’d start spouting out mindless ramblings, extreme cases saw them hospitalised. When they were cured, none of them could remember a thing during their time under that condition,” Elizabeth explained. The Great Seal should be holding, it couldn’t be happening again, could it?

“It does sound similar, it also bears some similarities to the mental breakdowns, something has to be causing this to be happening,” Natsumi noted. She didn’t seem frightened by the knowledge, instead it seemed as if she knew it; suddenly her expression hardened as if recalling something unpleasant. “Or someone is causing it,” Natsumi muttered. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, curious as to why Natsumi assumed that someone was behind this incident, and perhaps the others.

“Whatever the cause, if you continue to fight in the other world, you’ll reach your answer,” Margaret insisted. That had been the case with all of them, the other world provided the truth for the other two groups of Persona Wielders and perhaps those before them as well; Natsumi nodded her head before proceeding to look down at the watch that she had on.

“I better get home, it’s getting rather late,” Natsumi admitted. The girl quickly bowed to them and proceeded to run off, the three attendants waved the girl goodbye before turning to look at each other, hard expressions on their face; their discovery was useful, but it was also extremely disconcerting to be made aware of this unusual connection to the past dangers that had come.

No matter what, Elizabeth needed to check on the Great Seal, if it was weakened or broken then Elizabeth knew they were in for much more danger than before and that Natsumi needed to be made aware of the danger. If it was unchanged then everything was fine for them and Elizabeth could stop worrying about a repeat of seven years ago, but the similarities was still unnerving.

“Now that she’s gone, we need to do figure out how to better detect the strangeness that is pervading the city,” Margaret stated. Elizabeth could certainly spare time to focus upon this strangeness that kept occurring, but not for long, only until they had a clear idea of how to understand it.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 57: - Moon and Emperor

I needed to plan where to go the next time I could meet up with the Velvet Siblings, they’d managed to find something at the Wild Duck Burger which brought us one step closer to uncovering the mystery of the dark presence. But, if only made me more certain that whoever this Black Mask was that Madarame’s Shadow had spoken of, he or she was behind these incidents, that I had been made certain of.

“Hey, that calling card sent to the Madarame exhibit. Do you think…,” A girl asked. Hearing the discussion was focused on the calling card, I couldn’t help but perk up at hearing it, it would be nice to know what the rest of the student population happened to think of our newest heist; Ren had also focused his attention upon the girls ahead of us.

“Yeah, I think it’s just like the one sent to Kamoshida,” The girl beside her commented. She seemed unusually eager as she spoke about it, which was a good sign as it meant that more people believed in us ensuring the next level of Mementos would successfully open when we went down there. “People online are saying the Phantoms are behind this. There’s already a Phan-Site with a bunch of requests posted on it,” She added on. Good grief, Mishima’s creation was really making itself useful for us, I couldn’t help but smile at that.

“I can’t believe there are real-life superheroes,” The first girl claimed. That caused Ren and I to exchange glances, after all that was quite the compliment to be thrown at us so suddenly. “If it’s happened twice, it’s probably going to happen again. Can’t wait to see who’s next,” She admitted. Look like we had some high expectations assigned to us now.

Hearing how those girls had spoken of us actually boosted my spirits as I took my seat ready for class, hopefully everything would go well with locating our next target. There wasn’t a need to rush with finding one, but it did need to be one with a good reason for us to target. My phone went off and I pulled it out to see what was going on.

Ryūji: So, what kinda person would be a bigger target than Madarame?

Ann: Hmmm…

Ann: I wonder…

Ann: I guess it’d have to be someone who’s the talk of the town?

Yusuke: That’s quite a vague prerequisite…

Yusuke: Don’t we have any more specific ideas?

Ren: Not really.

Ren: I mean maybe some famous celebrity.

Yusuke: True, but we’ll need a lead before we can begin anything.

Natsumi: This is essentially the hardest part of our activities.

Ann: We’ll just have to look for that as we go…

Ryūji: If only there was a big target just lying around for us…

Natsumi: There probably is.

Natsumi: We just aren’t aware of who he or she is.

I closed my phone and slipped it away as my lips thinned at the discussion that had been had, a bigger target than Madarame; that was going to be quite the difficult obstacle to overcome.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Mishima was grateful that the school day was over, the social studies trip was tomorrow and he wasn’t looking forward to it, he really wished he could have looked at an IT company or something that could help him to improve the Phan-site. Mishima walked towards the entrance of the school when he spotted a familiar figure, perhaps it was time for a follow up conversation that Mishima had been hoping for.

“Afternoon Chiba-san,” Mishima greeted. He hadn’t been expecting to run into her so suddenly, but given that he had this was the perfect time for him to talk to Chiba about something she had said the previous time they’d spoken; the most recent Calling Card and its’ subsequent effect had sparked a few more comments to start popping up on the Phan-site had caused Mishima to think more about the conversation he’d had with the girl.

“Mishima, how are you?” Chiba asked. Mishima shifted his weight slightly, Chiba must have taken some meaning from his motions as she stepped back slightly and motioned for him to walk on; Mishima did and Chiba proceeded to follow him, easily keeping pace with his gait, not that this would be difficult for the girl given her stature.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about those requests you mentioned on the Phan-site,” Mishima admitted. Chiba released a small hum, as if allowing the boy to decide how to proceed but at least letting him know that she’d heard the words. “I’m really trying to think about what to do regarding them, since they don’t seem like things the Phantoms should be wasting their time solving,” Mishima stated. A small sigh escaped Chiba and Mishima looked at her only to find Chiba giving the boy a hard look.

“Mishima, no one’s problems are a waste of time, some people could have other issues that they’re hiding by using something else. Don’t be so dismissive,” Chiba chastised. Mishima ducked his head and brought his shoulders up to his ears, feeling pretty pathetic for what he’d just said, plus – though she likely didn’t mean it – Chiba’s look brought back the feeling of being pinned by Kamoshida’s glare.

“Oh, erm sorry,” Mishima apologised. Mishima felt something gently rest upon his hair, the boy looked up to find that Chiba had set a hand upon his blue-black locks and she now possessed a soft smile as she looked at him; Mishima felt his shoulders dropping down as a bit of relaxation proceeded to come over him and his head raised up properly.

“It’s fine. Regarding the other requests though, I think you need to individually evaluate each of the requests and decide how best to respond to them,” Chiba suggested. Chiba’s hand slipped down to rest back at her side once again, Mishima still felt a warm flutter dancing across his chest at the soft look that Chiba had given him… at least until her words actually sank into his brain.

“M-m-me! Are you sure I should be the one doing such a thing?!” Mishima exclaimed. Mishima didn’t think he was capable of doing something like that and besides, even if he was Mishima didn’t believe he was capable of giving any advice that would even be capable of actually helping the people who were in danger.

“Why not? You are the administrator after all, I can’t think of a better person to manage those requests,” Chiba stated. But there was someone better, someone who was kinder than most people would think and had a strong will despite outward appearance; Mishima wasn’t thinking of Amamiya when he thought that; the boy was too busy leading the heroic Phantoms on their life changing missions after all.

“You could,” Mishima commented. Chiba stopped abruptly and turned to look at him, but Mishima really believed that Chiba would be able to do it. “Well, you seem to understand how these issues should be resolved and it be great to have an extra hand,” Mishima explained. He had really admired the girl, for longer than he’d openly admitted to anyone, plus he did need some aid in handling things since he kept pulling all-nighters and it was starting to affect his schoolwork which could cause people to get suspicious of him. As Mishima looked at Chiba, she shifted to the side and looked away from him which caused Mishima to frown.

“I don’t know what view you have of me Mishima, but I’m not the type of person who can empathise with people. I can’t comprehend their emotions despite how much I’m trying to relearn that,” Chiba stated. Mishima could only blink in confusion, he really didn’t understand what could cause Chiba to think that way, but it sounded crazy if he was honest. “Besides, I’m a little too busy outside of school to actually help,” Chiba added on.

“Oh… okay, I’m sorry to be such a bother,” Mishima commented. He hadn’t even thought that the girl would be busy; back in middle school – before the tragedy of her parents which Mishima was sure had caused her personality to twist – Chiba had been involved in the Koto club and he’d even heard her singing a few times, plus her hands had always been calloused so he figured there was something else she had to be doing.

“Hey, you’re not being a bother Mishima. I’m actually rather touched that you would trust me this much with something like that,” Chiba reassured. This caused Mishima to brighten up, knowing that he wasn’t being a nuisance. “You should probably try and do it before handing the job over to someone else,” Chiba insisted. Right, the conversation they’d been having, Mishima snapped his attention back to it.

“What makes you think I’d be any better at it than you Chiba-san?” Mishima wondered. He really was confused as to why Chiba believed he would be better than someone as level-headed as she was for handling these conversations; Mishima was actually worried that he’d end up getting into an argument with the people who were making more ridiculous demands, arguments weren’t Mishima’s strong suit, in fact they actively terrified him.

“I think you’ll understand, like I said I can’t empathise with these people. But you can, the things you went through at Kamoshida’s hands, plus how cruelly you were treated in middle school means you understand the pain other people who have been tormented have gone through. Try advising people on what they can do or even just talk to them, sometimes an open ear is the best thing anyone can do,” Chiba advised. Mishima didn’t like to think about middle school much, he had few decent memories of that time, but the mention of Kamoshida caused him to recall something, something he had questions about.

“There’s something I’ve always wondered,” Mishima admitted. Chiba nodded her head to show that she was listening to him. “Why did you step in that day, when you caught Kamoshida about to hit me?” Mishima wondered. Immediately, a dark look came onto Chiba’s face, but not dark as in angry but dark as in pained; her eyes took on a look that immediately told Mishima she was sad and her lips thinned into a grimace while her head turned to the side, plus her entire body seemed to go rigid.

“I… it’s complicated but I’d been through something recently at that time which caused me to open my eyes to things I’d previously ignored,” Chiba explained. She seemed to compose herself as the look disappeared and she focused on Mishima once more. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come to my senses sooner, maybe I could have done more, before you, Shiho, Ann and Ryūji along with all the rest were hurt like you were,” Chiba apologised. Mishima’s eyes widened in shock at her words and the words leapt from his mouth before he could think.

“Chiba-san, what could you have done?” Mishima asked. Chiba looked at him with those wide green eyes, Mishima decided to plough forward with what he needed to say. “You’re a well respected student, never got into any kind of trouble. But you were still a student. If you had tried to do anything to Kamoshida then he would have either had you expelled… or worse,” Mishima warned. He violently shivered, recalling what had happened to Suzui, he had sent her into that situation, Mishima knew he was partially responsible for what Kamoshida had done to her.

“But I could have been there for you and the others, a listening ear, someone you could have at least vented to about what happened,” Chiba reminded. A saddened look appeared on Chiba’s face as her hands curled into fists, for some reason Mishima knew exactly what the girl was thinking about before she even opened her mouth. “Maybe even stop Shiho from attempting suicide,” Chiba added on. Yeah, Mishima was right, it had been but Chiba wasn’t really to blame for what had happened.

“You might not have been there for everyone else, but you were there for me,” Mishima admitted. This caused the sad look to vanish as she focused on him with surprise shining in her eyes. “When you stopped Kamoshida’s attack that day, it actually gave me a bit of hope, that what we went through wasn’t so invisible to everyone. And when I kept seeing you around school, how you stood up to Kamoshida as best you could, it was really what pushed me to keep getting through the day,” Mishima explained. Mishima could feel a blush burning within his cheeks.

“I… I did that?” Chiba asked. Mishima looked at the girl and found that a faint blush was staining her own cheeks it was definitely a lighter shade than Mishima’s cherry red blush but it still warmed his soul to see him having this kind of effect upon her; but his words weren’t a lie, they were something that he had felt the need to say for a long along with something else that he finally worked up the courage to do.                                                      

“Yes, you did. It might have been the Phantoms who ended up saving everyone, but to be honest… you were the one who saved me Chiba-san,” Mishima insisted. Mishima then proceeded to bow to her, he wanted to truly express how grateful he was without accidentally embarrassing the girl, so left it as a simple bow. “And for that, I’ll always be grateful to you,” Mishima added on.

“Thank you Mishima… truly thank you,” Chiba stated. She was smiling, sweetly and softly at him, Mishima basked in the warm glow of her smile and made a decision; if Chiba really believed in him, then he would try and talk to some of the requesters to help them as best he could, perhaps this would help Amamiya in the long run.

*Persona 5 Royal*

Yusuke had come to a decision, one that he believed needed to be done, it might not make Natsumi happy, but he was grateful to the woman for what she had done for him and he wanted to repay her in some way that might be meaningful to her. There was another matter that helped encourage Yusuke to help this decision, it caused a slight itch to appear in right hand as the memory flittered across his mind.

“Good evening Yusuke,” Natsumi greeted. Yusuke turned to face the girl; they had met up Shibuya since it was the best place for them to reach where Yusuke had hoped to go. “So, what did you want to talk about?” Natsumi wondered. No surprise that she would ask that as Yusuke had rather suddenly contacted her and asked for the girl to meet him here.

“I was thinking, we’ve been focusing on my sword skills and hoping to hone my skills. But I feel the need to look at other sources of art,” Yusuke explained. It was a bit nerve wracking for him to talk about this, he’d done the best he could while at school to come up with another painting, but a complete blank was all that came over his mind and it caused his hand to start trembling slightly at the emptiness surrounding him.

“Are you okay?” Natsumi asked. Her expression held worry as she heard those words, Yusuke wondered what was going through her mind when she heard the words; though Yusuke suspected that she was likely thinking he would end up putting down the brush permanently. Yusuke wanted to avoid that desperately so he was searching for a way to avoid it, Natsumi had already lost her ability to pursue singing so she likely wanted to help prevent it happening to Yusuke

“Painting has been… difficult for me as of late, perhaps because of what happened with Sensei,” Yusuke admitted. A strained expression appeared on Natsumi’s face at those words, but Yusuke swallowed the lump in his mouth and pushed forward. “Perhaps looking at other arts might help me,” Yusuke suggested. It was the best thing he could think of, weapon arts and the tea ceremony, both times with Natsumi had allowed him to see beautiful things that Yusuke wanted to frame so perhaps the luck would continue.

“Sure, what did you have in mind?” Natsumi wondered. Yusuke needed to control the smile that threatened to spread across his face, he was grateful that Natsumi was willing to go along with his plan, of course that could change the moment Yusuke told Natsumi where he wanted to go; this was the kind of situation that needed to be handled delicately… and that was not Yusuke’s speciality unless painting.

“Well, I find music to be rather wonderful for inspiration, so I was thinking of visiting a music shop that was recommended by one of my classmates,” Yusuke stated. He turned around and started to lead the way hoping that Natsumi would say nothing else about his chosen destination; unfortunately, his hopes were dashed with a single word from the girl who it appeared was not actually following him.

“Yusuke,” Natsumi called. Her tone made him freeze, before proceeded to turn around and get an eyeful of a distinctly unimpressed expression on her face but it wasn’t angry or anything that might have caused Yusuke to feel actually worried. “This isn’t some convoluted scheme to get me back into singing, is it?” Natsumi asked. So, it would seem that she had seen through Yusuke’s plan.

“Well… if that happened, I can’t say it would be a bad thing,” Yusuke answered. Natsumi simply raised an eyebrow in response, when his classmate had suggested to visit the music store, Yusuke had immediately thought of bringing Natsumi along though not because of her singing; more that he believed Natsumi would have decent taste in music that might be able to help him. “But the lack of inspiration to paint is true,” Yusuke added on.

“Alright, let’s get going then,” Natsumi agreed. Her expression softened when she realised that Yusuke wasn’t trying to force her into doing anything she was currently averse to participating in; Natsumi gestured for him to lead on and Yusuke proceeded to do so, guiding them through the pathways of Shibuya until they reached the store. “Which do you like more, Eastern or Western?” Natsumi asked.

“I have only listened to Eastern music, preferably of the classical variety, it was not exactly welcomed by Madarame to have other types in the shack. Beside I do not enjoy more modern music,” Yusuke admitted. Madarame had been rather against allowing the students to listen to any Western music; the boy did not know why but the dark glare he had sent a few who dared to try was enough to warn them all away from doing so ever again.

“Alright then, I know this store sells a good selection of western music and as Ouvrard was an opera singer, I know a lot of classical music so I can show you some of the better ones,” Natsumi insisted. She led the way in and Yusuke hurried to catch up to her as they moved through the aisle to the Western section of the store where Natsumi immediately started to hunt for the songs she believed where best and then have Yusuke listen to them.

Yusuke was right when he assumed Natsumi had good taste in music, she brought over many types of classical music that range from sorrowful to passionate, joyful to angry. Yusuke did not like them all, but each piece was certainly capable of inspiring the emotions it played; Natsumi even gave him some background on the stories connected to the songs. It was during that moment that Yusuke knew Natsumi still had a passion for singing and she did not begrudge the classical music world for what had happened to her.

Yusuke did not have a lot of money at the moment and he was saving a significant chunk for something that he needed to buy later for Ann and her parents. Which meant that Yusuke had to be discerning in what he selected, Natsumi however caught on and shoved some money into him; the painter tried to refuse but after being quietly told it was Shadow money, he decided there was no point arguing. Once Yusuke selected four songs, they proceeded to start leaving.

“Oh!” Natsumi exclaimed. Yusuke paused in his movements and turned back to look at the girl, finding that she had approached a specific CD rack, Yusuke trailed over and immediately frowned when he saw that it was one of these ‘idols’ that seemed so foolishly popular with his classmates; Yusuke could not wrap his head around why people liked scantily dressed people who liked bouncing and floundering with no dignity or poise

“What is it Natsumi?” Yusuke wondered. He was quite surprised to see that Natsumi had been drawn to this section and he’d taken Natsumi for someone who was much more mature and controlled than his peers; Yusuke saw that the actual CD that Natsumi was focused on happened to be by Kujikawa Rise or as she was most commonly called Risette, which caused Yusuke annoyance to rise even higher.

“It’s the song Shiho, a friend from school, played for me once. I didn’t realise it was Rise-san’s song,” Natsumi explained. Yusuke’s eyes widened in surprised at not only the words, but the tone of respect that Natsumi had used to refer to the idol, it didn’t seem like these two should even have been capable of meeting each other especially with Natsumi’s aversion to anything connected to singing.

“You know this idol?” Yusuke asked. Feeling quite surprised, if they did indeed know each other, then that was quite the interesting story and it actually caused Yusuke to have to start revising his previous opinion of Natsumi; it wasn’t about to be anything bad, but he had assumed her to be a refined lady of grace and ancient traditions with the steely core of an Onna-musha; it seems there was more to her than Yusuke previously assumed.

“Yes, we met and well, she has some understanding,” Natsumi admitted. As she did, the girl tapped her throat, to indicate exact what she was referring to, Yusuke could understand why they might have connected if this Kujikawa woman did understand the pain that Natsumi had been through, perhaps that woman was better suited to allowing Natsumi to reclaim her love of singing.

“Is the song any good?” Yusuke wondered. He was not a fan of idols, due to his perception of how they were actually quite unsightly individuals to watch, which immediately prevented him from being able to enjoy any of the music that came out of these individuals or groups, but Natsumi seemed to have good taste in music so it might be safe to trust her suggestions.

“To me it is, but everyone is different, let’s try it out,” Natsumi suggested. Instead of heading for the check out, they diverted back to one of the playing machines, Yusuke set himself up as Natsumi inserted the CD into the player; Yusuke braced himself for a terrible performance from the woman… well terrible by his standards at least.

Which meant when the song started, Yusuke was pleasantly surprised by the sound that initially greeted his ears. A flute-y, high pitched but not painful sound played followed by others, but that sound remained before the singer took over. And the words! As Yusuke continued to listen, a thrum rushed through his soul for those words seemed to hit deeper than any of the other songs he’d ever listened to before. There was a gentleness to the melody that seemed to be missing from the other idol songs he’d heard, but a deep well of strength was present as well. Eventually the song ended and Yusuke removed the headphones.

“Magnificent… as strange as it might seem, I feel like I connected with that song on a deep level,” Yusuke admitted. Goemon had stirred hearing those words, as though understanding that song contained a deeper message than most might have heard; when Yusuke looked over at Natsumi, there was a smile on her lips that seemed to have a mysterious quality to it. “Is there something you know about this song Natsumi?” Yusuke wondered.

“Yes. But that’s private, between me and Rise-san, I’d have to ask for permission to explain to you,” Natsumi admitted. Yusuke nodded his head, if it was something Natsumi did not feel deserved to be passed along to others freely then the artist could accept that; Natsumi had previously requested permission from him for such a reason while assuring the boy she would be discrete. Yusuke had agreed when he learned it was for his comrade’s mental health.

“Ah, I understand,” Yusuke commented. He would not push or prod, there seemed to be no danger present to his friend and Yusuke believed Natsumi was smart enough to warn him and the rest of the Phantoms if she was in real danger and unable to deal with it herself. “Do you have any other recommendations from this idol,” Yusuke wondered. The song had unexpectedly connected to him and he wondered if any more of them would do the same.

“I can show you some, but I actually think her more recent stuff is better than the stuff from five years and before. Rise-san took a break and when she came back, her music was superior to anything she put out before,” Natsumi admitted. With that they proceeded to look through a bit more of the woman’s collection with Natsumi picking out a few and allowing Yusuke to choose which ones to take back. Soon enough they were able to leave the store with their purchased goods; suddenly both of their phones went off and Yusuke fished out his phone to check the Chat.

Ryūji: You know how we’re going to that TV station tomorrow, yeah?

Ryūji: I’m thinking we might find out next target there.

Ann: Oh, that’s right!

Ann: We’re always hearing gossip about the dark sides of celebrities…

Ren: True, it seems like a reasonable place to start.

Ryūji: With that much money, they’ve prolly got their fingers in all sorts of dirty business.

Yusuke: Hm…

Yusuke: That phrasing has quite the immoral ring to it…

Ryūji: Dude, you always react to the weirdest stuff…

Natsumi: Still, there’s a possibility.

Natsumi: Not just celebrities but those behind the camera can be equally as guilty.

Ann: Anyway, we get to observe a live recording of a show, right?

Ryūji: Ooh, maybe we’re gonna be on TV!

Ann: We’ll just be in the crowd, remember? Any TV appearance would be for like, two seconds.

Yusuke: Hm. Try not to pull any fanciful stunts to garner attention, okay?

“Seriously Yusuke?” Natsumi chuckled. The painter put his phone away as he looked over at the weapon’s master and found her to be giggling away, seemingly quite enjoying the words he had typed. “I mean, Ryūji, I can see doing that but not the rest of us,” Natsumi insisted. While it was true that Yusuke believed only Ryūji would actively do something to cause trouble, it still needed to be said.

“Yes, but I’m sure anything could happen at those places,” Yusuke commented. It would do them all good to remain as anonymous as possible, that was why he had agreed to using the codewords that Natsumi, Ren and even a few from Ann had come up with to disguise their actions; Morgana had no need of them thanks to his cat form which meant they’d only really needed to get Ryūji to start being more consistent in their usage.

“Do you think the music will be able to help you?” Natsumi asked. They had started to walk back to the train station, strange things had been happening in Shibuya lately and Yusuke wanted to avoid any harm coming to Natsumi; capable as she was of defending herself, it was better to avoid a confrontation as much as possible.

“I don’t know, all I can do is try,” Yusuke admitted. He truly hoped that the music would be able to help him find something to paint, otherwise he was in a great deal of trouble and that trouble would only blow back on the Phantoms which was something they needed to avoid; complications in their personal lives should be mitigated as much as possible.

“Cruel as it might seem, to burden him with more, but if you don’t find the music helping then perhaps you could try talking to Ren. He’s very good at figuring things out,” Natsumi suggested. Yusuke nodded his head, Ren had aided him in Mementos that day so he knew Ren could help but as Natsumi had said, it seemed cruel to burden him more, but if things kept going then Yusuke would have no choice but to ask.

Chapter Text

Good Day Readers! Obviously, I do not own anything connected to the Persona series in general or Persona 5 specifically, I DO own Chiba Natsumi and Anais Ouvrard, along with Natsumi’s immediate family members and the original Personas that will be showing up on occasion.

I would appreciate any responses that you have, please enjoy

Chapter 58: - Trip to the TV Station

“… and that’s why we recruit sponsors to help make TV shows,” The tour guide explained. All of us who had chosen the TV station for our social studies trip were gathered within a set that looked to be used for a talk show or news station. “I’m sure you know about commercial breaks? Well, those are actually sponsor-related product placements. To sum things up, ratings are vitally important for a station’s production funding and-,” She added on. But a quieter voice closer to my ears overrode her next words.

“Huh…,” Ryūji sounded. However, it didn’t sound like he was actually interested in the words that the guide was coming out with; honestly I wasn’t all that interested either, the trips hadn’t really had much available that had seemed stimulating but I’d chosen the TV station simply because out of the limited options, it had seemed to be the most interesting one that was present, I was now regretting the choice I’d made.

“I thought everyone knew that,” Ren commented. While I couldn’t state that I did know this fact, I figured it was probably something to do with gaining part of their revenue, I swear my feet were starting to hurt from how much I’d been standing around doing nothing; it was really difficult not to fidget in place just to find some way to relieve the pressure being exerted upon the soles of my extremities.

“This has been more boring than I actually expected it to be,” I admitted. So far, all we’d done since arriving is be guided to this location and listened to this woman jabber on about things that seemed like common sense or topics that were easily worked out with just the smallest amount of focus and thinking it through.

“For example, soap opera re-runs are shown in the day, whereas alluring newswomen are broadcasted at night. Thus, the scheduling department is where we decide what time, we broadcast which program. I suppose you could say it’s the place where the scheduling is determined,” The tour guide explained. That last part was unnecessary, since it was obvious from her prior words that was exactly what the scheduling department would do.

“Could this get any more obvious?” Ann wondered. A fair point, the tour guide seemed to be floundering about what to tell us since she was saying such unnecessary words; I had to wonder if anyone had actually prepared the guide before we’d shown up today given how much she seemed to be struggling with what she was trying to tell us.

“No argument from me, Ann,” Ren agreed. Ann proceeded to yawn quite loudly as she expressed how sleepy she was, the blonde haired model did seem slightly tired ever since we met up with each other but it was likely that the sheer boredom we were being afflicted with was exacerbating her already present drowsiness.

“So, the best parts are taken from the footage in order to cut down the program to the desired length. The place where this filmed footage is edited would be the editing room,” The tour guide spoke. I wonder if it was possible for boredom to induce a headache because it certainly felt like I was going to end up with one at this rate.

“Hey, how much longer does this go?” Morgana asked. If even the seemingly ever-patience Morgana was starting to lose it, then we were probably right to be wary of how this whole thing was dragging like a stone across a swamp that was more mud than water; maybe Ryūji was right in his suggestion of just skipping… which is a scary thought in of itself.

“I swear, I’m not gonna last…,” Ryūji admitted. He then also yawned, someone suddenly barged passed Ren so hard that he spun around which spooked Morgana, I quickly looked over and saw that it was an older man dressed in a white suit; I didn’t like the look that was on his face as if he was looking down on us just for being here, plus the fact that he had purposely smacked into Ren with significant force wasn’t a good sign either.

“What’s going on? I can’t stand all this noise!” The man snapped. Ryūji surged forward and was about to insult him when Ann quickly grabbed him and pulled him back which also managed to silence our Electricity wielder, it would definitely just get us in trouble if we allowed Ryūji to rage as he wanted, no matter how much the rude man probably deserved to have someone tear into him for his lack of manners.

“Apologises, I’ll have them leave right away,” The tour guide capitulated. It was rather pathetic how quickly she had folded just because of one man yelling at her, but if that was her boss then I couldn’t blame her for doing what was necessary to keep her job, the white suit wearing man proceeded to storm off. “Now then, it’s time for a bit of hands-on experience!” The tour guide encouraged. Well, at least that sounded like something that was a little bit more interesting than standing around and doing nothing.

“Dammit… who does that jerk think he is?!” Ryūji demanded. Probably someone high up in the company’s hierarchy or it could be a celebrity that thought that he was entitled to boss people around as they wanted; it was really bad to see just how horrible some people acted when they thought they were better than others just because of their job or position in some organisation.

“Hey there. You wanna be on TV?” A male voice asked. We looked over at the source and saw a man standing there with his eyes on Ann, a look that was all too familiar. “You’ve got a slammin’ bod, after all. Hehehe,” The man commented. Revulsion rose up within me and I moved closer so that I could tug Ann behind me so that she could at least take shelter from this perverse individual.

“Excuse us, but we’re here on a school trip,” I spoke up. This caused the man’s attention to turn to me and I was glad of that… for all of three second; because after those three seconds passed, his eyes took on that same disgusting look they had when looking at Ann and I felt myself take a slight step backwards despite Ann being behind me, just because I wanted to create more distance between me and this man.

“Damn… you’re not too bad looking yourself. You two make quite the image,” The man commented. He proceeded to reach into his pocket and pulled out two objects, which he pretty much forced into mine and Ann’s hands by grabbing them; I think my skin might have tried to crawl off my hand the moment he touched me. “Just gimme a call if you’re interested. I’d greatly welcome a message from you, day or night,” The man offered.

“Greatly welcome, my ass. It’s obvious what he’s after,” Ryūji commented. My friend was quite right, he obviously had no intention of doing anything helpful for me or Ann. “Do these rotten adults care about anything other than looks!?” Ryūji questioned. Probably not given how they had been acting, I deeply wanted to stick my hand under hot water to get rid of the nasty feeling that man’s skin had given me. “I’ll yank-,” Ryūji began to threaten. Thankfully Ren covered the boy’s mouth and prevented him from saying anything damning.

“Will you quiet down!? You’re supposed to be acting like good students today!” Morgana snapped. Frankly, I think Ryūji had done remarkably well today since it had only been the presence of a rude man and this repulsive individual that had set the blonde off; before now he hadn’t been acting that much differently to the rest of us, although all of us tensed up slightly when Kawakami-sensei walked over.

“I understand you’re bored, but please don’t cause any trouble. Okay?” Kawakami-sensei requested. She had an annoyed look on her face but she still seemed to be rather exhausted by the deeper bags under her eyes and her face seemed a little sunken in; I felt my stomach sink slightly as I worried about what could possibly be causing Kawakami-sensei to end up like this.

“Well then, uuhh, let’s have you see what it’s like to be an AC. Oh, that stands for assistant camera. When we’re moving cameras, we need people who can keep the cables from getting tangled up. The blonde will do. He seems like he’s got energy to spare anyway. Guy next to him, you can come too if you’re feeling lonely. C’mon, hurry up and grab the cables!” The man insisted. He then proceeded to walk away from us.

“Dammit… this sucks!” Ryūji hissed. I couldn’t entirely blame him for feeling that way given that this whole trip had been quite the let down so far.

*Persona 5 Royal*

After being separated from Ryūji and Ren, Ann and I focused on doing whatever we could to avoid that creep, or any others like him. The moment we found some peace, me and Ann darted into the bathroom and scrubbed our hands clean after tearing up the cards that we’d been given and dumped the fragments into the bin. Upon leaving the bathroom, we heard Ryūji’s voice angrily complaining and proceeded to move over to him.

“Quiet down, will you!?” Ann demanded. This caused the blonde punk and Ren to look over at us as we proceeded to move to stand with them. “I get how you feel though… that sucked for the both of us,” Ann agreed. Both me and Ren nodded our heads, after all this trip had proven to be somewhat of a disappointment which I had not been expecting it to be, perhaps it was wrong to think we’d see something exciting, but I’d hoped it might be more interesting.

“We gotta do more of this tomorrow too?” Ryūji complained. I couldn’t say that I was looking forward to going through more of this mind-numbing boredom tomorrow, it was certainly something I’d prefer to avoid; likely sensing the path that Ryūji’s thoughts were tiptoeing down, Morgana proceeded to pop out of the bag and levelled an intense look at our Electricity wielder.

“No flaking out, Ryūji,” Morgana chastised. Yeah, we couldn’t have someone up and vanishing after showing up on the first day, if he hadn’t been here then nobody would bother with batting an eyelash at it but to vanish after having attended would certainly get some kind of reaction from most people and I could only imagine that bringing Niijima-senpai’s full focus upon us even if it might not be for her investigative reasoning.

“I know, I know. I gotta be a ‘good boy’ right?” Ryūji claimed. He was slumped down as he said those words, he clearly wasn’t enjoying having Morgana constantly on his back about behaving himself while at school; but we really didn’t need any additional attention being shot at us by the teachers. “Bein’ Phantom Thieves ain’t easy,” Ryūji whined.

“Ryūji!” All of us snapped. He was really starting to do my head in with his inability to develop a brain-to-mouth filter about our activities, I quickly snapped my head about in order to check to see if anyone had heard; thankfully no one else seemed to be around which caused me to breathe a sigh of relief… but one day Ryūji was going to get us in trouble with his blunt honesty.

“Anyway, we get to go home straight from here today,” Ann revealed. It was relief that we wouldn’t have to go back to school only to leave in order to go home. “We don’t spend much time in this area, so why don’t we relax and check out some shops beforehand?” Ann suggested. That actually seemed like a nice idea, a way for us to spend time together – even if we were lacking Yusuke – in an area we might not have much of an opportunity to visit.

“Ooh, I know a place! I wanna go to that huge pancake-looking place we passed on the way here!” Morgana exclaimed. All of us proceeded to look at the human turned cat with confusion on our faces… what could he be talking about? A pancake looking place, I hadn’t seen anything like that. “It looked delicious! What was that?” Morgana wondered. Suddenly realisation came upon Ryūji.

“Ohhh… you mean Dome Town?” Ryūji revealed. Understanding came to me then, it did kind of look pancake-ish the portion that Morgana had been referring to. “The round part is a baseball stadium, then along the outside they’ve got an amusement park,” Ryūji explained. It was exactly the kind of place where they would be able to spend time together while enjoying themselves.

“It’s right in the middle of a business area, but they have some pretty hardcore rides there too,” Ann added on. I hadn’t ever visited the place, but hearing the mention of ‘hardcore rides’ caused my stomach to roll a bit, I’d never been fond of roller coasters or the like, they didn’t look anywhere near safe enough for people to be strapped in by something that looked so terribly flimsy and then sent shooting around at high speeds and different angles.

“Alright… let’s go! I’ll show you just how courageous I am!” Morgana declared. I don’t think it was a good idea for Morgana to be going on such rides, at least not until he regained his human form, there was no way any of the restraints would be able to keep his lithe cat form secured to the cart… I do not want to lose our best healer and primary Wind wielder, plus essentially our navigator, to something like that.

“Going on a scary ride doesn’t really prove any kind of courage,” Ann claimed. She had a strained look on her face, but I couldn’t tell what she must have been thinking about at the moment, still at least she said something that would be likely to dissuade Morgana from attempting to get on such a ride given the dangers that were attached to going on one.

“Not like cats can get on anyways,” Ryūji commented. Morgana seemed surprised by this as he asked ‘Really?’ after hearing that, it really shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. “Really. You might be able to sneak in if you stay in the bag, but you’d totally puke if you did that,” Ryūji added on. Ren didn’t seem fond of that idea if the pinched expression on his face was anything to go by. “But uh… let’s just go to Dome Town! I’m really feelin’ it now!” Ryūji insisted.

“Me too! My stomach’s ready for roller coasters!” Ann happily declared. She seemed particularly energetic about going to the roller coasters, I was definitely not looking forward to going anywhere near such rides, I could already feel my stomach threatening a revolt at the mere thought of getting on those particular rides.

“Uhhh… I think I’ll pass on the puke rides,” Morgana admitted. I nodded my head in agreement to the healer’s words; it was quite unsettling to even think about going on them, at least this way if Ren did go on the rides, then someone else would be there to keep Morgana company, and prevent him from being catnapped like what had almost happened with Aino.

“Excuse me,” A gentle voice called. All of us jerked around to see who had spoken, behind us was a boy who was probably close to Niijima-senpai and Haru-senpai in age, he had shaggy, neck length brown hair with a fringe that rested to the sides of his face and reddish-brown eyes. He wore a tan pea coat with black buttons, striped black and white tie, black pants, black gloves and black loafers “I couldn’t help but notice your uniforms. Are you students of Shūjin Academy?” He asked.

“Yeah, whaddya want?” Ryūji asked. However, I was more focused on his Will of Rebellion, or rather the absolute lack of one, I’d never seen anyone completely lacking a Will before unless they happened to have a Persona; most people at least had something they were completely against in their lives so most people had flickering candles instead of the inferno required for Awakening a Persona. This was my first time running across such an unusual individual.

“I happened to be passing by, so it seemed polite to greet you. We’ll be filming together, after all,” The boy admitted. There was something about the boy that seemed slightly familiar, but I couldn’t exactly place where I had heard or seen him before. “Ah, where are my manners? My name is Akechi Goro,” The boy introduced. At that, I finally realised who this person was since I’d heard him a few times when the TV had been on at LeBlanc.

“As in the second Detective Prince, that Akechi Goro?” I asked. Akechi turned to look at me and a smile came onto his face as his eyes closed, however something about that smile immediately set me on edge; there was nothing malicious behind it, but I just had the sudden sensation that the smile he was showing was utterly, horribly, fake.

“Yes. That’s me,” Akechi confirmed. Even his voice had changed now, before it had been normal, neutral if enquiring but now it sounded almost… like… I guess plastic-y was the best way to describe it. “My apologises, I truly was just passing by. I must be going. There’s a briefing for tomorrow’s recording that I have to attend,” Akechi admitted. The boy had opened his eyes and stopped smiling by now, but his voice was the same and I took a step back as if to put more distance between me and his horrible voice. “So, you’re going to go have cake now?” Akechi suddenly asked. Despite his freaky voice, I couldn’t help but listen to that as all of us exchanged confused looks. “I missed lunch today, so I’m quite hungry myself,” Akechi added on.

“Huh? Cake? What’re you talkin’ about?” Ryūji asked. It was a bit baffling since I don’t recall any of us mentioning anything about cake, not even the sweet monster known as Ann had said anything, I have no idea where the boy could have possibly got a hold of such an idea and from the looks of the others, even they were confused.

“Oh, am I mistaken? I thought I heard something about delicious pancakes,” Akechi admitted. If possible, I think the hair on the back of my neck shot straight up hearing those words as my mind stumbled about trying to understand this comment. “No matter. Well, see you tomorrow,” Akechi stated. He then proceeded to walk away from us and off down the hallway, we waited a moment for the clicking of his shoes to completely fade before looking at each other.

“So, is that guy some kind of start up entertainer or something?” Ryūji asked. That was what he focused on? I was more concerned by what he had said since it didn’t make any sense no matter how I might try to think about it. “He’s never gonna get popular with that kinda hair though,” Ryūji claimed. It was clear to me that Ryūji didn’t have a clue who that boy had actually been.

“Ryūji,” I spoked. I reached up and rubbed the bridge of my nose as I tried to think about what to say but honestly my brain just felt like mush at this moment. “You know what, if you don’t know then never mind, I’m too tired to explain at the moment and if he’s right, you’ll learn tomorrow,” I decided. I raised my hands into the air to indicate my surrender before dropping them back down.

“Then it can wait for tomorrow. In the meantime, Dome Town! I’ve never actually been on a rollercoaster before, so this’ll be fun,” Ren encouraged. He seemed slightly chipper, but perhaps the idea of going on something he couldn’t before had perked him up; Ryūji on the other hand proceeded to gape at Ren with clear shock on his expression at those words.

“Dude! How have you never been on a rollercoaster?!” Ryūji exclaimed. It might seem surprising to people from the city that someone couldn’t have gone on a rollercoaster before, since there was so many of them around Tokyo; but it seems that there was one thing that Ryūji was forgetting as Ren turned to give him a deadpan look.

“My hometown is tiny!” Ren defended. The two boys proceeded to start walking away and I could still hear them loudly discussing something, but the words weren’t really making any sense to my brain as I slumped against the wall I happened to be standing near while massaging my temples to try and clear up whatever was wrong with my mind.

“You okay Natsu-chan?” Ann asked. My friend had reached over to press her hand against my shoulder as she gave me a worried look, I couldn’t even force my lips into a strained smile and instead simply shut my eyes in an effort to help clear up my mind; after a few minutes it finally did and I felt that I could actually breathe a little easier, as if something had been removed from pressing on my mind.

“Fine, just fine,” I admitted. Ann still looked worried, not that I blame her since I still felt wobbly, but at least I could actually think now instead of struggling to focus; as me and Ann moved to catch up to the boys who seemed oblivious to us being delayed, I thought back to the conversation we just had with Akechi, his lack of a Will or Persona was certainly weird but that wasn’t what caught my attention at all.

After all, the weirdest bit about that conversation, had been that the only person who mentioned pancakes was Morgana.

*Persona 5 Royal*

It was the next day and we were all gathered in the live audience seats of the show they were recording, our trip to Dome Town yesterday had been rather fun especially since Ryūji had wanted to be sick after going on a rollercoaster, while Ann seemed made of steel since she was fine. Ren had been enjoying himself a fair amount while Morgana had appreciated my company when he’d been left behind to avoid the dangers of rollercoasters.

“Akechi-san’s coming on!” An announcer claimed. The boy walked onto the stage and almost immediately, girls started to squeal and gush which hurt my ears quite a bit and surprised Ryūji from his face, but I could barely hear his words over the offensive sounds. “Cutting back from commercial. Seven, six, five seconds till start, four, three…,” The announcer warned. They must have started showing the program on TVs as I noticed the hosts’ attitudes change suddenly.

“And now, onto the ‘Hottest Meet-and-Greet’ segment of our show,” The female presenter announced. They seemed eager to get on with this part of the show but if the girls’ reaction was any sign, then Akechi must have been more popular than I realised. “After his last appearance was so well-received, we decided to bring back this fine gentleman today. It’s the high school detective, Akechi Goro!” The presenter declared. The boy proceeded to greet the two announcers and those of us watching the show.

“Thank you for taking the time to join us today, Akechi-kun. Your popularity is stunning,” The male presenter stated. That was saying something, I certainly hadn’t expected my ears to be so violently assaulted all of a sudden by the girls’ squealing and who knows how many people at their homes or where this show was being seen were most likely reacting to the boy’s presence.

“Even I’ve found it to be quite a surprise. It is a bit embarrassing though…,” Akechi claimed. I dearly wanted to clamp my hands over my ears at hearing his voice again, I don’t know what had happened but the pleasant natural tone he’d spoken with yesterday had completely vanished and that horrible plastic sounding voice was there instead, it was already starting to grate against my ears.

“Moving along, we’ve been told there’s a case on your mind right now. Care to share, detective?” The female announcer asked. A chill ran down my spine when I heard those words, I didn’t like the sound of that as there was a high probably that he may very well be talking about the case that happened to involve us and if this boy was anywhere near as intelligent enough as everything kept making him out to be, then we were in severe trouble.

“Ah, yes. That would be the scandal involving the master artist Madarame,” Akechi admitted. Well, we were in trouble, Ren had to quickly grab Ryūji arm so that he didn’t overtly react, but the tension could be felt rolling off the blonde punk; Ann had gone extremely pale with wide eyes, so I reached over to grab her hand in order to reassure her. None of us could be seen panicking about this being brought up.

“There it is! All of this phantom thief excitement has caught your attention too, Akechi-kun!” The male announcer claimed. I’m not entirely sure that it was the ‘excitement’ that had caught the attention of this boy. “Allow me to be blunt for just a second. What do you think of these justice-oriented Phantom Thieves?” The announcer asked. All of us went tense when we heard those words, it was like we were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“If they truly are heroes of justice, I sincerely hope they exist,” Akechi claimed. The male announcer seemed surprised that Akechi even entertained the possibility of us being real, I was more surprised that he seemed to welcome our existence. “I may not seem like it, but I sometimes wish that Santa Claus actually existed. Although if he did, I’d have to arrest him for breaking and entering,” Akechi admitted. For some reason, those words caused a sinking feeling to erupt in my stomach. “But, hypothetically speaking, if these Phantom Thieves are real… I believe they should be tried in a court of law,” Akechi revealed. Ah, there be the reason.

“That’s quite the statement. Are they committing crimes?” The male announcer asked. Well… I suppose we were, from a certain point of view, but when backed into the type of corner we had ended up, what else were we supposed to do? Walk away, allow horrible tragedies to keep happening. I think I’d be sick if I did that, if not worse; not to mention how the other three would feel. “Some people even say that the Thieves are actually helping their victims abandon their evil ways,” The man added on.

“What the artist Madarame did truly was an unforgivable crime. However, they are taking the law into their own hands by judging him. It is far from justice. More importantly, you should never forcefully change a person’s heart,” Akechi spoke. When the law does nothing to help the real victims, sometimes taking the law into one’s hands is the best way; I’d at least prefer to act towards moral justice over abiding by lawful ignorance. Also, what other choice did we have? These people would have never changed and never been charged with their crimes.

“You have a point. These people are calling themselves the Phantom Thieves, after all,” The male host agreed. That was because it’s how we were acting, stealing their twisted desires and never getting caught by our targets. “Amazing as always, Akechi-kun! I could listen to you for days! You have the most radiant charisma!” The man pandered. I barely held back a gag at the man’s words, Ann scrunched up her face as if she had smelled something foul.

“I have to say though, I would be embarrassed if it turns out these Phantoms don’t exist. If that were the case, I’d summarise it into a report as a school project,” Akechi claimed. I’d like it if he dismissed us as not existing even if we kept up with our actions; but I didn’t like how his last set of words seemed to diminish our actions to a school project, I felt a little insulted by his words.

“Now then, let’s try asking some students the same age as Akechi-kun about the phantom thieves!” The female announcer claimed. Oh boy, this would be interesting to see how a chunk of the second years viewed us. “First, please press your button now if you think the Phantoms exist!” The woman requested. Well, that was an easy enough answer for us to make.

“Of course they do!” Ryūji snapped. I jabbed my elbow into his side for saying such a thing, if anyone heard him then he’d get pressured and that was a whole other mess no one needed to deal with; I pressed the button and watched as the number counter ran through some different numbers before coming to a stop on seventeen, since I knew the other three had also pressed it, that meant thirteen other people believed we existed.

“About thirty percent or so? What are your thoughts, Akechi-kun?” The male announcer questioned. Thirty-ish percent, considering that this was from a source of Shūjin students, I was rather surprised that it wasn’t much higher than that; I wonder if they were truly blind to how Kamoshida had actually been acting or if the results were actually incorrect since some people weren’t taking it seriously. Not everyone was on the Phan-site but some people were from the comments.

“I’m a bit surprised. That’s higher than I was expecting,” Akechi admitted. Well, no surprise since he was leaning towards us not existing instead of the other way. “I’d love to hear some more detailed opinions on the phantom thieves’ actions,” Akechi requested. The female host stood up and walked into the crowd before stopping in front of Ren, that immediately set off my own alarm bells.

“Alright, let’s try asking this student here,” The woman decided. I grabbed Ryūji in Ren’s place as Ann started to cut off the blood circulation in the hand she already had a hold of. “Hypothetically speaking, what are your thoughts on these Phantom Thieves, if they were real?” The woman asked. I leaned around Ryūji to look at Ren and saw he was moving his jaw, yet no sound came out of his lips.

“They’re justice,” Ren answered. His tone was soft, cool and steady, but thanks to the microphone his words reverberated through the room and I sensed people shifting in their seats as they probably wanted to see who had spoken those words; but my eyes focused on Akechi whose gaze narrowed ever so slightly and the faint spark of something entered his previously empty looking red-brown eyes.

“Justice, you say,” Akechi commented. Shockingly enough, the plastic quality of his voice had vanished, the male host commented how Ren’s opinion completely opposed to Akechi’s own belief. “Indeed. It’s rather intriguing to hear such a strong acknowledgement,” Akechi claimed. The plastic sounded like it was trying to creep back in, but something in Akechi was keeping it away. “In that case, there’s one more question I’d like to ask. If someone close to you, for example, your friend next to you, if his heart suddenly changed… wouldn’t you think it was the work of the phantom thieves?” Akechi wondered.

“Not at all, it’s become apparent that they only target criminals. And truly heinous ones at that, those that possession no regret or guilt over their actions before the Change of Heart, my friend is nothing of the sort,” Ren answered. I sensed Ryūji’s massive grin without even looking at him, though Ren’s answer was no surprise to any of us, Ryūji’s heart didn’t need changing, nor could it be.

“Well, that’s certainly an interesting perspective. But there is a large problem in your reasoning,” Akechi claimed. This caused my eyebrows to furrow as the boy leaned forward to clasp his hands together. “Whether the thieves’ actions are good or not, I feel there is a more important issue at hand,” Akechi stated. That horrible plastic was back in his voice again, the female announcer returned to her seat while the man asked for clarification. “The matter of how they change people’s hearts,” Akechi stated. He looked down while crossing his legs and gripping his chin, I felt a tension appear in my body as I wondered in how much trouble we were in. “If they honestly possess that ability… it could be used for more than extracting confessions. It could be that what seem to be ordinary crimes are actually being perpetrated by these methods,” Akechi theorised.

“You know, you’re absolutely right,” The male host claimed. He was starting to sound like a kiss ass and this caused Akechi to look up at him, we knew that Akechi was wrong with what he was saying but there was a high chance that ordinary people might believe in his words more than they would a mysterious group that never showed their faces and took action in a rather obscure method.

“Oh, please don’t misunderstand. This is all purely hypothetical. It is only if people who can use such a power truly exist. Either way though, this cannot be ignored. The existence of the Phantoms would be nothing but a threat to our everyday lives. To be honest, I’m already working alongside the police to help sort out this matter,” Akechi admitted. Ice might as well have replaced my blood when I heard him say those words.

The show proceeded to wrap up and all of us set about collecting our stuff, I could feel a tense atmosphere lingering over us because of what had been discussion. Thought while the tension from Ryūji was definitely of the angry variety, Ann seemed to be a little bit more morose than I had expected, not that I was feeling particular chipper myself.

“It kinda seemed like what he was saying might be right,” Ann suddenly spoke up. We had moved to one side of the room in order to leave when Ann came to a sudden stop; there might have been a kernel of truth – at least – to what Akechi had been saying especially since his words had instantly made me think of the strange incidents that had been happening across Tokyo in the last two years.

“He made it sound like we’re the baddies. I don’t like it,” Ryūji stated. That was hardly a shock, Ryūji had become rather gung-ho about our social activities and always seemed eager to jump into them, obviously he would take offence to being labelled the villain, perhaps more so than any of us given his previous labelling at the hands of Kamoshida.

“But that stuff about the police… do you think it’s for real?” Ann asked. We couldn’t tell for certain if it was or wasn’t, none of us had any contacts inside the police to be able to ascertain whether this was truth or not, but we certainly couldn’t ignore the possibility that they would end up getting involved at some point or another.

“He can say whatever he wants. The justice of it all is something we can decide for ourselves,” Morgana insisted. Good advice, justice was much like beauty, it lay in a person’s own judgment as to what could truly be beautiful, which meant it was up to each individual to see if the justice they were witnessing was something they agreed with or were opposed to.

“Oh sorry, I gotta go take a leak. Can you guys wait here? I’ll be right back,” Ryūji spoke. He then took off before anyone could respond, I shook my head at the way he had turned what had actually been a serious conversation on its’ head; a small groan escaped the blonde model to my left and I couldn’t blame her in the least.

“Oh my god… I’m gonna keep going, okay?” Ann commented. Ren and I nodded our heads and the girl proceeded to walk off, I might as well stick around to keep Ren company while we waited for Ryūji to get back to us; I turned to the boy and was about to suggest a topic to get us talking when a set of footsteps echoed towards us.

“Oh, it’s you,” Akechi’s voice suddenly came. I quickly pressed myself back against the wall, his voice was so plastic-y, I really wanted to avoid his talking as much as possible. “I’m glad I found you. I wanted to thank you in person,” Akechi admitted. Well, he actually sounded like a normal person now, if he talked more like this then I could actually stand being around him more. “To paraphrase Hegel, advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis,” Akechi stated.

“But only truth can be found in a synthesis that combines the two,” Ren responded. I looked at him surprised by what he had just said, since I hadn’t expected him to give the answer he had, from Akechi’s silence he seemed to feel the same way. “That’s the final part of the quote, paraphrased a little true, but mostly the same,” Ren commented. Suddenly, a laugh escape from Akechi, it was a short and sharp bark of sound but laughter none the less.

“Yes, you’re right. What I meant is that our discussion was quite meaningful. Few people around me are so willing to speak their minds as freely as you did earlier,” Akechi admitted. Well, that must not have been pleasant, having to deal with people perhaps acting like the male host all the time. “Adults are only interested in using the young, while they simply do as the adults say. There are too many irresponsible people in these modern times. I can understand why you’d support the Phantoms,” Akechi commented. Oi, sounds like he had his own issues to deal with… still weird that he had no Will of Rebellion if he though this way. “It’s possible that this group is just as you believe and they are truly acting with good intentions. Since they have special talents, I assume their hearts must be burning with a sense of justice and duty. But that justice is merely a façade, concealing their lack of true strength,” Akechi commented. I felt a pulse of annoyance rush through me and Phantom howled darkly deep within my soul. “That’s why I believe, if a truly powerful opponent were to corner them, they would flee without a second thought,” Akechi insisted.

“You seem so certain of that, but perhaps they wouldn’t run. Perhaps they’d fight until the bitter end because their very real justice compels them to do so,” Ren argued. I was calmed by my leader’s defence of us, but it didn’t ease the violently song within my heart at the accusation that had been slung at me and my friends, along with my other self.

“Oh?” Akechi sounded. He certainly seemed surprised by Ren’s belief in us, I hope it didn’t cause Ren to be put under suspicion of being connected to us since that would be troublesome. “You really are intriguing. I bet you’d make a worthwhile debate partner on the subject. If it’s alright with you, would you continue sharing your thoughts with me?” Akechi requested. He held out his left hand to Ren.

“Yeah, that’s fine by me,” Ren agreed. I hoped Ren would be able to withstand the plastic sound of his voice more than I could, it was rather strange that it seemed to keep coming and going whenever Akechi spoke; Ren reached his hand out and they proceeded to shake their clasped hands, hopefully this could be useful for us.

“Thank you, that’s great news. I sense something in you that’s quite different from other people. I guess you can call it my detective’s intuition? Haha, kidding, of course,” Akechi stated. Just then I felt something, it was the firm yet capable of growing sensation that had appeared several times before now; just like with Mishima and Maruki-sensei, the moment I sensed this one, I realised that Akechi linked to Angel and Archangel. They exchanged contact information and then the older boy proceeded to walk away and Ren immediately spun to look at me.

“Okay, how did you do that?” Ren asked. I could only guess that he was referring to how Akechi hadn’t even seemed to react to my presence, sure it would have been difficult to see me since I was flat against the wall and Ren had been stood in front of me, but Ren hadn’t been stationary during the conversation, occasionally moving which should have exposed me but there had been nothing from the boy to indicate that he’d even realised I was present.

“Too much practice acting as if I’m a ghost for the last three years,” I admitted. Ren scrunched up his nose, clearly not liking me reference my time before befriending him and the rest of the Phantoms, but it apparently had some uses. “Be careful around him. I don’t know why but… he unnerves me,” I added on. Ren’s expression went stony, but his grey eyes gleamed with worry.

“What do you see?” Ren asked. That would be easy to explain but I still couldn’t wrap my head around the way his words and Will were completely opposed to each other; my head didn’t have that same stuffed feeling as before, but it didn’t make me feel any better about being around him given the fake tone he seemed fond of using.

“Nothing, not even a spark. As if he has no will to rebel at all, yet his words don’t make sense then,” I explained. Ren’s expression furrowed as even he seemed confused by the fact that Akechi seemed to have a slight unhappiness to how society worked which meant he should at least be willing to rebel and yet he didn’t have the slightest inclination to do so if my eyes were to be trusted.

“Even so, I don’t think we can underestimate a detective’s intuition,” Morgana warned. That was very true, for him to be so famous for solving cases then we needed to be careful about interacting with him. “On the other hand, there’s an awful lot we could learn from him. If he contacts you, try hanging out with him,” Morgana suggested. It certainly was something rather worthwhile for us to consider.

“Agreed, we absolutely have to be on guard when talking to him,” Ren commented. That was something we needed to do as if we weren’t careful then there was every possibility that he would start to get suspicious of Ren and if those suspicious spurred the boy to start investigating Ren, that could lead him to getting closer to the activities we were all engaged in.

“Just not too obvious, if you’re too defensive, he’ll read that and become suspicious,” I warned. We definitely couldn’t afford to put Akechi on high alert as that would only make him investigating Ren more likely thus putting us in more danger; this would certainly be a difficult connection to maintain, certainly more than the others that Ren had managed to craft with those outside our group.

“Like dancing on a tightrope then… fun,” Ren sarcastically commented. Yeah, that certainly described the situation that Ren had ended up in, I patted his arm in an attempt to reassure him and his lips pulled into a small smile; at that moment Ryūji proceeded to run up to us, apparently back from the break he needed to take.

“Sorry for takin’ so long! Wait, was that Akechi?” Ryūji asked. The both of us nodded our heads to show that he was right and, in that instant, the blonde’s expression turned dark and angry. “I can’t stand that high an’ mighty attitude! Just breathin’ the same air as him makes me sick,” Ryūji complained. It seemed that Ryūji had found someone else to start hating that wasn’t a target for us.

“He’s entitled to an opinion Ryūji. Even if it’s one you don’t like,” I chastised. With those words, I turned around and began to walk out of the stage, I heard the boys following after me hopefully with no more incidents happened to delay us leaving.

*Persona 5 Royal*

I was back at home and resting after the draining day that had happened at the TV station, I was enjoying a book when my phone started to blow up. I could already tell that Ryūji was probably complaining about what had happened with Akechi, a small groan escaped me, so I bookmarked my place and reached over to grab the object to see what was happening in the Chat.

Ryūji: That Akechi bastard… thinking about what he said is just pissing me off again.

Ann: He clearly tried to discredit everything we’re doing.

Ren: He certainly has an intensely negative viewpoint of us.

Natsumi: And he’s allowed, freedom of thought is a basic human right.

Natsumi: Do we really all want to think the same thing?

Ryūji: But we’re obviously the good guys. And he dissed us

Ryūji: On live TV too!

Ren: You’re both right.

Ren: We can’t all be the same otherwise we’re not people.

Ren: But we’re also doing something good for people who can’t.

Yusuke: Don’t be so sour, Ryūji.