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 91: - The Desert Town
We met up the next day, we definitely needed to get a quick start on helping Futaba because from what I could tell, she had been through enough thanks to the formation of her Palace. One interesting development that came before the meeting got to work was that Yusuke and Ryūji had a Showtime move down which was quite handy since we now had three of these moves to use against our enemies.
“So, Futaba still took Ryūji’s suggestion to heart,” Ren began. My eyes widened at those words since it did not seem like this could go well depending on what she decided to do. “She took down the Phan-site and left a question if this was enough proof. It’s back up thankfully so Mishima isn’t losing his mind,” Ren explained. I deflated a little at hearing that since it wasn’t a massive issue and Futaba had fixed it right away.
“Thank goodness, Mishima worked hard on that, he would have been distraught to see it gone,” I commented. Mishima had poured so much effort into the website and even if I disagreed with some of the choices that had been made regarding the website, Mishima didn’t deserve to have his hard work suddenly implode on him because of something that Ryūji had gone and said in an impulsive manner.
“Anyway, I’m honestly surprised at the Palace this time… everywhere we looked was just desert,” Morgana admitted. I shivered slightly at remembering the extreme heat that had swamped us when we ended up entering the Palace, we needed to be prepared for handling the heat when we entered that place this time around, especially since most of us were in dark clothing due to our Rebel’s Armour.
“Oh yeah, all the other ones until now have just been normal cities outside of the distortion itself,” Ann recalled. The only anomaly was Kaneshiro’s Palace but if you leave Shibuya then the rest of Tokyo would start to become more like its’ physical world counterpart; yet this time the extreme expanse of Futaba’s Palace was quite unsettling, I think it showed that Futaba was greatly disconnected to the rest of the world.
“Thanks to that, we didn’t even know we were in a Palace our first time goin’ into Kamoshida’s,” Ryūji reminded. I proceeded to give him a look, since it seemed that he was forgetting something that had also happened when they first went into Palace; judging from the look that Ren was giving him, he also was definitely remembering the incident that had occurred.
“We didn’t know even when we reached Shūjin, which does make me wonder Ryūji,” Ren commented. Ryūji turned just a little red as he looked down clearly understanding what Ren was getting at, because I truly did need to question exactly why he thought the building of our school would suddenly become like a castle of all things, even now I didn’t have a true answer.
“That’s still part of the Palace though. The city may not have been distorted but it was cognition. The Palace Rulers may have been criminals, but they were social enough to know the city layout,” Morgana stated. That at least made my theory a little bit more sensible, and it seemed the best way to explain the way the Palace had formed.
“I think this might be an expression of how Futaba-san is a shut-in. Her knowledge of the surroundings, or lack thereof, has affected how the Palace manifests,” I suggested. Such a lack of knowledge had definitely caused the Palace to form such a massive sprawling desert in place of basically the entirety of Yongen.
“Hence why the whole thing is a bleak desert. Understandable once you think about her lifestyle,” Yusuke agreed. It was definitely the most likely cause behind what had happened to manifesting such a strange Palace, we were already entering another world, but Futaba’s Palace really made it feel like we were in a completely different world.
“I doubt many famous criminals are shut-ins like her though. Hopefully that means we won’t have to go through all this desert business in the future,” Ann admitted. I really hope that we never had to deal with such a detached world again, or at least if we did, then could it at least not be something that would end up baking me inside of my own skin.
“That might not necessarily be the case,” Makoto warned. I did not like what Makoto was about to say, I could already tell this without even hearing it. “Many upper-class citizens travel by limo or plane, so they don’t know or care about city life,” Makoto explained. That honestly did not sound like a good thing, the limo wasn’t too back but it might be rather cramped quarters for a fight if we did, the plane on the other hand…
“A plane!? Damn, that sounds pretty good,” Ryūji commented. I gave him a surprised look, because I absolutely had no desire to fight on something so high in the sky after what happened during our escape from the last Palace. “I mean wouldn’t you want to go to a Palace wayyy up above the clouds if you could?” Ryūji asked. Ryuji had turned to look at Ren as he said those words, but our leader looked distinctly unimpressed.
“No thank you,” Ren firmly answered. I think Ren was speaking for all of us judging by the expressions on the other faces on the other human faces and the rather fluffed up tail that Morgana happened to be sporting; clearly Ryūji was the only one who actually wanted to do into a plane-based Palace, I pray that this never actually happened.
“I think a flying bank is quite enough thanks,” Makoto agreed. I firmly nodded my head to show my support for the words that Makoto had spoken, I could probably handle just about any other Palace so long as we didn’t end up flying around in the sky again; because I seriously didn’t need to go through thinking I was going to fall to my death a second time.
“I have to say though, the topic of the area outside the distortion is fascinating,” Yusuke admitted. All of us shifted our attention to the artist to hear what he said. “Depending on the criminal, there may be an exact replica of Tokyo within their Palace,” Yusuke theorised. I supposed Kaneshiro was the closest we had got, but that was purely in Shibuya, I wonder if a criminal did have such a recreation. “I would love to examine the aesthetics of such a strange place at least once,” Yusuke admitted.
“You don’t got a damn thing but art in that head of yours, huh?” Ryūji questioned. I think that had been very clearly established that Yusuke adored art above all else, after all had he forgotten that Yusuke had only met us by running out of a car in order to catch up to Ann all because he wanted to make a painting of her.
“But it’s true that an observant criminal could have a true to reality city in their Palace,” Morgana pointed out. That might be concerning, the atmosphere aside we could end up getting blindsided if we went into such a place and were in our normal clothes. “Although even if such a place did exist, it’s not like we’d have any use for it,” Morgana added on. A few nods occurred and with that discussion, we proceeded to depart for Futaba’s Palace.
*Persona 5 Royal*
“Hey, we’ve changed into our Rebel’s Armour,” Panther acknowledged. I think was probably something we should have expected to happen given what had happened right at the end of the last time we’d got involved with this Palace; it was rather strange for us to not be immediately cast as enemies but Shadow Futaba’s sudden about-face on her opinion of us was also extremely concerning.
“That proves she sees us as a threat now. Let’s be careful!” Mona reminded. We definitely had to be more concerned when we started to explore this Palace now, there hadn’t been any Shadows last time but there was bound to be some now which meant we’d have to be on high alert this time around as the danger of being attacked had likely increased; thank goodness we actually had our weapons this time around.
“Skull and Mona with me. Queen, you’ve got Panther, Fox and Amazon,” Joker ordered. We split into our groups and started to move towards the door leading inside the pyramid and we descended down the stairs; as there wasn’t any other path that we could take at the moment, we simply headed towards the door but while Joker, Skull, Queen, and myself tried to pry it open, it didn’t even budge if we did get a hold of the door in the first time.
“So, it still won’t open. We might just have to give up on it,” Mona warned. It definitely felt that way at the moment, we had no chance of getting through the door at the current moment which meant we probably needed to search around the outside in order to find a way to proceed deeper into this very bizarre Palace.
“No point sittin’ around though. Whaddya wanna do, Joker?” Skull wondered. I looked at our leader, I doubt he was going to pull out some way to open the door given that Joker wasn’t a miracle worker, no matter how skilled he was at fighting or keeping our group on task; I think getting this door to magically open was just a little beyond even his capabilities.
“I’d like to try and talk to Shadow Futaba if I can,” Joker admitted. I could understand his feeling about that, I also wanted another chance to talk to the Ruler, which was a strange feeling to have. “But for now, we can try looking for another entrance or find a key to this door,” Joker decided. That was pretty much the only way thing we could realistically do at the moment.
“Yes, there must be some means by which we can open it,” Queen agreed. There had to be, there was always at least one pathway through to the Treasure – which was a touch odd, but I won’t argue with it – so if there was a door then that meant that there had to be a key; especially since Futaba wanted us to Change her Heart, which meant a pathway had to be present.
“We will have to investigate every suspicious place we see, both inside the pyramid and out,” Fox stated. I had actually expected something like this to end up happening, as much as I wished that we didn’t have to head out into that monstrous heat again, it seemed like we didn’t have much of a choice in this case; at least this time I had come prepared for such a thing.
“Ugh, outside!? You mean we gotta deal with that heat again!?” Skull complained. None of us could disagree with him at this moment since the heat had certainly been quite soul sapping when we last had to endure it for more than a few minutes; but there wasn’t much choice available to us at the moment.
“At least we’ve brought water this time,” I pointed out. Reaching into my pockets, I pulled out a couple of bottles of water that were, miraculously enough, still mostly frozen which at least meant we could still use them to keep ourselves cool when out in that heat; Queen and Joker also pulled out some bottles to show that we had plenty of a supply at the moment, there were also a lot more in my seemingly bottomless pockets and most likely in the others as well.
“No complaining. Let’s begin our investigation right away,” Queen insisted. We really needed to get this search underway and actually moving instead of sitting around and doing nothing; we left the door and quickly made our way back to the front door. As we went, I noticed that I couldn’t sense the ominous energy from before, it seemed to be missing for some reason at the moment which was interesting.
“Are you leaving?” Shadow Futaba asked. We had almost reached the door, but at the sound of her voice, all of us spun around to find that she had appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Come back here. Let’s talk for a moment,” Shadow Futaba requested. I blinked my eyes in shock that she had just appeared like that given what had been said yesterday.
“You think she heard me?” Joker asked. There was that possibility, or she could have just decided to come and speak to us, either way we definitely needed to hear what she had to say; we proceeded to descend the steps so that we could properly speak with the unusual Shadow, hopefully we didn’t end up having to deal with another death trap if she decided to leave us after the last time she did that.
“Welcome back, I had thought I would never see you again,” Shadow Futaba admitted. I couldn’t really blame her since it was definitely unusual for us to have returned after nearly ending up being flattened, but we couldn’t just let a young girl suffer under the burden of her distorted heart any longer. So long as the information we got would be able to help us in healing Futaba’s heart, then I wasn’t bothered by what happened… except another death trap that is.
“Yeah, I wonder why. I can’t believe you tried to crush us with an effing boulder! You want us to steal your goddamn Treasure or not?!” Skull yelled. I could understand why it would be frustrating for him to deal with, but he didn’t need to yell at Shadow Futaba when she hadn’t done anything to us yet; I gently nudged his foot with my own, hoping that he’d be willing to calm down a little for the time being.
“Hm, why don’t we make a deal? You wish to proceed further, yes?” Shadow Futaba asked. That caught my attention as I focused on the girl, wondering what she was about to suggest to us, this was quite different to how she had initially acted, being rather defiant and seemingly against us setting foot within her Palace. I wonder what could have possibly caused such a change to occur within the Ruler after such a short time.
“A deal, you say?” Fox questioned. This would definitely be interesting to hear what Shadow Futaba wanted us to do for her, I was also getting a sense of déjà vu. I was still a bit wary at the moment, but the ominous aura hadn’t returned, and no kind of trap had ended up being sprung upon us suddenly just by talking to her, the phrase so far so good could definitely be applied here.
“There is a town nearby. I would like you to take back that which the bandit there stole from me,” Shadow Futaba explained. That caused my eyes to widen, I’d seen a town when we had been approaching the pyramid the other day, but the idea that there was someone in here who was treating the pyramid as something to rob… that was extremely unusual, most Shadows were blindly loyal to a Ruler until Joker started talking to them.
“Oh yeah, I think I remember seeing a town on the way here,” Panther recalled. It hadn’t been that far away if I recalled its’ location correctly, which would made the journey to it much easier than we probably anticipated, the only major issue would be finding the bandit and whatever had been taken from Shadow Futaba that was so important.
“If you bring what was stolen back to me, I will give you a reward. I’ll even tell you how to proceed,” Shadow Futaba offered. That was definitely something we could do with learning; it sounded like a really good deal so far and there didn’t seem to be any downside to accepting the offer. I looked at Joker wondering what he made of all of this.
“Can’t you tell us any more details? Anything about this bandit, or what was stolen?” Queen requested. We could do with any information that Shadow Futaba had, I was still trying to figure out why the Shadows would actually go and attack Shadow Futaba; was it in response to something Futaba had gone through? Then it probably wasn’t a Shadow but a cognition that we were going to face, we’d probably only find out when we got to the town.
“You’ll learn all the information you need to know once you arrive,” Shadow Futaba claimed. This was rather confusing, but maybe Shadow Futaba was attempting to test our abilities; perhaps she wanted to be sure that we could fulfil the desire that Futaba was carrying within her. Either way, we didn’t have much choice, and this certainly beat searching outside for any sign of a way to open that door.
“We’ll need to head outside if we want to get to the town. We can go when you’re ready, Joker,” Queen decided. It was definitely up to Joker as to what we should do at the moment, but I didn’t see a better option with our current situation; Joker allowed a breath to escape him, but he didn’t seem annoyed, so perhaps it was relief that we had something more of a direction than we did before this conversation.
“Let’s get moving now, no point waiting around,” Joker decided. We turned around and proceeded to move towards the door in order to continue our search, as we moved water bottles were passed out so that everyone would have some to use; if we were heading out into that heat and expecting a battle then we were going to be in need of these bottles, I just hope the ice lasted for a decent while.
“So, how’re we supposed to get to this town?” Skull asked. I think there was only one answer to that and personally it was definitely the better idea for us to travel to the town as swiftly as possible while avoiding the heat we’d likely be baked under if we did actually attempt to risk walking towards the town. Joker turned to look at the person we would be relying upon to get to the location.
“Would you be able to handle it, Mona?” Joker asked. He had been able to get us from the middle of the desert to the pyramid pretty easily enough, even if the air had been stagnantly warm when we made that journey, I’m sure that the distance from the Palace to the town would be much different. Hopefully nothing bad ended up happening while we were on route to this town which could put Mona in danger.
“I should be able to,” Mona admitted. With Mona’s confirmation, Joker smiled a little and then proceeded to turn to the steps with a small grimace on his face, I could only guess that he didn’t relish the idea of going back into that baking landscape. Then again, I completely agreed with him, the air-conditioned pyramid was a much nicer place to be then out here.
“Let us observe the surroundings and search for any towns that may lie about here,” Fox stated. Joker nodded his head, and we proceeded down the steps into the scorching heat, once at the bottom we quickly split up in order to start searching. I ended up finding a set of steps that led out to a locked door, but a call brought me back up and I found Panther stood on a wooden structure with her pointing out into the distance.
“Hey, isn’t that a town off in the distance?” Panther asked. I followed the direction that she was pointing and found that there was a vague thing in the distance that did seem to look like a collection of building, there wasn’t any waviness to it which could indicate a mirage, nor was anything setting off a sensation in my eyes to warn this was an illusion.
“Yes, I can see what appears to be buildings over there,” Fox answered. The others were nodding their heads in agreement to that statement, which at least meant we had found the place that Shadow Futaba had directed us to; now we just needed to reach it and then we’d could set about hunting down the thief.
“Want to head over to the town, Joker?” Mona asked. Joker nodded his head and Mona proceeded to turn into a van allowing us to climb in, and the van immediately took off towards the distant buildings, luckily the journey was shorter than we had anticipated, and we easily arrive in the building. “We’ve arrived. This is the city Shadow Futaba mentioned,” Mona stated. We got out of the van and took a quick look around.
“It looks quite desolate… she said only bandits reside here, but still,” Fox commented. That had definitely been the case, and I think the desolate nature of this place lent some heavy weight to the implication of that case; I doubt a place could flourish with the kind of people who would steal constantly from others.
We started to creep through the area, keeping close to shadows and corners as we moved. Coming upon an intersection, Joker found a Shadow approaching so called me up; a quick look confirmed that it was weak enough for us to handle without too much trouble. Joker took the move and pounced on it like he was some kind of cat, the mask was quickly torn off and three Sandmen appeared in the mummified Shadow’s place.
I quickly rattled on its’ Elemental affinities to the others so that they could hit the weak points. Joker started us off with a quick blast of Electrical magic via an armoured Persona known as Zouchouten. One managed to dodge the attack, so Joker executed a swift Baton Pass to Panther. She quickly had Carmen wreath the remaining one in fire to knock it down. Diving in, we executed our All-Out Attack which swiftly eliminated all of them.
There was another Shadow up ahead, so we quickly made our way after it, allowing Joker to ambush it once more. Two Anzu emerged this time and Joker quickly used a Persona called Ara Mitama to unleash a powerful burst of Nuke magic. With both of the Shadows down, we darted in and quickly eliminated them; I was starting to wonder if all the fights would be this easy for us. This feeling got stronger when we kept exploring and found a third Shadow which was just as easily defeated. We kept moving and eventually ended up in a square section of town that had been sealed off by a wall.
“I have to say the mood of this town is definitely strange. I can’t sense anyone around,” Mona admitted. From what we had seen, there were only Shadows inhabiting this place which definitely contributed to the eerie energy of this town; we hadn’t found any signs of the bandit we were meant to be looking for, since none of the Shadows had ended up dropping something that looked like it belonged to the Palace upon defeat.
“Hey! You guys lookin’ for something?” A strange voice asked. We turned around and saw that behind us was much more of a humanoid shape and he was waving a curved sword around. “Heh, I thought I heard someone rustlin’ around here… and here y’all are. Welcome to the desert fellow trader,” The individual commented.
“Hm? What does he mean by ‘trader’?” Fox questioned. I think this might have been the bandit that we had been sent to find, well at least we didn’t have to keep searching for him, now all we needed to do was get him to give us what he had taken. I didn’t want to spook him just yet since we were in an enclosed space while he could escape from us if he felt like it, which meant our work got harder.
“We don’t care about your welcomes. You’re a bandit, right? Just cough up the thing you stole,” Skull demanded. I allowed a sigh to escape from me upon hearing him say those words, since I’m pretty sure that the bandit was going to end up getting suspicious of us now; either he attacked us or he ran, but that would depend upon how cautious he was or not.
“Ha! Well, ain’t this interstin’. A group of criminals comin’ after a fellow trader,” The bandit cackled. I really just wanted to get to the fighting now instead of the continuing conversation. “Well, you’re gonna have to catch me if you want it!” The bandit dared. He then took off which is what I had expected him to do after daring us to catch him.
“Wait! Ughhh, you just had to scare him off, Skull!” Panther snapped. I could definitely agree with my red clad friend, Skull didn’t need to go and threaten the person that we had been pursuing and allow him to run away from us before we could do what Shadow Futaba asked of us. We needed to find the bandit again and as soon as possible to get a hold of the object.
“We’ll have time to talk later. Let’s get after him,” Queen insisted. We darted out of the dead end area and found him waiting a short distance ahead of us, we moved towards him but that blasted bandit just took off down another street. We followed after him once more, but just as we approached him a second time, he ran away once more.
“Wait!” Joker ordered. We all stopped moving and proceeded to turn around to look at him, I hoped that the bandit didn’t manage to escape from us while we talked. “We can’t keep chasing after him, he’ll just keep running away. We need to trap him before taking back whatever he stole,” Joker pointed out. That was definitely going to be the case, so we really needed to change gears at this moment.
“Perhaps we can use the area he confronted us at to pen him in,” Mona suggested. That seemed like a really good idea, since there wouldn’t be a way out for him in that area except the small opening and we’d easily be able to cover that with only a few people; it would easily keep this bandit contained thus ensuring we could get whatever it was he had managed to steal from Shadow Futaba.
“In which case splitting up might be an effective way of herding him in that direction,” Queen stated. If we covered any possible exit then that definitely seemed like the best idea, we could easily do that from what I had seen during our walk around the town. I could already tell from Joker’s expression that we were doing it, so I shrugged my box from my shoulder to be prepared for the order about to come.
“Mona! You and Panther approach from the road leading straight to the square. Queen! You and Skull will take the side road just off that route. Amazon! You and Fox will cover the side road that’s behind the building across from the square. I’ll be on the roof keeping an eye on him!” Joker ordered. We all nodded our heads and split up to our assigned locations as Joker climbed up onto the rooftops. Fox and I had our ranged weapons ready for if the bandit tried to come in our direction. I heard some gunfire which indicated the others had encountered the bandit.
I soon spotted him running towards us, so I loosed my arrow which rushed passed his shoulder, barely missing it. Fox had unleashed a spray of bullets to pepper the area at the bandit’s feet. The bandit wisely retreated and when I ran up to the entrance to our area and I saw that the bandit moved right towards where we wanted him to go. The rest of the Phantoms on the ground showed up and Joker dropped down to the ground.
“There he goes! We finally chased him into the square!” Panther cheered. At last! We’d finally managed to trap him, now all we had to do was just quickly kick his backside and take the object back to Shadow Futaba; all of us seemed rather eager to take this bandit down after the run around that he had just given us.
“Perfect. He has nowhere else to run now. Let’s do this, Joker!” Queen encouraged. We proceeded to move towards the entrance and flooded into it, but Skull and Queen lingered at the back to keep the bandit from being able to move around to try and escape. Joker and Mona moved further forward while the rest of us spread out a little more to prevent the bandit from trying to escape without fighting us.
“Yo bandit! What’s the matter? Not runnin’ anymore?” Skull taunted. I really don’t think he needed to do such a thing to the clearly cornered enemy, it was probably going to agitate the bandit much more than he already was and that might make whatever fight was coming a little bit more difficult for us. I summoned my naginata in preparation for what was coming for us.
“Tch… don’t even think about comin’ one step closer!” The bandit threatened. He was definitely on edge about us having managed to corner him like this, but he wasn’t going to do anything to make us run away from this confrontation, we were definitely going to have to keep our wits about us as we went through with this fight in order to deal with this highly agitated enemy,
“Give us what you stole, and we’ll leave,” Joker insisted. I doubt that was going to happen, but at least he seemed to be trying to avoid a confrontation which would be nice to skip since we’d get back to Shadow Futaba faster and see what she had for us. Joker’s hand was stretched out to the bandit as if expecting something to be handed over to him by the bandit.
“Heh, don’t be ridiculous. You’ve gotta let me go. I mean you guys came to raid that tomb too, right? Why don’t we work together and share the plunder?” The bandit suggested. Well, I suppose there wasn’t anything technically wrong with that statement since we were here to take the Treasure from Palace; but our reasoning for doing such a thing was completely different to the reason that the bandit had for doing his plundering.
“Don’t talk to use like we’re the same as you! We came here to save Futaba-chan!” Panther yelled. She sounded extremely angered at being folded into the same group as the bandit, not that I blamed her since we weren’t anything like this damnable bandit who stole things for selfish reasons. I really just wanted him to transform so I could start hacking at whatever his form turned out to be.
“So you wanna do this no matter what, huh? Well in that case… I guess I don’t got a choice!” The bandit declared. The bandit proceeded to turn to goo and emerged as a large golden feathered bird with gold adornments on its’ body, immediately it unleashed a powerful gust of wind that whipped around all of us. I felt the blades of wind slice into my body with more intensity than I had experienced before. Unfortunately, Skull took the blow and ended up falling down, allowing the Shadow to get in another blow. An attack that seemed to really rattle Fox but there were no other side effects. Once the wind died down, I immediately focused on our opponent.
“Garuda Resists Wind and Repels Bless! No Weakness!” I warned. We were definitely in a difficult situation given its’ lack of Weaknesses, at Joker’s signal I flicked off my mask and immediately used Samanda to weaken Garuda in the hopes that this might do something make our fight easier. Once my move was over, Mona took the opportunity to cast healing magic over us which was definitely going to be necessary given how powerful this Shadow seemed to be.
Joker pulled his mask off and a massive starfish with an eyeball at the centre of the star known as Decarabia appeared. With it a powerful burst of fire scorched across Garuda with a set of flames continuing to dance across the bird creature even with the main fire fading. Queen quickly figured out the best move to make and unleashed a blast of Nuke magic at Garuda which dealt quite a bit of damage to it, but it didn’t manage to knock it down.
Fox moved in to strike, unleashing a rapid and heavy slash that caused Garuda to sway slightly. Skull followed up with his own Physical strike. Panther instead opted to use her Dormina Ailment which successfully sent it to sleep for us. Since we were saved from having to deal with any more powerful Wind attacks for the time being, Joker took the opportunity to strike using Tam Lin’s Gravity Magic to slam into Garuda. The resulting attack was strong enough to knock Garuda down to the ground; we immediately pounced with an All-Out Attack, hacking into the bird as much as possible before it moved.
Garuda retaliated and lashed out with more Wind. It was only Single target this time, but the target was Skull and try as the boy might, he wasn’t able to avoid it, and the Wind was too sharp for any of us to reach Skull and pull him away. Skull took the blow and fell to the ground; Garuda then used the opportunity to attack. It flapped its’ wings, and I immediately felt something start to surround me. I violently shook my head as if I could shake it off, but the effect of the Spell started to twist around me much more tightly.
It was a suffocating aura that prevented me from being able to properly breathe no matter how hard I tried to sucking in my breath, all the while this crushing pressure of terror plagued me. For some reason I felt all alone, like I was back in that gilded cage being forced to sing until my throat was torn to shreds. It was too painful, where was everyone else, had they abandoned me? Oh gods, what if they were dead! I couldn’t lose anyone else!
A sharp slap burned across my cheek and the overwhelming despair rushed out of my head as if it had never been there before and a soothing calm took its’ place. I could finally breath again which was a relief, Joker pulled me back to my feet and I glared at the Garuda. That Spell was clearly geared towards the Despair Ailment, I was grateful to Joker for dragging me back and gave him a quick squeeze to show this.
Since I was back on my feet, I ripped my mask off and quickly slammed Garuda with Terazi which managed to hit it with enough force to knock it down. I darted over to Queen and quickly Baton Passed to her. A Nuke Spell quickly twisted around Garuda to deal some more damage. The damn Shadow pulled itself back up and used its’ Physical attack on Panther. The blonde girl immediately struck back with another burst of flames, but no fire remained this time.
Joker took over and pulled on his mask, bringing out Lilim and he used her Bufula Spell to attack. Thankfully, it immediately froze the Shadow and Skull took the opportunity to use his Physical Skill. The impact was so powerful that I was convinced I felt the reverberation from the blow run through me. Even better was that Garuda ended up falling to the ground and we darted in to attack as much as we could before it could get back up.
Get back up it did which was getting a little annoying, Fox immediately used his Skill to attack, and I think we were getting close to the end of this fight given how weak looking Garuda seemed. The bird attempted another multi-target Wind against us. Skull managed to dodge it this time which prevented another extra move for this Shadow and gave us the edge. It gave us so much of an edge that Queen called out for Skull to prepare their Showtime.
The entire environment became as desolate as the desert we were already in, but with pillars of stone, barren trees and cacti. There was also a signpost with wanted posters for the two Phantoms. Skull and Queen were posing at the end of a dirt track, Skull referred to Queen as the Fist of the Phantom Star, before Queen elbowed him. Ordering him to focus, they made their move, charging at the Shadow.
Queen leapt forward with a flying kick to strike Garuda. Skull jumped in and swung his mace down onto the enemy and then pulled back to swing his mace into it. Queen had used Skull’s attack to focus herself as if preparing for some kind of special move. She then unleashed a barrage of rapid fire punches that ended with her streaking passed the Shadow to end up behind it. Skull dashed up to Queen and handed her a drink can; but the brunette crushed the can in her fist as Skull bowed to her while the Shadow disintegrated. The scene faded away.
“We won! Oh, he dropped something,” Skull realised. His celebration had been cut short, I walked over and lifted it into my hands, it felt like paper but was slightly off, in a way that I hadn’t felt before. It was sealed with what I think was wax that had a short sequence of zeroes and ones on the surface, I turned to Joker and handed it to him so that he could look at it, but he seemed just as confused by the object as we were.
“Is this… some kind of papyrus parchment? It looks like there’s something written inside,” Mona commented. I had seen some writing when I’d been looking at the seal since I had the edge pointing towards my face; instead of looking inside of it, Joker instead tucked the piece of paper away and turned back to us.
“We shouldn’t snoop, we got this for Futaba’s sake,” Joker pointed out. That seemed reasonable, she had asked us to retrieve this not start looking into whatever it was that she had asked us to retrieve; we really shouldn’t have looked into the scroll even if it hadn’t been sealed by the wax dripped onto its’ edge.
“Yeah, no peeking at a girl’s belongings without permission,” Panther agreed. I could agree with that, we didn’t need to start snooping for information and end up alienating Shadow Futaba as a result; that we definitely wanted to avoid given the clear presence of death traps in this Palace, having the Ruler aiding us would be a great boon for our infiltration.
“Y’know, just what the hell’s happenin’ in her heart?” Skull wondered. I actually could agree with this comment, since Futaba’s heart was definitely unlike anything that I had seen before and that was saying something. “There’s this bandit, those weird voices sayin’, ‘you killed her’ and who knows what else. It’s a total freakin’ mess,” Skull reminded.
“So does this mean that even though she’s the Palace Ruler, she can’t control what happens in here?” Panther asked. That was a possibility, the ominous aura was also rather weird given the lack of its’ presence in the other Palaces; this entire situation was completely bizarre so I guess the Palace being as bizarre was probably something that we could have expected to happen, but this was very weird.
“I don’t know… I’ve never seen a case like this,” Mona admitted. I shook my head to show even I was confused about this, I suppose we’d only be able to figure out what was going on with the Palace and Shadow Futaba by venturing further into the Palace itself. Or at least I was hopeful that we would figure out the answers to the many questions I ended up having regarding this whole situation.
“Regardless, we have no more business in this city. Shall we head back, Joker?” Fox suggested. Joker nodded his head, and we quickly made our way back to the entrance where Mona assumed his van form and after we had piled in, Mona shot off back to the pyramid. I figured that the more dangerous Shadows would likely be contained within the pyramid, so we needed to be a little bit wary, unless Shadow Futaba opened the way to the Treasure completely. When Mona arrived, we quickly got out and after getting inside, we found that Shadow Futaba was still waiting for us inside.
“We’re back. This is the thing you said they stole, right?” Skull asked. Joker was holding it out to Shadow Futaba, the girl took it from us but didn’t seem all that interested in it, which was a little weird given how adamant she had been about us retrieving it from that bandit; I was starting to get that weird feeling again and I didn’t know what to make of the current oddness that Shadow Futaba was exhibiting.
“Well done. It is yours now,” Shadow Futaba stated. Ours? All of us proceeded to look at each other with clear confusion spreading on their faces as we all tried to puzzle out what Shadow Futaba could possibly be getting at with those words; we didn’t even know what the papyrus happened to contain. This was going way much weirder than I could have anticipated.
“Wait, what? Didn’t you want us to get it back because it’s important?” Panther asked. Shadow Futaba proceeded to break open the seal, she then rolled open the papyrus revealing that the contents weren’t anything I could have guessed it to be. My jaw probably would have ended up on the floor had that been possible, and I think the others probably also had their own stunned expressions at seeing it.
“That is a map of the tomb, stolen by the bandit to aid in his ransacking of this place,” Shadow Futaba explained. It was complete as well, we’d never come across an intact map before, but it was a pleasant development and we even had the Ruler handing it over willingly, this was a really good development. Mona hopped over and took the map so that he could begin looking it over, while the rest of us focused on this conversation with Shadow Futaba.
“Why are you letting them just do whatever they want? This is your Palace, isn’t it?” Queen questioned. That was a good question, I’d have never anticipated such a thing to actually occur, this whole thing was rather weird in such jarring ways; I hoped that we could figure this bizarreness out before we ended up reaching the Treasure.
“All that matters is that the map is now yours. Just come further in and… oh,” Shadow Futaba insisted. I got a sudden shiver down my spine when she stopped talking, especially since the ominous aura had decided to return and ended up spiking quite strongly, as if enraged at us speaking to Shadow Futaba. All of my warning bells were currently going off at the moment, because this aura was extremely oppressive.
“What is it Futaba-san?” I asked. A sudden shaking occurred which was honestly just making things even more weird, I looked over at Shadow Futaba hoping she would be able to explain something; but when I looked, I saw things were definitely going badly when Shadow Futaba when and disappeared just like yesterday.
“Huh? Futaba-chan disa-,” Panther began to speak. But she was cut off when the ground decided to open up and we fell in with Skull screaming as we tumbled into the darkness.